Tippah County Loses Beloved Historian Tommy Covington

If you’ve ever seen an old or historical photo of Tippah County, it is likely that it was found and posted by Tommy Covington. The retired director of the Ripley Public Library, who is personally responsible for the concrete lions out front and who is the namesake of the Covington Historical & Genealogical Collection at the library, was an incredibly valuable and deeply loved member of the Tippah County Community.

Tommy passed away on October 1, 2024, exactly 51 years to the day after becoming the librarian. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who loved and will miss him. Tippah county has lost a knowledgeable man who had the answer to any history question you might ask. Tommy graduated from Ole Miss with a master’s degree in Library Science in 1973 and became the librarian at Ripley Public Library on October 1, 1973. He retired from the library at the end of 2008.

I don’t feel like I can do this tribute as much justice than Tommy himself, so I wanted to share just a few of his own stories and photos that I have personally enjoyed. These were all borrowed from his public Facebook posts, which have been wildly popular amongst our community members. I encourage you to go and take a look through his posts. He had an eloquent way of drawing you into a story, even if you didn’t personally know the subjects.

Tom & Jerry
“It was probably in the late 1980s when I was in New Orleans for an American Library Association Conference when I encountered the two concrete lions that are in front of Ripley Public Library. I personally purchased them and they traveled back to Ripley in the Northeast Regional Library station wagon. I placed them there in front of the library but I saw that they needed something to make them higher. Someone had given me some money to be used at the library so one day when Jerry Owen was in the library I asked him if he would go with me to Ripley Monument Company up on Hwy. 15 N. Jerry was the Tippah County Library trustee at the time. We talked to Pete Crum known by some as Tombstone Pete to differentiate him from the other Pete Crum and we were able to get two blocks of granite to place the lions on. Pete was very helpful.
We completed the transaction and Jerry and I were out walking to my vehicle when all of a sudden I stopped and said to Jerry, “We should have asked Pete to put names on the granite!” We did not take much time to think about it. I knew that the famous lions at New York Public Library are named Patience and Fortitude. But we wanted something different. I all at once said, “They should be named for us, Tom and Jerry. So back into the monument company, we went. Pete was agreeable to putting the names on the blocks of granite and he added that he would not charge for doing that. For anyone thinking the lions were named for the cartoon characters that is okay but I’m here for a while yet to tell you that they were named for two fellows who were the best of friends.
Jerry Wayne Owen 1941 – 2022″

“Here I am wearing the Hawaiian shirt that I purchased last night because it was on sale. Behind me is a family heirloom pie safe that I refinished in the 1950s. It had been painted gray and the wood is walnut. I stripped off the paint, sanded it, and varnished it so that the walnut wood could be seen. I think that I did an outstanding job on the punched tin by removing the gray paint from the tin and then painting it with a dark walnut wood stain. After that had dried well, I also varnished the tin. I think that the dark brown color looks much better than an attempt to make the tin have a bright shiny color.

I know as a fact that the pie safe had belonged to my grandmother, Lillie Nabors Covington, and that it has been in the last two of three Covington houses. I strongly believe that it was also in the log house that my great-grandfather Wilson Covington purchased in 1874. That log house was torn down in 1911 to build the house that my brother and I were born in. That second house was replaced by a brick ranch style house in 1956.

When Lillie Nabors married Waymon Covington in 1894 they lived in that log house where Waymon’s mother, Martha Susan Berry Covington, was still living. That pie safe was probably hers. I lived with my grandmother who died in 1969 and could have asked her about the pie safe but I didn’t. Here I sit with that and other questions and there is no one still living who can give me answers.”

“This is the painting I did for the cover of TIPPAH COUNTY HERITAGE Vol. 1, in 1981. The book was republished with some corrections in 1991, but it did not have the painting on the cover. The title of the painting is “Mississippi Gothic” and it is at Ripley Public Library. The painting is based on a photograph of the George Story family who lived south of Dumas, MS.”

Tommy & his dog Rex, the puppy that his father bought him for Christmas 1952.