Coffee with Reverend Reginald Bernard

Coffee with… We hope that you all have had a wonderful and glorious week. We cap this week off with the very first interview, from the very first session of Coffee with… interviews. Before we get to telling you about the video, and before you hit play, we’d like to thank our guest host for these interviews. Let us preface things a little.  Cristy Whittington, the owner of Vicksburg Daily News, LLC, is also the owner of Concrete Productions, which she runs with the help of her husband Chris (that’s me!).  We (Cristy and I) first met Robyn Lea shortly after she began working here in Vicksburg.  We were producing a television spot for her business.  She was such an energetic and exciting person to be around, it was almost contagious. Years passed and we occasionally would run into Robyn and we’d catch up, but hadn’t really gotten to know what a true gem she is.  Fast forward a little while more and enter VicksburgDailyNews.com.  Robyn was one of our first sponsors on the site and she was just so excited about the idea of it all.  She threw out some ideas and was used – on more than one occasion – as a sounding board for our ideas. One night, Cristy and I were talking about this crazy idea that I had running around in my head about spotlighting people who are doing good works in our community.  “Coffee with…  (insert the name of the person)… that’s what we call it… we shoot it at the coffee shop on Washington Street and – here’s the kicker – we aren’t in it… not me, not you, not any other member of VDN!” Cristy looked at me and asked who we get to do the interviews.  I responded with a list of names that included Barbara Tolliver, Larry Gawronski, Robyn Lea, Leigh Cook, Chris Young and a few more that I can’t remember right now.  Cristy says, “call Robyn and see what she says.”  So I did. Robyn really got excited about the idea and started rattling off names of people she’d like to interview and the first name she threw out – I’ve got a horrible memory but I’m pretty sure it was the first since it was the first that I wrote down (I take notes…it’s that bad) – was Rev. Bernard. Before you could turn around good, Robyn was calling telling us when to be where so we could tape the interviews she had lined up. That’s when we met Reverend Reginald Bernard.  This man is amazing.  He speaks truth, unadulterated by any sort of political correctness.  He doesn’t even try to feign sensitivity to PC issues.  He’s attacking them head-on, which is very rare, even in the ministry, nowadays. Hearing some of the things that Reverend Bernard talked about in his interview sparked a wave of research on mine and Cristy’s part.   Some of the things he talks about are going to be hard for some people to hear, but I believe in what he is saying.   He speaks about the Black Family Weekend, which is Easter weekend, beginning on Good Friday (April 22) and will run through Easter Sunday and includes a Black Family Parade and Black Family Picnic on Saturday. It’s time to fix yourself a rather large cup of coffee and then come back, sit down and press play on the interview.  Please excuse the scratches in the audio… Reverend Bernard’s coat was rubbing the mic and we didn’t hear it at the time.  Without further adieu… and thanks to Robyn Lea for making this dream a reality….  Here’s Coffee with Reverend Reginald Bernard. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySwEq-ZCqSM[/youtube] Camera Operator / Video Editor:  Chris Whittington Supervising Producer: Cristy Whittington]]]]> ]]>