Mental Health | 7
Opinion | 8
Religion | 8
Lifestyle | 9
So, what am I supposed to do now?
Buc-ee's: Southern hospitality or consumerism?
Grief Observed: Thoughts & Ramblings
The joys of making unwise decisions
April 23, 2025 Collegedale, Tennessee
Southern Accent
Vol. 80 Issue 21
The student voice since 1926
Legacy, Loss and Leadership The life of Mayor Morty Lloyd
Mayor and senior pastor Morty Lloyd speaks to a congregation at a Sunday service at the Chattanooga Church. (Photo by Andrew Boggess)
Hayden Kobza Managing Editor Editor’s note: This article was originally written for the F24 Magazine & Feature Writing class at Southern Adventist University. Morty Lloyd swayed with the music, hands clasped, as the praise team led worship inside the Chattanooga Church. The voices of singers and the sounds from instruments merged with the response of the congregation. Once the music faded and the members settled,
Lloyd walked up to the pulpit and delivered his sermon, “Confronting Conflict,” a speech that spoke of the hardships in life, both personal and collective. Lloyd knows firsthand about challenges. On Sundays, he is the senior pastor of the congregation that meets just off Bonny Oaks Drive, but come Monday morning, he’s also mayor of the City of Collegedale, Tenn., and the major gifts officer for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Foundation (AOPA).
Early Life He was born in 1964 at Chattanooga Memorial Hospital to Marilyn and Mort Lloyd. His father was one of Chattanooga’s first news anchors and worked at WRCB-TV and then WDEF-TV. His mother owned and managed a radio station in nearby Dalton, Ga. Following the Watergate scandal, his father, Mort Lloyd, went into politics driven by the desire to make real change. The decision bore fruit when he won the Democratic nomination for Tennessee’s 3rd Congressional District.
Letter from the incoming editor: Not expected but here Hayden Kobza Managing Editor Sitting at my desk with pencils and paper scattered everywhere, my middle school English teacher forced me to diagram sentences — it felt like prison. I was the student who hated English the most growing up. I wasn’t a “bad” pupil, but I loathed school. My entire lifestyle was built around the outdoors, skateboarding and a sense of adventure. However, even at that time, there was another side to me. Art and the idea of expression were things I enjoyed, but I had no clue how to share my voice. I can’t paint, and some of my best drawings have a stick figure as the main subject. Ironically, I naturally loved writing. Looking back, I see now that writing poetry and attempting to capture the ethereal struck a chord with me in high school. This love was subconscious, though; I did not want to be a writer, and I remember often making fun of the profession. Life is funny. Moreover,
To celebrate his victory, Mort Lloyd flew his plane to his parents' house in Shelbyville, Tenn. Usually, his son Morty would accompany him on these flights, but on that day, he was attending a party. “It was August 20th, 1974,” Lloyd stated in an email to the Accent. “I was in Rome, Ga., at my niece’s birthday party. Otherwise, I would have been in the airplane with my father that day. We always flew together, so it was unusual for me not to be in the plane with him.” Little did young Lloyd
know that while his father was flying, the plane’s propeller broke off, sending its pilot to the ground. He died instantly. “My sister received a call from my mother in Chattanooga notifying her of the accident and my father’s death,” Lloyd stated. “She kept it quiet and later told me as we were driving to Chattanooga. It was an awful day.” Lloyd described how the incident still affects him to this day. “As a 10-year-old child
See Mayor Morty on page 3
Letter from the outgoing editor: Don't panic Matthew Orquia Editor-in-Chief
Hayden Kobza hugs a puppy on the Promenade. (Photo courtesy of source)
God, in his ultimate wisdom, has His way of changing our plans. I first came to Southern Adventist University to be a filmmaker, but that didn’t stick with me, so I decided to change my major to journalism.
At the time, I wanted to go to graduate school for archaeology, and journalism felt like it would be a better fit. I know that makes zero sense. Why would I be in a major that had nothing to do See Incoming on page 2
There are few times that I felt a greater sense of panic than I did during the final push to get the very first Southern Accent issue of the year ready for publication. As the newly minted editor-in-chief, it was my first time leading “editing night,” when the paper's editors and layout designers get together to prepare the week’s issue of the Accent. Editing nights are often long and grueling, but this one was especially arduous, as more questions, decisions and problems were lobbed my way than I thought I could handle. However, with many calls to Alva James-Johnson, faculty sponsor of the paper, and the hard work of many staff members, we successfully published the first issue. It was hard to imagine going through the same thing for another 20 issues,
Matthew Orquia (Photo by Preston Waters)
but here we are at the end of the semester, and despite countless challenges along the way, the Accent has never missed a publication, even if on several occasions I thought it might. This May will mark my completion of three years at the Accent. Sophomore year, I had the privilege of working as news editor under Alana Crosby, and junior year, I worked as managing
See Outgoing Editor on page 2