David Pryor, a natural-born politician who spent thirty-four years in public offices, including governor, the state legislature and both houses of Congress, died April 20, 2024 at his home in Little Rock at the age of 89.

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture called him “arguably the most popular Arkansas politician of the modern era,” although the description might have covered a much longer stretch of history. He ran for public offices 13 times between 1960 and 1996 and lost only once—a 1972 race for the U.S. Senate against Sen. John L. McClellan. 

After McClellan’s death before the end of the term in 1978, Pryor defeated two other rising political stars for the Senate seat—Congressmen Jim Guy Tucker and Ray H. Thornton Jr., both of whom would be elected to other major state offices. Pryor would hold the seat until January 1997, when he retired, owing to heart problems and his dismay over the rising partisanship, wrath and extremism in Congress and national politics.

In 2002, years after he retired from the Senate, Pryor’s son Mark, a former state representative and attorney general, won his seat by defeating Senator Tim Hutchinson and served two terms.

His nearly 35-year career in the state and national capitols were marked by passionate and sometimes lonely efforts for better and affordable medical care for the elderly and poor, peace, public safety in the nuclear age, the direct election of American presidents, reform of the state’s ancient constitution and, perhaps most markedly, for collaboration among political foes and parties.

Former President Bill Clinton, who got his inspiration for politics and public service as a 20-year-old Georgetown University student in 1966 from the “Young Turk” state lawmaker from a couple of rural counties east of him in south Arkansas, said he and his wife, Hillary, were deeply saddened by the death of their friend and collaborator, who was always “honest, compassionate and full of common sense.”

In every office he held, Clinton said, Pryor “fought for progressive politics that helped us put the divided past behind us and move into a brighter future together. He was always one of America’s greatest advocates for the elderly, waging long battles to lower the cost of prescription drugs, and to improve nursing home and home care to help more people live in dignity.”

“David made politics personal—from his famed retail campaigning to his ability to calmly and confidently explain tough votes to his constituents,” Clinton said. Clinton was Arkansas’s attorney general in Pryor’s last two years as governor. He was elected governor in the same election that voters promoted Pryor to the US Senate.

“I first met him and Barbara in 1966 when David was running for Congress and over the next 58 years he would be my mentor, confidant, supporter and, above all, friend. Having him and Dale Bumpers in the Senate when I was president was an extraordinary gift. I never felt far from home, and I always trusted the unvarnished advice he gave, especially when the going got tough. I’ll always be grateful that he served as the inaugural dean of the Clinton School of Public Service, where his very presence embodied the nobility and joy of public service.”

David Pryor lived a mythical life of politics and public service, said his longtime aide in Congress, Carmie Henry—starting with his election as president of the third grade. He defined retail politics in Arkansas as a campaigner and in public office, cementing personal bonds with everybody in both parties and in every executive office, including the security workers all over the Capitol. He became easily the most beloved member of the Senate and also with Arkansas voters.

“If any one person’s career marked the changing of an era in American politics, it was David Pryor’s,” Henry said. “There are no David Pryors in Washington anymore.”

Pryor was a liberal Democrat long before it became a term of opprobrium. He was stirred to enter politics, first as a crusading weekly newspaper editor at Camden and then as a candidate for the legislature, by the rise of racial hatred and discord after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1954 outlawing segregation in the nation’s public schools. A senior and student leader at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, Pryor traveled to the Capitol in February 1957 to testify at a dramatic public hearing on a bill creating a state sovereignty commission that would stop racial integration and find and punish people and groups that supported integration—or “race mixing,” as it was commonly called. He thought the bill was a flagrant violation of the federal and state constitutions. He was blocked from testifying, he would learn, at the instigation of university officials, notably the president, who feared a backlash against the school. The passage of a raft of bills to maintain white supremacy and Gov. Orval E. Faubus’s signing them into law in early 1957 and then Faubus’s dispatch of National Guardsmen to prevent nine Black youngsters from entering Little Rock Central High School that fall turned Pryor and his new wife, the former Barbara Jean Lunsford, into crusaders and reaffirmed his notion from early childhood that politics was the best way to spend his life.

David Hampton Pryor was born Aug. 29, 1934, in Camden, the third of four children of William Edgar Pryor and Susan Newton Pryor. His father ran a car dealership, was Ouachita County sheriff for four years and was always politically connected and influential. Governor Ben T. Laney (1945–1949) was a neighbor and family friend, although Laney’s leadership of the Southern white-supremacy  movement and his disloyalty to the Democratic Party in 1948 disturbed young Pryor, whose hero was Gov. Sid McMath from next-door Magnolia and Hot Springs, who had thwarted Laney’s Dixiecrat party and carried Arkansas for President Harry S. Truman that year. Pryor’s mother, who was known as Susie, had been a champion of women’s suffrage, and was the first woman to run for public office in Arkansas, losing a race for circuit and county clerk in 1926. She later won a school board race.

His autobiography, A Pryor Commitment, published in 2008 by Butler Center Books, gave a self-effacing and often humorous account of growing up, pursuing popularity and providential encounters with famous political figures that would shape his destiny. He was an unusually gregarious child who sought friendship with everybody and was attracted to politics almost from the time that he could read, perhaps owing to his father’s engagement in politics and with politicians. (The elder Pryor raised the money in 1942 that kept Congressman John L. McClellan from leaving the US Senate race, which he won in a Democratic runoff primary with Attorney General Jack Holt. McClellan was later shocked and embittered that his patron’s son would run against him. He had expected Pryor to succeed him when he retired.) 

Pryor wrote that he ran for president of Mary Bragg Wheeler’s third-grade class at Camden and that the teacher sent him and the other two candidates into the hall while the class voted.

“Sweating under the tension,” Pryor remembered, “I promised God that if He would let me win this election, I would never again run for political office. Our teacher called us back into the room. I had won! Before I sat down, I was already planning my race for fourth-grade president.”

His boyhood hero was the Razorback and Olympic star Clyde Scott from Smackover, 16 miles down the road from him, to the extent that 50 years later he stuttered trying to talk to the sainted old man, by then a retired insurance executive for Jackson T. “Jack” Stephens. Pryor was a football star for the Camden High School Panthers—a triple-threat tailback who made the all-district team. His memoir, however, confessed that he actually hated football and every minute of practice and the games, but social pressure forced him to stay with it. “Any Camden boy in the 1950s who entertained the slightest interest in peer acceptance—and who could circle the practice field in a heavy uniform without crumpling to earth—went out for football,” he said. Pryor dreaded “the 200-pound linemen” who smashed him to the ground nearly every play. 

Pryor wrote that after seeing the 1950 movie Born Yesterday, starring William Holden and Judy Holliday and set in political Washington, he ran home and sent a letter to Congressman Oren Harris of El Dorado, a family friend, asking if he could be a congressional page that summer. Harris agreed. Pryor drove to Washington, finally found the Capitol and reached the House doorkeeper’s office, where he was rebuked for being late and sent to the Senate, where there was an emergency—an all-night filibuster after all the Senate pages had gone home. When he reached the Senate floor, Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin (the anticommunist conspiracist who was later censured by the Senate) snapped his fingers at Pryor, scribbled a note, fished out a ten-dollar bill and handed him a ring of keys. 

Pryor’s account: “Here, son,” he said. “Get a taxi and go to this address, and on the floor of the closet in the bedroom you’ll find my bedroom slippers. Bring them to me.” It was David Pryor’s first act of public service. 

After Pryor enrolled as a freshman at Baylor University at Waco his father died suddenly and he canceled his enrollment and went instead to Henderson State Teachers College at Arkadelphia, 45 miles up Highway 7. When he arrived on campus late he was greeted by a sign in front of Womack Hall, the men’s dormitory, saying “David Pryor for Freshman Class President.” He was elected. After a year, he transferred to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He took a horse with him and put the colt in a stable at a farm south of town. He wrote that it had been a stupid thing to do because he rarely found time to ride the animal. He figured that he had done it because the last time he had seen his father alive was when the old man was astride a horse in the 1952 Ouachita County Fair parade.

