OLYMPICS: Together, again

Weeks family gathers in Rio

By Donna Lampkin Stephens
Cabot Star-Herald

The Weeks twins are reunited this week in Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics.

Tori Weeks joined her parents, Brent and Amy, for the weekend flight to Brazil. The Cabot family arrived Sunday in time to see Tori's eight-minutes-older twin sister Lexi compete in the pole vault preliminaries this morning. The finals are set for Friday night.

"We're rooting for Team Lexi," Brent Weeks said last week.

This summer marked the first time the twins hadn't competed together.

"Obviously, I want to be there with her, but I'm not resentful of anything," Tori said last week. "I just want to be there with her. I'm not going to have the same experience she is, but being there and seeing all the best athletes in the world — for me just to go there, to experience the meet, just getting to watch it, is a big deal."

Brent Weeks reiterated Tori's attitude.

"She said, 'I don't want to beat her; I want to be with her,' which makes me get teary-eyed," he said. "She doesn't want to have the limelight. She wants to have the limelight with Lexi. It's been bittersweet."

The twins pushed each other throughout high school. Tori won the Class 7A state meet as a sophomore. Lexi took the Meet of Champs title. As a junior, Lexi won both. During their senior year, Tori set the national high school indoor record at 14 feet, 4 inches; Lexi hit 14-7 1-4 for the national outdoor record.

"In their senior year, Lexi set the indoor national record early on, but Tori came back and broke that record and beat it by 3-4 inch," said Morry Sanders, who has coached the twins since they were 13 at his Arkansas Vault Club in Black Springs. "Tori would get ahead a little while, then Lexi would come back. That's the way they were from the time they were sophomores on, leapfrogging each other. You knew once one got ahead, it wasn't going to last very long.

"It's a perfect storm, a perfect situation. These two girls are best friends and do everything together. They're super-competitive, but they thrive off each other. I want one of them to pull ahead because I know the other one is going to jump up with her real soon."

The trend from high school continued during their freshman year as Lexi won SEC and NCAA indoor and outdoor titles. Indoors, Tori was third in the SEC and sixth nationally; outdoors, she finished second in the SEC and 15th nationally.

Both are All-Americans.

"They had unbelievable freshman years," Sanders said. "Lexi was the first female to ever win both indoor and outdoor championships in the same year. Everybody right now is focused on Lexi, but Tori had a phenomenal year. Most freshmen don't have a year near what she did.

"It just so happens her sister is Lexi Weeks."

Lexi said the situation was sometimes difficult.

"Us being twins, everyone compares us," she said. "People will ask, 'Why isn't Tori doing as well as Lexi?' You need to realize she's a freshman and was sixth at indoor nationals and second at SEC.

"Besides me, she's the best freshman in the country."

Sanders said their careers had always been "the Lexi-and-Tori show."

"They were competitive, but as long as the only one who beat them was their sister, they were OK with that," he said. "Now they're at the next level, it's not always going to be that situation. There are so many great athletes, it's just not going to happen like it always used to."

The original qualifying standard for the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials was 14-5 1-4. Tori hit that early in the indoor season and matched her personal record twice more outdoors. Lexi went 14-9 in her first collegiate meet.

So for a while, they expected to compete together at the Trials.

"But so many females met that (14-5 1-4) qualifying standard, they upped it to 14-9," Sanders said. "Lexi had already jumped that, and Tori just didn't get it."

After the NCAA meet, Lexi stayed in Fayetteville to train with Sandi Morris, the American record holder and former Razorback; Tori returned to Cabot.

So the Trials marked Lexi's first meet without her sister.

"It was different," Lexi said. "It helped a lot having Sandi there to fill that role. It was nice because I'm so used to having somebody there."

She surprised many when she qualified for the final spot on the American team with a PR 15-5. Jen Suhr, the defending Olympic champion, went 15-9; Morris cleared 15-7.

"Going into the trials, I expected her to do well but not to place," Tori said. "But she's just one of those people who always surprises me."

Brent Weeks said his daughters — CHS co-salutatorians with 4.26 GPAs and UA 4.0 chemistry majors — were both "incredibly disciplined."

"My oldest son made a comment one time that they are the most interesting people we know," he said. "They map out every minute of their day. They just have everything down to the minute organized. Go to their apartment in Fayetteville — everything is perfect."

Not many people expected Lexi to qualify for the Olympics this time, and not many expect her to finish among the top three in Rio.

"I don't think she's planning to medal," Brent Weeks said. "We're not expecting her to. But there's a football saying, 'Any given Sunday.' Oh, Lord, if she medals — that'll be too much. We may not come home."

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette River Valley/Ozarks: Conway has hall-of-fame coaching staff

Conway has hall-of-fame coaching staff

Donna Lampkin Stephens/Contributing WriterPublished 12:00 a.m.http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2016/aug/11/conway-has-hall-fame-coaching-staff/?f=rivervalley

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PHOTO BY: William Harvey

Former Conway Wampus Cats football coach and athletic director Dennis Fulmer looks at a photo of his 1968 Conway High School coaching staff after realizing they have all been inducted into halls of fame. Those hall-of-famers include Johnny Simmons, Ernie Miller, Joe Fred Young and Bernie Cox.

CONWAY — Dennis Fulmer of Conway was going through some old photos when a group shot of his 1968 Conway High School football coaching staff struck him.

All five in the photo — Fulmer and his four assistants — had gone on to be inducted into at least one hall of fame each.

