The Forrest City Public Library has been selected for The Millennium Project for Public Libraries award.
As part of the award, the library will receive 50 recently published volumes of The Library of America along with 50 bookplates citing this award.
The project is underwritten by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and is made available through a partnership of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Library of America and the American Library Association.
The proposal for the award was submitted by FCPL Co-Director Dashaune Roberts and circulation assistant Arlisa Price.
"We feel very pleased to get it considering we do not have a librarian right now. Being able to do this without a director is really good," Roberts said.
As part of the program, the library agreed to pledge a cost-sharing contribution of $250 to The Library of America. "Basically, we're paying $250 for 50 books," Roberts said.
To be eligible for the award, libraries must be small, rural, suburban and urban libraries that normally would not be able to afford The Library of America volumes or to carry out community programming featuring the Library of America volumes.
According to a NEH press release, the 50-volume Millennium Project set is valued at about $1,795. The Carnegie Corporation of New York is contributing $1,000, and The Library of America contributes $545 toward the cost of each set. The volumes were published between 1992 and 2000.
The books are divided into several categories. Those categories include: African-American Writers, Colonial and Revolutionary America, Nature and Travel, Fiction and Essays, Twentieth Century Journalism, Poetry, Mystery and Crime and Religion and Spirituality.
At least 512 libraries throughout the United States were selected for the award. In addition to Forrest City, other libraries in Arkansas receiving the award include: Eureka Springs, Lake Village, Marshall, Springdale and Yellville. These libraries join 293 others that were awarded the volumes earlier this year.
By CRYSTAL HOLLIS
T-H Staff Writer
The search for a missing Aubrey woman had a happy ending for her and her family this week.
Corrinne Hicks, 84, was afraid and tired, but otherwise okay, when she was found huddled under a bush in a bean field Thursday. Hicks had been missing more than 25 hours since she was last seen Wednesday afternoon walking to a nearby relative's house.
Family members said personnel at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Forrest City reported Hicks was in fair condition despite spending a night in the heat, rain and mosquito-infested rural area outside Marianna.
According to her daughter, Flozell Carlton of Aubrey, Hicks had left her house about noon walking to the relative's home a short distance away.
Hicks, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, did not make it to her destination.
"I looked out the window and I didn't see her," her daughter recalls. "The house is in plain view from mine, and she just wasn't there. We started to look for her but couldn't find her then a friend of the family said we better call the police and report her missing."
Lee County Sheriff's Department Chief Deputy Jack Oxner said the search for Hicks began about 6:30 p.m. and continued until midnight with no results. The search resumed about 5 a.m. the next day and continued until Hicks was found about 1 p.m. in the field located a few miles from her home.
In addition to the sheriff's department, others involved in the search for Hicks included the Lee County Fire Department, Pafford Ambulance Service of Marianna, Gibson Flying Service, Arkansas Department of Corrections search dogs, bloodhounds with the Emergency Management Association of Tennessee and several family, friends and volunteers.
"The bloodhounds were on her trail when she was found by two cotton scouts in the field, so they were right on track," Oxner said. He added that the county has been involved in several searches during his 22 years with the department, but this search was the first time the sheriff's department had utilized the Lee County Search and Rescue Team. "They did a good job."
Carlton said her son, Marion Carlton, was with the two cotton scouts who found his grandmother. "My son was with them when they found her. He said she was huddled under there all scared and everything but doing all right," she said.
"We were so frantic," recalls Carlton. "We didn't know if we were ever going to find her," she said. "I didn't know what kind of shape she would be in. It had rained Wednesday night and with all the mosquitoes and heat...we just didn't know what to expect."
Hicks was transported by ambulance to Baptist Memorial Hospital - Forrest City where she was released in good condition.
"We know there had to have been angels watching over her," said Hicks' granddaughter, Linda Hicks of Marion. "We Hicks are tough people, but what she has been through...there had to have been angels wrapping their wings around her to protect her," she said.
Carlton said her mother may not know what happened to her. Upon being released from the hospital, all Hicks wanted was a hamburger. "She said she was hungry and ready to go home," said Carlton.
The St. Francis County Museum, located in the historic Rush-Gates house on Front Street, is featuring an exhibit of artworks from members of the St. Francis County Artist Club this weekend.
