entergy mississippi employee wins president’s lifesaving award

by: julia comfort • communications specialist

entergy mississippi lineman mark whitworth doesn’t see his lifesaving actions as anything special, but it takes someone special to do what he did.

“if it would’ve been my wife and kids, i’d like to think that someone would help them,” whitworth said.

back in may, he was traveling on i-55 to charleston, mississippi, to perform routine work when he came upon an accident that had victims with obvious injuries. a van had rolled, ejecting all five passengers.

he pulled off the road and began to administer first aid to the victims. the situation was bad enough; however, it quickly became worse.

as he was helping the family, a truck collided with another vehicle that had slowed down. whitworth set out all of his cones to help prevent more accidents and to slow oncoming traffic. he then proceeded to render first aid to one of the passengers of the original accident until medics arrived.

“i’m tremendously privileged to work with people who go out of their way to help others in need,” said line supervisor jim lyles. “this is just one example of how mark has given of himself and the skills he has to come to another’s aid.”

in honor of whitworth helping the victims, entergy mississippi president and ceo haley fisackerly presented him with the president’s life saving award at the october health and safety advisory board meeting.

“mark not only took the time to take care of complete strangers, he also helped to prevent more accidents after the truck collision,” fisackerly said. “by putting out cones, he helped to slow traffic and alert other motorists. his actions have positively impacted lives. what he did was a testament to his morals and to how we train our employees.”