Kevin Samrow bought 120 pounds of peanut butter. In the photograph, he stands beside a tower of jars, smiling and holding two more, as if the tower might still need encouragement. A cardboard collection box waits nearby. He is wearing a jacket and an open-collar shirt. It is an executive portrait with a distinctly crowded foreground.
The purchase was for Jars of Love, a local donation drive in Natchez, Mississippi. Departments were competing to bring in the most jars. His employer described Samrow as “extremely competitive,” then added that his opponents were competitive too. Evidently, seniority did not entitle anyone to an easy victory.
Samrow is the chief executive officer of Merit Health Natchez. His career began in the U.S. Army and later took him into operating and executive roles in Mississippi and Oklahoma. That is the formal route. The peanut butter offers another way into the story: a senior executive joining a local effort with something more tangible than a congratulatory message.
A contest with somewhere to go
The 2024 drive had a goal of 1,500 jars. The intended recipients included the Natchez Stewpot and food pantries at Pilgrim Baptist Church and Natchez First Assembly of God. Those names gave the collection a destination. Someone buying a jar could know which local organizations would help distribute the donations.
Mayor Dan Gibson joined the effort, encouraging banks, downtown businesses and civic organizations to collect jars. City Hall became a drop-off location. The campaign gave people several ways to participate: contribute individually, organize a collection at work or bring another institution into the effort. The competition inside Samrow’s workplace was one piece of that wider invitation.
There is something pleasantly unceremonious about the photograph. The collection box and the crowded stack do most of the talking. A jar is a modest contribution. Put enough jars together and modesty becomes rather difficult to stack. Samrow’s purchase made him a visible participant in the same activity he was asking other people to join.
By April 2026, the fourth annual drive reported more than 3,039 jars. The thank-you went to employees, businesses, schools, clubs, individuals and the local chamber. It was a collective result, with many hands behind the total. Samrow belonged in that picture alongside the other contributors.
Peanut butter Samrow personally purchased for the 2024 community drive.
Before the corner office
Samrow’s working life began in the U.S. Army. His later education included a bachelor’s degree from the University of New Orleans and an MBA from New England College. The university degree was completed in 2009; his New England College studies ran from 2011 to 2012.
He subsequently served as chief operating officer at Merit Health River Region in Vicksburg. In 2019, he became CEO of AllianceHealth Durant and Madill in Oklahoma. The progression took him from responsibility for operations into responsibility for two organizations, and eventually to the Natchez appointment.
There is a geographical rhythm to the career: Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, then Mississippi again. The executive positions sit inside a larger personal history of moving between places. Each appointment has an institutional name attached to it; the move itself also means a new town, new acquaintances and a different set of local relationships.
An earlier Oklahoma biography describes his family’s Louisiana roots and their move to Bryan County in 2019. Samrow and his wife, Rebecca, have two daughters. Golfing, cycling and fishing appear among the family’s shared activities. That brief list supplies a welcome change of scenery in a résumé otherwise occupied by degrees and executive responsibilities.
- Before 2019Vicksburg, MSChief operating officer
- 2019Durant + Madill, OKChief executive officer
- July 2023Natchez, MSChief executive officer
The Oklahoma years, with a town attached
In Durant, Samrow also served on the board of the area chamber of commerce. That civic role placed him alongside the executive one. The family biography described a warm welcome in the community after their move, connecting a professional appointment with the experience of settling into a new place.
He was also listed on the Oklahoma Hospital Association’s Council on Rural Health. The council brought together executives from different communities. Its membership puts his Oklahoma work in a wider professional setting, beyond the two organizations he led.
His professional affiliations span that journey too. Samrow has belonged to the American College of Healthcare Executives since 2014. Its Mississippi chapter later welcomed him by name. The greeting connected his current position with membership stretching back before the Oklahoma move. A change of workplace can come with familiar professional company, even as the introductions in town begin again.
The years in Durant and Madill are a substantial chapter between Vicksburg and Natchez. He began the Oklahoma CEO role in 2019 and remained there until the move announced in 2023. Both AllianceHealth and Merit were part of Community Health Systems, so the change of location also occurred within a shared corporate network.
The chamber involvement is a useful detail to carry forward. It appears again in Natchez. Across the two places, Samrow’s professional life includes participation in local business organizations as well as responsibility inside his own workplace. The town has a place in the biography, alongside the employer.
Natchez gets a new name on the agenda
Samrow’s appointment at Merit Health Natchez took effect on July 31, 2023. He succeeded Garett May, who moved to an operating role in Huntsville, Alabama. The transition returned Samrow to Mississippi after his Oklahoma years and gave him a new organization to lead in a state where he had already worked.
By October 2024, his name appeared on the agenda for a meeting of the Natchez mayor and board of aldermen. His scheduled subject was the organization’s future direction. It shared the municipal paperwork with matters involving public works, the convention center and the golf clubhouse.
That juxtaposition is a useful view of an executive job from outside the office. On a city agenda, an organization takes its place among other local concerns. The person presenting it joins a conversation already populated by officials, departments and residents. A title becomes a name in the day’s business.
A December 2025 agenda listed him again, this time for a year-end update. Local coverage of the meeting described his emphasis on expansion. His stated ambition had a clear direction: “We’re looking to expand. We’re looking to grow.” The line expressed an intention, with the work of carrying it out still attached.
“We’re looking to expand. We’re looking to grow.”
Kevin Samrow, December 2025
A check for the city’s memory
Another Natchez photograph places Samrow beside a very large check. This one is made out to the Natchez Cemetery Association for $2,000. Association president Pokey O’Beirne stands in the middle; Christopher Martin, Merit Health Natchez’s chief of staff, stands on the other side. The check bears the date March 30, 2024.
The organization made the donation in honor of its medical staff for National Doctors’ Day. The staff had selected the cemetery as the recipient. That detail matters: the choice belonged to a group, and the presentation brought the organization’s representative together with the people responsible for a local preservation institution.
O’Beirne welcomed the contribution to the cemetery. In the picture, the oversized check performs its familiar ceremonial duty: making an ordinary financial transaction large enough for three people to hold. The amount is easy to read. So is the recipient’s name. Local generosity occasionally benefits from very large lettering.
Alongside the food-drive photograph, the presentation shows two different forms of participation. One involves buying and collecting goods; the other involves an organizational gift supporting preservation. Both put Samrow in company, with other people and a specific local purpose sharing the frame.
The company around the title
Samrow is listed among the directors of the Natchez Adams County Chamber of Commerce. The board includes people from banking, transport, education, hospitality and preservation. It places him inside a broader local business network, where his organization is one of several with a stake in the area’s future.
The chamber also partnered in the 2026 Jars of Love collection. A board list and a donation drive are different kinds of records, but here they meet in a practical project. Relationships between institutions become collection points, publicity and contributions. There are jars to gather and local pantries to receive them.
Seen across these episodes, Samrow’s Natchez chapter has a recognizable cast: colleagues, civic officials, chamber members and charitable organizers. The executive appointment explains his arrival. The encounters explain how his working life intersects with the place around it.
Return to the tower of peanut butter. It gives this career story a little welcome disorder: jars crowding the floor, a donation box and an executive holding two more contributions. Samrow’s competitive streak has found a contest with useful consequences. Whoever finished ahead inside the workplace, the collection already had somewhere better to go.