The publishers of The Eagle Democrat have chosen to publish articles from the past Oldtimer’s Notebook in memory of Robert L. Newton. This article was first published July 21, 2001.
William Aubert Martin (USAF-Ret.) is one of the remnant of the faithful old crowd that never used to miss a Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival.
The group included Colonel Martin, Senators Dale Bumpers and David Pryor, surely Henry Lee Turner, the retired school official at Morrilton who is always there when there is any sort of gathering of Arkansas people.
Colonel Martin was here for the recent festivity: who has seen either of Arkansas’ two U.S. Senators in Bradley County, of late?
In 2001?
2000?
Maybe we don’t amount to much to the State’s new power elite, based now in that sprawling megaplex that includes Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, and Bentonville.
Well, Governor Huckabee was here…he even entered the tomato-eatin’ contest.
The Governor, onetime Hope radio announcer and onetime rising preacher in the Southern Baptist Church, comes across on television as being excessively-portly (i.e. FAT); he doesn’t give that impression in person.
Back in Bradley county again was Lt. Governor Win Rockefeller, bravely he auctioned off the “first box” of Bradley County tomatoes at the all-tomato luncheon. Affiliated Foods of Little Rock and its CEO, Jerry Davis, paid five thousand dollars for the tomatoes.
That’s FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS that goes directly into the coffers of the festival for 2002…the 46th such festival in Warren town.
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Two items of concern about the festival.
Attendance at the all-tomato luncheon at the elegant family life center at First Baptist was just awful.
Perhaps 40 to 45 percent of the places at the tables were left unfilled.
Festival officials said they’d sold “all the tickets” for ten dollars each…lots of folks, for one reason or another, were willing to eschew a delicious meal and lose their ten-spot.
Also, this is the first time in our memory that Channel 7 television in Little Rock didn’t give extensive coverage to the festivity.
There are reasons for this, of course, since onetime Warrenite Dale Nicholson, who heads the TV venture, wouldn’t voluntarily give up providing the wonderful publicity for his hometown.
To Nicholson we’d say: “thanks for everything you’ve done for us and, if you can, send old Good Lookin’, the hair-ad weather man back in 2002!”
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Colonel William Aubert Martin was in the Class of ’49 at WHS, one laden with people who would taste future success.
There’s Colonel Martin, who headed the Arkansas Bar Foundation and who had 30 years in the Air Force Judge Advocate department; Dr. Charles Clyde Tracy, a renowned physician in Pine Bluff, surely Dr. Joel Smith Watkins, of the geology faculty of Texas A&M University.
John Claude Greenwood, a highly-placed YMCA official in Dallas, now retired, fits in there, too.
Col. Martin was known as “Aubert” in town and by an old nickname that won’t be published here.
In the air force, he was “Bill”.
The Colonel notes the wonderful new work being done in downtown Warren and the fact that there are no longer two steps to climb at the First State Bank corner of Main and Cedar.
Who remembers the Pastime Theatre used to display its advertising posters on that corner, to tell you what was on at “the show”?
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Two people important in Warren and Bradley County life were laid to rest recently.
Both had a hard time going: one was longtime hospital administer Joe Carmical, the other Dr. David Scogin, a fine coach at Drew Central, Warren, Monticello, and surely Northwestern State of Louisiana.
Joe was only 83, but his last years were spent in the kind of confusion he’d have hated.
But the Bradley County Medical Center and its firm foundation in Warren are monuments to him and to his good judgement.
Joe was the acknowledged “king of scroungers”.
He could got to government depots in Little Rock and get all kinds of wonderful equipment for the medical center at practically no cost.
…and that was just one of his attributes.
As for Dr. Scogin, he succumbed to cancer not long after entering Hot Springs Village retirement with his dear wife, Joan.
Eldest of six children born to the Garvin Scogins of the Green Hill Community south of Wilmar, David Scogin’s approach to life and to coaching and to all the things he did were located on a high plane.
David Scogin did his best in whatever he approached.
He should have been installed in the Lumberjack Hall of Fame in 2001.
Surely he will be accorded that honor in 2002.
Joe and David were among the Good Guys.
Their departure diminishes us.
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We are among the swelling legion of folks who have a “little dish” to bring in TV signals from those satellites floating majestically above the equator.
We pay a monthly fee for this service.
We understand, however, that black marketers in Mexico and other places an get you “hooked up” to the satellites where you get all the programming free.
…and, in certain areas of Mexico, people just climb utility poles and hook up wires that give power to their houses. They don’t pay for that either.
We like it better, right here in Pennington Township, Bradley County, Ark.
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Pleasing to run into an old friend, the Rev. Dr. George T. Blackman, the other day. Dr. Blackman’s 81 and say she has no plans, at all, to retire from his career as a minister.
Some of the older folk will remember what a fine job Dr. Blackman did as head of the state revenue office here in town.
Dr. Blackman’s office rule was “serve the public.”
