'Say it with Flowers': Ag Alum Takes Attitude of Public Service to Mississippi Legislature
Every other Thursday afternoon around 3 o'clock, Auburn University agricultural economics major Merle Flowers would climb through the driver's side window of his bright orange '78 Toyota Celica and drive 172 miles north to the town of Section, high atop Sand Mountain.
It wasn't some girl drawing him back to his hometown on such a regular basis. It was politics. His freshman year, Flowers had run for and won a seat on the Section Town Council–making him, at 19, the youngest elected public official in Alabama history at the time, incidentally–and the young councilman took that job seriously. From 1988 through 1991, when the Section Town Council met twice a month at 7 p.m. Thursdays, Flowers was there. And as soon as the meeting adjourned, he'd be on the road back to Auburn.
"When I ran for town council, I promised the people of Section I would do my best to make a positive difference in our community, and I was determined to honor that commitment," Flowers says today from his thriving real estate investment company in Southaven, Miss.
That's the same attitude and dedication he had displayed in high school in the mid-1980s, when he served as a state FFA officer two years in a row, and again in 1990 when, as a senior at Auburn, he was elected vice president of the Student Government Association.
Come January 2004, he'll take that sincere commitment with him to Jackson, Miss., when he begins his first term as a Mississippi state senator. He will be representing a newly created legislative district that encompasses northwest Mississippi's DeSoto County, the seventh-fastest-growing county in the nation.
DeSoto County, just to the south of Memphis, Tenn., has become the suburb of choice for migrating masses of Memphians in recent years. From 1990 to 2000, the county's population soared 57 percent, to 107,000–a growth explosion that Flowers undoubtedly has in mind when he says his real estate business has been "very blessed."
When the Mississippi Legislature redrew legislative district lines last year, DeSoto County merited a state senate district unto itself. But months before lawmakers had signed off on the final redistricting plan, Flowers' name was circulating in the Republican Party-dominated county as the ideal person to fill the seat. People he didn't even know began encouraging him to run.
Flowers and his wife, Stacey, spent weeks discussing, debating and praying about the matter, and on Jan. 10, 2003–roughly 25 years after his first venture into public office in a small Alabama community–Flowers qualified to run for Mississippi Senate District 19.
"I was certain God wanted me to run," Flowers says. "I wasn't too sure if he wanted me to win, but there was only one way to find out."
Immediately after qualifying for the post, an enthusiastic Flowers revived the catchy "Say It with Flowers" slogan he'd used to win the Auburn SGA seat in the '90s and hit the campaign trail. With the help of the 1000-plus campaign volunteers that seemingly materialized overnight, the CoAg alum covered the county with "Say It with Flowers" T-shirts, signs and slogan-emblazoned seed packets for red, white and blue zinnias.
As it turned out, the hard campaigning was short-lived. When the candidate qualifying deadline came on March 1, Flowers was unopposed. Under Mississippi law, he was duly elected state senator.
In January 2004, with Shelley by his side, Flowers will take the oath of office.
But get one thing straight right now: Flowers is not now, nor will he ever be, a politician.
"I am a public servant," he says. "This seat belongs to the citizens of DeSoto County. My goal is to represent them and their needs and to make a positive difference for them."
Flowers' venture into state-level politics came as no surprise to his College of Agriculture connections–first, because they know Merle and that's how Merle is, and second, because he's kept in touch with most of them since he got that ag econ degree in 1991.
"The College of Agriculture is just the most incredible place," Flowers says. "It's a family; that's what it is. The classes are small; everybody knows everybody. When you miss class, your professors are going to call and check on you. If you have a question about an assignment, you know you can pick up the phone and call your professor at home. I don't think you can do that anywhere else at Auburn.
"For me, the College of Agriculture and the ag econ department took a small-town, wet-behind-the-ears kid and gave me the great education and the confidence I needed to succeed, in school and in life," he says.
And it is to them he gives much of the credit for helping shape his future.
"They were my professors and my (Alpha Gamma Rho) fraternity brothers and classmates then, and they are now my friends and colleagues," Flowers says. "Jim Bannon, Bill Alverson, Bill Hardy, Joe Yeager and so many more–it's a great network of folks that I know I can still call on any time."
Another, earlier influence in his life was his high-school FFA teacher, Jerry Holcomb, who encouraged him to take a leadership role in that organization and unwittingly inspired Flowers to study agriculture.
"I didn't grow up on a farm, but there was never any question I was going to major in anything but agriculture," Flowers says. "Folks in agriculture are some of the best people I know, and I wanted to be a part of that."
After leaving AU, Flowers worked in Birmingham for a while and then, in 1994, headed to Oxford, Miss., to graduate school at Ole Miss. By the time he earned his master of business administration degree a year later, he'd met and fallen for Stacey, who was from Southaven.
The two got married, and shortly thereafter, Flowers landed a job as district manager of congressional operations for Mississippi Congressman Roger Wicker. Working from an office in DeSoto County, Flowers was responsible for 24 counties and also was Wicker's point man on education, taxes and, of course, agriculture.
He left that job earlier this year and now works full time as president of Flowers Properties LLC, the residential investment property and land development company he had been building on the side in recent years. Today, the list of awards and honors the 34-year-old has garnered in the business and civic world rivals the list he put together at Auburn.
He and Stacey have two children: Sarah Ann, 3, and Jackson, born this past spring. Though Flowers lived almost the first quarter century of his life in Alabama, he says Mississippi's home now.
"Right here in DeSoto County," he says. "This is where they'll bury me."
Still, Auburn University and the College of Agriculture always will be a part of him–so much so that, through the college's planned giving program, he has directed that a major contribution be made from his estate to the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology upon his death. The money is to be used for scholarships and research.
"Auburn's done so much for me, I had to give something back," Flowers says. "I've been very fortunate, very blessed in my life, and Auburn's been a part of that."