BY KAREN BRYANT
Contributing Writer, DBJ
(Ronnie Musgrove)
  Who is Mississippi's new governor and what does he believe will be his proudest accomplishments during the next four years? To get the answers, DBJ went to Jackson and asked Ronnie Musgrove himself. We also talked with a few people in and around Batesville, where Musgrove was reared.
  Musgrove was born not in Batesville, but in what he calls a suburb (population 42) of Batesville, where, he says:  "Everyone knew everyone else."
  Musgrove is the only person in his family to have graduated from college. His mother dropped out of school in the tenth grade, his father in the eighth. "No one in my family was formally educated; in fact, no one even graduated from high school (parents, aunts, uncles). That is the kind of working-class background that I came from," he says. "But, I had a lot of people who positively influenced me. A number of my teachers really made me feel that I was capable of one, doing the work in school and two, being able to do something."
  He says he wasn't brilliant academically, but that his mother expected a lot from him and that he liked school and worked hard to do well.
  Musgrove's first-grade teacher, Kathryn Nelson (who retired 20 years ago), says the governor showed potential right from the start, beginning with his easy adjustment to being away from his mother and home for the first time.
  "You have to remember, that was in the day when very few children went to kindergarten and first grade was their first time away from mom. First grade was a big step," she says.  "He was always smiling, always happy and went along with the flow of things. He just fit in and made the most of every situation."
  Musgrove maintained a lot of activities and was involved in a number of sports. In junior high, Musgrove played football, basketball, and baseball. In high school, he dropped football so he could play trumpet in the band. He is an avid outdoorsman. "All I had to do was walk out my back door to go hunting. I deer hunted, rabbit, squirrel and bird-hunted." He still enjoys hunting and mentions that he killed a nine-point just this past season.
  Those who knew him when he was growing up say they aren't surprised at how far Musgrove has come.
  Hudson Still, Batesville's vice mayor, says he remembers when Musgrove was in high school and working at the town drugstore. "I was impressed with him then. I knew he was going somewhere because he just had too much on the ball." Later, when Musgrove was in law practice in Batesville, Still says the governor-to-be was active in civic organizations and never met a stranger. "He was always meeting and greeting people and taking time with them."
  Nelson says Musgrove was a natural leader. She kept up with him throughout his school years. "I looked at some of the school yearbooks as he got older, even in high school, at what his friends wrote in the annuals. I could tell they looked up to Ronnie and thought of him as a leader."
  Musgrove says that he accepts the role of leader with a conviction and that he can live up to it. He describes himself as a solution-oriented person who maintains a relationship with the State Legislature that will allow him to get things done.
  Being governor, he says, "has given me the opportunity to help make a difference in Mississippi to put us in a position of a very good quality of life and address the issues that we've all wanted to address. And that's very rewarding. It will be a great sense of accomplishment to know that we've worked very hard and actually made a difference."
  Musgrove says hard work is nothing new to him. "I worked at a drugstore in high school and drove a tractor for my brother-in-law in the summers before I got my driver's license. My oldest sister and brother-in-law lived in Quitman County and farmed there. When I was in college, I sold books in the summer  with Southwestern Co. and paid my way through school. Before I did that I worked offshore out of Louisiana." He also married his wife, Melanie, during his college years. (The Mugroves have two children.)
  While working offshore, Musgrove says he recalls typically working 105 hours a week. "But one week we were trying to complete a job and worked 129 hours out of 168. So, again, hard work is not something I'm scared of, but I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to work and very fortunate that I had my health and tried to have a good perspective of things."
  And from Musgrove's perspective, college was a certainty.
  "I always wanted to practice law from the time I was eight years old.  I knew that necessitated college and law school," he says. Musgrove says his father, who died of pneumonia when Musgrove was seven years old, wanted to have a lawyer in the family, even though, says Musgrove, "He probably only had one piece of legal work done in his life and that was the purchase of the land that we owned. But he always wanted a lawyer in the family and that stuck with me because my father was very influential on me."
