SPORTS >> Searcy soccer rolls to national top 50

Searcy foward Steven Seitz, 20, leads the Lions in goals scored this season.

By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter

Searcy head soccer coach Bronco King’s explanation of the Lions’ recent success is a standard nuts and bolts answer, but it also hints that four years of Class 6A domination won’t end in the foreseeable future.

Youth soccer in Searcy has been popular since early 1990s, and with the Lions and Lady Lions winning a combined five state championship trophies the last three seasons, King believes the game’s popularity is still growing.

“That is one big thing in the Searcy area is our youth soccer leagues,” King said. “When we play, and you look over and see the little ones over there playing on their fields, you can see the interest is just taking off. It’s just funneled up through the years, and now we’re seeing success with our high-school programs.”

King lost eight seniors off his 6A state championship team of 2009. But with a new group of leaders, a top-50 national ranking by ESPN and a stellar, 14-1-1 record, the Lions, 4-0 in the 6A-East with two games remaining, could be on their way to a fourth conference title.

“That’s a credit to those young men on this team,” King said. “They all started in grade school and have kept it going. They’ve put in a lot of hard work, and now it’s paying off. The guys do asuper job of getting to practice and staying focused.”

Goalkeeper Will Lynn is a senior captain for the Lions. At 6-3, 215 pounds, Lynn provides a big obstacle for opponents, whenever they can get to him.

“He is a presence in front of the goal,” King said. “He can get to just about every ball; he’s only been scored on two or three times this year. The rest have been shutouts. Our backfield defense is so strong he doesn’t see a whole lot of action, but when he does, he’s ready.”

Jared Harriman is the Lions’ other senior captain, and is half of a midfielder duo that includes Isai Garcia.

“Those two are what make our team go,” King said. “They do a great job of moving the ball and finding the open player.”

Defensively, King said the lineup of Andrew Moore and James Adkins, along with seniors Trey Oliveto and Ben Buterbaugh, has been reliable all season. Offensively, forward Steven Seitz is leading the Lions in goals scored.

With the start of the 6A state soccer tournament two weeks away, the Lions are preparing to defend their three-straight state titles and continue their legacy.

“We have five seniors this year, but we had 14 freshmen who came in,” King said. “These freshmen will take the examples the seniors set for them and use that down the road. It just gets handed down year to year.”

SPORTS >> Arkansas softball back at Sherwood

By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor

University of Arkansas softball coach Mike Larabee is most interested in ending a losing streak when his team makes a visit to Sylvan Hills today.

The Razorbacks will be trying to end a nine-game losing streak that includes an SEC sweep at the hands of No. 13 LSU when they play Memphis in a non-conference game at the Sherwood Sports complex.

“Obviously we’re disappointed we didn’t hit better all of those games,” Larabee said.

Game time is 6:30 p.m. There will be a chance for fans to meet the players at 3:45 and there will be a postgame autograph session. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for students.

This is the second year the Razorbacks have played at Sherwood. The scheduling was set before Larabee took over the program in July, but he welcomes the chance to visit central Arkansas and give his program some extra downstate exposure.

“This will actually be my first opportunity but it just brings Razorback softball to an area where a lot of people don’t get a chance to watch us play,” Larabee said.

SPORTS >> Red Devils power to top with sweep

Jacob Abrahamson hit two home runs to lift Jacksonville on Tuesday night.

By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor

Jacob Abrahamson hit two home runs and the Jacksonville Red Devils took a firmer grip on first place in the 6A-East with a doubleheader sweep of Jonesboro at Dupree Park on Tuesday.

Abrahamson homered in each game as Jacksonville won 8-2 and 11-3, handing Jonesboro its first conference losses and improving to 10-0 in the conference.

“I thought we played better in game two definitely,” Jacksonville coach Larry Burrows said.

Despite the outcome of the first game, Burrows was worried his hitters hadn’t taken advantage of more opportunities while his staff had to work out of several jams and stand nine Hurricane baserunners. But after the second-game fireworks, Burrows was pleased to see the Red Devils standing atop the conference.

“I expected us to be in this position,” said Burrows, who nonetheless sounded a note of caution over Jacksonville’s upcoming conference opponents.

