Friends and family are mourning the loss of longtime The Vicksburg Post employee Curlie Whiten, who died Monday at the age of 94.

Arrangements are incomplete at Lakeview Memorial Funeral Home.

“He was one of our most dedicated and loyal employees and did everything around there, and did a lot of things most people were not aware of,” former Post publisher Pat Cashman said. “He was a personal family friend; he visited my father in last days when he was on the fifth floor of the old Parkview Hospital.

“He also would go visit mother at her house virtually every day and take her things to eat. He would often take her oysters, which she loved. He was just a great friend.”

Cashman said Whiten was one of the pallbearers at his mother’s funeral, adding, “You couldn’t ask for a nicer man to work for you and just a good family friend; he was always there.”

“He was always looking after things up there (at the paper). He was one of the first ones in the building. When I was staying up there during Kartrina, he’d be in there cleaning up and making sure everything was right and taking care of things.”

Whiten worked for The Post for 34 years, from May 1980 to November 2015, coming to work after retiring from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, where he worked for 30 years on the dredge Jadwin of the Corps’ mat sinking unit.

He was an Army veteran of World War II, serving with the 327th Quartermaster Service Regiment.

“My father was a joyful person,” his daughter Debra Williams said. “He never raised his voice and he always woke up with a smile. He was the patriarch of our family and the prince of the neighborhood; all the children loved him. He was so easygoing.

“He loved gardening. He couldn’t pass by an empty lot and not get some seeds and plant them. When everything finished growing, he would let people — anyone — go there and get something.”

Williams said her father got his job at The Post through a friend, Daniel Wilson. “He came to spend a few months to do some things and ended up staying 34 years,” she said.

She said he called the employees at the paper his second family and enjoyed working in the mailroom with the younger employees.

Williams said her father and her mother, Leethelma Whiten, were married 58 years and raised six children, three boys and three girls. Three of his children are still living: Williams; a brother, Curlie Jr.; and a sister Maurice.

“If you needed help, if you were hungry, they’d try and feed you,” she said. “She was his only wife and they lived together until they died.”

Jimmy Mullen, retired pressroom foreman, said Whiten was “probably one of the greatest people I’ve ever known. It’s just really sad.”

“He was loyal to the Cashmans, loyal to the people he worked with,” he said. “He did an outstanding job of taking the young men in the various departments under his wing and helping guide them, mentor them, and making them better people than they might otherwise would have been. He was a father figure and minister all in one to a lot of those guys in there.”

“He was full of energy; always smiling. He had more energy than anyone else,” said David Girard, who supervises The Post’s creative services department.

Bobby Childers, building and property manager, who worked with Whiten for 25 years, called him a good man who enjoyed his work.

“He was conscious of other people and any way he could help them, he would.”