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This week, two names have stood clear. Mack Gibson and Holman Johnson.

Both, will be long remembered for the role each of them played in the arts in and around Pike County.

Mack Gibson was the first director of the newly formed Troy Arts Council and served for 14 years and, if anything with the arts was going on in Pike County, Mack Gibson was there.

Holman Johnson was a highly-acclaimed photographer in Troy. I remember him from my childhood.

Back then, cameras were not in vogue so very few pictures were taken. Therefore, to capture our little selves in a picture, our mamas took us downstairs at the dime store for Mr. Olan Mills to take our pictures. I was ugly in every picture.

One exciting day, our grandmother took me and my cousin all the way to Troy for Mr.  Holman Johnson take my picture. I didn’t want my picture taken but first, we rode around town to see all the stores and the big fancy houses and,  just to make sure we sat still and smiled pretty for the camera, we were promised a ride down Thrill Hill.

After a couple of weeks, we went back to see our ugly pictures. I didn’t even know myself.

“Is that me, Mama?!!”

My hair was soft curly and combed. Mama had done that. But Mr. Holman Johnson had “tinted” my cheeks to look rosy and my hair to look shiny and soft.

“Is it really me? Mama! “Really!”

I didn’t look so bad after Mr. Holman Johnson got a hold of me.

Mama laughed at the transformation of her little tangled headed, tomboy. I didn’t stay transformed long but I’ll always remember Mr. Holman Johnson as the man with the magic camera.

Years and years later, when I first met Mack Gibson, he and Mary were delivering a wringer washing machine that they were donating to the Johnston Mill Museum n Brundidge.

“Bet you don’t know what this is!” Mack said, as he pushed the washing machine against the wall.

I did. My first year working at Yellowstone National Park there was a wringer washing machine in the laundry room.  My roommate used the wringer washing machine first. She was excited to get to run her close through the wringer. It looked like fun, but as she started putting her shirt  through the wringer, the wringer  grabbed her fingers and started pulling them through, too.  She was screaming so loud I knew ol’ Hazel the housemother would come running to see what terrible thing was happening. I didn’t know what to do so I just ran her fingers back through the wringer. Mack laughed at that.

So, from that time forward, when things were not going exactly right, Mack would say to me, “We’d better run that back through the wringer.”

Mack Gibson was always upbeat. And his laugher would overtake a tornado.

I was at an Alabama football game and I could hear Mack laughing over the crowd noise, the cheerleaders and the Million Dollar Band. I looked toward the laughter and saw him and Mary deep in the crowd. We waved over the crowd.

I don’t care where he was or what he was doing, Mack Gibson stood out in the crowd. He loved people and people loved him. He is and will continue to be missed.

And, when something is not going the way I think it should, I’ll just run it back through wringer.