New hospitality station will be a welcome relief for weary travelers in the North Delta
Delma Furniss Hospitality Station opens in Lula

by CHIP MABRY
DBJ Contributing Writer

With the opening of the new hospitality station in Lula, Delma Furniss’ long struggle is finished. The retired Mississippi legislator was even honored by having the structure at the intersection of U.S. 49 and U.S. 61 named for him.

The Senator Delma Furniss Hospitality Station opened October 18 and held its grand opening October 24.

“I am proud of it,” said Furniss, a Rena Lara resident who spent a total of 20 years in the Mississippi Legislature. “It’s a real honor but, at the same time, a humbling experience.”

Humbling, Furniss said, because he first sought funding for what would become the state’s 12th visitor center in 1988. It was turned down in the state assembly.

“I kept introducing it every year and finally got my money in 1999,” Furniss recalled. “Then we ran into all kinds of problems.”

Furniss, who spent nine years as a state representative and the last 11 of his two-decade political career as a state senator, was by this time accustomed to delays and postponements.

The discovery of Native American artifacts on the center’s property ended up precipitating a two-year series of archeological surveys at the site. Furniss calls it a silver-lined cloud because some of the thousands of pottery and stone-tool fragments unearthed will constitute a display at the center.

The 4.712-square-foot facility is the first in the state to be designated a hospitality station instead of a “Welcome Center,” said Furniss Station supervisor Lynda O’Neal. After a month of operation, O’Neal said traffic through the center is still slow.

O’Neal’s staff includes Latasha Metcalf and Lorna Dodd. The women open the station seven days a week, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., closing only Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day and a half-day on Christmas Eve.

“We welcome people to Mississippi, give them travel assistance and maps, make reservations and route them where they want to go,” O’Neal explained, adding that the staff also hands out free soft drinks and coffee to travelers. “Our goal is to make them comfortable in Mississippi.”

And that mission is music to Kappi Allen’s ears. Allen is a one-woman show as manager for the Coahoma County Tourism Commission. She expects the hospitality station to provide a convenient starting point for people entering the county, especially from the Arkansas side of the nearby Mississippi River.

“It’s a great opportunity for people to stop and get information. The ladies there are well versed on aspects of the whole state,” said Allen.

Of course, Allen wants visitors to realize that Coahoma County can be a tourist destination of its own: “The Tourist Commission looks forward to having events out there.”

Like Welcome Centers in other parts of the state, Allen and O’Neal plan to schedule musicians, artists and craftsmen at various times through the year. O’Neal said National Tourism Week in May will likely be a time when the Furniss Station puts its best foot forward and provides entertainment throughout the celebratory period.

Amy Hornback, spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Transportation and Development, said MDOT built the station at a cost of $750,000; the entire project ran $1,677,000.

Hornback said the designation as a “Hospitality Station” came about because the Furniss Station is smaller than the usual Welcome Center on the state’s Interstate and major highways.

“It looks exactly the same, only smaller,” said Hornback. The facility is maintained by MDOT but the Mississippi Development Authority’s Division of Tourism employs the staff.

Hornback said the daily traffic count on the two highways is 8,600. She adds there is “a lot of truck traffic” but the intersection is also a crossroads of leisure travelers motoring to and from Memphis as well as east and west.

For Furniss, his namesake station is the end of a quest. The 70-year-old Furniss doesn’t intend to let grass grow under his feet, though he admits his wife’s death last summer has stalled him.

“I’ve kind of been in limbo,” he said. He and Edith “Edie” Furniss were married 50 years, 7 months and 7 days, by his reckoning.

Furniss, who was a freight-train conductor on the Illinois Central for 35 years, plans to pursue some writing, probably even penning his memoirs.

“I’ve got a whole lot on my agenda,” Furniss said. DBJ