Nzinga Heru's piercing whistle can bring a smile to your face and put a bounce in your step.
Her whistle represents the determination that got her friend Endesha Ida Mae Holland through life, Heru said.
On Saturday, she let loose with a whistle that made mourners jump in their folding chairs.
"We must believe we can all love each other," Heru said. "That's her legacy."
A crowd of around 50 friends and family gathered in the white halls of Century Funeral Home on Saturday afternoon to honor the life of Holland.
The Greenwood-born dramatist earned a Pulitzer prize nomination for her play, "From the Mississippi Delta."
The words of childhood friends and academic colleagues painted a picture of an outspoken woman with a strong heart and powerful convictions.
The Rev. Thomas Brown said his playmate growing up "had a rendezvous with destiny."
Holland's play and memoirs, "From the Mississippi Delta," depict the run-down wooden shack she grew up in on Gibbs Street.
Her story is a series of tragedies from a rape at age 11 to a pregnancy at 16. Her mother died in a house fire believed to have been set by the Ku Klux Klan.
Brown said her troubled childhood fueled her tenacity and strong will.
Her formative years and work with the civil rights movement in the Delta inspired her art. "She wrote about it because she lived it," Brown said.
Holland's life turned around in the 1960s as the struggle against Jim Crow exploded in Greenwood.
Lawrence Guyot recalled Holland's kindness when he came to Greenwood as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Many people consider the civil rights work done in Greenwood instrumental in the passage of 1965's Voting Rights Act, Guyot said.
He credited Holland and her comrades for the black elected officials now holding office in Leflore County. "Not many cities can say they produced and cultivated a person like Ida Mae Holland."
The speakers' eyes often drifted to a table next to the podium on which rested the dark wood box containing Holland's ashes.
Habibi Minnie Wilson, Holland's manager and a close friend, was with Wilson during her final days.
Wilson was with Holland as she slowly succumbed to the ataxia that killed her. Ataxia is a degenerative disease of the nervous system.
Even in the end she was giving us orders and asking for catfish and hush puppies, Wilson said. "She was just as fearless on the last leg of her journey as in the beginning."
Her only son, Cedric Holland, said he was proud of his mother's accomplishments.
But don't the miss the point of my mother's work, Holland urged. "My mother's whole being was about never giving up."
