VIDEO: Local Legend Honored For Assisting President Eisenhower

CALHOUN CITY, Miss. (WCBI)- It took almost a decade, but Calhoun City High School finally pulled it off. A well overdue ceremony for an internationally known local legend.

Douglas Macarthur and General Patton are the first names that come to mind when you think of american Military heroes but Fox Conner may have been the most important of them all.

He is known worldwide for being President Dwight Eisenhower’s right hand man and advisor for wartime tactics.

“He’s actually responsible for us winning WWI you know I don’t know what would’ve happened there but he also realized there was going to be a second world war because the Treaty of Versailles was very weak and he told them that, he wrote the treaty of Versailles and he told him it was too weak and in 20 years Germany would come back and try it again, and they did,” says Calhoun City High School history teacher Pam McPhail.

But many don’t know he’s a local native of Slate Springs

McPhail is the facilitator of Friday’s events and the match that started it all.

“It started with a class, that we were trying to take a guy that almost faded from visibility and make him known again in the lime light and they did with those signs that come into the 13 Mississippi Highways,” says McPhail.

The ceremony incorporated a variety of guest speakers ranging from state judges, senators, and military generals.

All of them saluted Conner’s efforts and contributions to our country, even his relatives felt honored.

“It’s great, he was a great man. Recognition you know, he didn’t seek recognition and evidently he didn’t get enough I believe. So we’re trying to honor him today. It’s certainly a privilege to be related to him,” says relative Jerry Fox.

Author Steve Rabalais recently wrote a biography on General Conner called ‘General Fox Conner: Perishing’s Chief of Operations and Eisenhower’s Mentor’

“He cam to Calhoun County and got all of our notes and stuff and then he went all over the united states, he went to west point, he went everywhere getting information on this general,” says McPhail.

She says figures like Conner are important for students to remember and commemorate.

“You know, I like for my kids to know the important people from around here also but they don’t get any bigger than Fox Conner,” says McPhail.

Mcphail says they hope to have a monument made in Conner’s honor in the future.