Page 18 - South Mississippi Living - July, 2018

INMEMORIAM
COAST LOSES A LEADER
A.J.HOLLOWAY story by Lynn Lofton
Bphotos by John Stricklin and courtesy of The Holloway Family
iloxi and all the Coast rebuilding efforts in a way that mourned the death of would recapture the successes of A.J. Holloway, 79, last the past.
month. He served an A large part of Holloway’s legacy unprecedented 22 years is a long list of accomplishments
as Biloxi’s mayor and was noted for his leadership after Hurricane Katrina.
Among the tributes to Holloway was the lowering of flags to half staff at Keesler Air Force Base and Biloxi municipal facilities.
“It is with heartfelt sadness that we say goodbye to Biloxi’s longest- running mayor and friend of Keesler Air Force Base,” Keesler’s Facebook page announced on the day of his death.
Two months before Hurricane Katrina, Holloway led the city
to invest $92,000 in a business- interruption insurance policy that captured $10 million in gaming revenue that would have been lost to the storm. “It was our tsunami,” Holloway said in a quote that was republished around the world. Katrina claimed 6,000 of 25,000 homes and businesses in Biloxi, and more than 15,000 people were left without jobs in the gaming industry alone.
He marshaled city departments and using state and federal aid and went about the business of clearing the city of debris. Six months
after the storm, he announced
the Reviving the Renaissance initiative, prompting nearly 200 residents to step forward to help craft a blueprint to guide the city’s
for the city of Biloxi, including
new multi-million-dollar facilities for schools, sports, police and fire departments; a 50 percent rate drop in property taxes; the widening
of Caillavet Street, Cedar Lake Road and Popp’s Ferry Road;
and the construction of Back Bay Boulevard.
“He was a force,” Mayor Andrew “FoFo” Gilich said. “He was always in it, and that smile was infectious.”
Holloway was a high school football hero, a fierce competitor on the field, and was later said to have thrown a punch that led to the longtime cancellation of the Biloxi-Gulfport football rivalry. “He was a legend in so many ways,” Gilich said. “There was that ballgame with Gulfport. The whole town was like ‘All the Way Holloway.’”
Holloway played football on a scholarship at the University of Mississippi where he earned a bachelor’s degree in education. He played in two Sugar Bowls and a Cotton Bowl and was on the 1960 Rebels national championship football team. “He brought that winning spirit to City Hall as councilman and later as mayor,” Biloxi spokesman Vincent Creel said.
ABOVE: HOLLOWAY walks through
the destruction of Hurricane Katrina with President Bush. RIGHT: HOLLOWAY played half back on the football team at Ole Miss.
18 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • July 2018
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