By the time Jake McBride died Friday at the age of 86, age and infirmity had sidelined him for a number of years. That comes with living to a ripe, old age. If instead you die in your prime, the community is more immediately aware of the role you have played here during this lifetime.

McBride was by profession a civil engineer but he was as well one of the architects who, during the 1970s and ‘80s, helped to help build the momentum for economic growth and development in Batesville that continues today.

McBride was one of the “team,” consisting of the Batesville mayor, the president of the board of supervisors, the head of the chamber of commerce and other community leaders who realized that to achieve success in attracting industry and other economic development to Panola County, they had to speak with one voice. They trusted each other enough to do that at a time when city governments and county governments in Mississippi simply did not communicate.

In Panola County, the team spoke with one voice because each of the people involved did not worry about who got credit for what. They all had in view a larger picture that everyone benefited when projects were successful.

McBride supplemented his excellent engineering work with fine Cajun cuisine. Part of the team’s program for feting out-of-town visitors when they came looking for prospective industrial sites was Jake McBride’s gumbo, usually served in an outside, informal setting. None of us can be sure how much Crown Cork and Seal or Batesville Casket or any number of industries now located here were influenced by the taste of that gumbo.

McBride was a native of south Louisiana between Lake Charles and Lafayette, which influenced not only his cooking but also his accent. He entertained with stories he told in Cajun patois, and the best were those he told on himself.

McBride was invited to Russia in the early 1990s because of his engineering expertise. He was among a group of distinguished infrastructure experts who were encouraged in their visit by a U. S. government anxious to lend stability in the then-recently-dissolved Soviet Union.

“They had to have two translators for me,” McBride said after his return. “One translated my English into English that the Russian interpreter could understand so that he could translate it Russian.”

Jake McBride, 1924-2011