  Musgrove's father was only 42 years old when he died, and Musgrove clearly remembers the January of 1964, when his father, too ill to walk, was carried out of the house by a close friend. It was the last time Musgrove saw his father alive. "I remember it like it was yesterday," he says.
  Musgrove says he's fortunate to have had men in his life in the community whom he looked up to. He credits a brother, three years his senior, and several men in Batesville area who stepped up and, he says, "became father figures to me in love, discipline and everything else. When  I was around their house they treated me like their own child, but also made me mind and follow the rules."
  Two of his childhood friends had fathers, both now deceased, who Musgrove says had a strong influence on him.
  "People who have known me all my life have often said, "Your father would be very proud of you," says Musgrove. "But every one of us have a lot of things happen and we have our own difficulties. The question is, how do we deal with difficulty?"
  Being fatherless, Musgrove worked his way through school, and it was through working for his brother-in-law near Marks that he came to spend time in the Delta. "I literally lived all summer long in the Delta," he says. "We spent a lot of time in Clarksdale and Cleveland all the way as far down as Yazoo City going to buy things or deal with people. I have very fond memories of roving through the Delta, going down Highway 61 and remembering the flurry of activity in these small towns especially during planting and harvesting season."
  Musgrove says he understands the plight of Delta farmers because, "You can't have a sister and brother-in-law in farming and not know the ups and downs associated with it."
  He says he recognizes  the challenges the agriculture industry faces today are different from the ones it faced 20 years ago. "Much of the direction of agriculture is guided by Washington. It is important that we work very closely with those in agriculture here in Mississippi and work nationally with our congressional delegation.   "I've already talked to them concerning agriculture and other issues. I believe agriculture should not be a struggle, it should be a success."

Getting Political
  Musgrove began his political career in the 1980s when he was practicing law in Batesville. His area's state senator in 1987 had served four terms and decided not to run for re-election. Musgrove had a number of people suggest that he would make a good senator. He talked with his family, and decided running for that senate seat was something he wanted to do. He was just 30 years old and would turn 31 before being elected.
  After a decade of public service, Musgrove decided it was time to step up his political career. Around 1998 Musgrove says, "I was seriously looking at where we were in the state, and what I thought we needed, the kind of leader we needed.  I felt  that the next governor should pull our people to together,  that that person should be someone who could work with the Legislature and  could focus on things that would make a difference," he says. "There are large numbers of things we can do but there's a smaller number of things we can do that will have a significant impact on our state."
  Musgrove outlines the kinds of things he believes would have the strongest impact: "One is to have good, diverse high-paying jobs, whether that person lives in the Delta, or live in Northeast Mississippi or on the coast. That's important. But every area is different. And to me you have to be able to market those good jobs whether they be agriculture-related or industry-related in those different regions. Number two, I think it's just absolutely essential to have strong education to support those jobs. In today's world if  you're a farmer, and you don't know something about technology, you don't know how to use the high-tech equipment that we never used when I drove a tractor, then your ability to succeed as a farmer is diminished greatly. So in all areas, the ability to use technology is essential. Today you have to be well educated from kindergarten through potentially graduate school level. Those were the areas that I felt like we needed to concentrate on as a state if we were going to produce a really good quality of life. I felt like I had the temperament to be in the position of governor to work with the different groups the Legislature and others across the state, and that's why I decided to run for governor."
  Musgrove says his Legislative agenda are "those things I talked about during the campaign. One, I believe we need a new economic development strategy that focuses on the resources we have and targets certain industry areas to promote our state. Two, I think we need to continue to enhance education to keep our good teachers in the classroom and encourage young people to go into the field of teaching. We need to increase teacher pay and we also need to bring technology to the classroom. Third, we need to make sure we have quality health care close to home. Health care is not one of  those issues we talked about 10 years ago or 15 years ago, but with our changing demographic it is essential that we continue to have a strong rural community with health care available close to home and, four, I think we all want a safe community. We want to feel safe when we walk down the streets of our home town, and safe in our homes so if we're able to  concentrate and make a difference in those four areas, then to me those are the essential things that make the quality of life enhanced. So, those are the areas that we will concentrate on."

