Yet again, someone has defaced an attractive plaque on the grounds of the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Charleston that simply reminds the public of a son's great love for his mother.
The plaque was installed in the late 2000s after successful Germantown entrepreneur Winston Wolfe shelled out upwards of $100,000 to beautify the Charleston Court Square in memory of his late mother, Charleston native Janie Agnes Little.
Wolfe hired renowned Memphis landscape architect Joe Baasch to draw up plans, which would run the gamut from trimming trees on the courthouse grounds, laying a brick sidewalk along the perimeter, placing seven sets of teak benches and end tables, erecting new decorative lamp posts to match some on city property around the Square, and other actions to make the county courthouse site, the centerpiece of Charleston, more aesthetically pleasing and functional.
Wolfe never lived in Charleston — his mother moved from Tallahatchie County to Grenada when she was in her 20s and gave birth to her only child there — but he knew how very much she loved her home county.
His contributions, acknowledged publicly during an April 2008 dedication ceremony, live on. His lone request was that some of his donated funds be used to place an engraved plaque to honor the memory of his mother.
That this plaque would continue to be desecrated by some thoughtless or mean-spirited person is a sad reflection on Charleston and Tallahatchie County, which owe a debt of gratitude to the woman who gave birth to and raised such a son as Winston Wolfe.
