Community Champion: Ricky Long
JACKSON, Tenn. — It’s time to recognize a Community Champion, an honor given to people making a positive impact in the community in partnership with Leaders Credit Union.
We introduce you to man helping to preserve history for both the living and the dead.
“History has just always been my thing,” said Ricky Long, historian for Madison County. “History tends to kind of repeat itself and a lot of times, if we would bother to learn from past history, it might keep us from making the same mistakes a second and third time.”
Long helps to keep the community informed about the past and the place they live.
“I maintain a Facebook page called ‘Today In Madison County History’ and on each day, I post just a few history notes from that date of different years,” said Long.
Long is also on the board for the Hollywood Cemetery, where a lot of local history makers lie in rest.
“There is so much to learn, even from a place like a cemetery. When you can come through and you can see one, for instance, is that there are a number of union soldiers from the civil war buried here. Now that tells me that after the civil war, some of those men moved south and loved this town enough that they decided to stay here,” said Long.
The cemetery has been around for a long time and needed a lot of work done to it.
“We’ve started cleaning tombstones for people because they build up smudge and grime over time that needs cleaned off. And we have really seen the positive results of the work that we’ve been doing over the last few month,” said Long.
Long says the cemetery relies heavily on donations and the work is having a real impact.
“There were three baby stones that we had found from the 1880s that were broken and scattered. Well, we got them all repaired–set back up to where they look really nice. We had no idea if there were any family members still living because these were 140 years old. Monday this week, there were two families in here visiting from out of state, and it turned out that those three babies were the man’s granddaddy’s brothers and sister that he had never known existed,” said Long.
He says it’s important for people to care about the place they live.
“I hope that the people that have just moved to Jackson in the last 10, 15, 20 years will take the time to learn a little bit about our history because there’s so much more to this town than some people realize,” said Long.
If you know someone doing good in their community, you can nominate them for the Community Champion award by clicking here.
For more Madison County news, click here.