“We definitely have got the two best teams left even though Searcy has got two losses. They were in the state finals and didn’t hardly lose anybody from last year. They can play. And Mountain Home is solid.”

Abrahamson, the Red Devils’ shortstop, led off the third inning of the first game with a home run and he homered again to lead off the second game, atoning for a pair of errors he made in the first game.

“We still got to get him some work. When his back was hurt he didn’t even practice for awhile,” Burrows said. “Rehab. We just tried to get him ready for game day like you do in some football games.”

Abrahamson went 3 for 3 with a double, a home run, three RBI and two walks in the second game after he went 2 for 3 with three runs and an RBI in the first.

D’Vone McClure was 2 for 5 with a double and two RBI in the second game, Caleb Mitchell was 2 for 4 with a double and two runs and Noah Sanders was 3 for 4 with two RBI.

Starter Jesse Harbin got the first-game victory while Mike Lamb relieved, then Lamb won the second game with Nick Rodriguez finishing.

The Red Devils got a run in the first inning of the first game when Abrahamson led off with a single and scored on Patrick Castleberry’s sacrifice fly.

Jonesboro threatened in the third as Moe Malugen hit a leadoff double and then a series of passed balls and wild pitches, plus Bradyen Carson’s sacrifice, put Malugen and Blaine Carson on second and third with one out. But Malugen tried to score as the ball got away from Castleberry behind the plate and Castleberry threw to Harbin covering home for the putout.

Harbin then struck out Franklin Kelley to get out of the jam.

Abrahamson homered over the right-field fence to lead off the Jacksonville third and Castleberry reached on a one-out error and scored on Rodriguez’s single to center to make it 3-0.

The Red Devils dodged trouble again in the fourth.

Abrahamson’s throwing error put Jacob McDaniel on first and a walk to Colby Imboden and Will Winn’s infield hit loaded the bases with one out.

But Logan Perry made a diving catch of Malugen’s sinking drive in center and came up throwing to double Imboden off second and end the inning.

Jonesboro broke through in the fifth when Blaine Carson singled, Harbin hit Kelley, Jacob McDaniel walked and Clay Williams hit a two-RBI single.

SPORTS >> NO MIXED RECEPTION: Cabot fans turn out, embrace MMA

Joe Sexton, right, pins Madrid, Spain native Mendez Mosely to the cage.

By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter

Local mixed martial arts fans turned out in droves for “Chaos in Cabot,” a first-of-its-kind MMA event held at Veterans Community Center on Saturday.

The show was promoted by AXCMMA of North Little Rock, and featured a number of local fighters.

There were 20 matches on the card with two professional bouts. The main event was a women’s bout between unbeaten fighters Jessica Higler of Iowa and Arkansas native Kim Conner-Hamby, but the packed house invested much of its energy in cheering on the local amateurs.

One of those fighters, 17-year-old Nick Gauden, of Cabot, improved his record to 2-0 with a dramatic, three-round decision over Ray Olvey.

Olvey took the advantage in the first round before Gauden caught him with a flurry of punches and bloodied his nose in the second. The two stood toe-to-toe in the final round, but Gauden, the overwhelming crowd favorite, earned the victory by unanimous decision.

The hometown crowd dared judges to rule in favor of Olvey by chanting “Nick, Nick, Nick,” as soon as the bout was completed. Promoter and ring announcer

Nathan Kirby praised the efforts of both fighters after the match and encouraged the fans to take pride in their young hometown hero.

Gauden received a champion’s exit from the ring, complete with a ride on his teammates’ shoulders and congratulations from numerous friends, fans and family.

“He was a big person; he definitely hit hard,” Gauden said of Olvey. “Second round, I just had to really think about that. I got my angles right, head bobbing. He was an amazing fighter — it was just awesome. I loved it.”

Gauden also said having the crowd behind him made a difference in his performance.

“It definitely gives you a confidence boost,” Gauden said. “You want to go out there and take him down. You don’t care how many punches you take.

“When everyone’s cheering you on, you’ve got so much adrenaline coming. You’re staring at this guy straight in the face. He wants to hit you — you want to hit him.”

