CD: A mayor 15 years in the making

(SNEditor: cue dramatic muzak)

June 21, 2009

Jordan Novet

STARKVILLE — Parker Wiseman’s political career officially began when he was a seventh grader at Paul D. Armstrong Middle School. He ran for vice-president of the student body.His old friend Emily Sanford cracks up at the thought of one of the slogans he employed for the campaign, but she used the photocopier at her father’s office to make flyers with it pasted across them anyway. “A wise man once said, ‘Vote Parker Wiseman,’” they read.

She helped because, even back then, she could tell there was something different about him. “I always knew that he had great potential to be a leader,” said Sanford, now a pastor at Galloway United Methodist Church in Jackson.

Wiseman ended up outperforming his two competitors and winning the election. The next year, he automatically assumed the student body presidency.

Wiseman did not just pop up as a possible politico this year. His classmates and teachers through the years remember him as not only a leader proper but as a person with personality traits one needs to be able to effectively lead a population.

His college professors remember him as focused on turning theory into action and clear-eyed about his vision.

And for years his friends have seen him interacting across social strata and bringing people together.

Starkville High School social studies teacher Bonnie Feig, who taught a U.S. history course Wiseman took in 11th grade and an Advanced Placement U.S history course he took in 12th grade, recalls him as “the overall Mr. Starkville guy.”

Although he became passionate when he argued in defense of Starkville Public Schools and when he praised Mississippi State University — and was persuasive — he was “very accepting of all people” and “could get along with all people — economically, religiously, whatever,” she said.

She remembers him constantly bringing up current events in class. “I would think he read the newspaper,” she said. “He listened to the news.”

Read complete article from the Commercial Dispatch.