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The way<br />
WE were<br />
Marie & Arnold Jackson<br />
Camille Anding<br />
Sitting aboard their thirty-eight<br />
foot cruiser anchored to a pier in<br />
the Barnett Reservoir, Marie and<br />
Arnold Jackson laugh and joke<br />
about the circumstances that<br />
afforded them dating privileges.<br />
She was a 10th grader from<br />
Toomsuba, Mississippi, and he<br />
was a freshman at a community<br />
college in Meridian.<br />
Arnold worked as a grocery<br />
sacker in the Meridian A&P<br />
Grocery, and it was Marie’s mother<br />
who ran the cash register next to<br />
him. The two became good friends,<br />
and over time Marie’s mom invited<br />
him to join their family for a meal.<br />
Marie’s fond memory of that<br />
first meeting was actually the<br />
reverse order. “Usually the girl<br />
carries the boy home to meet her<br />
parents. Mother brought the boy<br />
home to me,” Marie said through<br />
her jovial laughter.<br />
After three years of dating<br />
and one quarter away from<br />
Arnold’s graduating from the<br />
University of Southern<br />
Mississippi, the two were wed<br />
on April 12, 1968. Arnold soon<br />
got a job that moved the<br />
newlyweds to Macon, Georgia.<br />
The next move carried them to<br />
California.<br />
Arnold’s appetite for better<br />
job opportunities kept him<br />
actively pursuing education and<br />
advancing his options. Law school<br />
was one of those opportunities,<br />
and while working days (with<br />
Marie’s help) and attending night<br />
classes, he added attorney to his<br />
job titles. That degree led him into<br />
the oil business where he and<br />
three other businessmen eventually<br />
launched Denbury Resources, Inc.<br />
While his jobs carried him<br />
throughout the states, Marie was<br />
a stay at home mom to their three<br />
daughters. When they were 5th,<br />
6th, and 9th graders in 1983, the<br />
Jacksons’ lives took a drastic turn.<br />
Marie’s parents were in a serious<br />
train/car collision that killed her<br />
father and put her mom in a<br />
six-week coma. One leg had to<br />
be amputated, and her eyesight<br />
was destroyed.<br />
Marie understood then why<br />
God’s plan for her hadn’t<br />
included a degree and career,<br />
because the next thirty years she<br />
was her mother’s caregiver in their<br />
home until her mother’s death.<br />
8 • Fall 2018
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