My Mississippiversary: C.A. Pierson

2017 is Mississippi's bicentennial! To celebrate, the Mississippi Library Commission has created the Bicentennial Bingo project. Throughout the year, fill in the squares in our bingo card to get the full Mississippi experience and learn more about our state. One of our favorite squares is "Tell us about your Mississippiversary," the responses from which we'll be sharing here and on our Facebook and Twitter feeds. We're so pleased to share our next Mississippiversary submission below.

"I was born in Gulfport in 1981, so I suppose that's when I officially became a Mississippian, but I moved to Savannah, Georgia, in 2001. I lived there for a couple years expecting to be there at least a decade before moving further north... but when Hurricane Katrina hit, I was out of contact with family for far too long.

 

It was frightening not knowing what was going on and looking for familiar faces in news footage, hearing that "due to inclement weather in the area you are trying to reach, your call cannot be completed as dialed" a hundred times, and eventually learning that family members had been injured and I wasn't here to help. It was too much, so, by November 2005, I'd moved back. So, that was the first time I chose to live in Mississippi." -C.A. Pierson