VIDEO: Amery, Wisconsin Meets Amory, Mississippi- In Person!

AMORY, Miss. (WCBI)- Amory’s favorite Wisconsinites are in town visiting this week.

For those involved- the meeting of these two towns is about lessening the divide and showing that whether you’re a thousand miles apart- you can still share a lot of similarities.

“We knew we had a spring break coming and I just said, we gotta go to Amory on our spring break,” says Michael Simonson.

And to Amory they came.

Just last week, Mayor Brad Blalock and Michael Simonson met for the very first time via FaceTime…

This week, they met in person- and even better, Blalock gave Simonson and his wife a tour around town.

“More than my expectations. It’s just been a great experience, getting to know everyone down here and everybody is so warm and welcoming,” says Simonson.

This visit started with an idea to connect two separate, yet very similar towns.

“Just the friendliness of the community- there’s so many similarities, it’s amazing. We have a hair place, it’s called cut above, and I see they had one here also. So, it’s just so many similarities but just the warmth of the people, the friendliness of the people, it’s amazing. It’s just a great community,” says Simonson.

The husband and wife duo even surprised the local food pantry with a donation.

“This is the first time that we’ve had a group from this far away to be interested in our food pantry, and they were generous enough to bring this much food from that far away. So it truly means a lot, we want to introduce them to our clients and let them know that people that far away care about them,” syas the co-director of the Amory Food Pantry.

“Anybody that would travel almost a thousand miles to do charitable work for another town, I mean, they’re amazing people and it’s been a delight to meet them,” says Blalock.

Simonson is making this twin town experiment a fun and educational experience for students.

“The kids came up with an idea to have a food drive and they did this food drive with just the third, fourth, and fifth grades that did it, last week, four days last week. We had themes, we got a hold of the pantry down here and asked what they needed and had themed days for each of the items they needed, so it was fun, we made it a fun deal. And we graphed everything on one of our walls, we made a graph and then we brought this down,” says Simonson.

Blalock says it’s a lesson the nation can learn from.

“We are in a day where in the media right now with divides and differences, however, I believe there’s so much more good and similarities out there that people just don’t realize it and I think it’s important for our young people to understand that there is greatness in the world that there’s great people in the world and there’s a hunger for people to help one another and I think it’s important to show that, so I’m excited, especially for you guys to cover it,” says Blalock.

Simonson says he plans to continue the “Amery to Amory” project in the years to come.