Columns

BRIDGES: Rice and the huge impact on Arkansas

Published

3 months ago

January 15, 2025

Across the globe, rice is the staple of life. Far more than wheat and other grains popular with the average American consumer, rice is the most important portion of meals in hundreds of millions of households each day. Arkansas has been the leading rice producer in the United States for decades, all due to the determination and imagination of William H. Fuller of Lonoke County.

While native to Asia, rice first began to be grown in North America in 1694 in South Carolina. Rice required flooded fields and hot climates to grow properly, which made the work very difficult. Modest attempts to grow rice in Arkansas were reported as early as 1819 at Arkansas Post, near the confluence of the Mississippi and White Rivers. Further attempts were made in the early 1840s but failed again.

Fuller, a Nebraska native, had grown up after the Civil War. He arrived in the Carlisle area in the latter 1800s and established a successful farm. Paul Williams, an African-American farmer and fellow Lonoke County resident had begun experimenting with rice cultivation on his own in 1893, but the results were mixed. Fuller became fascinated with rice after seeing the efforts of Williams as well as witnessing the success of Louisiana rice fields on a hunting trip. By 1897, Fuller began his own experiments on three acres. After the results fizzled, he travelled to Louisiana to learn rice farming firsthand. In 1904, with new water pumps and techniques, he tried again on 70 acres and produced an astonishing 5,225 bushels of rice.

Area farmers were inspired by Fuller’s success, and the rice industry took off in 1905. Investors and land dealers streamed through the region, anxious to see the progress of the crops. By 1907, a profitable rice mill had been completed in Lonoke County. Within four years, enough farmers had begun producing rice to form the Rice Growers’ Association of Arkansas. Stuttgart held its first Rice Carnival in 1909 to celebrate the impact rice was just beginning to have. The event would become a popular annual festival by 1918. Weiner and Hazen would establish their own rice festivals in the years to follow. By the end of World War I, Arkansas had become the second-largest rice producer in the nation, and the industry was still growing.

Fuller himself would remain a leading spokesman for Arkansas rice production through the 1910s. By the 1920s, rice production would rival cotton, long the heart of the state’s agriculture. Arkansas was the leading rice producer in the nation by the 1940s. Thousands of Arkansans would come to be employed by the rice industry, and rice itself would be declared the state grain in 2007.

Globally, the United States ranks eleventh in total rice production, well behind such nations as China, India, and Indonesia. Nearly all the rice produced commercially in the United States today is produced in portions of six states: California, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, and Arkansas. In 2014, the US Department of Agriculture reported that 28 eastern Arkansas counties produced rice. The state remains by far the leading rice producer of the nation, with nearly 60% coming from the Natural State. In fact, the state by itself produces nearly as much rice as South Korea each year.

One man’s vision had started a revolution in an industry that had stayed largely the same for generations. William Fuller lived his last years as a celebrity among farmers in the state, hailed as the “Father of Arkansas Rice.” Just a century after his inspiration, rice had become a billion-dollar industry in Arkansas.

Columns

BRIDGES: Peter

Published

20 hours ago

April 22, 2025

Sandy Sanford

Some people see the beauty in the world and want to share it with others. Lily Peter spent a lifetime teaching, writing, and giving to the people of Arkansas to nurture this love of life and the arts. The acclaimed poet and philanthropist left a deep legacy through the written word, music, and the education of countless students that left the world a richer place because of her work.

Lily Peter was born in June 1891 on her parents’ farm near the small town of Marvell in Phillips County. She was the eldest of ten children. Her childhood was one met with great tragedy. Five of her brothers and sisters died while still children. A horrible accident took the life of her father when she was 16.

She attended high school in the nearby community of Ohio, a community that has since disappeared. A gifted student, she graduated at the top of her class of Ohio High School. Though she wished for higher education, the needs of her family kept her close to home. She began working as a teacher in some of the small schools dotting the countryside of Phillips County to help support her ailing mother and surviving siblings.

Her eldest brother ran the farm with her help, and with her salary from teaching and the farm’s proceeds, she was able to send her other siblings to college. Within a few years, noting her sacrifices for them, they were able to return the favor and paid for her college education at Columbia University in New York, where she received a bachelors degree in English. She received a masters degree at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. Music had long been a passion for her, and she was able to study violin at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York.

