2005
2004
2003
2002
SKIP RUTHERFORD AND JO LUCK (Jan. 20), for leading non-profits that, in addition to their larger missions, are transforming the core of Little Rock: Rutherford, for his role as chairman of the Clinton Foundation and planning coordinator for the Clinton Library, and Luck for presiding over enormous growth at Heifer International. Rutherford stepped down from leading the Clinton Foundation in 2006 to become dean of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. Luck resigned from Heifer in 2010, saying she wanted to focus on writing a book about her experience leading the non-profit.
MR. AND MRS. RURAL ARKANSAS (Jan. 23), for successfully fighting school consolidation. “To save their tiny local schools, these men and women out-organized and outfought the governor, big corporations, the press, and what should have been a majority of the state legislature,” Doug Smith writes. Despite this success, school consolidation continued in the years that followed. In 2004, there were more than 300 school districts in the state. Today, there are fewer than 250.
MARK PRYOR (Jan. 24), for bucking a national Republican tide in 2002 to win a U.S. Senate seat despite the largest surge of money into a single campaign since the fourth and losing Winthrop Rockefeller campaign for governor in 1970.
WARREN STEPHENS (Jan. 25), for being the dominant man in business in Arkansas. Also, Ernest Dumas notes in his profile, Stephens “has led fund drives for higher education, given millions with his wife and father for the expansion of the Arkansas Arts Center along with other philanthropies including a stunning private high school; skirmished with the company’s critics on medical investments while steering the company deeper into biomedicine and genome research.”
2001
2000
1999
1998
TOWNSEND WOLFE (Jan. 26), for turning “duck-hunting businessmen into collectors of fine art, tight-fisted millionaires into philanthropists and the Arkansas Arts Center into a destination,” Leslie Newell Peacock writes. Wolfe, director and chief curator for 33 years, put an indelible stamp on the Arts Center, expanding its collection of works on paper, broadening its outreach and presiding over the Arts Center’s biggest capital campaign, which added 32,000 square feet to the museum. (He retired shortly afterward, and the Arts Center is still struggling to find firm ground.)
MIKE HUCKABEE (Jan. 28), for being “as much the big dog of Arkansas politics as Clinton ever was” and for “some real, if exaggerated, accomplishments — health insurance for poor children, especially; a modest highway program — and, frankly, for not being as bad as we feared,” Doug Smith writes. By the time his term as governor ended in 2007, he was the third longest-serving Arkansas governor, and some of our fears were justified.
HOUSTON NUTT (Jan. 29), for guiding the Razorbacks to a 9-3 record in 1998. Nutt was hailed by no less than Orville Henry, the pen of the Razorbacks, as the answer to fans’ prayers. In his Arkansan of the Year profile, Hoyt Purvis points out that it was Nutt’s 14th wedding anniversary the day Nutt was introduced as the Razorback football coach. Nine years later, Nutt resigned after two semi-scandals related to cyber messages: His 1,000 texts to a female television news anchor and another friend’s derogatory e-mail to quarterback Mitch Mustain.
DR. HARRY P. WARD (Jan. 30), for developing UAMS into one of the most powerful institutions in Arkansas. Under Ward’s leadership as chancellor, UAMS saw $200 million in new construction over the previous decade. “The campus makeover,” Bob Lancaster writes in his profile, “has transformed UAMS from a provincial little doctor factory — with a rather shabby hospital for indigent patients — into a first-rate metropolitan medical center.” Since 1980, the year after Ward began his position, the UAMS annual budget grew from $60 million in 1980 to nearly half a billion in 1997. www.arktimes.com
MAY 9, 2012
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