As the spring semester was ending in 1954, Pryor got a note to call Gov. Francis Cherry, who had defeated his hero Sid McMath two years earlier. Cherry wanted him to be his driver while he was campaigning for re-election in the Democratic primaries against Faubus and two other men that summer. In his autobiography and two oral histories late in life Pryor gave poignant accounts of Cherry’s grace and caring and the agonizing dilemmas the governor had faced in the historic confrontation with Faubus in the runoff primary; Cherry had decided to question Faubus’s patriotism by making an issue of his attendance at a socialist self-help school at Mena, Commonwealth College, and subsequently lying about it. It was to be an evening television speech at the KARK studio, which Pryor called “the speech of Cherry’s political life.” Pryor said he waited in the car for Cherry to leave the mansion for the studio and the governor veered into the shrubs next to the car and vomited. After his stumbling and wooden speech, Cherry returned to the car solemnly and said, “How’d I do, kid?” Pryor said he congratulated Cherry but began to realize that the speech had been a terrible mistake.

It occurred while the country, including Arkansas, rebelled against “McCarthyism,” which had been exposed as a fraud the previous month in the Army-McCarthy hearings before a Senate committee, including Arkansas’s John McClellan. It ended with Army attorney Joseph Welch’s famous putdown of Joe McCarthy, whose bedroom slippers Pryor had fetched four years earlier, for relentlessly attacking a young lawyer at the hearing: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough! Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” Pryor concluded that the very decent Cherry had been a poor politician who did not sense the great shift in public attitudes and was unable to rally voters against a smart but unprincipled politician. An even bigger mistake had been the unfortunate campaign line “we’re going to get the deadheads off the welfare rolls.” Faubus made him look cruel. 

After Cherry’s humiliation, a bitter Pryor decided that politics was miserable business and changed his major from political science to business administration. He took courses in accounting, banking and statistics but found them tedious and boring. Then he became violently ill with a strange malady that required multiple surgeries—he withered to 130 pounds and partially lost his eyesight—that cost him a year of school. 

He returned to the university in 1955 as a government major again. From his arrival, he was active in student government, including serving as a senator. Led by Pryor, Ray Thornton and others who would later seek state executive, legislative and judicial offices, the students took a special interest in the conflagration over integration that was growing at Little Rock, which was under federal court orders to desegregate its schools in the fall. A number of punitive bills to head off the desegregation consumed the lawmakers in the January–March session—notably the creation of a state sovereignty commission, which was based on the long-repudiated theory of John C. Calhoun that states could interpose their sovereignty between the federal government and the people. Pryor and one of his many college roommates, Kenneth C. Danforth of El Dorado, the editor of the campus newspaper, The Traveler, and later a journalist for the Arkansas Gazette, Time magazine and The National Geographic, drove to Little Rock to carry the students’ message to the lawmakers and the state that the legislation trampled upon the human rights of American citizens, who would be criminalized for even expressing the view that Blacks and those who might sympathize with them were entitled to equality and free expression and assembly. Pryor was embittered by the experience that day but, according to his memoir, the stayover at the Marion Hotel and association with the legislators and lobbyists, sharpened his understanding that politics and government—in Ouachita County, Little Rock, or Washington, D.C.—did not follow the examples in civics textbooks.

He left Fayetteville with his degree but could not find a job. The Gazette would not hire him, even when he volunteered to work free for a few months to prove his worth. Later, as a lawmaker and law student, he would be the Gazette’s Fayetteville correspondent. He married Barbara Jean Lunsford of Fayetteville, a classmate, and in late 1957 started a weekly newspaper, the Ouachita Citizen, with a printing press acquired from a local businessman. His wife and mother wrote weekly columns and reported, and Pryor sold advertisements and wrote editorials, often criticizing local government officials but mainly Gov. Faubus and legislative houses that went along with everything Faubus sought to do. The city’s daily newspaper, like most others around Arkansas after the school crisis, rarely took issue with the governor and the legislature. Faubus took pleasure in taunting Pryor and his little paper. At a big rally at Camden in his 1958 race against the meatpacker Chris Finkbeiner, whom Pryor supported, Faubus held up copies of Life and Time magazines and Pryor’s little paper, all of which had made Faubus look bad. 

“Life is for people who can’t read,” Faubus said. “Time is for people who can’t see, and the Ouachita Citizen is for people who can’t think.” The crowd roared and Pryor crawled in his car and went home.

But in 1960 Pryor told the county’s representative, a family friend, that if he did not begin to oppose Faubus on legislation he was going to run against him. The representative demurred and Pryor ran against him. He was 26 years old. Pryor’s memoir said he got elected mainly owing to the relentless campaigning of Barbara, carrying their infant son, David, with her as she went door to door across the county asking people to please vote for her husband. The family briefly moved to Little Rock. They sold the newspaper in 1962. He was elected twice more, in 1962 and 1964, while attending law school at Fayetteville when the legislature was not in session. He finished law school in 1964.

Except for his votes, Pryor’s legislative record was unremarkable, which was not unusual for new legislators. A Civil War buff, Pryor read about battles in South Arkansas and at his first session in February 1961 he introduced and passed a bill creating Poison Springs Battlefield State Park about eight miles from his home. It was the site of one of the Confederates’ few big victories in Arkansas, a victory most notable for the slaughter of a Kansas infantry regiment that included former slaves. The Confederates took no prisoners and used wagons to crush the skulls of the captured Black men. 

Pryor became one of a handful of liberals who jousted with Faubus and the legislative “Old Guard” on a wide variety of reforms. Called “the Young Turks” in the media, Pryor, Virgil Butler, Sterling R. Cockrill Jr., Jim Brandon, Hardy W. Croxton, Ray S. Smith Jr. and Hayes C. McClerkin introduced legislation outlawing the poll tax, reforming election laws, overhauling county purchasing and spending (Pryor had been on a grand jury investigating government fraud in Ouachita County), convening a constitutional convention, and overhauling highway administration. They got nowhere with the legislation. In 1961, Pryor introduced a bill to require competitive bidding on county purchases of more than $300, but he could get only few votes for it each year. Faubus had another legislator, Harry Colay of Magnolia, put his name on a similar bill in 1965, it passed, and Faubus signed it.

Pryor opened a law practice in 1964 at Camden with his friend Harry Barnes. He liked to mention a case where he represented a man in a dispute over who owned a coon dog. It was finally resolved by bringing the disputed mutt into the courtroom, which wandered around until it spotted Pryor’s client and put a paw on his knee. The judge immediately awarded him custody. For a different reason, the Arkansas Gazette cartoonist George Fisher later always put a happy coon dog at Pryor’s side. But Pryor never got to practice a lot of law.

Faubus’s enmity toward Pryor took a bizarre turn in the summer of 1965. Late in life, Faubus and Pryor would cement a friendship, and he told Pryor that one of the joys of his life had been setting in motion the events that year which sealed Pryor’s long career. In law school at Fayetteville, Pryor had become a close friend of Faubus’s son, Farrell, a shy, portly and tormented young man who would take his own life in 1977 at the age of 36. Farrell had felt shunned and ridiculed by the other students and some of the faculty. The two students studied, played golf, drank beer and got their law degrees together.

In July 1965, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Congressman Oren Harris to a federal judgeship, creating a congressional vacancy that Faubus was supposed to fill for the last 16 months of Harris’s term by calling a special election. It was Pryor’s dream, but there was no time to put together a campaign organization throughout the large Fourth District. State Auditor Jimmie “Red” Jones, who was known to every voter in the state, would be the automatic winner. Pryor mentioned his dilemma to his friend Farrell. He would learn later that Farrell told his dad that Pryor had helped him get his law degree, was the only person at the university who befriended him and about the only true friend he ever had.

Faubus dawdled about calling the special election for weeks and finally announced that the district did not really need a voting representative for the next year and a half, so he called the special election for the same day as the general election in November 1966. Voters would simultaneously fill the seat for the last two months of the year but also the following two years—two elections for the same seat on the same day. It gave Pryor more than a year to build a campaign organization. Red Jones then chose not to run because he would have to give up his safe lifetime job at the Capitol for a risky congressional election. Pryor won the special election and the general election handily. He defeated Richard S. Arnold of Texarkana, a future federal district and appellate judge, and three other prominent politicians from around the district, John Harris Jones of Pine Bluff, Charles L. “Chuck” Honey of Prescott and Dean Murphy of Hope. 

Pryor’s three terms in the seniority-driven House of Representatives were hardly notable, except for a controversy that he engineered—a crusade over the mistreatment of the elderly and disabled in nursing homes—and his personal dilemma over the Vietnam War, which he eventually came to oppose. 