After her graduation, she returned to Arkansas to teach. The family farm prospered and expanded. The family eventually bought a second farm and expanded their property size to more than 7,000 acres. She would later build a cotton gin on the farm as well.

In 1918, in the midst of World War I, she wrote a song in support of American troops fighting in Europe. The patriotic march “A-M-E-R-I-C-A” was put to music by Leo Friedman. In 1964, her first collection of poems was published, The Green Linen of Summer.

She also became famous for giving. At Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, she restored the old chapel on the college’s campus. The chapel was later renamed Peter Hall in her honor. To further honor her writing, philanthropy, and her support of music, she was given an honorary doctorate by the college in 1965. She never married and often said of the many students to whom she gave scholarships that it was not her privilege to have children but that those were her children. In 1969, determined to bring more culture to Arkansas, she took out a loan of $60,000 to bring the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra to Little Rock to perform.

In October 1971, Gov. Dale Bumpers named Peter, now aged 80, as the state’s fourth poet laureate. The Arkansas Poet Laureate position was an honorary title created by the state legislature in 1923. Peter would hold the honor for the next twenty years.

Now in her ninth decade, her passion for the arts and writing did not slow down. Peter continued to write and to support the arts and education. She helped establish the Lily Peter Auditorium at Phillips County Community College in Helena in 1972.

In 1973, she published her next collection of poetry, The Sea Dream of the Mississippi. She also expanded her interests into environmental causes as more attention began to be drawn to the topic in the 1970s. She began experimenting with organic farming, agriculture without pesticides. Organic farming would not start catching attention in the popular mind until the 1990s. She also began to speak out on a variety of environmental topics.

She enjoyed a warm correspondence with teachers and authors. These letters were later collected and donated to Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia. In 1982, Arkansas author Lyman B. Hagen wrote a brief biography simply called Lily Peter as part of the state’s Arkansas Authors project. Two of her most notable works, The Great Riding: The Story of de Soto in America and In the Beginning: Myths of the Western World were both republished in 1983. These epic poems of adventure, exploration, and imagination were well-received by readers and critics alike.

Always active, she never let up in her pursuit of the arts and literature. In July 1991, Peter died quietly at her home near Marvell, just a month past her one hundredth birthday. The beauty of her words and her spirit would live on.

Columns

BRIDGES: Bonneville

Published

6 days ago

April 17, 2025

Sandy Sanford

The early years of the United States includes tales of many daring explorers. One of these figures was Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville, a Frenchmen by birth who immigrated to the United States and eventually made Arkansas his home. Bonneville gave Americans a much clearer view of the Rocky Mountain West thanks to his travels in the 1830s.

Benjamin Bonneville was the son of a publisher and born in Paris, France, in 1796. In 1803, the family immigrated to New York. The family was close friends with Thomas Paine, the outspoken essayist who inspired countless Americans during the Revolutionary War. Paine had encouraged the family to come to the United States and paid for their voyage to their new home. Upon his death in 1809, Paine established a trust fund for Bonneville and his sister for their education.

Bonneville graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1815. He served at various army posts, including Fort Smith. In 1824, he was transferred to Fort Gibson, which was at that time in the Arkansas Territory but now located in northeastern Oklahoma.

Curious about the largely unexplored lands of Oregon and the Far West, he took a leave of absence from the army and led an exploratory expedition in 1832. The force of 110 men was financed by private investors. The explorers left Missouri in May, eventually trekking along the Platte River in present-day Nebraska and into Wyoming and Idaho. He took careful note of the different geologic formations along the way as well as the wildlife and fauna of the region.

He sent one party of scouts to the southwest to search for an overland route to California. This party went into northern Utah and Nevada and discovered what came to be known as the California Trail, later a major route for pioneers heading west during the California Gold Rush. Walker’s team encountered Great Salt Lake and the dry, ancient lakebed that Great Salt Lake once encompassed on a larger scale which was later named Lake Bonneville. The field of salts covering the desert floor mark what was once the lake itself and is now called the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Along the way, Bonneville encountered several different Native American tribes, often trading with them for supplies and employing several as guides. He made it as far as eastern Washington. In the winter of 1834, he and his party stayed with a band of Nez Perce near the Salmon River who helped them survive the difficult season. The next spring, the party returned to Missouri.

