Every year, usually in September, the Amsler family would have a large family reunion in Jackson, Mississippi, based around a Mississippi State football game. My aunt and uncle, Sue and Owen McCoy would come, their children Rick and Marcy, my grandad Dutch Amsler, my grandmother Sally Amsler, and my great uncle Stanley and his wife Una would come, along with me and my parents, and at least the men would go to the football game. By the 1980's, we had settled on the Passport Inn in North Jackson as the hotel where we stayed. We would get several rooms, and in my memory it was always warm and sunny. The motel had a decent restaurant as well, and I usually would walk up there on Friday or Saturday night and order a steak dinner. On one of those occasions, I had met a young employee there named Moses Kendrick. He was a football star at Madison-Ridgeland High School, and we had hit it off talking about football, rap music, and a lot of other things as well. After that first year that I had met him, we always managed to reconnect on the yearly family reunion trips. His goal was to go to Jackson State University, and his enthusiasm for J-State actually made me interested in the school as well. In 1983, our reunion was on the weekend of September 18th and 19th. I don't recall who Mississippi State was playing in the game, but everyone was at the reunion except my dad, who was still in Canada working. Over time, the reunions came to an end, for a number of reasons. My grandfather passed away during Hurricane Elena in 1985, and my uncle Stanley and grandmother Sally got more feeble with age. And Mississippi State started playing fewer and fewer games at Mississippi Memorial Stadium in Jackson, preferring to play their home games in Starkville. The last reunion was held in 1992, and in 1993, I started my fall tradition of going to Grambling's homecoming weekend instead.
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