A motorist passes by the new sign dedicating Mississippi 1 from U.S. 61 in Onward to the Issaquena/Washington County line to the late C.B. “Buddie” Newman Thursday.(C. Todd Sherman The Vicksburg Post)

[5/9/2003]ONWARD A stretch of riverside highway near the Valley Park home of former Mississippi House speaker C.B. “Buddie” Newman was dedicated in his name here Thursday.

Newman, a 41-year lawmaker who served as the chamber’s leader for 12 years, died at his home Oct. 13, at 81. Thursday would have been his 82nd birthday.

“The Legislature had advised him of its intention” to name the stretch of Mississippi 1 from U.S. 61 to the Issaquena/Washington county line for Newman, his wife, Betty, told the crowd of about 100 people at Thursday’s ceremony across from the Onward store. “He knew we were going to do what we’re doing today.”

C.B. “Buddie” Newman Memorial Highway runs just east of the Mississippi River levee in Issaquena County and through a small part of Sharkey County at its southeastern end.

“It is fitting that the road will run” within a few miles of “where the speaker was born,” said H.L. “Sonny” Merideth, who served with Newman in the Legislature.

Merideth was the first of six speakers at the ceremony, which was called to order by Central District transportation commissioner Dick Hall. Others who spoke were two more of Newman’s former legislative colleagues, Will Green Poindexter and Clarence Pierce, and Issaquena County’s Milton Goza, president of the board of supervisors, and Supervisor Willie Bunton.

Newman, who served in the Philippines during World War II, was first elected to the Mississippi Senate in 1947. Then, there was “only five miles of hard-surface road in Issaquena County, at Valley Park,” Betty Newman told Thursday’s crowd, adding that the only hard-surfaced road in Sharkey County may have been U.S. 61.

“Buddie was very proud of his efforts” to help get area “farm-to-market” roads paved, she added.

Newman served in the Senate through 1951, when he was first elected to the House of Representatives. He retired from the House in 1988, having held many committee leadership posts in addition to the speakership.

Pierce expressed his great admiration for Newman, telling the crowd that Fielding L. Wright, who was governor when Newman joined the Legislature, “would run a lot of things by the freshman senator,” who already had “a distinguished war record.”

Newman “gave us tone and reach and vision that the state badly needed,” Pierce said, adding that the state continues to “reap the benefits in more ways than we can see or count.”

In 1987 the National Guard Armory in Rolling Fork was also dedicated to Newman.