In 1837, he worked with famed writer Washington Irving and published his journals as The Adventures of Captain Bonneville. During the Mexican War, he served with Gen. Winfield Scott in his campaign to take Mexico City and was part of the occupation force of the Mexican capital. By 1855, he was promoted to colonel and took command of different posts in the New Mexico Territory.

He initially retired in 1861, but the eruption of the Civil War led him to return to the army, where he a commanded garrison in St. Louis. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and was put in charge of recruiting Union troops in Missouri. He retired for the final time in 1866.

Bonneville spent the last years of his life in Fort Smith. He died in 1878. His name appears often across Arkansas and the nation, including a number of schools in the West. The community of Booneville in Logan County was named in his honor. Bonneville County, Idaho, was also named after the general. In 1962, the Fort Smith School District named Bonneville Elementary School after him.

Columns

KINGDOM ETHIC: Hunger and Thirst

Published

2 months ago

March 3, 2025

Staff Reports

Matthew 5:6 says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

Jesus spoke these words about righteousness to ordinary men and women during His famous “Sermon on the Mount.” Shortly afterward, He told them, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Both statements must have been confusing to His listeners. First, what does our basic need for food and drink have to do with righteousness? Second, how could an average person possibly exceed the righteousness of the highly respected, God-appointed holy men known as Pharisees?

Jesus went on to teach more truths that relate to this topic. In John 6, He declared that He is the Bread of Life, and that unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we have no life in ourselves. He also taught that those who do this abide in Him.

By “eating” His body and “drinking” His blood—symbols of the atoning elements of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross—we acknowledge our ongoing need for Him, just as we need food to sustain physical life. Too often, salvation is viewed as a one-time transaction, but the reality is that we are continually being saved and rely on His body and blood for ongoing spiritual nourishment. This is how our righteousness surpasses that of those who simply keep the law, for it is Christ’s righteousness that does indeed surpass that of the Pharisees. Partaking in His body and blood, we partake in His righteousness and there fulfill His command to surpass.

Hunger and thirst are fundamental human needs. They are also daily needs, as Jesus alluded to in this same sermon through the famous “Lord’s Prayer.” In the same way, our need for the righteousness provided by the broken body and shed blood of the Lord is also a daily need. This doesn’t mean we must be “saved” every day, but rather that He is our daily sustenance and the One who sustains our spiritual life.

St. Augustine of Hippo once said, “Recognize in this bread what hung on the cross, and in this chalice what flowed from His side.” A true Christian can no more cease to hunger and thirst for Christ than we can stop hungering and thirsting for physical food and drink.

Perhaps the pervasive dissatisfaction within much of Christian society today stems from feeding ourselves with what gratifies us momentarily but never truly satisfies our deeper spiritual hunger. As the Psalmist writes, “For he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things” (Psalm 107:9).

Columns

BRIDGES: From Arkansas to Hollywood, this man made his mark

Published

2 months ago

February 28, 2025

Grant Merrill

Arkansas musician Scott Bradley was never widely known outside of the studio, but his music was the heart of some of the most iconic American cultural icons of the twentieth century, most notably, the famed cartoon duo of Tom and Jerry.

Bradley was born in Russellville in 1891. He developed a love of music early and taught himself. By the 1910s, he headed to Houston to put his musical talents to work. He found work as a conductor for orchestras and theaters throughout Southeast Texas as well as radio stations. At the same time, he continued to write his own music. Though he was a successful musician, Bradley still took lessons from more experienced musicians to fine-tune his own craft.

By the early 1920s, California was rapidly becoming the heart of the entertainment world. Bradley left Texas in 1926 to become a conductor for a Los Angeles radio station. In 1929, he was hired by The Walt Disney Studio as a staff musician. However, Walt Disney had a falling out with some of his staff in 1930. One of Disney’s chief animators went to form his own cartoon studio for which Bradley worked for several years.