Ward resident and Austin police officer Johnny “Five-O” McFall took perhaps the quickest and easiest victory of the night when he pummeled Cabot fighter Dennis Wilkes into a technical knock out in fewer than 30 seconds.

McFall, who improved to 4-0, was the immediate aggressor. He caught Wilkes with a series of quick crosses before slamming him to the mat of the octagon ring.

McFall then struck Wilkes with a series of strong rights, prompting the official to stop the match less than a minute in. McFall’s next fight will be a heavyweight title fight for Ring Rulers on May 14 in Shreveport, Louisiana.

“My coaches, they wanted me to come out, be strong on stand-up,” McFall said. “They wanted me to come out and do some pounding. They didn’t want me to go to the ground — most of my fights have been TKO on the ground. I need to improve on my stand-up, so tonight was a test for me.”

As for the main event, it was Connor-Hamby taking a three-round split decision to hand Hilger her first career loss.

In other bouts, Gravel Ridge’s John Jessa and opponent Keeton Horton both made their debut in the event’s first fight, with Horton winning by TKO in the second round. Searcy fighter J.R. Lynn, fighting out of Beebe’s Team Wolfpack dojo, defeated Dierks fighter Briar Morrow by tap-out in the second round.

Lynn dropped Morrow in the first round and kept the advantage and forced submission early in Round 2.

EDITORIAL >> Piazza tosses initiated act

When a lawsuit challenging the initiated act that outlaws adoptions and foster parenting by unmarried couples was assigned last year to Circuit Judge Chris Piazza, the religious groups pushing the law had to be happy. Piazza, an old prosecutor, is known as a no-nonsense, law-and-order judge who never tries to break new ground.

But they were not so happy yesterday. Judge Piazza ruled that the act was unconstitutional because it infringed upon the privacy of individuals and punished a group of people who happened to be unpopular, gays and lesbians.

Judge Piazza was right, but for more reasons than the narrow ones that he cited. The real beneficiaries of his decision are not gays and lesbians and other unmarried couples who want to adopt or rear a foster child but the abandoned, neglected and brutalized children who had no chance to have a nurturing home. Now, many more of them will.

The issue has bedeviled Arkansas for a half-dozen years since the Human Services Department under Gov. Mike Huckabee declared that same-sex couples were unsuitable parents and forbade them from fostering or adopting needy children, even though hundreds of children were going unloved or else warehoused in uncaring homes where couples fostered them for the small cash assistance they received. When the courts struck down that prohibition as exceeding the state’s power under statutes, the Arkansas Family Council came back with an initiated act in 2008, which the voters approved. The sponsors sought to avoid the discrimination issue by banning both same-sex couples and cohabiting heterosexuals from being parents.

Judge Piazza destroyed the argument rationally. Arkansas courts have long recognized a right to privacy under the Arkansas Constitution that is more certain than the privacy doctrine ascribed to the U. S. Constitution. The Arkansas Supreme Court had ruled that the privacy right protected all private, consensual and noncommercial acts of sexual intimacy between adults — that is, all consensual adult activity but prostitution.

So under Initiated Act 1, if an unmarried man and woman want to adopt a child or take a foster child, all they have to do is either marry or move apart and they can be adoptive or foster parents, Judge Piazza observed. But a gay or lesbian couple can’t marry and be parents because Arkansas law forbids their marrying. Judge Piazza found it troubling that the act targeted one politically unpopular group for exclusion from being parents.

Yes, but both sides in the dispute agreed on one question and so do we. The welfare of needy children is a legitimate concern of the state government. The Family Council insisted that those children could only be helped by limiting their parents to married heterosexual couples. Never mind that there is a shortage of such families, caring and suitable ones anyway, who want to adopt troubled and disabled children or serve as foster parents. Although Judge Piazza ruled in their favor on the federal claims, the defenders of the law could not prove that gay and lesbian couples or other unmarried couples provided unhealthier home environments than other couples. The preponderant studies actually showed there was no difference in outcomes for children reared by gay and lesbian couples.

The Family Council will appeal the decision to the Arkansas Supreme Court, but no one should have any doubt about the outcome there. All the precedents of the past two decades suggest that the justices will put this ill-considered law out of its misery and give these desperately needy children a small lease on a happy life.

