Jerry Clower is Study Club focus for March
Special to The Clinton Courier
The Clinton Study Club’s March meeting focused on the life of Mississippian Howard Gerald “Jerry” Clower, a comedian known for his humorous stories of the rural South. Shown (l to r) are Lynda Williams and Kim Pigott, hostesses for the meeting, and Barbara Parks, who traced the life and work of Clower.
His rural background served country comic Jerry Clower well, Barbara Parks told members of the Clinton Study Club at the March meeting held at Northside Baptist Church.
“He said he ‘told stories funny, not funny stories,’ drawing on material from his growing up years in the East Fork-Liberty area.”
The program was the seventh in the club year’s series about Mississippi celebrities that has featured musicians, writers, chefs and philanthropists.
Park highlighted her presentation with recordings of Clower, whose stories earned him the title of “The Mouth of Mississippi.” The Baptist layman known for his clean humor recorded more than eighteen albums and was author of four books.
Parks told of the Clower family background, the hard work that the farming family faced, and as Clower stated, “working like dogs.” Born in 1926 in Liberty, he graduated from East Fork High School and joined the Navy. Two years later, he began his college career, determined to play football, first at Southwest Junior College and then at Mississippi State University, where he majored in agriculture. He became an assistant county agent directing 4-H Clubs, a program he had been involved in as a boy. He was recruited as a salesman for the Mississippi Chemical Company in Yazoo City, where he found his sales improved when he embellished his sales talks with his humorous storytelling.
He died in 1998 from complications following heart bypass surgery.
Maybe he was not everybody’s cup of tea, it was suggested, but club emeritus member Janet Lee, who with her family lived next door to the Clowers in Yazoo City, noted, “. . .beneath his loud bombast and never-met-a stranger persona, he was a dedicated Christian who considered himself blessed beyond measure. His favorite auxiliary religious group was the Gideons, and he sometimes visited local schools to share New Testaments.”
Lee related a last visit with him, when he wanted to talk about the training of “preacher boys” at Mississippi College.
“His loyalty was to Mississippi State, but he wanted to support students receiving a religious education at the state’s flagship Baptist college,” said Lee.
The Study Club chooses a theme to explore each year, with a club member researching and presenting the topic at the monthly meeting.
Present for the meeting were Jenta Boone, Betty Byrne, Carolyn Cannon, Kathy Cannon, Mary Clark, Vee Deshpanode, Margaret Drummond, Emily Fokeladeh, Sabrina Hagerman, Carole Kelly, Mary Lundgren, Susan Meadors, Barbara Parks, Kim Pigott, Roland Roberts, Lynda Williams and Paula Wimbish.
