JACKSON - No matter how many millions of dollars he made, Warren Hood still called himself a "peckerwood sawmill operator." He died suddenly at home last week at age 87.
To be sure, Hood's self-applied appellation was a constant reminder his great wealth began from cobbling together $900 as a 22-year-old to buy a tiny sawmill in his native Copiah County.
Earlier, as a young timber appraiser in the piney woods of South Mississippi, he first realized the prospective value of the forestry resources which in later years would help him build a home-grown fortune, much of it to be invested in Mississippi philanthropies.
Suffice it to say, the name of Warren Hood would become synonymous with Mississippi timber and wood products. He erected an industrial empire from lumber, hardboard and diversified interests. Meantime he acquired bank holdings to become eventually the largest single stockholder in AmSouth, the state's biggest bank.
For being a formidable mover and shaker in Mississippi civic and economic affairs over four decades, Hood was uncharacteristically a gentle, quiet man. His forte was a keen common sense, marked with an optimistic practicality.
Of course, he had a magic touch for making money-but not by overnight miracle deals. Even though he made a great deal of money, you'd never know it when he didn't pick up the tab at our little weekly coffee klatch.
Warren couldn't hear worth a flip in recent years. We would kid at coffee that the only time he heard us was if someone mentioned dollars and cents.
Last year vivacious Nikki Martinson Boland stopped by to visit us coffee-sipping oldies in her campaign for justice court judge. When one guy leaned over and said, "Warren, why don't you to give her a contribution?" he made no move for his wallet. However, the next day he sent her $1,000.
Myriad are the solid Mississippi-based good causes that were the beneficiaries of his largess, many of those closest to his heart. Because his wife was a devoted Presbyterian, he gave millions to Belhaven College. Yet, he spread his generosity also to Millsaps College, a Methodist institution, and Baptist-backed Mississippi College.
His keenest love in later years was devoting time and money to the Home Place (formerly the Willard F. Bond Home) for the very elderly of modest means. Weekly he would have breakfast there and scope out what needed to be fixed, whether a roof, a new wing, or what else.
He never ran for public office, but he financially backed several of his favorite political figures, principally William Winter, who had to run three times for governor until he was elected in 1979. Each time Winter ran, Hood was his finance chairman.
Two times in the 1970s as a citizen of the highest integrity and trust, Hood was thrust into a leading public role involving change which few others could occupy.
Not many will remember that when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered massive integration of Mississippi school districts - Jackson's the principal one - to begin in January 1970, the Nixon administration called on Warren Hood to head a biracial group of respected moderate local business and professional leaders to smooth the transition.
Hood, though he previously had never been involved in racial reconciliation, took on the assignment knowing he would win no popularity contest in the segregationist tension that existed in the state.
The Hood committee succeeded in helping the state to make a peaceful transition under the school integration order as it had been asked to do by the White House. But it was disbanded before it could tackle any long-term solution to preserve a racially integrated public school system in years ahead.
With much growth going to suburban areas by the beginning of the 1970s, Jackson was figuratively in danger of seeing grass grow in its downtown business district.
That's when Hood was called upon to first head an unofficial Chamber of Commerce redevelopment task force, then to take over the reins as chairman of the Downtown Redevelopment Authority.
At the time South Central Bell, the largest source of downtown property taxes, was threatening to move from the city center into larger quarters beyond the city limits. To hold the telephone company downtown, Hood launched a bold urban renewal program along Capitol Street, making way for erection of several new office buildings.
The Hood-inspired urban renewal plan kept Bell South anchored (saving a tax base vital to the municipal school district) and launched other aggressive projects, among them a downtown parking garage the government said was needed for it to build the new federal building at Capitol and Farish streets.
"Downtown Jackson would have been lost if it were not for Warren's redevelopment leadership," said John Hampton Stennis, the Redevelopment Authority's former general counsel. Stennis added that Hood "mixed an unquenchable optimism with a sawmill hand's practicality" in preserving some landmarks in the face-lifting of Jackson's business district.
Hood's contribution to downtown redevelopment was later recognized when Jackson dedicated its municipal building across from the historic pre-Civil War City Hall as the Warren A. Hood Building.
Mindful that his formal education didn't go beyond high school and a dab of junior college, Hood in the 1950s began funding four-year college scholarships for his employees' children. In all, he sent over 1,000 young people through the state's higher education institutions.
Thousands of other Mississippi youngsters also benefited from Hood's devotion to the Boy Scout movement, and the 1,300 acres of land in Copiah County he gave as a reservation for the Andrew Jackson Council of Boy Scouts. His service to Scouting was nationally recognized.
Much of the wealth Hood had amassed, as he told us at the weekly coffee klatch, was "given away to my children." Much of his remarkable business acumen evidently has also been handed down. One son, Warren A. Hood Jr. of Hattiesburg, already presides over a number of business and corporate entities, and his other son, James W., has launched a new bank in Jackson.
Whenever he arrived for coffee, Warren always loved to greet me with a grin and ask, "Minor, when are you going to write some more of that crap?"
I'd always come back with "I'll do it, Warren, but you wouldn't understand it anyway."
OK. Warren, this one's for you.
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