TOP STORY >> Student’s nightmare over

Foreign exchange student Felicia Kasselback is all smiles with her best host parents, Debbie and Phil Taylor of Cabot.

By JEFFREY SMITH
Leader staff writer

A Cabot family has opened its house and its hearts to a foreign-exchange student who was thinking about packing her bags and returning to Europe after two troubling stays with host families in Arkansas.

Felicia Kasselback, 18, of Stockholm, Sweden, enrolled in a foreign-exchange student program with 10 of her friends from Stockholm to attend high school for a year in the U.S.

Even though they will not get credit for their year here — they will have to repeat their senior year when they return to Sweden — the exchange students looked forward to studying in the U.S. and making new friends.

But for Felicia, the excitement of studying in America came to a screeching halt almost as soon as she landed here.

Her nightmare began the day after she arrived in Arkansas last August. She landed in Little Rock at night after a 19-hour flight.

Felicia was scheduled to spend a year with a host family in Camden, which included two daughters—one Felicia’s age and the other younger.

She recalled the horrible conditions she found when she awoke that first morning. “The host family’s house was messy and nasty,” she said. The photos of the home that were e-mailed to Felicia when she was in Sweden didn’t show any of the filth she found when she got here.

She said the Camden home had holes in the floors. The house had mold in the bathroom. The kitchen was messy. Old food was left out on the counters. Clothing was scattered everywhere.

“They didn’t care. All they did was watch television because they said it was too hot,” Felicia said.

She said the family did not have much money and bought cheap, unhealthy foods. She bought her own food, including fruit and yogurt.

Kasselback’s mother told her to give it some time. She stayed two weeks. Felicia said the house got dirtier and messier.

She took photos of the condition in the house and e-mailed them to her mom. Her mother forwarded the photos to the foreign-exchange student program.

The exchange program contacted Felicia a day later and told her help was on the way. The next day, the student-exchange program sent a student coordinator to the house.

Felicia said the exchange program called the host family and told them she was leaving.

“The mother got upset and starting screaming at me,” Felicia said.

She packed her belongings. The student coordinator took Felicia away. She stayed in the coordinator’s Camden home for three days.

The host family wrote insulting messages on Felicia’s Facebook page. She had to change her password. She said she was frightened.

The family sent back the gifts Felicia had given them and wrote nasty letters.

She said the host mom harassed the student coordinator to the point that the coordinator was afraid for Kasselback’s safety.

She was moved to a second student coordinator’s home in Beebe, where she stayed four days.

Felicia’s next stop, her third week in the United States, was to live with a host family in Enola (Faulkner County). The parents had two sons—one was Felicia’s age and the other was a pre-teen.

“The house was huge and gorgeous. It was clean,” she said.

She said the host parents were older, quieter and laid back. Felicia attended Mount Vernon High School for three weeks.

Then, for the second time, she wished she were back home.

She noticed the father was always watching her. He went into her room and wouldn’t leave her alone. He would ask inappropriate questions about her relationship with her boyfriend in Sweden. He also started touching her feet.

Felicia said she was scared. She contacted the foreign-exchange student coordinator in Beebe and called her mom.

She was afraid all communications might be broken off and she wouldn’t be able to contact her parents.

For the second time, she moved back into the student coordinator’s home in Beebe for three days and tried to find another host family, possibly in another state.

Felicia then found the break she had been praying for.

The student coordinator’s parents were friends with Debbie and Phil Taylor of Cabot.

The Taylors had opened their home a year ago, when the coordinator needed help placing Lara Schirmer, a German foreign-exchange student.

She, too, had difficulties with her host family. Schirmer had signed up for a semester in the U.S.

Originally, the Taylors were going to let Schirmer stay at their home for a few days until a new host family was found, but they decided to let her spend four months at their home and finish the school year.

Schirmer is coming back to the U.S. to visit the Taylors for five weeks this summer.

Debbie Taylor said they have never applied to be a host family, but she offers protection, mothering and love to the exchange students who need help.

Felicia, who has stayed with the Taylors since September, is a senior at Cabot High School.

In the spring musical “Aida,” she was in the cast as a handmaiden for the princess.

“I thought the musical was really fun. I had really good teachers,” she said.

