Aaron Azeriah

Aaron Azeriah was born February 12, 1969, in Biloxi, MS. His parents, Lahcen and Kadja Azeriah, had immigrated to the United States a year earlier, and made their way from New York to Biloxi. Lahcen worked as a car salesman; Kadja, a housewife, was killed in an automobile accident in 1978. Lahcen never remarried.

A studious boy, Azeriah excelled in his studies, and upon graduation from high school in 1987 won a full scholarship to Mississippi State University in Starkville. While a student, he competed on the university swim team and served on the undergraduate student council. He majored in history and earned high marks in his classes, but withdrew from the university and returned to Biloxi when his father suffered a minor heart attack.

Azeriah and his father moved to Oxford in the summer of 1990, and Azeriah planned to finish his degree at the University of Mississippi. However, when in the winter of 1990 Lahcet purchased a bar, Azeriah became its full-time manager, and never returned to college.

Azeriah and his father continue to live in Oxford and operate their bar, The 8-Ball Lounge, a popular student locale eight miles south of the Oxford city limits.