His mother told him that after visiting friends in nursing homes over the years she had concluded that the warehousing of people in the profit-driven industry had to be a national scandal rather than a local one. Now that her son was a congressman, he ought to do something about it. Having little else to do as a freshman, Pryor started volunteering on weekends as an orderly in nursing homes in the District of Columbia and suburban Maryland and Virginia, and recording the lack of staffing and lapses in medical care that he saw. His mother was right. Nursing homes often were just profitable warehouses for those waiting for the grave. Government inspectors often gave owners notice of their inspections, which rarely found lapses and, when they did, nothing was done about them. The industry had lobbyists who kept Pryor’s congressional colleagues and other government monitors at bay. 

Pryor made a speech on the House floor revealing his secret work. He said he had encountered only two nursing homes where he would put his mother, but he couldn’t have afforded either one on his $42,500 salary. He was attacked by Maryland’s state mental-health director and people in the industry. Pryor called for the House to create a select committee on nursing homes and homes for the aged. A majority of the House voted for his resolution, but it was non-binding and Congress did nothing. The House, led by the 80-year-old Mississippian who headed the Rules Committee, would not provide space or staffing for the committee. Pryor decided to do the work himself, after finding a vacant lot beside a gasoline station near the Capitol. The station’s owner found two house trailers that became the site for Pryor’s investigations and hearings. Pryor tried and failed to set up a permanent Committee on Aging, as the Senate had done in 1959. President Richard M. Nixon joined Pryor’s cause in 1971, deploring conditions in nursing homes and proposing to end payments to substandard homes.

In 1974, two years after Pryor left, the House joined the cause and established the Select Committee on Aging. For the next 50 years, Congress, federal and state administrators and the industry would wage a continuous battle over standards of care for the aged and the degree of regulation that government should provide.

When Pryor went to Washington, the Vietnam War had engaged the United States for ten years. (President Eisenhower sent the first US troops in 1955 and Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson had raised the commitment.) After the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Congress gave Johnson new authority to dramatically expand America’s commitment, still without a declaration of war. By 1968, congressional and public opposition to the war had grown. Vice President Hubert Humphrey asked Pryor to make a short speech to the riotous Democratic National Convention in Chicago—Humphrey was the presidential nominee—in support of the Vietnam plank, an oblique statement that neither endorsed nor opposed the war effort. Pryor went to the convention as an Arkansas delegate and had already alienated other Southern congressmen, especially Mississippians, by voting as a member of the Credentials Committee to seat Mississippi’s Freedom Democrats—Blacks and liberals—instead of the white delegation picked by the party in Mississippi. In his two-minute speech, he urged an end to the war but called for unity and wisdom. Arkansas Sen. J. William Fulbright had already decided America’s war policies were improvident and conducted hearings that began to turn public sentiment against the war.

President Johnson, who had had misgivings about the war from the first, had then made himself the champion of the war against communism after the Gulf of Tonkin incident. He became more and more sorrowful and morose as tens of thousands of Americans a year died, but he could not become the first president to lose a war. In 1967, Johnson asked Pryor to fly to Texas with him for rallies to pump up flagging support in his home state. Pryor would write that Johnson seemed glum and introspective the whole trip. Pryor understood why. As they were flying back to Washington at night in Air Force One, Pryor looked out the window and figured that the lights below were his hometown of Camden. 

“Mr. President,” he said, “it looks like we might be flying directly over Camden, Arkansas. That’s my hometown. If you look straight down at the ground, you might see Jim’s Café on Washington Street.”

The president leaned across him and looked out the window. He slumped back in his seat and shook his head.

“God a’mighty!” he sighed. “I wish I was at Jim’s Café right now.” He was silent the rest of the trip.

For Pryor, the climax to the moral struggle over the war was more personal, as he would recall in A Pryor Commitment and oral histories. On an airline trip from Washington to Arkansas he fell into conversation with a young serviceman from his district who was headed to Vietnam. Many months later, he got on a plane for the same flight back home and recognized the young man, in uniform. He asked the soldier about his tour of duty. The soldier pulled back a blanket across his lap, which showed that he had lost a leg in combat.

 “Congressman Pryor,” the young man said, “I would not have minded losing my leg, if only someone had told me why we were there in the first place.”

Pryor sent constituents a newsletter announcing that he would thereafter oppose any further funding of the war and calling for troops to be brought home. It was not an altogether popular step. At a fishfry at the Carlisle High School stadium soon afterward, a man ran out of the crowd, jumped on Pryor’s back and began hitting him and calling him a traitor. Mayor Bobby Glover, later a state representative and then a senator, pulled the man off Pryor. Two decades later Pryor would write a letter to his son Scott, explaining his dilemma over the war and the consequences. He likened it to the contemporary dilemma over the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

In 1972, McClellan, by then chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, which had funded the development of the navigation dams on the Arkansas River in Arkansas and Oklahoma, announced he was running for a sixth term. His hearings on labor racketeering had made enemies of organized labor. Unions representing wood, paper, oil, chemical and electrical workers in South Arkansas had supplied much of Pryor’s political strength. He announced that he was running for the seat, too, along with Ted Boswell, a liberal trial lawyer, and Foster Johnson, a book salesman who for the third straight Senate election went around towns wearing clanging metal campaign signs over his shoulders. 

Pryor survived a rough campaign in which he was accused of being a friend of draft dodgers and a supporter of gun control. (As a freshman legislator, he had sponsored a bill making it illegal to carry a loaded weapon in a vehicle inside city limits—a reaction to a neighboring boy accidentally killing himself with a loaded shotgun on a Safeway parking lot.) But Pryor was a close second in the preferential primary and entered the runoff as a heavy favorite, certain to get all the votes that had been cast for the more liberal Boswell. W. R. “Witt” Stephens, the gas baron and investment banker, summoned a meeting of the state’s banking and business leaders with McClellan in the board room of the Union National Bank at Little Rock where everyone ponied up tens of thousands of dollars for McClellan or pledged to collect it.

The two-week runoff ended with the famous televised debate. McClellan, wearing a white suit, taunted Pryor for his support by unions, particularly “labor bosses” from outside the state. Pryor responded that the money reported on his campaign finance forms came from the cookie jars and overall pockets of hardworking men. McClellan responded that Pryor had gotten $79,000 from “bosses” from outside the state. 

“David, David,” he taunted, shaking a finger, “this is no cookie-jar nickels and dimes!”

Pryor’s campaign gifts paled alongside the money from businessmen and bankers in McClellan’s campaign, but McClellan’s commanding performance showed him as anything but a doddering 76-year-old man. But his victory in the election the next week depended more on the massive get-out-the-vote effort by political leaders commanded by Witt Stephens. Pryor got only 20,000 more votes than in the first primary, McClellan 22,000 more. On election night, Pryor faced the TV cameras early, conceded and said the voters had elected the right man, a typical Pryor reflection on his opponents.

Witt Stephens was watching television that night and was struck by the Pryor’s magnanimity. Two years later, when Gov. Dale Bumpers announced he was not running for a third term as governor but instead for the Senate—against Fulbright—Stephens picked up the phone and called Pryor, suggesting that he run for governor. Pryor said he was about to call Stephens and urge him to run (they had served in the House of Representatives together as freshmen in 1961). Stephens said no, he was serious, and promised his full organizational support if Pryor announced. He did, and so did former governor Faubus and Lt. Gov. Bob Riley. Faubus, making his second comeback attempt since retiring in 1966, was shocked to discover that nearly his entire political machine marshaled by Stephens had been diverted to Pryor. Pryor won without a runoff. For the rest of his life, Faubus remained bitter about his old friend and supporter’s betrayal while also warming to the young man whom his son Farrell had asked him to help. 

Providence seemed always to shine on Pryor at election time—but with actual governance, not so much. Bumpers had raised income and motor-fuel taxes and closed tax loopholes. Furious economic growth filled the state treasury so that Bumpers could enhance public schools and higher education, build many state parks, improve highways, expand medical care and build hospitals and college classrooms. Bumpers called a special legislative session to spend the big surplus that had accumulated in the treasury. The moment that Pryor moved into the Governor’s Mansion the nation was hit with a long recession complicated by inflation, and the treasury was depleted. Pryor had to slash budgets and freeze hiring even for filling job vacancies. In his four years, Bumpers had carried out all the reforms prescribed by the liberal group Democrats for Arkansas during the late 1960s—nearly everything but a new state constitution, which became Pryor’s biggest goal. It was never fulfilled.