At high school in Stockholm, Felicia is focused on economics and business. She said she would like to be a lawyer.

She says of her new host mom, “We are always together. We are very good friends. She is a nice, wonderful person.”

“It is great. It is like home,” she added.

She says of her new host family, “They know when I am homesick. They let me talk to my parents.”

Debbie Taylor said, “I protect her as my own child. There are no miles between our hearts—we are connected.”

“We have been blessed with a home we are able to share,” she added.

Phil Taylor said all that is required for a host family is to give exchange students a roof over their head and a place at the table and treat them as part of their family.

Anything the Taylors do, Felicia participates in.

Debbie said it was a blessing to have Felicia during the holidays.

Debbie said, “For us it is an honor to host an exchange student in the home. I don’t take it lightly.”

Phil said, “We do spoil her rotten, and she does the same back.”

For spring break, Jenny Kvarby-Engvall, 17, Felicia’s friend since junior high school, visited Cabot. Kvarby-Engvall is an exchange student attending high school in Melrose, Wis.

She and Felicia grew up in the same neighborhood in Stockholm.

They went on a Caribbean cruise with the Taylors’ son, Josh, and his wife Tiffinie, who is the daughter of Cabot Mayor Eddie Joe Williams.

TOP STORY >> Rice verdict brings joy to farmers

By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader senior staff writer

A Lonoke County jury may have awarded Randall Snider and 15 other area rice producers nearly $50 million in actual and punitive damages Thursday afternoon, but by Friday morning he was back on his tractor “pulling levees” on the 700 acres of rice he farms.

To no one’s surprise, Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of Bayer, the $8.7 billion a year international conglomerate on the paying end of that judgment, will appeal, according to one of its lawyers.

That appeal will be to the Arkansas Court of Appeals or the Arkansas Supreme Court, according to Paul Byrd, managing partner of Hare, Wynn, Newell & Newton’s Little Rock office, which represented the plaintiffs.

It took the jury just two hours and five minutes to find that Bayer CropScience was negligent in safeguarding the rice crop from its experiments with genetically modified rice in and around 2000.

This was the fourth judgment since December against Bayer for the rice contamination, Byrd said, and the second that included punitive damages. It is by far the largest judgment of the four, with the other three cases totaling less than $5 million.

The actual award in this case was $5.9 million in actual damages and $42 million in punitive damages.

Lonoke County plaintiffs in that suit include Randy Schafer, End of the Road Farms, Shafer Planting Co., Wallace Farms, Robert E. Moery, Kyle Moery, Carter Farms Partnership, Robert Petrus, Randall Amaden, R&B Amaden Farms, Randall J. Snider, S&R Farms, A.S. Kelly and Sons, Neil Daniels Farms, Little Twist Land Co. and Garner Land Co.

Two more suits involving Arkansas rice growers are scheduled, one in St. Louis for June and in Desha County in July, Byrd said.

Some of the rice crop in Arkansas and else where was contaminated by the unapproved, experimental, genetically modified rice strain Liberty Link 601. It was just a trace of contamination—.06 percent—but it was sufficient to crash the market for Arkansas’ long-grain rice.

Bayer sought to develop a rice strain resistant to its own herbicide so it could be used directly on the rice without damaging it.

Even if Liberty Link 601 had been approved by the USDA, neither the Japanese nor members of the European Union—two of the largest consumers—will buy genetically modified food.

“In 2006, rice (stocks) were at a 23-year low,” Snider said. “Everything was lining up for us to do really well.

“We were ready for harvest,” said Snider. “All our money and inputs were made. The markets just shut down on us. The price dropped and we lost the export market.”

“We’re glad we made a stand,” said Snider, a third generation Carlisle rice producer.

Asked if he thought the Bayer defense team was talking down in its summation to the Lonoke jury of six men and six women, Snider said. “They understood enough. They got the message. I think justice was served.”

In closing arguments Thurs-day, Scott Powell for the plaintiffs showed the jury that USDA standard for handling experimental, genetically modified plant seed was to ensure “no release into the environment,” not a standard of “low-level” released.