“I just saw that picture, and I remembered what a good staff it was, all the good staff meetings we had, how everybody got along,” Fulmer said. “It’s a highlight to have that good a coaching staff. You don’t realize how good a staff that was until you get away from it.”

That staff included some of the legends of Arkansas high school football coaching:

Fulmer, now 81, was the Wampus Cat head coach from 1967-70 before becoming the first full-time athletic director in the school’s history. He has been inducted into the University of Central Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Track and Field Hall of Fame.

Joe Fred Young, 73, was offensive coordinator. After a distinguished coaching career at Fort Smith Northside, he is a member of the Arkansas High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame and the UCA Sports Hall of Fame.

Ernie Miller, 74, was defensive coordinator. He has been inducted into the UCA Sports Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Track and Field Hall of Fame.

Bernie Cox, 72, coached offensive backs and special teams. He went on to a 35-year tenure at the helm of Little Rock Central High School and is a member of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame and the Harding University Athletic Hall of Fame.

Johnny Simmons, 73, coached defensive backs and special teams and is a member of the UCA Sports Hall of Fame.

A year after the Wampus Cats went 10-1 (losing only to North

Little Rock) and were named the No. 1 team in Class AA, the 1968 squad finished 10-2.

“I got to select them, but I pretty well knew them,” Fulmer said of his coaches. “I knew Joe Fred most of his life, and Bernie was my quarterback at Jacksonville, and I knew him quite well. I knew Ernie from when he was in college [at UCA].

“They were capable coaches. I knew they could coach, and I allowed them to coach. Bernie told me one time, ‘This is the first time I’ve got to coach.’ I trusted them that much. They were that dependable, and I knew they could do the job.”

While the staff eventually moved on — Fulmer became Conway athletic director before going into private business; Young succeeded him as head coach for a year and later took Cox with him to Little Rock Central; Simmons went on to a 45-year career in banking, real estate and insurance; and Miller retired after 38 years in school-equipment sales — all five recall their common Conway experience fondly.

“Those four years meant everything in the world to me,” Cox said. “That four years there and the three years I was with Joe Fred [as an assistant] at Central set me up for whatever I’ve been able to do. The four years at Conway gave me the background I needed, and I needed it badly.

“The kids were so good to coach, and they were disciplined. That was a good community with good people, and those four guys, they took care of me.”

Cox said he believed he was too young to take the reins at Central when Young left there after three seasons for a position on Frank Broyles’ University of Arkansas staff in December 1974, but over the next 35 years, Cox led the Tigers to state titles in ’75, ’78, ’80, ’81, ’86, 2003 and ’04 — and a record of 271-93-8.

He said he played quarterback for Fulmer at Jacksonville from his freshman through senior seasons.

“[Fulmer] was one of the reasons I went into coaching,” Cox said. “I had graduated from Harding in 1966 and was coaching at Searcy when he had an opening and called me, and boy, I jumped on that. The staff over there — Joe Fred and Johnny and Coach Fulmer and Ernie and C.D. Taylor (another Hall of Famer who was the Wampus Cats’ basketball coach) — was so good, and I learned a lot about kids and coaching and football the four years I was there.

“It was the hardest thing in the world for me to leave after four years and go to Little Rock with Joe Fred. That was a wonderful, wonderful period of my coaching life. And I still have a love in my heart for Conway. I’m still for Conway in everything they do, athletically and as a community.”

Young joked that he “had to choke Bernie to get him out of Conway.”

After Central, Young coached two years under Broyles, then decided to return to high school coaching. He spent four years at Fayetteville before landing at Northside, where he took the Grizzlies to eight state championship games during his 1981-98 tenure and won the title in 1987.

“I learned everything from Dennis,” Young said. “The thing I got most from him was how to deal with people and with kids. He was absolutely marvelous.

“All the time I worked with him — five years — never, ever, ever did we have a cross word. I can’t remember him ever having a cross word with any of the coaches, and that was an inspiration to me. I always tried to do the same thing when I became a head coach. I wanted to make sure the coaches worked together, enjoyed each other and got along.

“It makes everything so much more enjoyable when you have people get along. That’s the way I looked at him then and how I look at him now. He was my hero.”

With Young’s move to Central, Miller succeeded him as Wampus Cat head coach for three seasons before going on to earn a doctorate from UA, then entering sales.

But his experience with Fulmer’s staff followed Miller throughout his career.

“They were all my friends,” he said. “It was nice to surround yourself with good people. We worked together real well. I always thought I would get back to coaching, maybe track on the college level, but another opportunity came along, and I retired from that after 38 years.

“But I always said selling was like coaching — you go out and try to win that order because of your competitive nature.”

Simmons coached just one more year after the ’68 season. Instead of taking a position as head coach and athletic director at Clarksville, he veered into business.

“Lord, that was the best staff,” he remembered. “What I liked about Dennis was he let you express your ideas, and if you had a good one, he was all for it.”

Simmons said that during his final year, the Wampus Cats were helped by quarterback Mike New.

“I could see a lot of our success was based on him, but he was going to graduate, and my next quarterback was going to be Tommy Courtway (now president of the University of Central Arkansas),” Simmons said. “Tommy’s a great guy and a great president, but he wasn’t a Mike New.”

Lessons learned?

“In football, playing and coaching, you can’t get too high or too low,” Simmons said. “You can’t let success go to your head because the next week you may get your butt beat. And if you lose a couple in a row, it’s not the end of the world. You just keep plugging along.”