Marketing Mississippi
  Musgrove says he recognizes that Mississippians need to work on promoting the state in a more positive light, and he comments on an article that ran in Jackson's Clarion Ledger that portrayed the Delta negatively.
  "None of us feel good when we are portrayed in a bad light. A lot of us feel that's the portrayal Mississippians receive nationally. Outside the borders of our state the perception is different than most of us who live inside the state. Somehow, we have not marketed our state to ourselves and outside the border. Sometimes, we are our own worst enemy," he says.
Musgrove believes it's his responsibility as governor to market the state well and to serve as the state's spokesperson. About the Delta specifically, he says, "The Delta has some challenges. To not admit that and not work on them is not being realistic. The Gulf Coast has challenges; they just happen to be different from the ones in the Delta. So what we need is a governor that's diverse enough that can deal with the problems of our state honestly, realistically but in a way that finds solutions to make things better. And that's what I believe we can do and that's what I am determined to do."
  Musgrove says that Mississippi has some national firsts to its credit, but that no one is aware of the successes.
"For instance, when we made the announcement in DeSoto County recently that we want to expand Internet exchanges to all counties, we're the first state in nation to do this. When we connected all of our schools and county libraries to the university libraries for research  purposes,  we were the first state in the nation to do that. I can list you many firsts in the nation, but most of us here do not even know that. We need to do better marketing the successes that we have."
Musgrove plans to review economic development strategies and bring together people who represent different areas of the state, marketing each area's specific resources.
  "We need to revamp and provide a new, comprehensive economic development plan that captures the resources and focuses on specific industries and go out and get them."
  Because of Musgrove's  efforts during his senatorial term, Batesville is getting a new $400 million power plant that is expected to open this summer. "We think [the power plant] will bring benefits down the road. It will help not just Batesville but the general area also."
  Musgrove would like to see a balance of businesses in the state.
  "In many instances, if you have people or smaller businesses or do not have a large capital base you have to look at growing smaller businesses into larger business rather than constantly trying to recruit 1,000-employee companies. Also, you need to put an educational system in place that will provide the work force, and then you need to have the work force training that will take the people who live in the area and help them be trained for the industries that are there."
  To his critics who say he pays more attention to education than to economic development, Musgrove says, "In today's world you can't have one without the other. You look at a very good company that is successful economically and I'll show you a successful education system. If you have people walking out of high school who do not have the tools to be successful and trainable, then we don't land businesses, industries and companies and we don't get the ones already here which want to expand."
  Those in education, though, are content with Musgrove's strong education agenda. Bob Norris, director of finance at  South Panola school district, says the state's education enhancement funds (EEF), which were created when Musgrove was lieutenant governor, have been a real boon to education in the state. "[The EEF one-cent sales tax bill] probably had no hands on it larger than Musgrove's. Through EEF funding, we receive funds in four different areas, for buildings and buses, another for transportation and another for teachers. We call it one-cent money, where teachers are allotted a certain amount to spend each year to enhance their classrooms. They don't have to go to the principal and beg for money for a particular item."
Norris is another Batesville citizen who has good things to say about Musgrove. "He's a sharp, honest, hard-working Mississippi-raised guy," he says. He admires Musgrove's work ethic and remembers when the governor sold books to pay his way through college and refereed basketball games for extra cash. "I'll say this about Ronnie: He can't referee a ballgame worth a flip," Norris chuckles, but quickly adds: "Of course, I'm only kidding. Ronnie is a true Mississippian. There's nothing fake about him."
  What Musgrove has accomplished at the end of the day, he says, is for others to decide.
  "But if people can say their quality of life is better as a result of the positions and directions I took, then I will feel good because that is what our overriding objective is - to make Mississippi's quality of life good enough to where people will want to stay here and raise their families."