He then projected on a screen copies of Bayer emails, letters and documents showing that the handling and controls for Liberty Link 601 and other experimental Liberty Link varieties was inadequate and that Bayer knew it without correcting the problem.

The Liberty Link 601 was tested at nine sites, including at the LSU rice station.

Bayer employees wrote of “shipping transgenic material without authorization, that (experiment) management was antagonistic toward stewardship” and that there had been “obvious foul-ups and lost samples at our lab levels.”

“I do not think the project is under control,” wrote one.

Powell told jurors that it was negligent or reckless to perform the experiments with the Liberty Link rice “in Louisiana, the mouth of the major rice breeding area in the nation.”

Some documents suggested doing the experiments at a site 75 miles from commercial rice production.

“They know how do it (responsibly) if they wanted to,” Powell told the jury.”

“If you let this stuff go, be prepared to buy the U.S. rice market,” one expert advised Bayer.

In his closing, Dick Ellis, lead attorney for Bayer, warned the jury about confusing documents pertaining to other Liberty Link experimental rice seed with those pertaining to the LL 601, the contaminent.

He called those documents “red herrings” dragged across the tracks of the truth by the plaintiffs to throw jurors off the scent.

“Travel back in time to 2000 and 2001,” said Ellis. “Measure the negligent circumstances not by today’s standards, but the standards then.”

He said the actions of Bayer and its agents showed “the care of ordinary persons under ordinary circumstances.

“Perfection is not the standard in this case,” he said.

“This is about market damages, not about safety,” he said.

“The alternative to perfection is doing nothing,” he said.

He characterized the attitude of the farmers as: “You let it out and I made record profits and I want more.”

TOP STORY >> Cabot reserves water with CAW

By JOAN MCCOY
Leader staff writer

The commission that runs Cabot WaterWorks approved Tuesday night the purchase of the last 7 million gallons a day water allocation available in Lake DeGray to ensure that Cabot has water for its residents into the next century.

But the commissioners said during the same meeting that they will not participate in the Lonoke-White Water Project at Greers Ferry Lake until they are provided with accurate information about the cost and other pertinent factors.

Lake DeGray has a total allocation of 152 million gallons a day, most of which is held by Central Arkansas Water.

Tad Bohannon, the commission’s attorney, said the commission is not agreeing to buy water. The U.S. Corps of Engineers, which controls the lake, doesn’t guarantee the quality or availability of water from the lake. But what Cabot WaterWorks does get for a purchase price of $455,000 and an annual maintenance fee of $4,000 is water-storage capacity in the lake.

“This is not an agreement to buy water. You’re buying a jug to hold water,” Bohannon said.

Central Arkansas Water, which formed a decade ago through the consolidation of the water departments of Little Rock and North Little Rock, holds the first right of refusal on an allocation of 120 million gallons of water a day in the lake.

That water source will not be tapped for 50 years. But the plan now is for Cabot to get its water from the lake through lines that will be built by CAW.

Cabot currently gets its water from wells located between Beebe and Lonoke, but a line to connect to CAW’s existing sources, which will supply Cabot with water in the near future, is under construction.

Bill Cypert, spokesman for the commission and a candidate for Cabot mayor, said very few people in the room would be alive when the water from Lake DeGray starts flowing, but he added, “I think it is prudent that we lock this up.”

Chairman J.M. Park, a retired banker and lifelong Cabot resident who remembers when water to bathe in was a luxury, agreed with Cypert. It is critical to ensure a long-term water supply, Park pointed out.

Although the purchase has not been finalized, Cabot also holds a 1.2145-million-gallon-a-day allocation in Greers Ferry Lake through the Mid Arkansas Water Alliance. That allocation is always included when proponents of the Lonoke-White project to bring water to the area from Greers Ferry Lake talk about available water.

But Cypert, speaking for the commission during the Tuesday meeting, said Cabot will not give up its allocation to anyone, especially the Lonoke-White Public Water Authority, of which Cabot is a member.

Cabot might consider leasing the allocation to a city or water association but for no more than a year at a time, he said.

The Lonoke-White project has been ongoing for 15 years, but before construction can begin, about $50 million in funding must be locked down.

The most recent plan has been to use federal money funneled through the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission, but whether federal money can be used for the project is unclear because for the most part the water is not needed immediately.

