MY MEMORIES

Mississippi State University

In May of 1983, we accepted Professorships in Computer Science at Mississippi State University (MS State) located on the east side of Starkville, Mississippi, me as Associate and Nancy as Assistant. Starkville had been a small university town since the late 1800’s. In 1983 the population of Starkville was about 13,000, the University added another 13,000 students to the mix. One of the attractions to MS State was their Master's program in Computer Science with the intention of adding a Ph.D. program in the future. The Master's program offered both a Thesis and Non-thesis option, the later was very popular. The Thesis option was for a student who intended to go elsewhere to obtain a PhD. The Non-thesis option was, at the time, intended for those who had a degree in some other field and wanted to change to a field where the job market was better.

During the summer we made a trip to Starkville to find a place to live. We didn’t find anything we really liked so we decided to build a new house on a 4-acre lot out in the piney woods 5 miles west of Starkville. It was a small housing development of about 20 homes, each with about 4 acres, called Oakwood. All of the lots were fully wooded with a variety of trees, most of the trees were 80-90 feet tall.

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