VIDEO: Two Towns With The Same Name Meet Virtually

AMORY, Miss. (WCBI)- It’s no secret towns in other states share the same names.

But what happens when those two towns decide to team up to exchange similarities and differences?

City officials in Amory, Mississippi virtually met with students from Amery, Wisconsin.

These two towns might be spelled differently and might have different populations, however, they’re finding out through their differences, they have a lot more in common than they thought.”

“We were amazed at the similarities. We were amazed that the years, we were founded the same year. We have similar clocks, similar looking buildings, you know similar size- we liked all that, we were about that and the kids have really taken off with it,” says fifth grade teacher in Amery, Wisconsin Michael Simonson.

Simonson wanted his students to think and see out side the box.

He contacted Amory Mayor Brad Blalock in hopes to become “sister towns”.

His class exchanged letters and cards to Blalock and other city officials.

Tuesday, Simonson’s class met the north Mississippi town’s officials via FaceTime.

“Just reaching out to those, you know other communities in different parts of the country, now the kids kind of have experienced that in a way and you know just now, travelling through your Amory on the FaceTime, it really means a lot to us. It puts more ownership in our learning I think,” says Simonson.

Blalock took the class on a virtual tour of the town and introduced them to the Fire and Police Chiefs.

“Very exciting to see how excited their children are to see our Amory. We’re proud of Amory and we’re happy to see that somebody else seems to be proud of our Amory as well,” says Blalock.

The children even surprised Police Chief Ronnie Bowen with a $500 donation for the police department thanks to a fundraiser they had selling “Amery to Amory” t-shirts.

“A lot of times we struggle with our differences but most times when we talk to one another, we do find that we have a lot more similarities with one another than we do differences and I think it’s important that even when we do have differences, that we can work through those and find those similarities that we can all get along with,” says Blalock.

Mr. Simonson is going to be coming to Amory, Mississippi next week to take a walking tour of the town with Mayor Blalock, just to see exactly what Amory, Mississippi has that’s different from Amery, Wisconsin.

Make sure to stay tuned to WCBI next Tuesday for that story.