Every pew of Vicksburg’s First Presbyterian Church was packed last week for the funeral of former state Sen. Grey Ferris, a champion of public education and promoter of racial equality.

Friends and relatives recalled how Ferris, who died of cancer at 62, was a community servant who felt a deep connection to the farm where he and his siblings were raised, in the rolling hills of Warren County. He earned a law degree and practiced for a few years before choosing to tend the land, mend the fences and develop an idyllic setting for his extended family and herds of happy cows.

Ferris’ passing brings to mind an essential truth about Mississippi politics: This is a small state, and one public servant can make a significant difference in the lives of people he might never meet.

Mississippi has just over 2.9 million people, a million fewer than Los Angeles alone.

Sen. Hob Bryan of Amory noted during his tribute at Ferris’ funeral that the Mississippi Capitol is a sort of social mixer — a place where people from disparate backgrounds are flung together with the common purpose of shaping public policy.

Had it not been for politics, Bryan said he might never have met Ferris, who became a lifelong friend.

It helped that Bryan and Ferris were both Democrats and that they had similar ideas about the proper role of state government. But Ferris’ circle of friends was not limited to people in his own political party.

“He was perhaps the most courteous, respectful person that I’ve ever known,” former Sen. Jim Bean, R-Hattiesburg, told The Vicksburg Post. “He leaves a legacy for the education of children in this state that in my opinion will never be matched.”

Ferris served several years on the local school board and helped the Vicksburg and Warren County schools go through a challenging consolidation in the late 1980s. He was elected to the Senate in 1991 and served eight years. He ran for lieutenant governor in 1999, but lost in the Democratic primary to former state Sen. Amy Tuck of Maben, who switched parties in 2002 and was re-elected as a Republican in 2003.

As chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Ferris was one of the primary architects of the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, a complex formula that changed the way the state distributes money to its school districts. It is designed to ensure that even the poorest schools receive enough money to meet midlevel accreditation standards.

MAEP failed for several years before lawmakers in 1997 finally pushed it into law by overriding the veto of Republican Gov. Kirk Fordice, who warned that it would be too expensive.

Fordice was also from Vicksburg, but he and Ferris were on opposite ends of the political spectrum. The brash governor was an outspoken conservative.

Ferris played a major role in thwarting some of Fordice’s appointments to the state College Board in 1996. The governor tried to appoint four white men. While Ferris didn’t quibble with the nominees’ qualifications, he said the board needed to reflect the state.

“Why the governor, knowing the sensitivities around this issue, why he didn’t name at least one black … he hasn’t acted responsibly,” Ferris said.

The slate of four nominees failed after two white senators — Ferris and Democratic Sen. Gray Tollison of Oxford — sided with several black senators in taking a stand for more diversity.

That prompted the Fordice camp to complain that Mississippi didn’t have a black or white problem; it had a Grey problem.

Emily Wagster Pettus covers Mississippi for the Associated Press.