Fulmer said he remained in touch with all four coaches.

“It was just a bond that coaches and friends have,” he said. “It was a time back then when the world was a little bit slower. We all taught a full load of classes. I was doing what I wanted to do all my life.”

6:51 pm - August 08, 2016

OLYMPICS: Rio down, bound for Weeks, family

Lexi Weeks at the beach in Brazil. (Twitter/@lexianne)

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By Donna Lampkin Stephens

Cabot Star-Herald

Lexi Weeks is representing the United States in the pole vault in Rio de Janeiro next week, and her hometown of Cabot has turned out to do its part.

Roughly 165 donors — almost all with some tie to the city — came together recently to raise $15,706 to help send Weeks’ parents, Brent and Amy; and her twin sister, fellow pole vaulter Tori, to Brazil to watch their Olympian compete in person.

The family will leave Saturday and arrive in Rio on Sunday. The pole vault prelims are Tuesday, Aug. 16; the finals will be Friday, Aug. 19. They will head home the next day.

It’s been a whirlwind few weeks for the whole family, but the generosity of their neighbors may have been the most emotional part.

Dwight Daugherty, who teaches AP physics and chemistry at Cabot High School — where he taught all five Weeks children, including the twins’ three older brothers — contacted Brent Weeks shortly after Lexi unexpectedly qualified for the U.S. team.

“He said they wanted to start a Go Fund Me-type site, and I said, ‘I don’t know if I can accept that kind of money,’” Brent Weeks said. “We were looking at $20,000-25,000. He said, ‘You have to. The community is going to want to do it. People want to participate.

“So I called my best friend, Paul Osborne (from Cabot), and told him what was going on. He said, ‘You have to accept it; people would be insulted if you didn’t, and this way everybody can have a piece of it.

“‘Get over your pride and do it.’”

So Brent Weeks called Daugherty the next day with the OK.

But Daugherty had already started the process through a YouCaring website, which he said featured lower administrative costs. Based on an early estimate by a travel agent, the original goal was $20,000, but the family insisted on economizing as much as possible, so the goal was revised down to $15,000.

It took just seven days and six hours to reach the goal.

“We ended up with $15,706 before I could get it shut off,” Daugherty said.

The Weeks family say they have been touched beyond words by their neighbors’ generosity.

“If it weren’t for that, there’s no way my sister and my parents would be able to make the trip,” Lexi Weeks said. “It’s so overwhelming how generous our community was. We were blown away. It’s just so crazy to have the community come behind us and support us in that way.”

Added Brent: “We are completely humbled and overwhelmed with emotion. People in Cabot are just good people. It’s a good community to raise a family. We want the people to know we are very, very grateful for what they’ve given us. We are stunned by it.”

Daugherty recalled Brent Weeks’ initial hesitation.

“He still feels very uncomfortable taking charity, but he said there was no way they could afford to go with three people,” Daugherty said. “He said they’d been saving for 2020 in Tokyo just in case, but this was a bit of a surprise.

“They’ve been very, very gracious. Brent said, ‘You give me the cheapest airfare and the cheapest motel in the safest part of town.’”

Daugherty said that hotel, where the three will stay in one room with three twin beds, wound up costing $600 per night.

Daugherty, who said he took the lead in the fundraising project after seeing the idea from a post on a local website, also checked with the University of Arkansas NCAA compliance office. Lexi and Tori will head to Fayetteville to start their sophomore year shortly after their return from Rio.

“The NCAA said anything they don’t spend has to be returned or go to a charity, and most people give to another charity,” Daugherty said. “So we listed our local scholarship fund here at the school, the Cabot Scholarship Foundation. From that, we funded $110,000 last year in local scholarships, mostly academic. The teachers and employees have a payroll deduction plan, and we give almost $20,000 out of our paychecks every year.”

So any leftover money will go there.

A booth in front of Walmart on a Saturday collected almost $700. McDonald’s donated $2,000. Dr. James Hertzog, a local optometrist, made a matching pledge of up to $1,000, “but he only had to match $660 because I cut it off once we made our goal,” Daugherty said.

An early donation of $500 came from one of Daugherty’s former students, Jarrod Burns, now an engineer in Texas.

“He doesn’t even know the Weeks family, but he wants to support the citizens here,” Daugherty said. “We had several other $500 donations, and that just stunned me. I was expecting donations of $20 or $30.”

Lexi had gotten her passport earlier this year in preparation for a different international meet, but after the fundraiser, the rest of the family had theirs expedited.

“We are going as cheaply as we can go,” Brent Weeks said. “Think how humbling this is — people gave us money they could’ve spent on groceries. People gave money that probably a lot of them didn’t have. You can’t go on a fancy vacation with that. We are taking minimal clothes and going cheap because this is not our money.”

Lexi won SEC and NCAA indoor and outdoor pole vault titles as a freshman, but her parents didn’t go to the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore., in June.

“We talked about it, but we thought it was basically a practice meet — a chance to get on a national stage and vault,” Brent Weeks said. “If you think your daughter’s got a good chance, you book in advance. If you don’t think she’s got a chance, you work 80 hours a week and you don’t go.”

Instead, he and Amy watched the Trials at their son Tyler and daughter-in-law April’s home.

“Amy never thought she would make it, and I thought there was a very slim chance she would qualify,” Brent said. “When she won that (third and final qualifying) spot, we were just beside ourselves. There was just a lot of screaming, lots of crying, absolutely crazy. Then we sat there looking at each other just dumbfounded. Amy went out and took a walk. We just could not believe it.