By the 1930s, the cartoon short feature had become a staple part of the moviegoing experience. Audiences expected to see a cartoon and perhaps another short film and a newsreel showing current events in addition to the previews of coming attractions and the main feature film. Seeing the success of Disney and others with the growing popularity of animation, Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer Studios decided to form its own cartoon studio in 1937 to compete. Bradley was quickly hired to help provide the music.

In 1940, MGM animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera created the Tom and Jerry cartoon, though they were originally named Jasper and Jinx. Bradley went on to write and conduct the large orchestras for the music in the 114 original cartoons made between 1940 and 1957.

Since Tom and Jerry almost never spoke, most of the stories relied on Bradley’s music to set up and underline the different jokes, playful tensions, and transitions from one scene to the next. The physical humor and lack of dialogue helped make the cartoons immensely popular around the world as Bradley’s music needed no translations.

One 1947 cartoon in particular, “The Cat Concerto,” placed music at the center of the episode as Tom played a concert pianist whose piano happened to be Jerry’s home. Jerry got his revenge against Tom as he tried to finish his concert with increasing desperation. Thanks to Bradley’s music direction, the cartoon won the 1948 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, the fourth consecutive Academy Award for Tom and Jerry.

Bradley also composed the musical score for the 28 Barney Bear cartoons made by MGM between 1939 and 1954. Bradley would also go on to provide the music for the 24 Droopy cartoons produced between 1943 and 1957 and the Screwy Squirrel cartoons made in the late 1940s.

In 1957, MGM closed its cartoon studio as part of a corporate restructuring effort. Though MGM would continue to produce cartoons, the large budgets were gone and an entirely new group of directors, animators, and musicians were hired. Bradley’s contract was cancelled; and at the age of 65, he decided to retire. In those nearly two decades of the first batch of Tom and Jerry cartoons, Bradley was part of a team that earned eleven Academy Award nominations and won eight Academy Awards for the cartoons. Overall, he composed 250 cartoon music scores.

By the mid-1960s, television stations across the United States were airing Tom and Jerry cartoons first shown in theaters. Though edited from their original screen versions, the cartoons were an immediate sensation with children. Because of this, by the 1970s, new Tom and Jerry cartoons began to be produced strictly for television.

Bradley died at his home in California in 1977 at the age of 85 as a new generation of youngsters discovered in television reruns the cartoons he helped bring to life. A compilation album of his musical scores from some of these cartoons was released in 2006. Today, these cartoons continue to be seen on television and on video daily in homes around the world.

Columns

KINGDOM ETHIC: Meekness

Published

2 months ago

February 24, 2025

Staff Reports

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5)

Meekness is difficult to define and even harder to put into practice. If someone told you to be merciful, you would likely know what that entails. However, if someone told you to be meek, you might need to pause and consider which actions truly demonstrate meekness.
I believe the best way to explain meekness—understood as gentleness, humility, and lowliness—is to consider its opposite. The clearest illustration of this contrast is found right here in this very Beatitude.

Jesus is speaking to a crowd of Israelites gathered on a hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee. It is a time of harsh Roman occupation, and Israel is longing for a Messiah who will literally liberate them from Roman control, reestablish Israel’s sovereign rule over the land, and form a tangible—not merely theoretical—Jewish kingdom.

Rome is ruthless, known throughout history for conquering and dividing. The Romans use force and might to expand their empire, claiming new lands and daring the weaker former inhabitants to resist. As the Roman historian Sallust noted, “The Roman people won empire through war, not by negotiation or treaty.”

Imagine the mental struggle of the Hebrew listeners that day when Jesus, speaking to a people eager to reclaim their “earth”—or perhaps the greek could be better translated, “land”—says, “The meek…will get the land back.” In other words, you can’t out Rome, Rome at its own game to regain your land. There is a better way, the way of The Kingdom and it’s upside down ethics, and it’s the opposite of Rome’s method. While Rome seized land by force, you will inherit it through meekness.

Meekness is not about fighting the enemy in the same way the enemy fights you; it’s about trusting God to fight your battles and grant you, by inheritance, what He has promised.

As Psalm 20:7 reminds us, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.” This is the essence of meekness.