The exhibit will be on display in the front parlor of the museum through the end of July. The facility is hosting a public reception for the artists on Saturday, June 30, from 2 to 4 p.m. The artists will also be on hand to discuss their works. Refreshments will be served.
Five artists from the SFCAC have their works on exhibit. They are Barbara Taylor, Michi David, Beatrice McCuen, Laura Taylor and Joan Benard.
The exhibit includes oils on canvas, watercolors, pastels, collages and small works on paper.
Gov. Mike Huckabee said Thursday that too much focus has been placed on his initial 1996 decision to release convicted rapist Wayne Dumond from prison, rather than his final decision to deny Dumond's pardon request.
Dumond is a suspect in two Missouri homicides but has been charged only with a parole violation so far.
The state parole board chairman, meanwhile, said Thursday he regrets the decision to parole Dumond.
"You always hate for anybody to violate conditions of parole," said Leroy Brownlee, chairman of the Arkansas Post Prison Transfer Board. "That's the one major regret that you have. It hurts. You lose. You don't ever want to lose."
Brownlee said Huckabee did not pressure the board to parole Dumond, despite Huckabee's private appearance before the board in which Dumond's case was mentioned.
"We've never had any pressure from the governor's office on any decision that we've made over here," Brownlee said. "They don't get involved."Asked about the Oct. 31, 1996, private board meeting with Huckabee, Brownlee said the governor put no pressure on the board.
"Dumond came up in discussion, and when it was recognized it was improper, it was stopped and that was it," Brownlee said. "So, no, we felt no pressure."
Dumond was convicted in Arkansas in the 1984 rape of 17-year-old Ashley Stevens.
His castration, Huckabee said in 1996, ''more than has given whatever punishment is necessary, particularly for a crime that is very questionable he committed.''
Huckabee also questioned Dumond's guilt.
Huckabee's intentions created a political firestorm. Female legislators, the victim's family and Democratic lawmakers led opposition to his decision.
Stevens also met privately with Huckabee.
The parole board in January 1997 voted to allow Dumond's parole, provided he move out of state. The decision was a reversal of an August 1996 vote on his parole.
The parole board cited a genetics expert's conclusion that semen on the girl's pants did not exhibit a genetic marker that Dumond possessed.
A spokesman for Huckabee, Rex Nelson, said the governor agreed with the decision.
The board's decision in January came four days before a 120-day deadline that would have forced Huckabee to decide whether to grant the pardon.
Lawmakers who considered subpoenaing Huckabee for official hearings questioned the fortunate timing of the board's decision for Huckabee. Had Dumond not been transferred from the prison system's Varner Unit to the Tucker Unit in November, the board, which schedules parole hearings unit by unit, would not have held the parole hearing until after Huckabee's deadline.
Some lawmakers also questioned Huckabee's reappointment of Railey Steele to the board, days before the former Democratic lawmaker switched his vote in favor of the parole.
Dumond remained in prison because no state would agree to take over his parole.
In 1999, the parole board agreed to let Dumond return to his hometown of DeWitt. Missouri took over his parole supervision from Arkansas last year, and Dumond moved to Smithville, Mo., on Aug. 1, 2000.
The body of Carol Shields, 39, of Parkville, Mo., was found in a friend's Clay County (Mo.) apartment last Sept. 20, less than two months after Dumond moved to a Kansas City suburb about 10 miles north of the crime scene.
Dumond was arrested early Saturday after investigators linked him to the Shield's murder through DNA evidence taken from under the victim's fingernails.
In response to reporters' questions Thursday, Huckabee expressed dismay with the portrayal of his role in the matter.
"The point that's being missed ... the action that I took on that case was to deny," he said. "Questions arose, but then doubts came about those questions as well, and that's why I denied. It's unfortunate that that part of the story doesn't seem to be able to be focused."
Huckabee also reflected on how the Dumond case may affect future pardon decisions.
"I think it always gives us pause when something like this happens," he said. "His sentence was commuted in 1992. He had an institutional record that was virtually spotless."
Dumond has arrests dating back to the 1970s, including in the 1972 bludgeoning death of an Oklahoma man. He was spared prosecution for that crime after agreeing to testify for the state. The next year, Dumond received a five-year deferred sentence after pleading guilty to an attack on a woman outside a Washington state shopping mall.