By Alyssa Schnugg
News editor
County Road 204 will now be known as “Mr. Henry “Pug” Wortham Road” after the Lafayette County Board of Supervisors approved the change Monday night.
The name change is in memory of Wortham who died in 2008.
Wortham served as the county’s first African American deputy with the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Department from 1972 until he retired in 2000.
“Pug helped raise me,” said Sheriff Joey East, whose father, the late Sheriff F.D. Buddy East hired Wortham after East became sheriff in 1972.
“I think he helped raise a lot of people,” said Supervisor David Rikard at Monday’s meeting.
A duplicate of the road sign was given to Wortham’s family members who attended the meeting — his wife, Mary Wortham and two daughters, Elaine Clark and LaKesha Wortham.
“He would be so ecstatic over this,” Elaine Wortham said.
