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County Official Profile
Sonny Cox: Making a difference in Arkansas County
By Randy M. Kemp County Lines Editor
Depending on your dealings with Glenn “Sonny” Cox, Arkansas County Judge, you might call him a knowledgeable road man, a good supervisor, an effective leader; you might say he’s fair, honest, level-headed, outgoing, open-minded, and genuine. Tack on persuasive speaker and trainer, and you’re starting to get a pretty good snapshot of the Hon. Judge Cox, in his 18th year as top administrator of the state’s third largest county by area, known worldwide for its rice and “duck-mania”.
Judge Cox is a “people person” by nature. He’s not intimidated by anyone. That’s not to say he runs over anybody; on the contrary, he’s never met a stranger, and considers everyone he meets a friend. He’ll look you in the eye, chat you up with a smile, and listen to you carefully.
He’s apt to say he was born in Humphrey, a little burg down the road from Stuttgart. But if you know your way around this Delta region, he’ll pinpoint a little bend on the Bayou Meto called Cox’s Bend. His mother still lives in the same house where he was born. “I grew up loving the country,” he said.
Marrying his sweetheart of 48 years, Marilyn (“she’s the love of my life!”), they raised their kids in “town” – in Arkansas County that means Stuttgart – but later on he talked her into moving back to the country.
In 1989 they sold the family business, Shirkey-Cox Pipe and Supply Company, Inc. and moved to eight acres 14 miles out of town. “I’m an outside person. I love to get up in the morning and take my coffee outside and wander around,” he said with a smile.
Just as importantly, the move put him exactly halfway between Arkansas County’s dual courthouses at Stuttgart and DeWitt. It was about that time that he was part of a coffee-drinking crowd in Stuttgart. “There were 10 or 12 of us in the coffee shop one morning talking,” he recalls. He already had experience on the city council, planning commission, and chamber of commerce, among other roles. “One of my friends said I ought to run for county judge; that with my political experience, dirt and roadbuilding experience, having managed my own company, and knowing how to meet and deal with people I ought to run.
“I brushed it off, but at the same time it kinda intrigued me.” He replied, “I’ll tell you what. If you all sitting at this table will raise some money, I’ll consider it.”
“Well, some of them right then and there raised $1,500, in about three minutes. I went home and told my wife about it, and she thought I was crazy! But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, ‘you know, this is something I could make a difference in’. I thought they were kidding, but they were serious. That’s a humbling experience, in a way.”
As a young adult, the opportunity to attend a Dale Carnegie “Win Friends and Influence People” course helped him hone his winning personality even more. He remembers that course for other reasons as well – classmates J.B. and J.L Hunt went on to become giants in Arkansas and regional business circles.
A love for heavy equipment...
“Sonny” was an energetic young representative for Union Life Insurance Co. at the time, first in sales then as a recruiting and training manager. His first love, though, was heavy equipment. After growing up on a farm and graduating from Stuttgart High School in 1957, he joined the National Guard in 1958, where he learned to operate a lot of equipment while becoming knowledgeable in dirt work.
In 1968 he got the opportunity to move back to Stuttgart, working with Irrigation Pipe Supply, which his dad managed. In 1970, Sonny and his dad became owners of their own business – Shirkey-Cox Pipe and Supply Co. While he was keeping the business humming over the next 22 years, he found himself elected or appointed to serve in a number of posts, including Stuttgart City Council; Stuttgart Planning and Zoning; longtime member and president of the Stuttgart Chamber of Commerce; and so on. He also was chairman of the prestigious World Championship Duck Calling Contest, a Delta staple known around the world. He’s chaired virtually every event in the annual fall contest.
Guiding principles...
“The worst thing you can do is go into office and make wholesale changes” without studying the situation from various viewpoints. “I spent my first year looking and studying how things worked before I started making a lot of changes. I went to every school that AAC and the County Judges Association offered; I read all the manuals; and I studied up on what are the duties and responsibilities of a county judge.
“First and foremost is the ability to get along with others. The ability to lead is not Godgiven, I don’t think; it’s listening to other people, and how they think it ought to work. And somewhere in the middle, there’s compromise.
“I’ve always felt that, you give me a problem, I’ll find a solution. It doesn’t have to be ‘my way or the highway’; I want to be a good listener. I consider myself as being able to find a solution that will work, a solution that works best for the majority. There are plenty of those opportunities in the courthouse, and out on the roads, and among the general public.