“We came home afterward and just sat down and looked at each other.”

Last week, the family watched the opening ceremonies from Rio. They recorded the evening, and Brent said they were able to catch a glimpse of their girl.

“I’ve got a screen grab of that,” he said.

In a text from Rio on Sunday, Lexi called the opening ceremonies “amazing.”

“Something I’ll never forget,” she said. “It was a very long day, with lots of sitting and lots of standing, but walking out into the stadium was incredible, something every athlete dreams of. Then the lighting of the torch and the fireworks at the end were magical!!!”

She said that Team USA was training at a naval base away from the Olympic Village in preparing for its competition.

“It’s very nice,” she said of the facility. “I did a short run practice last night and just a workout this morning, but we will be training out there up until we compete.”

The pole vault competition will certainly be followed in Cabot and all over Arkansas. Daugherty said Cabot High School would have televisions set up for a watch party

With so much bad news in the headlines recently, people have gravitated to this story.

Daugherty summed up the attraction.

“This family is a great family, and those two little girls — they’ve got five wonderful kids, but Lexi and Tori are both incredible athletes and incredible people. My daughter said one time, ‘You know, you’d like to dislike them — they’re beautiful, smart, athletic — but you can’t because they’re too nice.’”

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7:03 pm - August 01, 2016

OLYMPICS: Weeks packing her bug spray for Rio

Tori and Lexi Weeks are identical twins and pole vaulters at the University of Arkansas. The Cabot natives are getting ready this week for the Olympics as Lexi Weeks qualified for the United States team, while sister Tori will be in the stands watching. (Walt Beazley/University of Arkansas)

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By Donna Lampkin Stephens

Cabot Star-Herald

Cabot’s Lexi Weeks is on her way to Rio.

Weeks, 19, the Arkansas Razorback pole vaulter who qualified for the 2016 Olympic Games, and former Razorback Sandi Morris, another first-time Olympian, were to fly Tuesday to Houston for more team processing before joining many other American Olympians for the flight to Brazil.

Weeks went a career-best 15 feet, 5 inches at the United States Olympic Trials last month in Eugene, Ore., to qualify third for the three-woman American team that will compete in Rio de Janeiro. Jen Suhr, the defending Olympic champion, qualified atop the American squad.

Opening ceremonies are Friday. Pole vault prelims will be Aug. 16 with the finals Aug. 19.

“I don’t know a whole lot of what to expect,” Weeks said from Fayetteville last week. “We’ll train at the Naval facility or something like that, track and field and maybe swimming. We’ll see how it goes when we get there. We’ll train until the prelims. We won’t do a whole lot of hard workouts, just get some shakeouts and a little bit of pole vaulting.”

Arkansas vault coach Bryan Compton will join Weeks and Morris, who have trained together in Fayetteville all year.

It’s been a whirlwind few weeks for Weeks, who won the Southeastern Conference and NCAA Indoor and Outdoor titles as an Arkansas freshman but who said she never dreamed she’d spend the rest of her summer in Rio.

“I’m so excited,” she said. “Going into (the Trials) I didn’t expect to make the team. I guess I figured if I had the meet of my life I might make it, but there were three girls (Suhr, Morris and Demi Payne) ranked ahead of me, and I knew if they were going to have their day, there was no way for me. Demi didn’t have the day she was hoping to have. She’d jumped 16 feet last indoor season.”

But Payne, who had the third-best mark in the country this year (16 feet, 3-4 inch), failed to qualify for the finals.

Then, Weeks said, she saw a slight opening.

“Right away, I was like, ‘If I have my day, maybe,’ but at the same time, it was not just those three,” she said. “There were several others with experience. But Sandi had been telling me for months, ‘You never know; if someone has a bad day,’ and after the prelims she told me, ‘You really have a shot.’ I was like, ‘We’ll just see.’

“Then fast-forward to the finals, when I was making each bar and getting more and more confident.”

Weeks cleared 14-5 1-4, 14-9, 15-1 and 15-3 — each on her first try — to secure her spot on the team. She missed on her first attempt at 15-5 but cleared the personal record on her second.

The secret to her success at storied Hayward Field?

“Honestly, I think it was the atmosphere,” she said. “I’d never been in a meet where the stands were so packed, and the crowd would roar on every jump. There was so much adrenaline.”

She said Hayward Field had been full for the NCAA Outdoor Championships in June, but for the Olympic Trials, four more grandstands were brought in “so there were stands surrounding the track, not just the home and visitor’s side.”

“It was just crazy,” she said. “The whole experience was just awesome. The environment was so cool.”

She said that after she cleared 15-3, it dawned on her that might have been enough. She, Morris and Suhr turned out to be the only ones to make that height.

“Watching the other girls take their first, second and third attempts — it’s kind of a hard sport to watch,” Weeks said. “Watching girls I’m friends with — you want them to do good, but at the same time, every miss puts me closer to making the team. When the last one went out and I realized I’d made the team, Sandi and I just hugged each other. I was bawling; it was so surreal to me, and so unexpected.”

She said she purposely went into the Trials with no pressure on herself.

“There was no point,” she said. “I’d already had a great season, and this was icing on the cake. I was nervous because I’d never pole vaulted in front of that many people, but there was so much excitement. At nationals, I was expected to win and get points for my team. That was a lot harder. I think I was able to perform so well at the Trials because I was there to have fun.”

