
1 minute read
Former professor Purvis dies; UA, Fulbright years remembered
by Bill Bowden
Originally published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on May 27, 2023. Reprinted with permission.
Advertisement
Hoyt Purvis of Fayetteville died on Friday after an illness, said his wife Marion Purvis. He was 83.
During his colorful life, Purvis had been kidnapped by Johnny Cash, dangled his feet in the Black Sea with U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd while waiting to meet with Leonid Brezhnev, and watched smoke billowing from the Pentagon on 9-11.
For 34 years, he was a prominent figure on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville -- 36 years if you count the two years it took him to clean out his office.
Purvis was a journalism professor who had served as an aide to U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and an adviser to Sen. Byrd of West Virginia.
“He was just a brilliant, brilliant man,” said former UA journalism professor Gerald Jordan. “He read anything in sight and just constantly vacuumed up information. We were so fortunate. Imagine the places he could have gone.”
Purvis had an uncanny ability to be in the middle of history, said UA journalism professor Larry Foley.
“Like Forrest Gump, he was everywhere,” said Foley.
“He had a date to appear on ‘Jeopardy!’, and he probably would have won, but somehow or another word got back to Sen. Fulbright and he wouldn’t let him go,” said Foley. “The senator didn’t want his staffer off gallivanting in California on game shows.”
Charlie Alison, a UA spokesman, said he called Purvis while he was in Washington, D.C., during the aftermath of 9/11.
“He was there for a meeting of the Fulbright Exchange Program when he was chair of it,” said Alison. “He adjourned the meeting and walked across the Capitol Mall to the Potomac, where he could see the Pentagon on the opposite side burning and smoke billowing out.”
Then there was that time in 1958 when he was kidnapped by Johnny Cash. Sort of.
Purvis was in high school in Jonesboro at the time. He and another student drove to Bono, where Cash was playing a gig, to ask him to perform in Jonesboro.
After the show, Cash invited the boys to join him in his black Cadillac to talk it over. The next thing they knew, the driver started the car, shifted into gear and the Caddy began rolling down the highway. Eventually, it went over the Mississippi River bridge into downtown Memphis, where the driver stopped and deposited
Continued on Page 4