George Parkinson understands the significance of preserving pieces of Greenwood's history.
But even he can't explain the connection, forged over many years, between him and the plaque on Keesler Bridge.
Parkinson was there in the 1950s when the plaque was knocked off the bridge and also when it was found again years later. He even kept it in his home for a time.
But now it's in its original spot on the bridge, having been reinstalled there in May.
"Providence has kept that thing in the right possession to get it in its right place now," he said with a laugh.
Parkinson remembers the day the plaque was lost.
It was in the 1950s, when he was a police officer working the intersection at the south end of the bridge during afternoon rush hour.
A convoy of trucks was headed south on the bridge, carrying oil drilling machinery. Suddenly, he said, "I heard the awfulest commotion and collision and racket, and it just shook that old bridge."
A piece of equipment - possibly a bulldozer blade - was being carried on one of the trucks but was too wide for the bridge. So it hit the plaque, dented it and knocked it off.
Somehow the plaque ended up under the bridge on the west side of it. Maybe it was thrown off, Parkinson said.
But he was focused on keeping the traffic moving. The load on the truck had to be straightened out so everyone could move through.
"As far as I can remember, we had to back all that traffic back north to rearrange the load," Parkinson said. "It was a mess in there for a while."
He didn't encounter the plaque again until years later, when he was working for the Park Commission.
When he started with the commission in 1959, the mayor and some commissioners were looking at the potential of the wooded area known as Veterans Park, owned by the American Legion. Some members of the commission wanted to clean it out and make it into an outdoor walking trail and nature area in the heart of the city.
For two years in the 1960s, during their offseasons, crews worked to clean that area and cut out "undesirable" trees, Parkinson said.
During the latter of those two offseasons, workers ended up under the old bridge, cutting away with kaiser blades, crosscut saws and axes.
"You didn't see trees growing up near the bridges like you
see now," Parkinson recalled. "You could walk that levee and riverbank from the old bridge all the way to the city limits. We had it that clean and nice."
One day, while the crew was cutting, one worker hit something.
"He said, 'Mr. George, come here; what is this thing?'" Parkinson said. "And I said, 'Well, I'll be.' It was that plaque."
It had been years since the mishap involving the plaque and the truck. But as he read the words on the plaque, the details of the event came back to him, and he decided he wanted to save it.
"I put it in my truck and took it down to the park commission house - knowing that if it wasn't preserved, it was going to get thrown in somebody's scrap iron, and that would've been the last of it," he said.
He put the plaque somewhere in a corner of the park commission building on Henry Street, where it remained until he retired.
In 1985, when he was preparing to leave his post and was cleaning up, he saw the plaque again - "just laying against a wall out there in a bunch of scrap," he said.
He took it home and kept it there until city and Main Street Greenwood officials started talking about restoring the bridge. He called George Smith, who served as parks director after him and is now retired.
Parkinson asked Smith to come by his shop because he believed the plaque could be placed back on the bridge.
Parkinson didn't know the contractor for the bridge project or anyone else connected with it, but he thought Smith might be able to "put it in the right direction."
"Where he took it and who he gave it to, I don't know that," Parkinson said. "But that's the last I saw of it 'til I saw this picture in the paper where it had been mounted on the bridge."
The photo he referred to appeared in the Commonwealth May 19. In the caption, Mayor Harry Smith said the plaque had been returned anonymously.
"That's when I called the mayor and told him about the little history of the thing," Parkinson said.
The plaque is now where it was between 1925 and the traffic accident. In fact, Parkinson said, the dent made in the accident is probably still there.
"I reckon Providence just saved that old thing," he said.
