Have you ever seen a Super Bowl ring, NFL championship ring or a national collegiate championship ring? If not, or if you would like to see them again, then plan to come to the Natchez Tricentennial Legends and Lore presentation on hometown sports at 5:30 p.m. Monday at the Historic Natchez Foundation at 108 S. Commerce St.

Trevor Brown, deputy director of the foundation, and myself will present a short program on local, hometown sports history and the people that helped make it. We will then take questions and try to answer them. There will be a walking tour of the many items from our local sports history and the visiting Smithsonian exhibit — “Hometown Teams: How Sports Shape America.”

The rings belong to Allen Brown, an All-American at Ole Miss and a member of the Green Bay Packers, who won the first two games named the Super Bowl. Allen also has a ring for the college national championship that Ole Miss won in 1962.

Joe Fortunato, an All-American at Mississippi State and selected as one of the greatest linebackers in Chicago Bears history, will have his 1963 NFL championship ring on display. This was before they started calling the game the Super Bowl.

Football will not be the only sport that will have displays as there will be items from basketball, baseball, track and field, golf, tennis, swimming, boxing, fencing, fishing, cheerleading and others. Even if you made the grand opening when the Smithsonian arrived, you should plan to come back as so much more local sports history has been added and more is coming in every day. The Smithsonian display will leave on June 26. But the local display will be there through the summer.

Both Allen and Joe are in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in Jackson, and we also have three local coaches in the hall. Coaches A. J. Rexinger, J.O. Brown and Ed Reed have all been inducted.

Glenvall Estes, the longtime sports writer for The Natchez Democrat, is in the Big 8 Writers Association Hall of Fame and some of his articles will also be shown.

I would like to thank the Historic Natchez Foundation and Executive Director Mimi Miller and staff for doing an outstanding job on collecting the local sports history items.

We hope you will join us at 5:30 p.m. Monday to show how hometown sports has helped make Natchez the place we call home and love.

 

Tony Byrne is a former mayor of Natchez and one of the speakers at Monday’s Legends and Lore presentation.