“One of the lessons I learned early in life: Treat everybody the same; the same rules for everybody. My dad taught me that! If you have five kids and three cookies, everybody gets a piece of cookie; we didn’t do for some and not for the others because we don’t like them as well.” In fact, that is one of the cornerstones when he leads training at the biennial new-elect seminars put on by the AAC after each election. “The worst thing (a newly-elected judge) can do is have an agenda when you come into the office: ‘I’m gonna get even with so-and-so’; or the fact that you’re going to change this or that without looking at the other side.”
With his expertise in roads, water flow, and heavy equipment, one might wonder how “hands-on” is Judge Cox with his road department crew? “I try to be involved, and be handson, but my philosophy is you surround yourself
County Official Profile County Official Profile
Arkansas County Judge Glenn “Sonny” Cox navigates smoothly through an impromptu interview with a Channel 4 NBC reporter in the halls of the Capitol moments after he testified in committee against the “unfunded mandates” burden that would have been placed on county road departments by further dump truck tarpaulin restrictions proposed by Sen. Kim Hendren.
with good people, good leaders – and let those leaders train the rest of the people. I am handson with my supervisors. I don’t ever go to the staff with correction; that needs to come from the supervisors.”
How does he handle complaints? First, he doesn’t even call them complaints; to Judge Cox, they’re “challenges”.
“I try to end a call or visit not with them being mad at you, but with understanding. You try to explain, then follow through on what you tell them. And when somebody’s complaining, you never interrupt them; you let them talk and vent.”
Proud of...
On the same ballot that saw Sonny first elected, voters in Arkansas County turned down a sales tax designated to build a new jail, although the old jail had been condemned. “I was a brand new judge, sworn in on Jan. 1, but the budget finance chairman said, ‘We need to get this back on the ballot, and in a way that will be successful’. I believed I knew how to restructure the ballot title so it would pass. I presented that to the quorum court at the February meeting, and we put it back on the ballot in July, when it passed by 76 percent.”
What did they do differently? They needed to raise $5 million for construction costs, plus have an ongoing revenue stream for maintenance and operation. The first ballot asked voters to approve a 1 percent sales tax hike, and after construction, to roll that back to a half-percent for O&M. “I was out in the public enough that I knew why it had failed. The problem was, the people didn’t think it would ever be lowered after construction,” he recalled. His successful approach was to pitch the idea of a half-percent sales tax for acquisition, construction, and ongoing operation of a new jail, then instead of starting construction immediately, to bank it for a short time (1993-96) until they had enough to build the jail. “I’m very proud of how we did that, and of it passing by a vote of 76 percent. When we got it built $5 million later, it was paid for.”
He also takes pride in the county’s 9-1-1 system and state-of-the-art Office of Emergency Management. Federal CSEPP and grant money was important to the OEM program. The 9-1-1 system was due to another successful ballot issue that levied fees on land line telephones. Renovation of both courthouses in his dual-seat county, as well as renovation of a courthouse annex and construction of two county health buildings, are also high on his “proud of” list.
BulletPoints
...about Judge “Sonny” Cox
Public Service / Boards / Associations:
Past History
• Stuttgart Planning Commission • Stuttgart City Council Finance Chairman • Grand Prairie War Memorial Association President and Board Member • Stuttgart Chamber Of Commerce President and
Board Member • World Championship Duck Calling Contest Chairman • Chairman Stuttgart Jaycees • Coalition of Juvenile Justice – State Commission on Library Laws • County Judges Association of Arkansas Executive
Board 2004-2005 • Two-year term as County Judges Association of
Arkansas (CJAA) President
Presently Serving
• Stuttgart Industrial Development Commission • DeWitt Industrial Development Commission • DeWitt Chamber of Commerce • Stuttgart Chamber of Commerce • AWIN Executive Committee Co-Chair, with Claire
Bailey • AWIN Steering Committee • Arkansas County Fair Association • Southeast Arkansas Economic Development
District Vice-President • Southeast Solid Waste District President • Child Development, Inc.
Family
Sonny and his wife, Marilyn, have two children, Kristi
Cox and Marci Cox Miller, and two grandchildren,
Olivia and Rally. He and his family are members of Emanuel Lutheran Church of Stuttgart, where he serves as president of the Church Council.
Education/Background
Graduated Stuttgart High School in 1957, attended
Little Rock University, Dale Carnegie Graduate.
LUTC I and LUTC2, several management schools for Union Life Insurance Company. Owned and operated Shirkey-Cox Pipe and Supply Company.
Sonny Cox: Continued from 39 >>>
Roads, bridges, and beavers...
