By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter
The WatchDOGS were visited by one of the most beloved Hogs.
Former Arkansas Razorback receiver Anthony Lucas was the keynote speaker at Jacksonville Lighthouse Charter School’s annual Dinner with Dad event on Tuesday night for the WatchDOGS, a program that encourages fathers to become more active in the academics of their children.
For dads, it was an opportunity to meet Lucas, the prolific Hogs receiver who set several school records from 1995-1999, but for the kids, it was all about Shelly, the Arkansas Travelers mascot. Shelly came out and greeted the crowd of 180 people before the evening’s spaghetti dinner.
Event coordinator Scott Head announced a photo session with Shelly in the hallway just after bringing Lucas up to the microphone to speak, and all of the pint-sized people in the Lighthouse cafeteria quickly disbursed.
“Man, Shelly is big time in Jacksonville,” Lucas said as the kids emptied into the hallway.
WatchDOGS (Dads of Great Students) is a father-involvement initiative of the National Center for Fathering started in Springdale in 1998. It was the third meeting at the Lighthouse School for an event that has grown exponentially in a short amount of time. The numerous crock pots full of spaghetti and jugs of iced tea were just enough to go around.
“The first one of these, there were maybe 60 people here, and the second one had about 80 people,” Head said. “Tonight, we counted 180. That’s phenomenal.”
The WatchDOGS program was founded at George Elementary School in Springdale as a response to the shootings at Jonesboro Middle School in 1998.
“It’s just been a huge success,” Head said. “Bringing dads in, asking them to volunteer – one day a year, that’s all we ask. Just spend that day on campus, tutoring kids, mentoring kids, as well as being an extra set of eyes and ears on campus.”
Lucas, who has remained a visible figure in Arkansas since his untimely retirement from the National Football League in the early 2000’s, has a new outlook on life with the recent birth of his 6-month-old daughter Kassidy for him and his wife Davae.
“It’s always awesome just to be able to come out and do things like this,” Lucas said. “Especially for the dads, and the WatchDOGS program. Now that I’m a father, I know how important it is for dads as well as moms to be in kids’ lives.”
Lucas spoke to the group about using disadvantaged home life as motivation towards a better life and avoiding using those disadvantages as a crutch.
“When you’re ready to have kids, you can grow up and be in your child’s life,” He said.
The Lighthouse Charter School, now in its third academic year, started as a kindergarten through sixth grade school, and has expanded by one grade every year. The total number of students is now 626 total between the campus on First Street and Jacksonville and the satellite campus at the Little Rock Air Force Base.
“We have a defined mission to be college preparatory,” Lighthouse principle Delano Whitfield said. “We want all of our students to go to college and to graduate from college. We don’t have a mission of just being available to students, we have a mission of coming to school every day, preparing our students to one day graduate from college.”
Whitfield, who attended the University of Arkansas in the late 90s at about the time Lucas was a football star on the hill, remembers attending some of the same social functions as Lucas in those days. “I like to say he knows me,” Whitfield said. “We ran in some of the same circles when we were both in college. It’s been a long time since we’ve touched base, but I’m a Razorback through and through.”