Immediate need is a condition for the federal funding.

Even if the funding is approved, Cypert said Cabot won’t participate without answers to questions the commission has asked for almost four years: How much will the project cost? How much will it cost to operate and maintain? And how will members without MAWA allocations get water?

He said during a later interview that following Bohannon’s advice, the commission threw the water-purchase agreement for the Lonoke-White project into the trash.

As one of the largest members of the project, Cabot wants a weighted vote. The smaller members should have equal power on the board, he said.

Aside for needing water in the future, the attraction for many of the project members such as Beebe is that all 11 members have an equal vote on the board of the Lonoke-White Public Water Authority.

Beebe pulled out more than a decade ago because the projected cost of the water was more than it was willing to pay, but also because it had no voice on the board of Community Water System, the association on the lake that controlled the project.

Since that time, a lawsuit has given control to project members wh0 organized as the Lonoke-White Public Water Authority which is run by a board made up of representatives from all the participating entities.

Woody Bryant, chairman of the board of Grand Prairie Water Association and the project manager for the Lonoke-White Project, said Friday that he was aware of Cabot’s concerns and reservations about the project. If Cabot pulls out, he believes the project will still move forward.

He said progress is being made toward finding the answers to Cabot’s questions. And as for funding, federal money distributed through the state is still very likely, Bryant said.

“The good news is they haven’t turned us down,” he said. “They just haven’t accepted it yet.”

TOP STORY >> PCSSD looking to new start as it fills vacancy

By NANCY DOCKTER
Leader staff writer

It was a homecoming Thursday for Charles L. Hopson, who was selected to be superintendent of the Pulaski County Special School District.

The Arkansas native worked early in his career in the district and is a deputy superintendent for Portland, Ore., schools.

The vote at an emergency meeting to hire Hopson, originally from Prescott, was unanimous. Hopson’s start date and salary are yet to be determined in contract negotiations.

Hopson said immediately after the board vote, “I am deeply honored and humbled to be elected superintendent of a district where I started my teaching career. The vote in solidarity symbolizes that the time is now for the district to move forward in reconciliation and healing for the needs of the students.”

Hopson said that in coming back to PCSSD as superintendent is a way to give back to “a district and state that have given me so much.”

Hopson’s strong personal reasons for taking the post may provide the added incentive needed to stay for awhile to address the challenges faced by the district, the third largest in the state with about 17,000 students. He said he is “in it for the long haul.”

“I was at my last district for 20 years,” he said. “You cannot do this work in a hurry. Jobs like this are sometimes viewed as a steppingstone.”

In recent months, there have been several sources of tension, instability and distraction for district personnel, the board and school patrons: The board vote in December to decertify the Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers as the bargaining agent for district certified personnel and a subsequent court challenge to that action; an investigation into allegations of racial insensitivity on the part of acting Superintendent Rob McGill and then the leak of the investigators’ report, possibly by a board member, triggering yet another investigation; the month-long hearing in federal court on the district’s compliance with its desegregation plan, the outcome of which may profoundly impact the future course and geographic configuration of the district.

On top of all that, back in March, one of two finalists withdrew her application days before the board was expected to make its pick for permanent hire for superintendent. Rather than hire the other, McGill, the board voted to reopen a national search once the court hearing concluded. A few days after that, McGill accepted an offer to head a charter school in Maumelle when his contract with PCSSD runs out at the end of June.

The board voted last week to again interview Hopson, who had been among the four top applicants selected for consideration back in the winter. The remaining candidate has since accepted another job offer.

To get the district back on track and focused on educating children, Hopson said that his priority in the first 100 days on the job will be “listening and building the capacity for trust” and “being sensitive to a lot of hurt and pain” around issues to do with the teachers union as well as “other areas where people have concerns about educating the children.”

His plan is to visit every school and sound out staff, including clerical and custodial workers, about their “aspirations and what we can be.”

“I call it a gap analysis,” Hopson said. His plan is then to return a set of recommendations to the board from “a grassroots perspective.”

“The worst thing we can do is assume what we see at this level is an accurate assessment,” Hopson said, alluding to the tensions in recent months around board actions.

