Talking about his life and the changes and enjoyments he’s seen and experienced growing up in the Hub City, James Winstead sits in the office that used to belong to his father, Joe R. “Buddy” Winstead. He hasn’t changed anything about the office. It’s part of the Hulett-Winstead legacy.
That legacy began in 1910 when J.E. Hulett, a doctor, opened a funeral home as a sideline business in a different downtown Hattiesburg location.
In 1928, construction was started on a new building at 205 Bay Street (the site of the current location) and took five years before it was completed. It was during the depression and Hulett would build until he ran out of money. The doors finally opened in 1933.
Buddy went to work for Hulett in 1947. He went to mortuary school and worked his way up through the ranks, becoming manager and then buying into the business before purchasing it in 1972.
It’s been wholly owned by the Winstead family since then.
“At one time, my dad, my two brothers (twins, Joe and John), me and my mother all worked here at the funeral home,” said James. These days it’s just him.
James explained that brother, John, chose to go in a different direction. He and his wife, Barbara, own Stewart’s Camera Shop in Hattiesburg. “It was then just my dad, my brother, Joe, and myself and our other employees,” he said.
His father continued to work but died in 2010 after suffering from a stroke several years earlier from which he never fully recovered. “But he still came down here just about every day until 2008,” James said.
“This was his life. He was very active in the community, serving on multiple boards such as the United Way, which all of us have at one time or another.”
When Buddy died the funeral home passed to Joe and James to run together, which they did until Joe’s untimely death at the age of 66 in 2017.
“It’s gone from being a full family to just me,” James said. His children, one son and two daughters, have opted to go in different directions.
He said he never really thought about another job.
His mother wanted him to be a doctor, but his dad always had a theory.
“He always told us, ‘I have this business. If you want to come into the business, I would love for you to come in, but don’t do it just because it’s here. If you find something you would prefer to do more, I will stand behind you 100 percent, as long as it’s legal.’ He never forced us.”
James said when he started working he literally started at the bottom – digging graves. He also ran a flower truck and made cemetery setups. His dad told him, “If you’re going to come into the business, I want you to handle the business end of things. So that’s what I did.
I’ve been through the whole process; I’ve done everything,” said James, who earned a degree in business from USM. Both of his brothers went to mortuary school.
Winstead said Hattiesburg has been good to his family.
“I’m very blessed to live in Hattiesburg all my life,” he said with a quivery voice. He considers his job a calling where satisfaction comes when he runs into people later on and they let him know they appreciate what he did. “That’s what it’s all about,” he said. “We see people at the absolute worst, and it’s our job to try and guide them, not tell them what to do. It’s more, ‘Let me do the thinking for a little bit or I’ll do the reminding of things you need to take care of.’”
Those compliments he attributes to his father, who he refers to as a really good teacher.
“I enjoy what I do,” he said. “I feel like we’re helping people.”
His father left him with some tidbits of wisdom, one of which was “Never put yourself in a position where if you run into a family you’ve served, whether at the grocery store or a restaurant, that you can’t feel comfortable looking them eye to eye or try and avoid them. If we’ve done our job, we don’t have to worry about being ashamed of running into somebody.”
James considers it a trust issue, something they never want to jeopardize.
“Dad always told us, ‘if you can take care of the people, the people will take care of you.’”
Having grown up in the business, James has never really known anything else. And because of the nature of the business, when you never know what’s going to happen, he said he feels more tied to the job now than he used to. “But there have always been others to step in and help,” he said.
James said he never really thought of living anywhere but the Hub City. He remembers back to growing up here when everybody knew each other. “When you live in the same town you grew up in, there are really no secrets,” he said. “And the Winstead boys were all boys. If there was something to get into, we probably got into it.”
But he also remembers the Hattiesburg that was small enough if you got in too deep, there was somebody who was going to pull you out.
“I’ve got friends, literally, that I’ve had all my life,” he said. “I don’t remember a time when they weren’t there, when they weren’t my friends, from a little boy. And those are the things you cherish.”
His wife, Kathie, who he met while at Southern Miss, has always been amazed at the relationship her husband has had with people. “It’s not a matter of seeing each other every week, but when we run into each other, we have the biggest time.
“She told me, “We see all you guys over there in the corner and you are laughing and cutting up, and you’re telling the same lies.”
‘Oh no, the lies have gotten bigger and better,’ I tell her.”
James went through the Hattiesburg Public School system from grades 1-12 and went to Thames School from second through ninth grade.
“How many people get the privilege of going to one school for that long?” said Winstead of the neighborhood school. “I never rode a school bus. I either walked or rode my bike. I never had a key to my house. The back door was always unlocked when I got home from school or from football or basketball practice. I knew to go in the house and do whatever I needed to do; I didn’t have a choice.”
While both of his parents worked, his father at the funeral home and his mother as a nurse at Methodist Hospital, he remembers his mother always had breakfast cooked for he and his brothers before she went to work and at night they had a meal together.
“I didn’t realize that we really didn’t have a whole lot, but they took care of us,” he said.
He remembers living on 11th Avenue until he was six years old. It was then that they moved “way” out on Eddie Street, right across 49.
“Really, it was so far out my friends couldn’t come and play with me because it was too far out,” he said.
He remembers that Eddie Street and Velma Avenue were the only blacktopped roads when the family moved to Eddie Street.
“I’ve watched Hattiesburg jump over 49 and then 28th Ave. I watched 40th Avenue being built, because we used to camp out where all of that was. And then I watched it jump across Interstate 59. The only thing I’m surprised about is that I didn’t live my whole life inside the city limits of Hattiesburg. I would have thought I would always be in the city limits of Hattiesburg.”
The Winsteads moved west and have lived there for about 24 years.
When James graduated from Hattiesburg High in 1974, Oak Grove’s graduating class numbered about 60, while HHS was between 350 and 400. His graduating class was the first integrated class at HHS. Instead of heading to the high school in the 10th grade they all went to Rowan, which had been the African American high school.
He rode to school with five girls. “Having lived in a house full of boys, as a 15-year-old boy with five girls, I got educated,” he remembers. “I still see a couple of them and we laugh. It’s kind of a standing joke.”
He and Kathie, who was a teacher with the Hattiesburg School District for a number of years before retiring, met at USM. She was from Pensacola, Fla., and roomed with Rebecca Roseberry, who James had gone to school with all his life.
“We only dated eight years before we got married,” Winstead said of their sometimes on again, off again romance.
“She’s a great mother who raised three great kids. I tell folks she raised a doctor, a physical therapist and a teacher and I give her credit for all that. I feel very blessed.”
While James would have loved for his children to remain in the Hub City, they aren’t that far away. Son, Keith, is a doctor in Laurel and a member of the first graduating DO class at William Carey; daughter Anna Napier, is a physical therapist who lives in Lafayette, La., and Leah West is a school teacher who lives in Madison. The Winsteads have two young grandchildren.
In their free time, they like to attend a lot of USM sports, where their son played baseball. “We try and make as many of the football, baseball and basketball games as we can and Kathie gets to travel; I don’t,” James said.
