Emaline Fulton Hupp “Emy” Bullard Wilkinson, director of the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau for a year, died early today, April 5, 2005, at River Region Medical Center. She was 33.

Mrs. Wilkinson was a native of Vicksburg and had worked elsewhere in Mississippi before accepting the chief executive’s post for the tourism development agency here effective April 12, 2004.

“She hit the ground running,” said Lamar Roberts, a VCVB board member, of Mrs. Wilkinson’s efforts in the face of the progressive illness diagnosed after her move “back home.”

Mrs. Wilkinson started her career as the director of tourism in Yazoo City before joining the Corinth tourism bureau. She worked there for 7 1/2 years as executive director before coming to Vicksburg.

Curt Follmer, general manager of the Rainbow Hotel Casino and chairman of the VCVB board, said Mrs. Wilkinson was dedicated to her work in Vicksburg and had made important contributions in the time she headed the day-to-day operations of the bureau.

“This will be a loss to her family” in addition to being a loss to the bureau, Follmer said.

Roberts remembered Mrs. Wilkinson as friendly, thorough and with a penchant for meticulous work. They first met when she was in college and working on a paper on the CSS Arkansas, a Confederate ironclad. Roberts then operated what was known as the Gray and Blue Naval Museum in a small building on Clay Street. “She copied all my files and all my books on the Arkansas,” Roberts said.

She was recruited to Vicksburg after a national search to head the VCVB, created as a city-county-state partnership and funded with about $1 million annually to market local tourism assets.

Mrs. Wilkinson was preceded in death by her father, the late Nathaniel W. “Nat” Bullard, an attorney in Vicksburg for many years who also served as mayor of Vicksburg and as a chancellor of the 9th Chancery Court District.

She is survived by her husband, Odis Wilkinson of Vicksburg; two sons, John Henley Wilkinson and Christopher Harris Wilkinson, both of Vicksburg; her mother, Betty Dial Williams Bullard of Vicksburg; five sisters, Betty B. Quantz of Oxford, Ohio, Ann B. Gee of St. Joseph, Ettie B. Jones of Midland, Texas, Allison B. Durst of Vicksburg and Salley B. Fink of Clinton; two brothers, John Williams Bullard of Vicksburg and Archibald Webb Bullard of Corinth; and a number of nieces and nephews.

Arrangements will be under the direction of Riles Funeral Home.