1972-1977

Long -Service Earns Pra

own large beat was redis- tricted, and when he left of- fice he only had about 200 miles of roads to look after, and they were much im- proved roads, aswas the case of the whole county. Three major things took place while Nford was supervisor, the renovation of the courthouse, the building of the Ross Barnett Re- servoir, and implementation of a garbage disposal system for the county.N1took a lot of time, a lot of trips to Jackson, a lot of argument and negotiating, and a lot of hard work., he says. Carthage grew and Leake hurnty progressed, and the 3upervisorshad a part in that. Nford r t ~a l l s that "Carthage -just did ~ q t havemuchof any- thing back in 1952" when he

The man who is c rd t ed with providmg the leadership got Leake County out of le mud was given a special ~ a r d at the annual meeting 'the LeakeCountyChamber ' Commerce last Thursday iening. He is D. C. (Crawley)Al- ~urdof Standing Pine, who was a member of theBoardof Supervisorsfor 28 years, and president of the Board for the last eight years he served. Mr. Alford was elected supervisor fromBeat 5 at the age of 32 in 1952, one of the youngest men ever to servein this capacity. At that time Beat 5 was a large district with about 300 miles of dirt roads, Alford re- calls. In fact. he savs there were practic'ally no gravel

hard-surfacedroads. But,a little at the time, that began to change. By the time he left office in January, 1980, Leake County still had a few dirt roads but also many miles of gravel and a lot of miles of hard-surfacedroads. The first stephe tookwas to get the State Highway De- partment to take over as much mileage as he could, and thenext was to start had- ing washed gravel from Lex- ington to go or1the roads. The Farm-to-Market plan also held, but all of it was done "a little at a time, just a mile, sometimes," Alford re- members. When he was able to get a black-toppingmachine about 20 years ago, that helped, and the machine was shared with other supervisors. In time, his,

was first elected, but the chicken business, some factories, a different kind of farming,andbetterroadsand highways changed the status quo. Clark Howell, in mak- ing the presentation of the plaque to Alford Thursday night said: "The Leake County Chamber of Com- mercewould l i e to pay a spe- cial tribute to a man who has served our county and his fel- low citizens for many years. He has tirelessly served us through three decades of many changes and mcult times." Alford is a native of Stand- ing Pine. He went to school at Walnut Grove and East Cent- ral JuniorCollege. After sew- ing a hitch in the Air Force where he was in a construe-

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Cited for Long Service D. C. (Crawlev) Alfard