In a year, she has improved her PR from 14-7 1-2 (the outdoor national high school record) to 15-5. She went 14-9 in her first collegiate meet to secure the Olympic-qualifying standard. Two meets later, she went 15-1, then it was 15-2 1-4 at Indoor nationals, then 15-2 3-4 at a home outdoor meet.

“Especially at 15 feet and above, every little centimeter counts so much,” she said.

Weeks is making her first trip out of the country a big one. She said she hoped to be able to watch some of the other Olympic sports while she’s there.

“Sandi and I were talking the other day at practice about that, and she mentioned beach volleyball,” Weeks said. “That would be so cool. I’ve loved watching that.”

And she isn’t worried about any of the Olympic controversies that have been all over the news.

“With Zika, I’ll wear a lot of bug spray,” she said. “I feel like they’ve, hopefully, taken a lot of measures to kill the mosquitos. One of the other Olympians, (former Razorback) Omar McLeod, was telling me that our rooms weren’t ready.

“But I’m just thankful to be there,” she said. “I hope they have it figured out by the time I get there. But to be an Olympian is such an honor in itself; whatever happens, I’ll make do."

501 Life: Greenbrier's Terry May retires from coaching

Greenbrier's Terry May retires from coaching

Tuesday, 19 July 2016

by Donna Lampkin Stephens Terry May couldn’t have picked a better way to go out as Greenbrier baseball coach. May, 50, retired from coaching following the season after 26 years at the helm of the Panther program. The highlight was the 1996 Class AA state championship; his final two regular-season wins came in a 5A-West sweep of Faulkner County rival Vilonia (9-2, 3-1) in front of the biggest crowd in the history of the Greenbrier program. At a surprise retirement celebration, retiring Greenbrier Coach Terry May (left) was presented with a bat covered with photos from the ‘96 state championship run. Participating in the event were D.J. Vinacco (center) and Matt Wilcox. (Donna Spears photo) And a crowd of about 100 Panther fans — former players, parents, community members — surprised him afterward with a celebration of his career. “They did way too much, and it was awesome, really awesome,” the soft-spoken May said. “We probably had at least 30 or 35 players back; some had driven five and six hours to be here. We sat around a long time and talked about old times. It was really good seeing them all.” Becky May, the coach’s wife and a Greenbrier elementary teacher, helped plan the party. “There were a lot of older players who came back, and you’d hear young men coming up and saying things like, ‘He taught me more than baseball. He made me love the game,’” she said. “You heard the word ‘respect’ over and over again. And the camaraderie — they said you knew he cared more about you than just baseball.” May’s final team finished 14-9, third in the 5A-West, and reached the quarterfinals of the Class 5A State Tournament. But, obviously, his career has been about far more than that. May grew up in Center Ridge and was an all-state baseball and basketball player at Nemo Vista. Competitiveness came naturally. “It is in Terry to be the best at whatever he does,” Becky said. “His whole family is very competitive. Whether it is ball playing, playing cards, fishing or cooking, his uncles, aunts and siblings all want to be the best, and they want to beat you.” After his graduation in 1984, he landed a baseball scholarship to Arkansas Tech, where he played catcher. As a senior there, he earned all-Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference honors. “After my first year of college, I knew I wanted to coach,” he said. He earned his degree in physical education and health but didn’t have a job lined up when he graduated — or for some time afterward. “I had already decided to go back to school to be a (graduate assistant) for Dale (Harpenau, Tech’s baseball coach),” May said. But in late summer, Greenbrier had an opening for head baseball and assistant basketball coach, and May was hired in August. He said he thought it was meant to be. “I was really lucky to be this close to home, just 15 miles from where I grew up, and to find a baseball job,” he said. “Back then, especially, they didn’t hire many baseball coaches. To find a job this close and at a place like Greenbrier was lucky for me.” Steve Wiedower, now an assistant for the Little Rock women’s basketball team, had been head baseball and assistant basketball coach at Greenbrier. After May was hired, they worked as each other’s assistants. “He brought such enthusiasm to the game of baseball, along with his calmness and discipline that he had with his players,” Wiedower said. “Everyone respected him and enjoyed playing for him. I really enjoyed the opportunity to work with him, and he is still a great friend.” Over the years, May also spent time as assistant football coach, head junior boys basketball coach and head golf coach. “I really loved basketball, but it interfered with baseball too much,” he said. “Baseball and football work together (as a coaching assignment), but when golf was moved to the fall from the spring, a football coach couldn’t do that, so I stepped into the golf job and did that through this year.” He finished with a career baseball record of 413-210. His baseball teams won nine conference championships, reached the state tournament “20 or 21 times” and went to the semifinals “two or three times,” with the final one in 2010. At his retirement celebration, May was presented with a bat covered with photos from the ‘96 state championship run and a memory book containing photos, news clippings and well wishes documenting what his coaching career had meant to so many. From the memory book:  “Thank you for your guidance, continued support, and instilling in me what it truly means to bleed blue. Babe Ruth once said, ‘Heroes are remembered, but legends live forever.’ You will always be a legend in my book!” — Colt Harmon, Class of 2011 “Thank you for being a great coach and never taking it easy on us.” — Ryan Flake, Class of 2017 “Thank you for everything you have done and the impact you made on this town and all your past players. You’ve been one of the best coaches I’ve had and I really appreciate you and your effort.” — Hunter Russaw “Coach May, thank you for teaching me not only lessons in baseball but lessons about life, which I will take with me through the years.” — Wesley Waters “Coach May, the impact you have made on me is something I will never forget, and I wanted to thank you for that.” — Lane Herndon “Coach May doesn’t care about his winning %, TMay is about the % of players who become WINNERS!” — Dan Thornton “Thank you for allowing me to come on the journey and taking me under your wing.” — Jacob Giles, 2016 volunteer baseball coach “I am most thankful, after all these years, to call you my friend.” — Jason Miller, Class of 1991 “Thank you for setting such a great example for me to follow when I become a coach. I aspire to be a man of your character and will remember forever all you have done for me.” — Cody McKnight, Class of 2016 “Thank you for the life-long memories you have given me. Not only did you make me a better baseball player, you made me a better man as well.” — Ryan McKnight, Class of 2015 May met Becky, who teaches fifth-grade science and social studies at Eastside Elementary, during his second year at Greenbrier. She was a new teacher just out of the University of Central Arkansas. The father of one of his players, Rick Whitley (who was elementary principal) introduced them. They were married Nov. 6, 1993, and have three children: Jesse, a senior at Arkansas Tech; Jacob, a recent GHS graduate heading to UCA; and Katie Jewell, who will be a seventh grader. Becky learned early on about being a coach’s wife. “When we were first dating, Terry and his players and former players would get giddy when they were around each other — hugs, the little shoulder bumps, and the players would say things like, ‘Remember when you made me do this, Coach?’; ‘How many foul poles did you make me run for that?’ Terry started coaching at 23, so for several years, he was more like their big brother.  “But I know the feelings he has toward his boys. They’re his. I learned very quickly you did not criticize or comment negatively about his boys. He was very defensive of them. He could say it, but you were not able to say anything negative about his boys.” She said he was also good at keeping secrets — at least the negative ones. “I would tell the parents, ‘If your son did something really good, I might know it, but if your kid did anything bad, I would never know,’” she said. “After a few years, no one would pump me for information.” She said she long ago learned the essence of Terry May. “He’s always going to do what he thinks is fair for each of his players, what is fair to the game,” she said. “He’s not going to lie, not going to sugar-coat, and the best player plays. We’ve lost friendships over that, but everybody will say about Terry, if you deserve to play, you’re playing. “It doesn’t matter who you are; if you are not performing, you don’t play. And that’s how it ought to be. He’s been very consistent with that.” May, who will remain as dean of students at the junior high, said he had mixed feelings when thinking about his retirement from coaching. “It feels good in some ways, but I drove by the field the other day, and I didn’t know if I would walk out there again or not,” he said. One thing is for sure, though — he will transition into a Panther fan. “Oh yeah, definitely,” he said. “Especially for these seniors I’ve had for three years. I will definitely be there to see them play in the spring.” Meanwhile, he should get some more time to hunt and fish and take family trips to the lake. “I’m sure I’ll find something to do,” he said.

