As mayor Mel Hawthorne reflected on his 12-year tenure as mayor of Vaiden, he said he thought of a question he was asked when he first was elected.
He said when he moved back to Vaiden, he and his wife planned to retire and help take care of his mother. After she passed, he said he opened up his tax service business because no one was offering that service in town.
“I put up my building and opened up my tax service. Went into business for me. A couple of months though [after I opened], a lot of people started coming and telling me that I should run for mayor,” he said. “I didn’t have any plans to run for mayor.”
He said after thinking it over, he decided to join the race, and he won. Hawthorne became the first black mayor of Vaiden, but, for him, that is not something that he dwells on.
“I was asked how [I felt] about making history as the first black mayor of Vaiden. I said that I wasn’t concerned about making history, I was concerned about making a difference,” Hawthorne said. “I don’t think about stuff like that. I still don’t. I only wanted to make a difference. I don’t dwell on stuff like that. There are a lot of firsts in a lot of families. You have the first child to go to college, the first child to become a lawyer or a nurse. People make history every day. You’re probably making history right now. So, I don’t dwell on being first in anything. People do stuff every day. Now the question is, did I make a difference?”
Looking back over Hawthorne’s accomplishments, he said he feels he did what he set out to do -- make a difference.
Hawthorne’s list of accomplishments is extensive. In the past 12 years, Hawthorne along with the Vaiden Board of aldermen have made great strides in Vaiden.
During his 12 years as mayor, the town:
• Received a $100,000 Self-help Grant for the North Vaiden Veterans Park, which includes a 16 ft. width rubberized walking track, children playground, and two pavilions.
• Vaiden was the only small town in MS to receive a 5 Gold Medal Award from the First Lady, Michelle Obama, Let’s Move! Cities, Town and Counties Project. Received a letter from Michelle Obama congratulating us for the achievement
• Started a Mayor’s Health Council to provide a healthy lifestyle program for the community
• Started a summer feeding program for the children
• Came in second place in a Kaboom! Challenge and won two playground building blocks
• Replaced the Vaiden Welcome sign with a new design with night reflection letters.
• Installed Air Conditions in the Gym
• A Beautification Committee was formed to improve the town’s presence
• The Beautification Committee won the MML Spirit Award in 2019
• Received a $505,000 grant to replace two mobile homes and upgrade five regular homes
• Received a $100,000 grant to upgrade the Farmers Market Building
Received grants to purchase police cars & Public Works Trucks
• Received a $50,000 grant to install two generators at the Water Booster Stations
Received a $450,000 grant to chlorinate the Waste Water before it gets to the Big Black River
• Received a $35,000 to purchase an Excavator
• Received $200,000 grant to overlay portion of some streets
• Launched the annual festival with quality artists for the community
Launched the annual Veterans Day Program
Continued the annual Christmas Parade
Launched the annual 1 mile – run/walk/jog along with health screening
Hawthorne said his greatest accomplishment though would be talking about 20 or so households off of well water and putting them on Vaiden’s Water System.
“When I first got into office, there were about 20 or so households who still got their water from a well. So, when we started our water project, they came to the meeting wanting to know why they weren’t on our system. I didn’t know why they couldn’t be on our system or what kind of roadblock there was, so we worked to place them on there. That’s probably my first accomplishment as mayor. Probably my greatest accomplishment from a health standpoint,” Hawthorne said. “They're well water wasn’t being tested. It could’ve been generations drinking this well water and we don’t know what was in it. We know now that this water has to be treated. That probably had the biggest lasting effect. We don’t know what sickness and ailments they may have gotten by drinking the well water. That’s one of the more beneficial achievements.”
He said if he had to choose what was most important on the list, it would be the additions at the North Vaiden Veterans Park, the fact that Vaiden was recognized as the healthiest town in Mississippi by former First Lady Michelle Obama, and the new air conditioning units in the gymnasium and the generators.
“That has the most lasting impact. We have about 100 or so customers on our line that if the power goes out, they can still have water. Before, if the power went out, they didn’t have lights, water, or anything. We can fix the water part,” he said.
Hawthorne’s background in the military prepared him for what he would encounter as mayor.
“It wasn’t a task for me. It was another job, another project that I was assigned to do. It’s no different than what I had done. I had been over hundreds of people, different department heads reporting to me. It didn’t bother me at all. The only thing is I didn’t get to accomplish everything I wanted to do because of revenue. We didn’t have the dollars and cents,” he said.
For him, it was about the service to the Town of Vaiden. It wasn’t about him.
“I’ve always been service-oriented. When I would come home to visit my mother she would tell me ‘Take me here, take this person there, or take this here or go get me some peas or something. If they killed a hog, everyone had to get a piece. When I came home, I was a taxi,” he said laughing. “My mother told me that service has always been in me. I don’t know, I’m used to serving, it’s just the way I was raised.”
Hawthorne said he had hoped to be able to build a splash pad for the children in Vaiden at the Veterans Park and switch over the town’s water meters to radio-read meters. Those two have more expensive price tags.
“The splash pad is $100,000 and the radio-read meters are a quarter of a million. So, it was just finding a way to secure the funding for those projects,” he said. ”Those are some I was hoping to accomplish.”
He said he’s looking forward to doing what he and his wife initially planned to do when they retired and returned to Vaiden, flying with the 172nd and 117th out of Jackson.
“If they have a mission, we can go with them. Unless it’s a critical mission then we can’t, but if not and they have two extra seats, we can do it. Doesn’t matter where they go, it can be Germany or Washington State, Las Vegas. We can fly,” he said.
