PASCAGOULA - A local filming company is working on a documentary on the life and career of Pulitzer Prize-winning editor Ira B. Harkey Jr. of Kerrville, Tex., who owned and edited The Chronicle here from 1948-63.

"I've enjoyed reminiscing during the hours of interviews," Harkey, who will be 87 Jan. 15, said Wednesday in a phone interview. "It's just a local endeavor, with a new company that impressed me."

Harkey won the prestigious Pulitzer in 1963 for distinguished editorial writing during the integration of the University of Mississippi.

Lanie Ellifritt, a co-owner of Crystal Eye Entertainment, said they hope to market the production of "Southern Gentleman, Southern Journalist, Southern Courage and the Fight for Civil Rights: The Story of Ira B. Harkey Jr."

Harkey said he has learned a lot in the interview sessions with Ellifritt, the former Melanie Polk, a 1973 Pascagoula High School graduate. Harkey said he is working with filming editor Scott Ellifritt and Beau Foust.

The team has gotten in six hours of interviews and hopes to eventually get 16 hours with Harkey.

Harkey, who suffers from Parkinson's disease and is in a nursing home in Kerrville, said the sessions are tiring.

"We're working on a 60-minute film that could become a full-length documentary," said Ellifritt, whose company works out of the Ellifritt home. "We'll have a screening in Los Angeles and hope to market it on networks like Public Broadcasting System, History Channel, Black Entertainment Network and A&E Biographies."

She called Harkey a very bright, funny man. "He is very alert, although he might forget a name or date," she said. "We have gotten some wonderful footage, including things that have never been in articles or his book."

He published "The Smell of Burning Crosses" in 1967.

Ellifritt said they wanted to do the interviews with Harkey first, and then move on to legislators and others who knew him in the 1960s.

"I believe he made a difference for the smooth integration at Pascagoula High," she recalled. "Our interview shows more humor than hostility from Harkey, even though his editorial stand brought bullets and cross burnings."