Pryor proposed a dramatic refashioning of state spending—a 25 percent reduction in state income tax rates and empowerment of local governments to implement the income tax themselves to address all the problems of cities, counties and schools. The Arkansas Plan, as it was called, consumed a legislative session. Pryor traveled the state promoting the plan, explaining to a group at Jonesboro that he was cutting state taxes and allowing people locally to use it in whatever way pleased them—jokingly suggesting that if they didn’t want to levy taxes to build roads and streets they could spend the money on “a new coon dog.” Gazette cartoonist George Fisher labeled it the “Coon Dog Plan” and thereafter always put a grinning mutt at Pryor’s side. The Arkansas Plan failed.

Another passion was litter. Pryor hated the trash along the state’s streets and roads. He started a “Pick Up Arkansas” campaign and proposed a bill levying a small tax on soft drinks, pet foods, newspapers and plastic wrappers to discourage littering; the money would be used for highway and street cleanup. Local governments were encouraged to dispose of solid waste like abandoned cars and refrigerators. The bill passed, but a letter from the state Revenue Department to businesses on how to collect the tax warned that they might go to prison for failing to remit the litter tax. Legislators who had voted for the bill heard from merchants and demanded that Pryor call them back into session to repeal the bill before it took effect on July 1. He did but always regretted it when he saw sandwich wrappers and soft-drink containers strewn along streets and on the roadsides.

Constitutional revision, an obsession with an aging legislator who had been the leader of the Young Turks, was Pryor’s biggest failure. Voters had defeated a liberalized constitution drafted by a popularly elected convention in 1970. Pryor decided to try again after taking office in 1975. The solution had to be to avoid the pitched battles over a few issues such as the state’s antiunion law (the Right to Work Amendment), usury, judicial elections and county-government reform. He offered a bill calling for the appointment, by the legislature and the governor, of 35 delegates who would write a new constitution but leave those and a few other features of the 1874 constitution untouched and then submit the document to the voters in September. On the day the delegates convened, the state Supreme Court voted four to three to abolish the convention because the delegates were prohibited from changing some parts of the constitution. It had to be all or nothing. In 1977, Pryor tried again with a bill that called for the election of 100 delegates in 1978 and a vote on the document in 1980. But voters defeated that new constitution decisively. 

McClellan died in November 1977 and Pryor appointed Kaneaster Hodges of Newport, a lawyer and minister, to finish his term, which ended Jan. 1, 1979. Pryor soon announced that he would run for the seat. So did US Rep. Jim Guy Tucker of Little Rock and Rep. Ray H. Thornton Jr. of Sheridan. It would be a race between three friends and philosophical triplets. A. C. Grigson, a Texarkana accountant, joined the race claiming to be McClellan’s philosophical successor. Pryor barely led in the first primary and Tucker edged Thornton for the second spot. The runoff would also be amiable until its final days when Tucker accused Pryor’s campaign manager of trying to persuade a friend on the state Public Service Commission to approve a rate increase for Witt Stephens’s western Arkansas gas company in exchange for the Stephens family’s support in the runoff. Pryor won by a safe margin. Tucker later shrugged off his defeat. No one, he said, was going to believe that David Pryor did anything even slightly deceitful, and wouldn’t blame him if he had.

The Senate years were Pryor’s most pleasurable. His Arkansas colleague, Dale Bumpers, was a close friend and an ally on most but not all issues. After their retirements, they became a popular team for television and political events, taunting and telling tall tales about each other.

During the eight-year administration of President Ronald Reagan, both senators opposed much of the Reagan program, including the tax cuts for the wealthy in 1981 and later the big binge of military spending. Bumpers, a deficit hawk, publicly opposed the tax cuts, and Pryor finally joined him by voting “present” on the roll call, the same as a no vote. The month after the tax cuts passed the nation fell into a deep 14-month recession with double-digit unemployment, the deepest since the 1930s, although the charming Reagan was never blamed for the longest and deepest recession in modern times or the staggering budget deficits and debt that he ran up for eight years or for the repeated tax increases that the Reagan administration described as “revenue enhancements” instead of taxes.

But Pryor also became a leading critic of Pentagon spending, calling attention to such excesses as the orders for thousands of ball-peen hammers and toilet seats at hugely inflated prices. He also veered from Bumpers and the state’s four congressmen in his opposition to the development of binary chemical weapons. He opposed developing and storing the chemical weapons at the Pine Bluff Arsenal. Vice President George H. W. Bush, a friend who went to Congress the same time as Pryor, went to the Senate to cast the tie-breaking vote for the arsenal.

Even before Reagan’s election, the Pentagon already suspected that Pryor was not a votary, especially after he called attention to the perils of the Titan II missile system after a series of dangerous failures around the country and two catastrophes in Arkansas. When the Defense Department developed the Titan II system—54 underground intercontinental missiles with nuclear warheads—US Rep. Wilbur D. Mills agreed to vote for President Kennedy’s tax cuts if he agreed to put a ring of 18 of the new missiles in Arkansas. A fire in a silo with a nuclear warhead near Searcy in 1965 killed 53 workers who were retrofitting the missile’s fuel system. In January 1978, a fuel transporter at a missile silo at Damascus overheated and sent thousands of gallons of deadly nitrogen tetroxide vapor over the countryside. In 1979, after more such leaks in the Arkansas and Kansas missile networks, Pryor and Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas were regretting having Titan sites in their states and talked about whether they should be anywhere near American citizens. 

After rumors of incidents at the silos, Pryor in the summer of 1980 did his own secret investigation and found nine major incidents in the previous 14 months that could have endangered Arkansas lives around the silos. Clearly, the Air Force had been lying about the safety at the Titan sites in Arkansas, Kansas and New Mexico. Pryor gave the detailed results of investigation of the eight incidents to two Arkansas Gazette reporters, who described the incidents and Pryor’s conclusions. Surrounding residents were never informed about any of them, despite an Air Force vow that residents would always be informed.

Pryor and Dole went to Congress to push an amendment to the Defense Department appropriation that called for an early-warning system around all the silos. The amendment passed. Three days later, on Sept. 18, 1980, the missile in a silo at Damascus exploded, blowing the nuclear warhead and two technicians into the air. One of the men died almost instantly and the other’s health was permanently impaired. Two years later, the Pentagon decided to abandon the Titans for more advanced, and perhaps safer, missile systems. But Pryor’s negativity about defense weaponry and spending took a political toll, at least nationally.

The payoff came in 1984, when the White House and the party leadership persuaded Congressman Ed Bethune of Searcy—the Pryors and Bethunes were social friends—to run against Pryor with the promise of financial backing. More than 20 Reagan administration officials and Republican senators came to Arkansas for fund-raising events for Bethune. Rev. Jerry Falwell, the right-wing leader, came to Arkansas to call for Pryor’s defeat. Pryor eschewed the same strategy, feeling that Democrats from out of the state would hurt rather than help him. Bethune’s ads said Pryor had voted against the popular former movie star, Ronnie Reagan, on 77 percent of the issues in the Senate. The Saturday before the election Reagan, who was approaching a landslide win of his own, made a speech at the packed Excelsior Hotel ballroom. 

“Don’t send me back to Washington alone,” Reagan said with the smiling Bethune beside him. Reagan carried Arkansas with 60 percent of the vote. Pryor got 57 percent.

In 1994, Pryor ran for re-election and no Democrat or Republican opposed him—a rarity in any state. Betty White, a homeless woman, ran as a write-in and got 832 votes. (Pryor’s son Mark also had no opposition, except for a Green Party candidate, in his second race for the same seat in 2008.)

Pryor spent much of his second term fighting for a taxpayer’s bill of rights, to curb abuses by the Internal Revenue Service. Reagan signed Pryor’s bill into law in 1988.

Pryor’s last crusade was against the pharmaceutical industry. In 1990, he introduced the Pharmaceutical Access and Prudent Purchasing Act, which sought to end the spiral of drug prices; it would have allowed Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate with drug makers on prices that would be charged to Medicare and Medicaid patients. The industry fought back. 

Pryor had a massive heart attack on April 15, 1991. The illness hobbled him for the rest of his career. Majority Leader George Mitchell and Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas took up the cause of drug pricing but they never were able to pass a bill. President Joe Biden finally took up Pryor’s cause in 2023.

