William Tackett started out as a sharecropper but built his way up to being the largest catfish farmer in the world.
Mr. Tackett always attributed his success to hard work and the good Lord, said Robert “Shorty” Jones, a Glen Allan catfish farmer and a longtime friend of Mr. Tackett’s.
“One of the finest businessmen I’ve ever known and obviously the best farmer because he accomplished more than anybody else was able to. He was a role model for me,” Jones said Saturday.
Mr. Tackett, 87, of Schlater died peacefully at his home Saturday after a five-month battle with lymphoma.
Services will be at 11 a.m. Monday at Greenwood Church of God. Visitation will be from 4 to 6 p.m. today at the Greenwood Church of God and from noon to 2 p.m. Tuesday at the United Pentecostal Church in Higden, Ark.
Burial will be in McLehaney Higden Cemetery in Higden.
Mr. Tackett was born Jan. 27, 1925, in Higden, the first of eight children. At 18, he was drafted into the Navy, and at 19, he married his wife, Lillian Marue Potter Tackett.
They started farming in 1948 in Arkansas.
Mr. Tackett looked back on those early days during a 2001 interview with the Commonwealth.
“We started with nothing,” he said then. “If you’ve ever sharecropped, like I have, you won’t never forget it. But I have no regrets. It was a good starting place. At least you know nobody didn’t give it to you. I enjoyed working for myself, working for my family. I enjoy being around people.”
Jones said Mr. Tackett worked for an honest man his first year sharecropping, and when Mr. Tackett made a good crop, the landowner gave him his fair pay.
The next year Mr. Tackett rented 100 acres and had another good crop.
By his third year farming, he began buying land, and he continued to acquire more land each year, Jones said.
The Tacketts moved in 1964 with their five children from Jonesboro, Ark., to Belzoni, where they farmed rice, soybeans and cotton.
Mr. Tackett built his first catfish pond in Humphreys County in 1968, and in 1973 he moved to Leflore County and continued row crop farming. He built catfish ponds in Leflore and Sunflower counties in 1978.
“We were looking to make the best use of the land,” he said in 2001.
The business grew. Mr. Tackett opened a catfish hatchery and began a brooder and fingerling operation in 1984, and then came the Heartland Catfish processing plant in Itta Bena, which opened in 1995. He was president of Heartland Catfish. A second processing plant opened in 2008 in Greensboro, Ala.
“He was the largest catfish farmer in the world,” Jones said. “It was a great accomplishment.”
Mr. Tackett was a member of Greenwood Church of God since 1973 and served on the Church and Pastor’s Council for several years.
Jones said Mr. Tackett’s was the only farm office he ever saw that had a Bible on the desk.
“He walked the walk, and he talked the talk,” Jones said. “He wasn’t a man of a lot of words, but when he talked, you needed to listen to what he had to say.”
Mr. Tackett served on numerous boards related to the catfish industry, and in 2006 he was the inaugural recipient of the Catfish Farmers of America Lifetime Achievement Award.
He is survived by his wife, two sons and three daughters.
