Orlando Trainer said if there is one thing he learned from playing football in the Southeastern Conference, it’s a drive to overcome adversity.
“When you play in a conference like that and you play up against that kind of competition, you learn to respect obstacles,” he said “But at the same time, you don’t allow those obstacles to dictate whether or not you face something. For me, that type of drive has helped me deal with a lot of things.”
More than 15 years since he last played football, Trainer says he’s still applying those lessons. In fact, these days those lessons seem even more essential.
As the District 2 Supervisor for Oktibbeha County since 1999 and more recently the self-proclaimed “poster child” for the possible sale of the county’s hospital, Trainer has been tossed into a whirlwind of rumors, emotion, speculation and misunderstandings from both sides in what has quickly become a polarizing issue. At a board meeting last month, Trainer was met with a hail of citizen comments opposing the sale, and of the nearly 60 people there, not one stood in favor of his proposal. Even so Trainer has remained steadfast to his position.
“I think playing sports will help teach you that drive,” he said.
Trainer has scheduled what he bills as an educational session regarding the possible sale of the Oktibbeha County Hospital at 5:30 on Monday. A group that is fervently opposed to the sale will meet on Thursday at 5 p.m. at the Greensboro Center.
Trainer, 33, is a native of Oktibbeha County and a 1992 graduate of Starkville High School, After his high-school career, he received offers from all of the in-state colleges to play football after being selected as an all-state performer, playing both sides of the ball for the Yellow Jackets. However, there was one program that decided not to show Trainer any attention.
“Jackie (Sherrill) was looking for a person a few inches taller that year,” he said. “He thought with the right frame, he could build a player into what he wanted. I just don’t think I really fit the profile they were looking for.”
Passed over by Mississippi State, Trainer decided to accept an offer at the University of Mississippi, where he became a two-year starter at right tackle.
After graduating with a business degree in 1996, he came back “home” and began his own small hay farming operation. During that time, Trainer also drove a school bus for the county school district and worked as an in-school suspension teacher for the Starkville School District.
Trainer, who still owns his hay farming business, was elected as the District 2 Supervisor in 1999, and said he felt called to the position.
“More than anything, it was just a call to serve, that’s all it was, just a great desire to help people on a different level,” he said. “I just think that all the things that I got and all the ups and the downs and the good outweighing the bad, is a result of giving and so that’s the way I try to pattern myself in life.”
Along with his duties as a county supervisor and a small business owner Trainer also serves as a deacon at his church and sings in the choir.
“If it wasn’t for the Lord, if it wasn’t for my spiritual relationship, I wouldn’t be here,” Trainer said. “Anything that happens to me is a direct blessing from God and I understand that and I realize that and I just try to walk by faith, not by sight.”
In a lot of respects, walking by faith and not by sight is what Trainer is asking the people of Oktibbeha County to do in regard to the hospital. He has been evasive in laying out the details of how the county would benefit from the sale of the hospital other than it could offer great possibilities. He is asking for citizens to focus on those possibilities, not the past or the present.
“A lot of supporters of OCH are focused on what we have and I don’t have a problem with that, but I am focusing on what we could have,” Trainer said. “There is a wide world of opportunities that are far beyond what I can even understand yet, but you have to look at it from a broad perspective.
“When you start to put more emphasis on what you have done and what you are doing, that’s fine and dandy, but that should just be a foundation for you to move forward. You don’t want to get stagnate.”
Trainer said he thinks the hospital has done a great job expanding as much as possible, but that it wouldn’t be wise for him, as a leader of the community, to allow the county to sit and wait to be victims of competitive circumstance, which he thinks is inevitable if the hospital stays under county control.
“I was born in this hospital in 1974, and there are so many things that have changed since then, and they have done a great job with the resources they have, but right now, we just don’t have the capacity. We are going to be limited based on what we can do financially and what the hospital can do financially, but if you were to bring in a partner, you could bring in someone with bigger pockets that could back some of those investments in some of those services that people have to go elsewhere and get right now.”
Trainer said he started looking into the issue when the voters approved a $27 million bond for hospital expansion a couple years ago. He said he thinks the bond was approved because it was the only option put in front of the people, and that no other options were even examined to his knowledge.
“That was a red flag to me,” he said. “I don’t think any of the money was really spent on any new services, anyway. It was really just adding that wing and sprucing the place up. And that is fine, but at the same time we don’t go there for a nice place, you go there to get the best health care you can.”
Trainer is urging everyone interested in what the possibilities are to come to Monday’s meeting. He said he hopes to have similar sessions in the future, with someone other than Richard Cowart, who will be speaking at the session, but has been linked to the sale of the hospital in Oxford.
“We want this to be an open process. We will bring in someone other than Richard Cowart if we have to,” he said. “We want folks to understand that this just isn’t a small decision, or one we want to make in the dark and then just put it on people. We want people to be on board, because I think we can do much more in this community when we work together rather than working apart.”
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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