Another passionate reform effort was to end the electoral college so that the winner of the popular vote would always be the next president. The most important job in the whole democracy was president, but it also was the only political job in the country, from members of the county quorum court to the top, that might go to the loser. In 1992, sensing that the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot could tilt the election of George H. W. Bush over Bill Clinton regardless of the size of Clinton’s election victory, Pryor again introduced a Senate resolution for a constitutional amendment to end the electoral college and assure that election winners always took office. The Senate never sent the amendment to the states for ratification. Only one election loser had ever failed to become president—Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878 —but two subsequent losers, George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald J. Trump in 2016, became president. Trump lost the actual balloting to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes.

Like Bumpers, Pryor found the relationships in Congress profoundly different after radio provocateur Rush Limbaugh and Republican House leader Newt Gingrich turned American politics into a war of saintly Republicans vs. evil Democrats. Friendly Republicans departed and were replaced by politicians who called Democrats socialists and radicals who were out to destroy the country. Pryor did not run again in 1996; Bumpers made the same choice in 1998. The Capitol, they said, was no longer an enjoyable place to be.

Pryor’s retirement did not end his engagement with politics and government. In 2000, he was director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He taught courses at the University of Arkansas and gave his unexpended campaign funds to form the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History at the university. He was the inaugural dean of the Clinton School of Public Service at Little Rock, serving for two years. After the murder of Bill Gwatney in 2008, he was chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party for a spell. In 2009, Gov. Mike Beebe appointed him to a 10-year term on the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees, where he did not enhance his popularity by protesting the lavish spending on athletics and stadium additions. A massive stroke in 2016 curtailed his activities for good.

Survivors include his widow, Barbara; his sons and their wives, David Jr. (Judith), Mark (Joi) and Scott (Diane); his grandchildren, Hampton, Adams, Porter and Devin; and his great-grandson, Raven. 

The post In Memoriam appeared first on Arkansas Strong.

“In addition to Little Rock and the surrounding areas, it is our pledge to serve the diverse population in the rural areas of Arkansas,” said Little Rock VA Regional Office Executive Director Sammie Quillin. “We are working to connect with these Veterans along with those unable to reach us by other means.”

The VA also wants veterans and their families to know about their Visitor Reporting Engagement Application (VERA), an online tool to help appointments. For those who don’t have a VA clinic accessible to them, it’s a great way to stay on top of healthcare needs.

You can find more details, provided by the VA, below.

WHAT: Monthly Virtual VA Claims Clinic for Arkansas Veterans

WHO: During the upcoming Virtual Claims Clinic, Veterans may speak one-on-one with staff at the Little Rock VA Regional Office who are ready to assist with specific questions regarding their claims for VA benefits.

WHEN: Thursday, January 25, 4 – 6 p.m.

HOW:  To reserve a time slot, Veterans are asked to call 501-370-3829 by COB, January 24.

MORE INFO:

Little Rock VA Regional Office is located at 2200 Fort Roots Drive in North Little Rock and open Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Veteran Assist Phone Line, 501-370-3829, is staffed Monday – Friday, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Two VA satellite offices are located at 1) the John L. McClellan VA Medical Center, Room 1C-151B, open Tuesdays, 8 a.m. – noon, and Thursdays, noon – 4 p.m, and 2) the Eugene J. Towbin VA Healthcare Center, Room 1C-149, Bldg. 170, 2200 Fort Roots Dr. in North Little Rock, open Wednesdays, 8 a.m. – noon.

VA Regional Offices provide financial and other forms of assistance to Veterans and their dependents. This includes disability compensation, survivor’s benefits, pension and fiduciary service, education and training, vocational rehabilitation and employment assistance, life insurance coverage, and home loan guaranties. VA disability compensation (pay) offers a monthly tax-free payment to Veterans who got sick or injured while serving in the military and to Veterans whose service made an existing condition worse. 

During the upcoming Virtual Claims Clinic, staff members of the Little Rock VA Regional Office will answer questions about PACT Act benefits, existing VA benefits claims, and assist with filing new claims.  

For more information about VA benefits, go to http://benefits.va.gov/benefits/ or call 800-827-1000. For information about PACT Act benefits, visit www.va.gov/resources/the-pact-act-and-your-va-benefits.

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Among the little heads are my two, Rosie and Beau. They are four and five years old, respectively, and they wear their disabilities on their bodies and voices. Beau, with his almond-shaped eyes, short stature, and precious few intelligible words and phrases and Rosie, with eyes that match her brother’s and a wheelchair that offers a kind of independence that only families like ours can understand.

It was the lack of wheelchair accessibility in most public spaces that first gave me a wave of now familiar grief in a very public place. It was a stormy day, so we had to do an indoor activity after preschool. We decided to walk around the mall as a family, trying to get Beau’s energy out before we grabbed dinner at a restaurant in the building. When the time came, we rounded a corner toward the fast-casual place we planned to eat.

I instantly noticed the layout of the restaurant was not accessible. All tables on the lower floor, where we’d entered, were taken. To order our meal, we would have to scale four-or-so steps before being in the queue. The restaurant had two entrances: one from the inside of the mall, which is where we approached, and another from the sidewalk outside of the mall. In order to access the restaurant and eat when we arrived we would have to walk outside, where rain was pouring buckets, and enter from the other door.

Inaccessible space making often goes unnoticed until it impacts your family directly. My father was also a wheelchair user, so as a child I experienced my fair share of disappointment due to his absence simply because a space lacks a ramp or a clear path to move through. I learned implicitly that the world did not want people like my dad to join abled people in spaces where we congregate. The world was not created for my dad.

Based on my unique parenting experience, the world was not created for my children either. This brings a familiar grief that you can only imagine until you experience it.

Grief disappears at storytime. We enter with everyone else using a visible ramp at the main entrance. Space is made for Rosie’s wheelchair, and Beau can spin and stim until he’s regulated enough to sit for the story.

We are with the world, among new friends.

The faith of my youth taught me that the world is broken, in need of redemption. A new heaven and a new Earth are an end goal for believers, and in this new heaven and Earth all will be at peace, and the grief and tears of today will be no more.

The closest thing I have experienced to this peace of the Scriptures is storytime with my kids. Heaven is a library— a public library. And we never want to leave. 

The post Heaven is a Library appeared first on Arkansas Strong.

What an awkward phrase that is: “the youth group at my parents’ church.” 

For the longest time, even after I no longer attended their North Texas non-denominational evangelical congregation (another epic phrase), I thought of it as my church. Even after I was aware of the trauma, aware of the terrible theologies and philosophies, aware of abuses that had happened within its walls, I still instinctively claimed it. It was the winter of 2021 before I finally broke the habit and remembered to use “my parents’ church.” 

Because it wasn’t my church. It was never really mine. In high school, after my older brothers had left for college and I was functionally an only child, the majority of my fights with my parents was whether or not I had to attend youth group. I loved the other students in the group and I have fond memories of them (Strangely, many of them have undergone similar journeys to the one I’m about to describe. Curious how that happens, isn’t it?). 

But the theologies and youth leadership that tends to go hand-in-hand with North Texas evangelical churches – sickly sweet, smiling as they throw their verbal barbs, uncaring if they speared my closeted friends – was not for me, in my curiosity and open-heartedness. 

And yet. Here I was, still calling it “my church.” 

My particular brand of religious trauma is arguably tamer than most. I’m a straight white dude, so exactly the demographic North Texas non-denominational evangelical churches tend to appreciate most. But trauma doesn’t have an Olympics; traumatic experiences are unique to the individual. If you freeze when you think of church, if the thought of what you learned in church makes you tear up or get nauseous or have any kind of visceral reaction, congrats, here’s your trauma. 

(The jokes are a coping mechanism. I’m working on it.)

Accepting that I’d been traumatized was only the first step. Like many in my shoes, I flirted with atheism, desperate to find a system that didn’t rely on anything beyond what I could rationally understand. It worked for a while, and I don’t discount that my years denying any kind of higher power other than the mysteries of science were essential in my journey. 

But in my most vulnerable moments, the thought of a universe with nothing else never quite sat right with me. I saw Hubble pictures and felt the mysterium tremendum, the terrible mystery of creation that has no answer. I read so many different books looking for answers – Kierkegaard, Rachel Held Evans, hell, the Bible, unfettered by toxic theologies – and felt something realer, something truer, than what I could explain. I looked out over the northern Pacific Ocean, and felt small in a way that words and logic could not describe.  