501 Life: Harding professor named to World War I committee

Harding professor named to World War I committee

Tuesday, 19 July 2016

by Donna Lampkin Stephens A Harding University professor has been named to Arkansas’s nine-member World War I Centennial Commemoration Committee. Dr. Shawn Fisher, 44, assistant professor of history who specializes in American history, military history and Southern history, was chosen as one of three at-large members by Gov. Asa Hutchinson after meeting the governor when Hutchinson came to the Harding campus. Harding University’s Shawn Fisher was chosen by Gov. Asa Hutchinson for the World War I Centennial Commemoration Committee. (Jeff Montgomery photo) “When they started this, I was contacted, and they wanted to know if I wanted to be part of it,” Fisher said. “I said yes, and when we got to the first meeting, they said they needed a chairman — ‘Would you do it?’ So I’m the chairman by name, but the guy doing the real work is Mark Christ (community outreach director for the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program).” According to a Harding press release, the committee will plan events and projects for Arkansas’s two-year commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Great War in 2017 and ‘18. “It is a great privilege to work on this project as we recognize the legacy of the Great War in Arkansas and the Arkansans who served in the war,” Fisher said in the release. “It’s a first for me, to serve on a state committee, but I’m humbled to be able to contribute.” Fisher graduated from Searcy High School in 1990 and earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1997 and a master of education degree from Harding. He taught in public schools at Bradford and White County Central before returning to Harding to teach. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Memphis in 2013. He had joined the National Guard at 17, and the GI Bill helped him become the first in his family to earn a college degree. “I have a very brief military background, and it made a big difference for me, so I have a fondness, an affinity, for the military,” Fisher said. “It’s a pleasure to be involved in this. I appreciate the governor having the faith in me to ask me to do it. I’m just trying to do a good job for the people of Arkansas for this very important historical event.” Fisher said besides the some-70,000 Arkansans who participated, WWI had a huge impact on the state. “It marked the beginning of the ROTC program in the state, and it sent a lot of Arkansas boys far away to France,” he said. “In many ways, this is the end of the Civil War and the beginning of a sort of national unity that brings the North and South together for the first time.” The Great War — the world’s first global conflict — began in Europe on July 28, 1914, and lasted until Nov. 11, 1918. The United States didn’t enter the conflict until 1917, thus the centennial commemoration is beginning next year. “Right around this time, you had the 50th anniversary of the Civil War, and people from the North and South shaking hands and their sons and grandsons going off to war under the American flag for the first time,” Fisher said. “There was resistance to the draft in Arkansas in several counties, some talk about, ‘No, I’m not going to go fight for the U.S.’ That’s just a very important part of Arkansas’s participation in a national project.” He said Arkansas lost 1,000-1,500 men in battle but several thousand more to disease, including an outbreak of swine flu following the war that killed a large number of people at Camp Pike (now Camp Robinson) in North Little Rock. Fisher said the committee’s work now was mainly planning. It is also working to coordinate various groups’ efforts to commemorate the centennial. “We will serve as a clearinghouse to make sure people are getting approval if they want to say they’re an official event at the state level,” he said. “We’ll have some requests for speakers or materials. We’re putting together books and articles for people to look at about what is Arkansas’s history during the First World War. The state historical department has put together a traveling display they’ll try to get around to all the counties. As I understand it, it’s quite nice.” Official activities will begin in January. Fisher said the committee has a logo and is working on a website, among other things. “We have a lot of resources that need to be pulled together,” he said. Other committee members include Stacy Hurst, director of the Department of Arkansas Heritage; Dr. Raymond Screws, director of the Arkansas National Guard Museum; Dr. Lisa Speer, Arkansas State Historian; Lt. Col. Matt Snead, director of the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs; Lt. Col. Joel Lynch, public affairs officer of the Arkansas National Guard; Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas; Maj. Gen. Mark Berry, adjutant general, Arkansas National Guard; and Retired Lt. Col. Ken Griffin, military and veterans affairs officer in the Governor’s Office.

