When a member of a group of Jones County Junior College students heard about Sunday’s untimely death of TV pitchman Billy Mays, she didn’t believe.
Twenty-one-year-old Allison Graves, who had just met Mays a week ago, said the news seemed unreal.
“When one of my friends told me, at first I thought they were playing a joke on me because they knew I had just met the man,” Graves said about her reaction to Mays’ death. “Once I checked out the news and realized it was true, it was so weird. I had put my photo with him on Facebook and to think that we met him on Wednesday and he died on Sunday. It’s just weird.”
Graves — along with seven other JCJC students, and instructors Charlotte Williams of Ellisville and David Ray of Petal — were in California as a part of a school trip for members of the academic business organization, Phi Beta Lambda.
The group — which included Allison Graves of Laurel, Caleb Houston of Laurel, Sean Wolfe of Hattiesburg, Brian Leggett of Laurel, Brittany Henry of Laurel, Susanna Walters of Hattiesburg, Kayla Graham of Foxworth and Clair Mahon of Petal — had been at a PBL Conference in Anaheim, Calif., where they competed in 14 events and captured five wins in three events.
Williams and Ray said they were proud of the group’s achievements. However, they were worried because many of them had been hoping “to see somebody famous” and they had not.
That is until they were preparing to return to Mississippi and traveled to the Los Angeles airport on Wednesday.
“It was about 9:30 a.m. when we were in the airport,” Graves recalls. “Me and Caleb Houston were sitting down eating breakfast when Sean Wolfe said he saw Billy Mays and talked to him.
“We didn’t believe him. So, we kept on eating. When we finished, we were going to go look at magazines and that’s when we saw him,” she said with excitement.
Graves said unlike his television personality, Mays was soft-spoken.
“We went up to him and he actually talked to us,” she said. “He was kind and quiet-talking.
“He was real nice to us and gave all of us autographed photos,” she recalled. “Then, we asked him if we could take a picture and he said ‘yes, find someone to take it.’ We just asked someone passing by and we got our photo taken with Billy Mays.”
Williams and Ray said they were “just happy for the students.”
The locals said Mays “seemed fine.”
“He was preparing to fly home to Florida when they met him,” Williams said. “It’s hard to think that it was one of the last times most people saw him.”
According to reports, Mays was on a flight from Philadelphia that experienced a hard landing Saturday at Tampa International Airport after the front tire of the plane blew out.
After the flight, Mays told a Tampa TV station, “All of a sudden as we hit, you know, it was just the hardest hit, all the things from the ceiling started dropping. It hit me on the head, but I got a hard head.” However, Mays apparently died from heart disease, according to the medical examiner.
Mays, 50, was pronounced dead at his home near Tampa Sunday morning, after his wife Deborah found him unresponsive.
The locals said their brush with the television spokesman occurred less than four days before his death.
Although it was a short span of time that the young people met and talked to Mays, they agree that they will remember that unique encounter.
“We were so excited,” said Graves. “It was the last day of our trip and we met Billy Mays. ... He was very nice to us and took time with us. It was great.”
Local News
Related Photos
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Photo courtesy of Allison Graves
A chance encounter with Billy Mays
Local JCJC students met TV pitchman just days before his sudden death
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