We have driven along Highway 90 here in and around Biloxi dozens of times since we came early in Feb. When I kept seeing the sign along the road which said, "Least tern - Judith Toups Highway", well, my writer's brain was brought to attention.
What is a least tern and who is Judith Toups. The least tern is the smallest member of the gull
and tern family and when the world's longest man-made beach along the Mississippi Sound was built in 1952, the least terns found a paradise for nesting.
As for who is Judith Toups--that is a little more complicated. After her children became more or less raised, Judith began painting and soon birds appeared in many of her pictures and before long she got a field guide and binoculars ansd began to learn to identify the birds she found along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She founded a local chapter of the Audubon Society.
Hurricane Katrina changed forever the hometown of the Toups family. Although a year after Katrina, casinos and money-making businesses began to rebuild, families had to relocate as
they tried to sell their stripped real estate or wait around to settle with insurance companies.
When Judith's daughter, Christine, lost her job at a local newspaper after nearly 12 years of
service, Judith sold the family home and moved to Decatur, AL and it was there she died of lung cancer, caused by years of chain-smoking, on Feb. 27, 2007.
I urge you to look up the story of Judith Toups on the internet. Hers is a fascinating story.
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