501 Life: Thornton remembered for service to 501

Thornton remembered for service to 501

Tuesday, 21 June 2016

by Donna Lampkin Stephens While the April death of Ray Thornton, one of the real Renaissance men in Arkansas history, reverberated across the nation and the state, the 501 lost a native son. Thornton, a former law professor, lawyer, attorney general, United States congressman, university president and Arkansas Supreme Court justice, among other accomplishments, died April 13. At a Grant County event in 2015 in his honor, Ray Thornton and his granddaughter, Melody Woodard, hold a photo showing Ed Handy (left) and Thornton with the first Handywagon in May 1965. Thornton and Handy developed the vehicle. Woodard conducted research on her grandfather and his accomplishments for a slide presentation at the event. “I’m in awe of all the things he has done,” she said. “This is my favorite photo ever.” “The main thought I have about Ray is that while he had a nominal political career, very few people have been in the positions he’s been in, including president of two of our major universities,” said former long-time state Sen. Stanley Russ. “He was always a gentleman. I rank him right up there with our superstars — Bumpers, Pryor, Tucker — but he wasn’t as flamboyant. “He was just totally, quietly effective.” Thornton’s first tie to the 501 was his birth in Conway on July 16, 1928, in a house his father had bought for his own mother, Sally Thornton. “He paid $600 for the little house on Ash Street in Conway because she had lost, through a separation, her husband,” Thornton told Scott Lunsford of the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History in an oral history for the Arkansas Memories Project. “She was selling pins and needles and other materials like that in a little cart she pushed around the city of Conway. Mother and Dad thought that she needed more, so they paid $600 for this house on Ash Street. I was born there.” His father, Raymond Hoyt Thornton Sr., had grown up on Gold Creek and was the first member of the family to go to college, graduating from Arkansas State Teachers College (now the University of Central Arkansas) in the mid-1920s. He took a job as superintendent at Poyen and was, Thornton said, the first person in Grant County to have a college degree. Poyen was where Thornton Sr. met Wilma Elizabeth Stephens, who became his wife. “I think he was very smart in marrying Mother, who was also a brilliant person who later became a schoolteacher of more than 40 years’ experience,” Thornton said in the oral history interview. “So I was fortunate in that I was a child of two schoolteachers, and they didn’t have enough members in their classes, so they spent their time teaching and indoctrinating me. And without my having any idea that it was unusual, they had me reading at the age of 3. While I was that age, I would go to Prattsville (in Grant County) and read the newspaper to my grandfather (Albert Jackson Stephens).” Wilma Elizabeth Stephens was the daughter of Stephens and the sister of Witt and Jack Stephens, who went on to be considered 20th-century kingmakers of Arkansas. She did most of her collegiate work at ASTC during the summers, so young Ray spent a lot of time in Conway with the Thornton family. As a child at his grandmother’s house in Conway, Thornton choked on a banana and hard-rock candy, and the mother of Silas Snow, who went on to become president of ASTC, “ran across the street and took me by the heels and shook me until the rock candy and banana came out,” he said in the oral history interview. “So my life was saved there. Dr. Snow was always pleased that he could claim credit for his mother saving my life.” Thornton grew up mostly in Grant County, where his parents were educators. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, he attended the University of Arkansas, where he won the Navy Holloway Program Scholarship that took him to Yale University, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in international relationships and engineering. He went on to study at the University of Texas Law School and the Navy School of Engineering before serving with the Pacific Fleet during the Korean War. After his service ended, he completed his law degree at the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1956. He married the former Betty Jo Mann of Sheridan (with whom he had daughters Nancy, Mary Jo and Stephanie) and moved to Little Rock to work in the legal department at Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company (Arkla), which his uncle Witt had acquired in 1954. He also worked in some of the other Stephens family businesses until making a decision to strike out on his own. “After all those good experiences, I found myself one day going over to Witt’s office and say(ing), ‘You know, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all that you’ve done for me since I’ve come to the firm,’” Thornton said in the oral history interview. “He looked at me and said, ‘Well, what is it?’ I said, ‘Well, I really want to become a candidate for public office, and I can’t ask for any better employment than you’ve given me. I’ve made a lot of money and I’m happy.’” Thornton recalled that his uncle bit on his cigar and then said, “Well, let me tell you this. If you are coming for advice, I’m glad to know you are making good money, and if it were me I know what I’d do. I’d stay right where you are and make a pot full of money, and you’ll probably have more effect on politics than you’ll ever have as a candidate. But if you decide you really want to be a candidate, then I’ll support you, and all the family will support you, as long as you don’t use your politics for making money. “Now if you want to make money, you stay right here and you’ll make a bushel basket of it. But if you go into politics, the only thing I have, or the family has, to gain is your reputation for honesty and integrity, and that isn’t the same as making a lot of