God was there for me, in some capacity, and so I couldn’t help but continue to call that North Texas congregation “my church” because that was my first experience of the certainty of God’s existence. Despite having found another church, that North Texas place still had a grip on me.  

What does it mean to move on from fundamentalism? For me, it was acceptance of uncertainty. My parents’ church taught faith as an unwavering devotion to a man-made document that answered any questions you might have about life. My foray into atheism was similarly rooted in a belief that science and logic could answer just about any question. 

I was seeking certainty again. 

But life isn’t like that, is it? A book written by men thousands of years ago doesn’t have all the answers for our complex life together in 2023. We have to constantly hash out the new worlds we live in, preferably over a meal. 

I returned to a semblance of faith in God because those books I read and the experiences I had taught me, at last, to be comfortable with uncertainty. To seek it out and live in that mystery. There’s other ways to do that, sure, but it feels like I chose this. At last, this is my faith. Not my parents’. Not those grinning, too-put-together youth pastors. This is mine. 

At last, this is my faith. Not my parents’. Not those grinning, too-put-together youth pastors. This is mine. 

Faith after fundamentalism makes the mystery make sense to me, as much as it can. It helps me accept and live within uncertainty, the knowledge that some questions will never be answered, and to revel in that. It doesn’t solve the mystery, but then, I don’t think it has to anymore. 

So now I go to church, sometimes. 

There’s a great little Episcopalian church off of Cantrell in West Little Rock. The people are so kind, and so accepting, and so willing to listen to questions. The priest is one of the smartest, most empathetic women I’ve ever met. They have a potluck every Sunday. It’s my church. 

There’s a nice Presbyterian church a block over from my house. The reverend is a man whose booming voice and delightful stories stand next to an absolute care for his flock, a burning desire to serve them in whatever way he can. It’s my church. 

There’s a Methodist church back in Athens, Georgia, that I miss dearly. It’s a scrappy group of people who stand in front of refugees and immigrants. It’s professors and students and veterans who go out after services and feed the unhoused, as Jesus commanded. It’s my church. 

All of these places have made me feel comfortable and happy inside their walls. All these places have invited me to their table with my uncertainty, genuine smiles on their faces, and told me: “Stay, with your questions. We don’t have a lot of answers, but we love you.” 

I think of faith now as, among other things, a community of uncertain people who continue on anyway. Who shrug, alongside me, and say, “We’re doing our best. God helps with that. Want some lunch?” 

The post A Faith of My Own appeared first on Arkansas Strong.

In his heartbreakingly simple song “Speed Trap Town,” contemporary southern sage and roots rock troubadour Jason Isbell sings of the small-town high school football effect: “It’s a boy’s last dream and man’s first loss.” To be young and perpetually hopeful only to eventually come face to face with defeat — this is the coming of age sports story we embrace here in Arkansas.

But what is a Friday autumn night without the bright lights of a football field beckoning us to remember those last dreams and first losses?

Early this spring, Chris Goering asked this very question on a social media post:

I started on the defensive line for three years at little Medicine Lodge, Kansas, and we improved each year, from 3-6 to 7-2 to an undefeated regular season my senior year, 9-0, before running into the private school bullies from Wichita: Wichita Collegiate. (Although they played in the same class as us, they could recruit from the huge city of Wichita and had at least 5 seniors on that team play major Division One football.) We played only with the players living in our small town and public school district. Though it was 27 years ago, this story still stings and it currently reverberates on the high school football field and education landscape of Arkansas.

Medicine Lodge is 100 miles from Anywhere, USA, that most Americans could point to on map. It’s a small agriculture-centered town that has largely stayed in the game all these years because there happened to be a large gypsum deposit nearby, which enables the town’s industry to make and ship wallboard all over the region from there. I love my hometown, and I feel just as connected to it when I return to visit my parents. The people of that town still have my back all these years later. Like most towns in Arkansas, it is a small town a long ways away from any bigger towns.

While I’d love to recount more stories from high school football, what I owe my hometown is to make sure that your kids will continue to be able to form productive identities in small town sports and extracurricular activities, to feel an entire community’s support at their backs in basketball gyms, at the softball diamond, and on the football field. Your kids deserve a chance to host a state playoff game where they cannot see past the people standing around the field and filling both sets of bleachers.

As a former high school (and college) football player turned teacher I believe that Governor Sanders’ new education plan poses a deep threat to all rural schools across the state. I want to preserve important opportunities for our kids and protect the small towns of America.

What the Governor is up to is pretty simple. She deeply wants to open school choice up to the state by adding vouchers for private schools now and create a free-for-all of charter schools later. The problem, as most of you who live in rural areas know, your towns don’t have access to private schools or charter schools, and losing even a few members of your schools to this competition could have disastrous effects.

Charters and private schools don’t outperform public schools, and they don’t often offer comprehensive extracurriculars or sports like football (typically), pathways for young people to be as connected to and as proud as I am of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, all these years later. These schools are not an improvement; they are a means of destroying your towns by taking the schools out at the knees, just as Wichita Collegiate did to us those years ago. They open up public school tax dollars that you and I pay to be wasted, as incidents around the country prove over and over.

With the LEARNS act, Governor Sanders is a 5-star athlete playing quarterback for Wichita Collegiate in 1995. She has all the power and all the advantages in the world on the football field, and she’s coming to your town to not only dash your dreams of holding your communities together but to beat you 42-7. The problem is that with the LEARNS act, not only will the things you love about your town be different, the foundation that the public school provides will be significantly compromised or reduced to rubble.

-Chris Goering, #73

The post a boys last dream and a man’s first loss: saving high school football appeared first on Arkansas Strong.

Strength is not only the power to exact change, but also the endurance to persevere. There are many examples throughout Arkansas history in which we not only used our power to exact change, but powered through the adversity plaguing us with strike. The most prominent example that comes to mind is when the Little Rock Nine stood up against segregation, and started to integrate into Little Rock Central High School. They used their strong wills and powerful minds to go against social and political practices. Understanding that though the fight would be tough, the positive ramifications it would have on the next generations was worth the price.

That sort of selflessness and self sacrificial mindset is the embodiment of Arkansas strength. They were met with many threats against not only their lives, but of the lives of the people they hold dear. Unfortunately the threats did not just stop at verbal assault. Many of them, Like Ernest Green, were physically assaulted by their white classmates. Even amidst the violence, they did not stop persevering. They were able to use their strength to start the integration process, but the battle was far from over. In 1958, Little Rock high schools were closed for an entire academic year. An attempt to ice out the strong willed Arkansas, amidst the political, social, and legal controversy. But they did not back down, they remained headstrong and waited for their time to shine. In May of 1958, Ernest Green became not only the first African American student to take classes at Little Rock Central High School, but he also became the first African American student to graduate from there as well.

This cataclysmic moment became the first ripple in an ever changing title wave that swept the nation. Little by little, other districts, cities, and even states started to use the Little Rock Nine as a symbol for hope, and a symbol for change. This would not be the first or the last time that Arkansas has become a beacon for hope and an inspiration across the nation. In 1992, Arkansas native Bill Clinton was elected as President of the United States. Bill Clinton was able to take all the core values that Arkansans hold dear, and amplify them on a nationwide scale. During his presidency, the United States saw its lowest unemployment rate in the past 30 years. He was able to create more than 22 million new jobs. Just like the Little Rock Nine, he used his power to enact change. He ensured internet access to over 95 percent of all schools, he raised the educational standards, which increased reading and math scores on the SAT. Overall Bill Clinton and the Little Rock Nine are perfect examples of what make Arkansas strong. And that is the fact that Arkansans are strong willed and well mannered, always fighting to tackle injustices and inequalities they see. Arkansas is strong because it sees where change is needed, and becomes that change.

Works Cited:

“Te Clinton Presidency: A Historic Era of Progress and Prosperity .” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, https://clintonwhitehouse5.archives.gov/WH/Accomplishments/eightyears-01.html. 

The post The Little Rock Nine (What Makes Arkansas Strong) appeared first on Arkansas Strong.

