by Ezabelle Janssen, Senior Staff Writer

PASS CHRISTIAN (GG) — Some stories refuse to disappear. Not because they are written in history books or marked by monuments, but because the people who lived them continue telling them, generation after generation. As time passes and those voices begin to fade, filmmaking has become one of the most powerful ways to preserve what remains. 

That was the heart of the Pass Christian Historical Society’s luncheon on Monday, June 22nd. Hancock County natives Brehm Bell and Matt Barrett presented Roots to Rockets, an oral history film documenting the communities displaced to make way for what is now NASA’s Stennis Space Center. 

The project began with a simple realization. 

As longtime friends and former presidents of the Hancock County Historical Society, Bell and Barrett recognized that many of the people who remembered communities like Logtown, Napoleon, Santa Rosa, and Gainesville were growing older. Every funeral meant another chapter of local history disappearing forever. 

“It was just a labor of love,” Bell said. 

When the federal government selected Hancock County as a site for the nation’s rocket testing facility in 1961, hundreds of families were forced to leave their homes, many of which had been in their families for generations. Over 13,000 acres became the testing site. Hundreds of homes, churches, schools, businesses, and cemeteries were displaced. 

For many families, fair market value could never replace generations of memories. “That’s not just my house,” Bell recalled people saying. “My great-grandfather built that house.” 

Yet the film never paints its subjects as victims alone. Instead, it explores the complicated balance between tremendous personal sacrifice and a national achievement that ultimately helped send Americans to the moon. “We wanted to preserve the culture,” Bell said. “But we also wanted to give them credit for the sacrifice they made for us.” 

Throughout the presentation, Bell repeatedly returned to one idea: these communities helped make history, even if history rarely remembers them. “There may come a period of time… where

the names of these communities… will never be spoken again,” he told the audience. “So we’re proud to preserve a bit of that history.” 

For many in attendance, the film struck a deeply personal chord. 

Former Saturn program engineer Charles Knott worked at the Mississippi Test Facility during its earliest days. Watching the film transported him back to muddy construction sites, trailer offices, and shared desks, when engineers were building the facility that would eventually test the rocket engines used during the Apollo program. “They did a good job,” Knott said after the screening. 

Others connected through family history. 

Isiah Edwards, past president of the Pass Christian Historical Society, whose relatives came from the affected communities, appreciated seeing stories from Logtown and Gainesville preserved on film. While he found the presentation informative, he also noted that many African American families experienced displacement differently from what was shown. “They didn’t get near enough money from the federal government to go out and buy a home,” Edwards said. “When you first go into Perlington, and most of these areas where they’re relocated, you see all these little shacks, because they couldn’t afford to buy a home.” His comments offered another reminder that every historical event contains multiple perspectives, each deserving to be remembered. 

That may be the greatest strength of Roots to Rockets. Rather than trying to provide every answer, it opens the door for more conversations. Audience members shared memories of relatives who lived in the vanished communities, discussed family cemeteries, and recalled school field trips to the test site. For a little over thirty minutes, ghost towns came back to life. 

History often celebrates rockets, moon landings, and technological breakthroughs. Roots to Rockets reminds audiences that behind every giant leap were ordinary families asked to make extraordinary sacrifices.

(Photos by Ezabelle Janssen/The Gazebo Gazette)