money. So you think about it, and if you want to go into politics I’ll support you, and if you want to make money, stay right here.” Thornton said the conversation made him “think hard.” “(H)e had it right,” he said of his uncle. “He understood it — that going into politics is not the way to make yourself a fortune. It’s a way to do public service. I decided I wanted to go into politics, and I chose to go into a race for the attorney general.” He served one term as state attorney general in the early 1970s before being elected to the United States House of Representatives from the Fourth Congressional District for three terms. There he served on the House Judiciary Committee, which in the aftermath of the June 1972 Watergate break-ins put together draft articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon. According to Thornton’s biography in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas by Dr. Paul D. Haynie, professor of history at Harding University, “Thornton’s three articles indicted the president for abuse of power, obstruction of justice and continuing to show contempt for Congress. The substance of Thornton’s draft was approved, and the articles were immediately submitted to the full Judiciary Committee, which, after some amending, passed article one — obstruction of justice — on July 27, 1974, and the other two articles — abuse of power and contempt of Congress — by July 30. With the ‘smoking gun’ tape becoming public, as well as the upcoming vote in the House to accept the Judiciary Committee’s impeachment articles and his loss of congressional support, Nixon resigned on Aug. 9.” Thornton left the House to run for the U.S. Senate in 1978 as a Democrat against another congressman, Jim Guy Tucker, and the sitting governor, David Pryor, in what has been called “one of the classic campaigns in the history of the state,” according to Jay Barth’s biography of Pryor in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “That was a race of three of the political giants of their time,” Russ said. “The race seesawed back and forth among all three. Ray was ahead much of the time, and then he was second, which would’ve put him in a runoff, except that Jim Guy slipped in there and got second. It was razor-close for second.”  Pryor went on to beat Tucker in the runoff, and Thornton returned to Arkansas the next year to go into higher education. As he said later, “(H)e won the Senate and I won the presidency of Arkansas State University and the University of Arkansas.” Thornton was executive director of the Joint Educational Consortium of Ouachita Baptist University and Henderson State University before being named president of ASU in 1980 and UA in 1984. He decided on a return to politics in 1990, when he ran for U.S. representative from the Second Congressional District. “(T)here was some talk that I had chosen to move into the district in order to run,” Thornton said in the oral history interview. “We countered that pretty effectively by asking Mr. Kitchens, who owned the little house that I was born in, if we could open up the campaign there, and he said, ‘Certainly, if you’ll tell me you won’t do anything to cut my rights to use a gun for hunting.’ I agreed to that, and we had the campaign kickoff on the steps of the house where I was born in Conway. “With that, the criticism of my being an outsider seeking a district to run in kind of disappeared.” Thornton served the Second District until 1997 before being elected to an eight-year term on the Arkansas Supreme Court. Once that ended in 2005, he was the first Public Service Fellow for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. He still wasn’t finished. Despite his opposition to a state-run lottery, in 2009 he became the first chairman of the Arkansas Lottery Commission. “(W)hen the people of Arkansas voted by nearly two-thirds (60 percent) to start one, I thought it was critically important to make sure that it developed the connection to scholarship and to giving deserving students an opportunity to go to higher education in Arkansas,” Thornton said during the 2011 interview. “I was told that a program properly run could develop many scholarships and would be very useful. I’ve seen in the paper recently that several students have remarked that they would not have had an opportunity to go to college except for this program.” He said he agreed to serve as chair for a while but that he didn’t want to get stuck too long in the position. “(I)t’s going to need a good steady hand to get it started,” he said. “Then it can be refined and developed into an ongoing program. I’m good to get it started because I have experience starting other enterprises.” He said the decision to hire Ernie Passailaigue from South Carolina to get the nuts and bolts of the lottery going was a good one, although Passailaigue was ultimately criticized for his high salary and eventually returned to South Carolina. “I became very convinced that Ernie could get it done and that we’d have to pay him a lot more because to get a program like that started, ordinarily you have to hire a consultant or two and pay them a half million dollars each to develop the plans,” Thornton said. “Well, all Ernie had to do was to put in place the plans he had used in South Carolina. And so it was an expensive couple of years, but it didn’t cost us as much as it would have to get one or two consultants to tell us how to do it. “So instead of waiting for someone to tell us how, we hired a manager who knew how to make it go, and Ernie did a fine job of getting it started. We have had many scholarships funded.” Thornton said in the 2011 interview that his life had been enriched by the quality of people who supported him as well as those who ran against him. “I’m happy with the opportunities I’ve had in my career,” he said. “I don’t mean to say that I’ve always got it right. But I do mean to say that I’ve always gotten it right within the scope of my vision and understanding of the issues.