I remember crossing the street to my grandpa’s house, my little sisters trailing behind me as I walked the familiar route. Pretending that the paved road matched the scene around me, morphing it into a huge river that the trees bent to in my mind. The sway of the leaves dared me forward. Glancing around and holding out my hand to stop my sisters, our adventure began. Jumping and running, before finally, the final pass materialized ahead. The biggest part of the river, shimmering black with mystery, with two looks to my left and to my right, to check for the zooming alligators who could strike, we darted across. Now safe and satisfied with our journey, we skipped past the remaining trees and threw our wishes into the pond we passed, arriving to, at last, our destination. These memories, among others, solidify our state’s alias. Arkansas is the natural state, and natural indeed. As forests flourish and mountains tower, our beautiful state is no doubt bursting with the lovely scenes of the untouched world. Looking closer, however, one would find there is something deeper. Arkansas is also naturally inclined to other aspects: that being a natural strength within its geography as well as its community.

Naturally Strong

The strength of Arkansas cannot be defined in concise and definitive natures. In fact, the strength presented in the state is quiet and subtle. The strength can be hard to notice when it becomes routine. This is precisely the case in Arkansas. Looking around the state, diversity is everywhere. Not just in its flora and fauna, but within its communities. People who have suffered great loss walk each day like they always have. Leaving their scars to heal and buds to blossom. The beauty in this routine is that it’s found everywhere here. People get up, go to work, and come home. Maybe they are trying to make a living, or achieve their dreams, or maybe provide a better life for the ones they love. Regardless, one thing remains true, here in our state, everyday we grow. That is our strength, despite the failure, despite the pain, we continue to grow. The soil does not bend around the roots, they have to pave their way. Arkansans know this, the people here are not defined by their soil. They push past the dirt, and even move rocks. They start in one environment, but they do not end there. A mother working hard for her children, learning and fighting, becoming the sturdy cornerstone which builds her family. A child maturing around the broken parts of society becoming a trailblazer and blunting the blade of blame in our world. This comes so naturally because it is all around us. It is built into our homes, families, and people. Here in our state, we become: we grow. 

Not only is growth important for each of us, but each of us is important for growth. Our communities build our structure. The leaf and the stem may seem nothing alike, but they are connected through their plant, they need each other. We grow together, and we are strong together. Arkansas may not be for everyone, but it is for anyone. We may seem different but we are connected through the way we live. Our clothes or habits may separate us on the outside, but everyone tries their hardest to make tomorrow better than yesterday. And while our identities in our hearts do not always agree, Arkansas is a place to listen to the different rhythms of pulse. Here the landscape drips with scenery envied by the sunsets themselves; effortlessly splendid; but it is no match for the inhabitants. Walking downtown where I live, everyone is so warm to each other. Even on the worst days, an individual can still summon the strength to smile at a stranger. This simple strength shows again. We build one another up, and if they fall we lend a hand. When tornadoes destroy homes, neighbors and friends help rebuild. When a pandemic strikes and panic threatens to invade, our families of all kinds hold together. All of this exists as naturally as breathing. Our kindness is not plastic and our love is genuine. Even as times get difficult, as they have the past few years, we have never lost our sense of what matters and never given up on the fellowship within our borders. 

Strength is deeper than utility, it is perseverance brimming on stubbornness. More than natural diamonds are made in Arkansas. Our future leaders, mothers, fathers, and models may be pressurized at times, but coal was meant to grow into something stronger. And, diamonds are used to refine those around them. Here in Arkansas, our strength is drawn from our past, used in our present, and determines our future. I believe Arkansas will continue to grow and exemplify strength to all who visit through its people. After all, Arkansas inspires and kindles the flames of the future: naturally, of course. 

The post Naturally Arkansas appeared first on Arkansas Strong.

In New Brief, Teach Plus Arkansas Policy Fellows Address Mental Health Needs of Students

Teachers’ recommendations focus on providing mental health services for students and relevant professional development for educators

The need to support students socially and emotionally, as well as cognitively, has become evident as the result of the COVID pandemic. Lack of such support leaves students unprepared for school and life and contributes to the higher burnout rates of teachers. In their new brief, Strategically Addressing Student Mental Health in Our Schools: Recommendations from Teach Plus Arkansas Policy Fellows, Teach Plus teacher leaders set forth a series of recommendations for state leaders on closing the gaps of social, emotional, and mental health education and support in the state.

“Investing in mental health services for students and ensuring that teachers have the training and the time to thoughtfully implement SEL is good for teachers, directly benefits students, and can help alleviate Arkansas’s critical teacher shortage by ensuring that more teachers remain in our classrooms,” said Teach Plus Arkansas Executive Director Stacey McAdoo. “With these solutions from Teach Plus teacher leaders, we can improve conditions in our public schools to make certain that we are educating the whole child and alleviating barriers so that more teachers want and can remain in our classrooms.”

“Our students cannot learn if they are in fight or flight mode. If we expect teachers to help students learn, we must give educators the tools to help students be in the right mindset in the first place,” said Perla Andrade, a teacher in Little Rock and one of the authors of the brief.

To better understand Arkansas teachers’ experience with SEL, Teach Plus teacher leaders surveyed 247 Arkansas teachers about how their schools are supporting students’ social and emotional needs. They found that schools and educators are committed to their students’ social-emotional learning. Educators try their best to embed some form of SEL strategies into the daily academic day, but they need support in the form of professional development focused on mental health, trauma-informed instruction and the social-emotional learning of students. They also need to have protected time in their day to implement SEL.

Teach Plus teacher leaders’ recommendations are:

1. Create school-specific mental health services, such as a coordinator/student success coach, in order to provide in-school support for students and professional development for teachers.
2. Protect teacher time to have SEL lessons and conversations with students and participate in relevant training.
3. Engage teachers in relevant training, such as Mental Health First Aid training, on how to authentically serve the SEL needs of students.

“The only way we can truly provide an equitable educational experience to our students is to understand the whole child and provide resources to take care of their social, emotional, and mental health needs,” said Christhian Saavedra, Student Success Coach in Rogers and one of the authors of the brief.

About Teach Plus

The mission of Teach Plus is to empower excellent, experienced, and diverse teachers to take leadership over key policy and practice issues that affect their students’ success. Since 2009, Teach Plus has developed thousands of teacher leaders across the country to exercise their leadership in shaping education policy and improving teaching and learning, to create an education system driven by access and excellence for all. Teachplus.org

The post Teach Plus Policy Fellows Address Mental Health Needs of Students appeared first on Arkansas Strong.

Though constant hermiting is no longer mandatory, and I teach five classes in person, my dogs remain in favor of this other arrangement. And I find myself so spoiled by a husband who brings me coffee, layers of covers so warm and cozy, and the ambience of snoring dogs so conducive to writing, that on days I am off I may never return to my desk, even if in some future scenario I happen to find it under the piles of miscellany it has accumulated.

In addition to the Boston terriers, I have a golden retriever spread out like a rug beside my besk. They growl at him if he tries to get on the bed and sometimes he lets them be the bosses; not always. When he gets enough he goes savage like in “Zootopia” when an otherwise well-behaved animal loses its mind and turns violent. We try to avoid those times.

I also have a black Lab who John Whiteside says is the only dog I have that’s worth a dime. You can find her curled on the couch at any time of day. If she sees a human she wags her tail and it thumps loudly against the cushions. Like many Labs, the only thing that awakens passion in her is food. Even this most docile, sanguine creature has been known to fight for her right to leftover sausage gravy.

One fateful day this summer I attended a sit-in with other teachers in Little Rock at the Arkansas Legislative Council meeting in which members of the Legislature voted to answer our request for raises by punishing our local school districts. They did this by snatching covid relief money already allocated and approved for covid-related projects in those districts and re-assigning it for one-time teacher bonuses.

They did this to spite school boards and administrators, local control they claim to champion but really despise, and of course to try to squelch a movement of teachers who have finally decided to keep them accountable for their actions when it comes to the degradation of public schools–actions like the one the ALC chose that particular day: using none of the $1.6-billion surplus to raise teacher pay, instead awarding it to the wealthiest Arkansans through tax cuts. In the middle of a statewide teacher shortage.

Just typing that makes my heart beat fast. So you can imagine the state I was in when I left the ALC meeting. I did my breathing thing to tamp down the bubbles of rage fizzing fast to the surface, and drove to Brummett’s. Yes, that Brummett. I am allowed to call him Brummett or even Johnny Ray because I am his favorite if only self-appointed apprentice. He is my favorite crochety columnist.

I had braved Clarksville’s Peach Picking Paradise in the rain the day before to obtain some of his and my favorite white peaches and a few other varieties for his saintly wife Shalah. I thought they weren’t home so I left the peaches on the porch and scrambled halfway to my car before I heard him bellowing, “Hey! Come back here!”

