After years of significant financial losses, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, it appeared that Greenwood Leflore Hospital would find a way forward through a lease agreement with the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
But when UMMC pulled out of negotiations in November, leaders of the hospital, local governments and community were left to find another solution to try to keep the 116-year-old medical institution from closing.
The hospital’s struggle was voted the top story of 2022 by the Commonwealth staff.
The hospital got by for a while during the pandemic with the help of federal relief funding but was forced to spend more of its cash reserves in response to the delta and omicron variants of the coronavirus.
Once the federal government opted not to provide more relief to hospitals, Greenwood Leflore was at a crisis point. It has laid off employees, closed its maternity ward and intensive care unit, closed some clinics and transitioned other clinics to UMMC.
To make matters worse, most services were shut down for three days in August because of the effects of a clogged sewer line.
In the short term, the Leflore County Board of Supervisors, Greenwood City Council and Greenwood Utilities are committing about $4 million in cash or free services to keep the hospital going while longer-term help is pursued at the state and federal levels. A group of businesses collaborated to pay Dick Cowart, a Nashville-based expert in health-care law, to assist with planning, and county supervisors hired Indianapolis health-care consultant Sam Odle to advise.
Greenwood Leflore is pursuing designation as a “critical access hospital,” which would bring higher Medicare reimbursements but still allow it to staff a limited number of inpatient beds. The hospital board voted to reduce its bed count to 25 for acute care and 10 for rehabilitation.
The rest of the top 10 stories:
- Express Grain Terminals sells assets, and its president, John Coleman, faces fraud charges. The company, which filed for bankruptcy in September 2021, sold its grain storage facilities in Sidon and Minter City in 2022 to Delta Grain Co., which began operations this summer. Express Grain’s Greenwood oil mill, used for processing and crushing soybeans, was sold to Oxbow Crush. The goal is to have the mill fully operational within the next few months.
Coleman was indicted on multiple counts of fraud by Leflore County and federal grand juries. The charges in-volve statements made to farmers, banks and the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce and his alleged submission of falsified financial documents to state regulators and UMB Bank. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled to begin May 9. A court-appointed examiner of Coleman’s available finances found no instances of fraud that benefitted Coleman personally, according to a report submitted in November.
Coleman’s father, Dr. Michael Coleman, who is a Greenwood ophthalmologist and the principal owner of Express Grain, has been sued by UMB Bank and accused of breaching an agreement to pay back loans if the company did not do so. The bank is seeking more than $38 million from the physician, but he has denied violating the agreement. Express Grain, which was found to owe more than $200 million to various creditors, has paid about $35 million of the $70 million it owed to the largest of those, UMB Bank. Many farmers were left unpaid for grain they had delivered. In a court settlement, a group of them was awarded $9 million of the $57 million they were owed, but some still have not been paid. Other farmers chose to sue UMB Bank.
- Twenty homicides in Leflore County in 2022. Of those deaths, 18 involved firearms, according to reporting by the Commonwealth, and four occurred between Oct. 20 and Oct. 24. Half of the victims were 26 years old or younger, including two teenagers. Government officials and local activists proposed various measures to address the problem. A temporary curfew was imposed in October, and the Greenwood City Council also asked the police to put more effort into enforcing the existing youth curfew. Mayor Carolyn McAdams urged citizens to speak up if they could provide information about the violent crimes or had information indicating that another could happen.
- Nancy New and Zach New plead guilty to misusing public money in the state’s massive welfare scandal. Nancy New, a Greenwood native, and her son Zach ran the nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center, which received millions of dollars in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funding. The money, appropriated by the federal government in block grants to the state, was intended to help the poor but was diverted to, among other things, an investment in a pharmaceutical start-up company, drug rehabilitation treatment for retired wrestler Brett DiBiase and the building of a volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi.
The News have pleaded guilty to federal and state charges and have agreed to testify against others. Nancy New founded New Summit School in Jackson, which has closed, and North New Summit School in Greenwood, which is now operating under new leadership as Leflore Christian School.
- Emmett Till statue is unveiled at Rail Spike Park in October. Till, a Black 14-year-old from Chicago, was kidnapped, tortured and killed in 1955 after whistling at a white woman at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market in Money. The two white men responsible for the killing were acquitted by an all-male, all-white jury but later admitted in a magazine interview that they had killed him. Outrage over Till’s death and the acquittals galvanized the civil rights movement. The statue was created by Big Statues, a firm based in Utah. Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, was the subject of the limited television series “Women of the Movement,” which was broadcast in early 2022. Much of it had been filmed in Greenwood, Grenada and Sumner. “Till,” a film about her and her son, was released in the fall.
- Basketball star Lusia Harris-Stewart dies. Harris-Stewart, who played at Amanda Elzy High School and Delta State University and was drafted by the NBA's New Orleans Jazz, died in January at the age of 66. Harris-Stewart averaged 25 points per game at Delta State, led the team to three national championships and scored the first points in women’s Olympic basketball history. In February, a short film about her, “The Queen of Basketball,” won an Academy Award. Cherry Street in Greenwood was renamed Lusia Harris Stewart Street in November.
- Former Franciscan friar Paul West is found guilty of sexual abuse. West was accused of abusing student La Jarvis Love at St. Francis of Assisi Elementary School in the 1990s. In April, a Leflore County jury found him guilty of one count of sexual battery and one count of gratification of lust. He was sentenced to 30 years on the first count and 15 years on the second, to be served consecutively. West, 62, was to be tried in May on allegations of abusing Love’s cousin, Joshua Love, but the charges were dropped.
- James Johnson-Waldington is chosen as superintendent of the Greenwood Leflore Consolidated School District. The school board selected Johnson-Waldington in February by a 3-2 vote and approved a three-year contract for him. Johnson-Waldington succeeded Mary Brown, who was not issued another contract last year by the board. He had served most recently as superintendent of the South Delta School District, which is based in Rolling Fork. He had served as interim superintendent for the former Leflore County School District in 2017. The Leflore County and Greenwood districts merged in the summer of 2019.
- St. Francis of Assisi School closes. It was announced in May that St. Francis, which had been in operation for 71 years, would cease operations. Enrollment was down to 50, a drop of almost 60% since 2015. Only 41 students had registered for the 2022-2023 school year at the time of the announced closure. The school had dealt with increasing budget deficits and a decline in donations.
- A Leflore County grand jury declined to indict Carolyn Donham for the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till. The grand jury made its decision in August, citing a lack of evidence. The case was presented to the grand jury after an unserved 1955 warrant for her arrest on kidnapping charges was found in the basement of the Leflore County Courthouse. Another grand jury voted in 2007 not to indict her on a manslaughter charge. In 2017, a joint federal and state investigation was reopened based on claims that Donham may have recanted previous statements given in the 1955 trial of her husband or to FBI investigators during their 2004 to 2007 investigation. Donham has denied recanting her testimony. Last year, the FBI closed the second investigation, saying there were no suspects still living for which the evidence supported pursuing a prosecution.
