Visit Oxford Honors Jack Mayfield with Room Dedication

Jack Mayfield
Photo by Alyssa Schnugg

By Alyssa Schnugg
Staff writer
alyssa.schnugg@hottytoddy.com

For 10 years, Jack Mayfield has been showing off Oxford’s history to visitors and residents who wanted to learn more about our “little postage stamp of native soul” while also enjoying a ride on Oxford’s iconic double-decker buses.

Due to health issues, he recently retired as Visit Oxford’s main bus tour guide.

“Jack has spent countless hours guiding double-decker bus tours, school groups, university groups and travel writers and sharing his knowledge with people from all over the world,” said Visit Oxford Director Mary Allen Hedges. “He has been an asset to the city of Oxford and we will miss him.”

To thank Mayfield for his service to the city, Visit Oxford has named the turret room after Mayfield.

“Jack would often sit in here while he waited for the tour to start,” Hedges said Thursday at a dedication ceremony at Visit Oxford. “Because our building has so much history being once owned by Phil Stone who was William Faulkner’s mentor, we thought it was appropriate to dedicate this room in his honor.”

Mayfield, who recently battled throat cancer, said he’s loved doing the tours over the last 10 years. When asked what his favorite story was to tell, he said he “loved them all.”

Mayfield used to work in the insurance field and became a history professor and newspaper columnist. The hundreds of columns he’s written since 2004 have been gathered by the Lafayette County Historical and Genealogical Society and so far five volumes, each containing about 100 of Mayfield’s history columns have been printed and bound.

Copies of his columns have been provided to Visit Oxford to be used by future tour guides if needed.

“This is very nice,” he said of the room dedication Thursday.