The photo at right was the original shot submitted by James Junior, the deaf 60-year-old Indian Hills resident who has a knack for growing large tomatoes on very tall plants. You see him on a stepladder about to measure the height of his plants, which wound up being almost 9 feet tall. He came by the Daily Journal office two weeks ago with a handful of photos and a handwritten note that began, “Hi, I am a deaf man.”

James is the first person I’ve interviewed who’s deaf and unable to speak. However, we had an enjoyable conversation. During his visit to the Daily Journal office, I wrote a couple of questions on the sheet and he replied with his answers. So, when I visited James at his home, I carried a legal pad because I wanted to ask a lot of questions.  If you look at today’s Neighbors section and see the photo of James, his girlfriend Lorraine Seat and their neighbor Nannette Belton, that’s my notepad that Lorraine is writing on. Lorraine, who’s also deaf and unable to speak, was answering a question. 

My question-and-answer session with James filled up three pages. They were questions I would ask any interview subject, and instead of saying the answer he’d write it out.

This is one of the pages used for the interview. I used a pen with red ink and James wrote his responses with a pen with black ink. James, however, misplaced his pen while I was taking photos of him, so we wound up sharing my pen.

I think there was one moment when he didn’t understand what I had written. Of course, my penmanship isn’t that great; it’s hard for anyone to read. All in all, my interview with James went smoother than some verbal interviews I’ve done during my career.  James is a jolly guy who’s proud of his plants and his tomatoes. Finding people like James is what Lee County Neighbors is all about.

If you know someone like James Junior who might make a good Neighbors cover story, send me an e-mail at bobby.pepper@djournal.com and I’ll check it out.

Here are additional photos from Friday’s Lee County Relay For Life at The Summit Center in Tupelo. Once again, Relay was a festive event even with the move indoors to escape the muggy humidity and threat of rain.

I had problems uploading to the photo host (Slide.com) this morning, and I was only able to post a portion of my shots. The remaining photos will be added later today (if Slide is more cooperative).

These are photos I shot Friday night at the first Baldwyn Relay For Life. I had planned to stay only through the Survivor Walk, but I got caught up in the enthusiasm and excitement of the event and had a great time. I wound up staying until 11 p.m. 

During the luminary ceremony, I paused from my work to think about the many people in my life who’ve battled cancer. It was very uplifting to see a community like Baldwyn pull together for Relay For Life.

Most of the photos are from the Relay events between 5:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. Unfortunately, my camera began to act funny and then shut down during the womanless beauty review. I suspect one of the contestants broke my camera.

Let me explain:

The number of pages in the Neighbors section is determined by the amount of advertising sold for it. We have a weekly goal to devote a certain amount of space in the section to advertising. We try to meet or exceed that goal number each week.

However, there are times when we have to sacrifice that weekly goal. That’s especially true when we receive an overwhelming number of photos and information, creating a backlog. As of this week, the backlog exceeded 100 photos.

In order to get most of those photos in, we have to “blow out” the section (increase the number of pages). We fail to meet the weekly goal, but we get in a lot of photos readers have submitted and want to see in a timely manner.

This week’s section helped relieve the backlog, but I think another blowout section might help even more.

This is a videoclip from its walk on Thursday, May 1 benefitting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. The students and staff collect pennies – a lot of them, in fact – and donate it to St. Jude. This year they raised $1,011.66!

The clip is from the opening ceremony when a group of balloons were released. The child who helps counselor Sandi Mallary release the balloons is Andrew Benson, a kindergarten student who underwent chemotherapy treatments at St. Jude when he was 2 years old. His grandmother was at the walk, and she said Andrew celebrated his third birthday at St. Jude. Andrew is doing well, even showing me the scar on his belly where he received his treatments.

I’d like to say hello to Ruby Trice’s kindergarten students at Shannon Primary School. I visited the class this morning to tell about my career as a journalist. I enjoyed meeting the kids and answering their questions. Each child had a question or a comment. It was a great way to start the morning. I appreciate Mrs. Trice and her class for inviting me to speak.

While covering the eighth annual Azalea Festival in Presley Heights, I caught the performance by Lawhon Elementary School’s  third-grade choir, One Voice. The talented youngsters, led by director Courtney Rutherford, performed six songs Saturday morning. The two videoclips are from the final two songs, “Born to Make Music” and their rendition of “Hound Dog” by Tupelo’s own Elvis Presley.

It’s neat to see a Lawhon group perform an Elvis song. Long before he became the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis was just like the kids in the videoclips. Lawhon was the first school he attended.

The Azalea Festival, sponsored by the Presley Heights Neighborhood Association, is an annual event at Veterans Park in east Tupelo.

Patricia Neely-Dorsey, a Lee County poet and this week’s Neighbors cover story subject, reads from her first book of poetry, “Reflections of a Mississippi Magnolia.”

Some of my neighbors in the Country Oaks subdivision in Guntown turned the back side of a pond dam into their own ski slope Saturday morning after the rare March snowfall. One invited me to take a slide down the slope, but I refused. With my luck, if I got on the skis or the sled I would take a nasty fall and hurt myself. By lunchtime, the snow was all but gone. It was fun while it lasted.

As I stated in my column in today’s Neighbors, if you have a snowy photo from the weekend and want to share it with the rest of Lee County, submit it to Neighbors. You can e-mail it to me (.jpg format only) or prints can be dropped off at the Journal office at 1242 South Green in Tupelo. They can be mailed to Lee County Neighbors, P.O. Box 909, Tupelo, MS 38802.