I sat down in their exquisite living room and drank water Shalah gave me in a vintage glass. Their regal beagle Sophie sauntered over to lick my legs. Roscoe, the other beagle, jumped into my lap for a cuddle. Brummett was horrified, which I found hilarious. “Roscoe! Get down!” He looked at me hopelessly. “He’s going to ruin your dress!”

I did have on a nice dress but in that moment I could not have cared less if it survived Roscoe. Because in the way of all good dogs, Roscoe is a rescue dog. And he was doing his best to rescue me. As I petted him I could literally feel my heart rate slow, my shoulders relax, my spirit beginning to rest.

Brummett finally gave up fussing, and while we sat and talked about peaches and furniture and neighbors, goodness returned to the world. Hope floated back into the air. Friendship, joy, laughter, love–all that matters most–superseded the ugly of the morning. And by the time the beagles and Brummetts were through with me, I was fortified to go back out into the world. Restored.

If you are like most humans, you have moments of anxiety and sadness. If you are a person who belongs to a dog, being comforted in those times is likely a familiar experience. Even the Bible records how dogs helped people in ancient times, keeping them company and soothing their sores.

If you don’t have this kind of help on a rough day, well, bless your heart. Maybe it is time to find a rescue dog–or two–and let them rescue you.

Column originally published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

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I’m not a professional dog trainer, but I do live with dogs. And I put that in italics because I truly mean it. The dogs I live with are not just accessories; most of my day and night are arranged to ensure they are cared for and have what they need. As a former farm kid, the lesson that animals come first because they can’t do for themselves sticks with me. The dogs, in return, care for me, booping me when I’ve been at my desk too long, making sure I get out every day and move around, and making me laugh when I take myself too seriously.

It’s a symbiotic relationship. 

When Chester came to live with us, he was very anxious. He wouldn’t stop circling the house, moving from room to room, in constant motion like a shark. I followed him around until I finally managed to put my hands on his back, and he leaned into me, realizing I only wanted to pet him. These days, I can’t sit down without him there, either snuggling up under my arm on the couch or creating canine origami in my armchair. While it can be a bit much, the level of satisfaction I get from his trust in me more than makes up for any irritation.

Chester’s coping mechanism is to carry a toy in his mouth, pretty much any time he’s anxious. To strangers, his toy habit is precious and they think he’s just showing them his baby. But I know that he’s got a toy in his mouth because it keeps him from putting his mouth on whatever is causing the anxiety. He does love his babies, though, and he’s always excited when they take a trip through the washer and dryer. He waits for me to open a dryer full of them so he can  have a baby party in the hallway. 

Chester does have a threshold — we all do. The threshold I’m talking about is that point where no matter what coping mechanism he uses or how he communicates his anxiety if I don’t listen, he loses it. Once I paid attention and recognized the signs that he was near crossing that threshold, Chester hasn’t lost his marbles. We’ve built trust, Chester and I, and we listen to each other.

I have my own threshold, as well. And, while I have developed some pretty good coping mechanisms, that doesn’t mean I am never near my threshold when it comes to anxiety. I’m just (most days) a pretty high-functioning person with anxiety. Lately, though, due to a number of factors, I find myself teetering on my threshold.

My family is going through a large transition right now, in part because my wife’s employer finally nudged her just enough that it put her over her threshold. That story isn’t mine to tell, but I will say that while our decision to move back to the central part of the state and leave her full-time position as a hospital physician was made quickly, it wasn’t. We’ve been talking about the need for something to change for well over a year now, and it just took a small, seemingly insignificant thing to tip us over the line.  

We’ve been through big shifts before — medical school and residency, for instance. When we moved back to Arkansas, we decided it was time for me to stop traveling so much for work and to shift my attention to writing, which was always the plan. As someone who always took pride in being able to take care of herself, and who always worked, sometimes with a side-hustle, my retirement from higher education was not a smooth transition. I struggled with identity issues — for so long, my work in higher education was the largest part of my identity. Five years later, I am finally comfortable answering the question “what do you do?” without hesitating or first explaining that “I used to be. . .” Now, the answer comes out: I’m a freelance writer and editor. But still, in this transition we’re making, I find myself flailing again in new and awful ways. 

We made the decision that we are not going to buy another house in our transition back to central Arkansas. While the current market situation is one reason, as is our decision for Doc to take some time off to focus on her board certification which means we are budgeting in new ways, the main reason is we don’t know where we’ll wind up. We made the decision to rent, something we never thought we would do again. It didn’t take long for me to hit my threshold. 

I get that we are not the typical renters. We’ve owned two houses together, and Doc has not rented since 1996. I’ve not rented since 2004. We’re in our 50s. We have no kids. We’re financially stable. But, just getting in the application pool was a nightmare. Even though we’re married, we were told repeatedly that both of us had to fill out applications that included a background check and credit check. That’s not a problem, but what is a problem for me — freelance writer, remember — is that they require all applicants to make at least 3.5 times the rent per month in order to even be considered. It doesn’t matter that one spouse makes more than 10 times that amount after taxes and other things are deducted — if the freelance writer only makes X dollars in steady assignments and Y (which varies as it’s royalties on novels that run six weeks behind), that’s a problem.

We literally had a realtor contact us that she needed my “check stubs” for my work, despite having Doc’s for the last quarter. Without our full tax returns, basically, they wouldn’t actually process either of our applications. We withdrew them and got our $100 back. But, the “we need Angelic’s pay stubs” took me over the threshold into a meltdown. 

Thresholds are part of our culture’s marriage nostalgia. The image of the groom carrying the bride over the threshold of their home or church still pops up over and over in movies, for instance, even though few people are aware of the superstition that his doing so prevents “the chance of her stumbling, which would anger a group of ancient household gods.”

My domestic work seems to calm those ancient household gods pretty well. When your spouse works 80+ hours a week and could be called out at any time to go deal with work, you get to do all of the household management. In addition to writing and my own research projects, I literally pay the bills, buy the groceries, plan and cook the meals, deal with the bug guy, and arrange house maintenance on a 104-year-old house. I’m the one here to meet with the electrician when he comes out to wire something. I’m the one who makes sure the dogs get exercise, who buys the cat his expensive prescription food that keeps him alive. When we had a pool, I was the one who made sure we could actually use it.

In the past, I would have been cast as a housewife. And, honestly, I’m fine with that title. But I’m aware that in the eyes of those who are running for office in my state right now, I’m not a wife at all. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been very clear that she believes states should be able to decide whether to recognize same-sex marriages. Likewise, Leslie Rutledge has repeatedly shown her disdain for marriage equality in the natural state. Both of them say they are all about protecting families and “American values.” 

As long as the families we’re talking about fit their narrow definition of family — they don’t want to protect my family. We’ve been legally married since 2007, but not all states (not even the federal government) recognized our marriage. In 2013, Section 3 of The Defense of Marriage Act fell in the ruling on United States v. Windsor, and in June of 2015 the Obergefell v. Hodges case led to a 5–4 ruling in favor of marriage equality, making our marriage legal in all 50 states. Our rental struggles took me back to the years of having to do fancy footwork when I was married in some states and not in others.

Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer were together for decades. They built a life together. Before Spyer’s death, they made the trek to Canada to get married. When Spyer died in 2009, Windsor was hit with inheritance taxes on Spyer’s estate, which she willed to her spouse. The hitch was DOMA, which kept the federal government from recognizing their marriage, even though New York, their state of residence did recognize it. Like Windsor and Spyer, we married in 2007 in Canada, and when DOMA fell, we became legal under federal law, but not under Arkansas law. 

Like Windsor and Spyer, we’ve built a life together over the last 18 years. The difficulties we’ve encountered in the last few weeks remind me I’m invisible to people like Huckabee-Sanders and Rutledge.  I remember protesting as Mike Huckabee held his Covenant Marriage rally on February 14, 2005, Dani holding a huge heart with “I can’t marry my Valentine” written on it. Dani and I met in Little Rock, protesting efforts to keep us invisible and keep us apart. And now, 18 years later, I can only wonder what Huckabee-Sanders and Rutledge have planned for Arkansas after November. The recently leaked draft opinion by Alito certainly sets the stage for those who want to bring down marriage equality to do so, and lots of us are already worried about rights being rolled back.

For the summer, though, our focus is on moving into our rent house and regrouping. Here’s hoping that the cardboard boxes don’t have to be used for protest signs, but maybe I’ll order some markers just in case. 

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