Booker Langston Price

Booker Langston Price died in Biloxi on August 23, 2026. He was eighty-three. Born there on March 27, 1943, he grew up knowing the Gulf as a workplace, not a backdrop. His father worked the docks. Booker learned a shrimp basket before he learned a highway. He became a deckhand because a boat that waits is a kind of insult, and because he liked a job whose mistakes were immediately visible. He spent two decades on the water, then another eighteen as a school custodian in a brick building that did not look like the brochures. He arrived early. He did not advertise. Principals called him because he would tell the truth about a boiler even when the truth postponed a Monday. He charged a fair hour on the side when a church van needed a lift more than a sermon. He kept a notebook of rooms, not clients. He married Inez Price in 1965. They raised three children in a house that needed a new porch every twenty years. Inez taught Sunday school. Booker grilled on Sundays and considered a plate of smoked mullet a seasonal obligation. After his knees quit the worst boats he still came out for a favorite hall, moving slower, swearing less, doing the same honest work. Friends remember a man who wiped his hands before he shook yours, who could stand in a noise without making it a personality, and who left a floor cleaner than he found it. He loved a quiet porch at dusk, a glass of tea he did not finish, and the sound of a plant that had decided to live. He died in Biloxi, in the city whose water had written his calendar. The school still opens. Someone else will hear the sound that means trouble.