Oxford Student Irene Doyle to Perform in MSMS Candlelight Cemetery History Tour

Irene Doyle of Oxford will step into Friendship Cemetery this week as Lottie Loeb, a woman whose family built the largest department store in northeast Mississippi in the early 20th century and whose story has largely faded from public memory.

Doyle, daughter of Daniel and Alison Doyle, was selected as one of 11 performers out of 48 Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science students who spent the school year researching historical documents for the 36th annual "Tales from the Crypt." The candlelight history tour runs April 8, 10, 15 and 17, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Friendship Cemetery on Fourth Street South in Columbus. Admission is $5 per person, available on site and through the Visit Columbus Mississippi website.

The Loeb family were prominent members of Columbus's Jewish community, and their department store represented a commercial anchor for the broader northeast Mississippi region. To reconstruct Lottie Loeb, Doyle drew on archival materials including records from the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library and the Mississippi University for Women Archives, producing an original script grounded in primary sources.

That research process is what distinguishes "Tales from the Crypt" from conventional student theater. All 48 researchers worked through documents over the academic year; the 11 chosen performers then developed their historical figures into full characters for live interpretation inside the cemetery, by candlelight. The program has received national coverage on NPR's "All Things Considered" and in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and the Fallows' bestseller "Our Towns." It has also earned the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts and reached the finals of The History Channel's "Save Our History" Award.

Beyond institutional recognition, the program carries a philanthropic component the students control directly. Over the previous ten years, admission proceeds have exceeded $55,000 in donations to student-selected charities.

Doyle's selection as one of 11 performers carries weight for Oxford families tracking what MSMS participation can look like beyond its Oktibbeha County campus. The casting process rewards students who can move from archival research to original writing to live performance, a sequence that mirrors the work of professional historians and writers. The Loeb story amplifies that point: a prominent Jewish merchant family at the center of northeast Mississippi's commercial life, recovered not from any standard curriculum but from the work of a student willing to go looking for it.