“When I campaigned originally, I said I would improve the road system: Better roads, with crowns, and better drainage.” When you live in a county that is as flat as a pancake, drainage is a big problem – one that is compounded by large beaver populations along the many streams, bayous and levees. Their dams are bad about flooding county roads. He tackled that problem with a beaver tail bounty. The county budgets to buy 2,500 beaver tails per year, with the county paying $15 each and landowners matching it with another $10. It’s a beaver control project, not beaver eradication, the judge noted. In 1996, Arkansas County was honored with recognition for its model beaver control program.
The Delta drainage issues are central to a number of this county’s challenges. There is a great need for better and more paved roads, but it’s like fixing things around an aging house or barn: before you fix one obvious problem, sometimes you have to back up and fix something else first. In Sonny Cox’s case, he inherited approximately 1,000 wooden bridges in the early 1990s, and “it really does no good to have a nice 16-foot road with a wooden bridge in it,” he said.
“We’ve replaced about 800 of them with steel tank cars or concrete culverts or concrete bridges. One of my goals in the next three years is to replace all the remaining wooden bridges.” That way the next county judge will be able to focus more on road improvements and paving, he said.
His biggest frustration, he admitted, comes back to the county roads system. “This is probably the most frustrating thing any county judge deals with,” he noted. “I would have liked to have paved more miles of road than I have.” Judge Cox has 1,500 miles of gravel roads, 200 miles of dirt roads, and about 135 miles of paved county roads.
For the rookie road-builder, consider that it costs twice as much to build a road in the Delta as elsewhere in the state, because there is no rock with which to construct a solid road bed. “If there is rock in Arkansas County, we’ve hauled it in there. Gravel has to come from Little Rock, which is a 150-mile round trip.” Arkansas County, at 1,035 square miles, is 70 miles long, north to south. “It’s all as flat as this desk, and there’s no rock close to us!” he said. Plan, then communicate...
Along with Judge Cox’s practical insights and “people” skills is his ability to communicate what he wants to accomplish. Since you can’t spend money you don’t have, his approach has been to “fix what we’ve got, and phase in the things we want to do.” The secret to a good plan, he said, is publicly communicating through the local media what needs to be accomplished and what steps it will take, then phase it in so that people can see it happening. “The first thing I did was to make a seven-year road plan, then a 10-year road plan, and a 15-year road plan,” he confided. And he often reminds his supervisors and new-elect participants: “Who won the race – the tortoise or the hare? Going on methodically beats going off herky-jerky every time.”
Personal...
He takes pride in having been married for 48 years. “She’s the love of my life. We’ve made the long haul.” They work at spending time together, whether it is going out to dinner, working on projects together, working out in the yard together. “We tried to raise our kids the same way.” Sonny had one brother, but Marilyn was from a family of six, “and I love our large family reunions.”
Sonny used to be an avid hunter and fisherman, but that has given way in later years to an interest in history, travel, spending time with grandchildren and other family members, and in general helping people find solutions to problems. “Family is numero uno,” he says with conviction. “The Lord has blessed me with good health and I am very thankful for that. I thank God for my wife, children, and grandchildren.”
Judge Cox has devoted countless hundreds of hours to civic, church and other community functions, in addition to service through the County Judges Association of Arkansas. “I really enjoyed coming up through the ranks of the CJAA, and serving as president” in 2004-05, he added. “I’ve always enjoyed politics, and I tended to be pushed out front – because I’m not bashful, I guess!”
Final thoughts... > “My goal is to get in two more years as judge, then run for state representative. I want to go to the state capitol, and see if a country boy can make a difference.”
> “I enjoy going to the Capitol” where, in the role of county judge, he sometimes testifies in committee on behalf of county government legislation. “I really feel I can make a difference. That’s the reason why anybody should run for office.
> “I don’t think you just wake up one morning and want to run for county judge, or state representative, or mayor; I think usually someone encourages you, thinks you can do it. It is a process that starts with someone encouraging you.”
> “The thing about city and county government... it’s no different to the chamber of commerce. It’s one-on-one talking to someone, treating everybody fairly.”
> “I hope I come across as genuine. That’s the thing that when you talk to someone, you want to come across as someone you can trust, can have confidence in; that what you see is what you get. I’ve seen people who are one way when they’re with someone, and another way when they’re with someone else. I never want to be perceived that way. When you see me I’m going to try to be the same way all the time, because I want to be genuine.”
> “When I retire, I want people to say of me: ‘He did a good job, and when he told me something, you could believe him; you could put it in the bank.’”