He said there are “pockets of success that are tremendous and promising” in PCSSD schools and he wants to see to it that those successes are “duplicated and not isolated” so there is equity of opportunity for all students, no matter which school they attend.

Hopson went on to say that a “hallmark” of his administration will be to help create schools “where people feel comfortable sending their children – a district that is high performance and attractive as an option and the best district in the state.”

Hopson called the movement launched by some Jacksonville school residents to establish a separate school district should be seen as “a red flag” that the district should make a priority. He said his hope is that the district does not divide.

“At this point, I would like to think of this district as a unified school district,” he said, adding that he intends to “reach out” to Jacksonville and other areas in the district that may feel disenfranchised so that they are “valued and affirmed and don’t have to do that as an option.”

Charter schools too signal dissatisfaction with a school district, said Hopson, who is has experience with those in the Portland district.

“It is important to make sure that public schools are an attractive, viable option,” he said.

Hopson said he plans to stay out of the likely resumption of efforts by some board members to decertify the union, because that was set in motion prior to his being hired.

“I will honor what has taken place and preceded me,” Hopson said.

A vote to set a date to decertify may come as early as next Tuesday at the next monthly board meeting. Last week, Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Tim Fox ruled that the board’s December vote to decertify the union violated state law, although a school board does have the authority to decertify.

To meet statutory requirements, the board must first have policies in place to support a personnel policy committee, the entity which by law supplants a union as a teachers’ bargaining unit.

As the district moves forward, Hopson advocates being “straightforward and transparent about what we can do and limitations about what may be desired by the teachers or bargaining unit, while making sure that the lines of communication are open and people are treated with respect and dignity.”

Hopson said racial disparities in academic achievement and discipline rates will be a priority, applying what he learned while a principal at a Portland high school with high suspension and expulsion rates.

In time, those rates dropped below district averages and included rates for black males of 3 to 4 percent. A “culturally responsive” approach to learning and discipline and a school climate that promoted excellence were keys to success, he said.

“We focused on creating an environment of highest expectations and performance,” Hopson said. “Students saw themselves reflected in the curriculum and are rewarded for what they do. It is a process of affirmation.”

Hopson said that although he has been away from the state for 20 years, he has always regarded himself as “a transplanted Arkansan,” not an Oregonian.

“The values and experiences unique to this state I would not trade for anything and have been such an asset to me,” Hopson said. “I am glad I grew up here first.”

Hopson is married to the former Patricia Heard of Helena. She is a school media specialist. They have a daughter who attends college.

Hopson is the son of a minister and school cook for the Pulaski County schools. His father, Charles Hopson, is deceased. His mother, Lucy Hopson, lives in Sherwood.

He credits his father with imbuing him with his core values of “integrity, being a person of your word and treating people right.”

Hopson has two brothers, Billy Hopson, who works for the city of Little Rock, and Timothy Hopson, who works for the Little Rock School District.

After graduating from the University of Central Arkansas in 1976 with a degree in elementary education, Hopson took a teaching job in the Guy-Perkins School District in Faulkner County, then worked for two years as a special education teacher at then-Northwood Junior High in PCSSD.

From there, he relocated to Helena, where he was a school principal. He was recruited after four years to work in the Portland School District.

There he has moved up the ranks from teacher to principal and two years ago was tapped to be one of four deputy supervisors in the district of 46,000 students.

Hopson holds a doctorate degree in educational policy and management from the University of Oregon.

“I have been a change agent, working in some of the most challenging schools in the district,” Hopson said.

SPORTS >> Van Buren trips Cabot to take lead in Central

By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter

Van Buren steered its way out of a logjam to the top of the 7A-Central Conference standings with a 10-1 rout of Cabot at Brian Wade Conrade Field on Thursday.

Cabot (10-6, 3-4) was trying to force a five-way tie but found hitting Van Buren’s Tyler Spoon difficult as the Pointers (11-7, 5-2) took possession of first.

Van Buren held a one-game lead over Russellville, Conway and North Little Rock, all at 4-3, entering Friday. Cabot was in a three-way tie for fifth with Little Rock Catholic and Little Rock Central, while Bryant was in last place at 2-5.

Spoon gave up only three hits, working his way out of a bases-loaded jam in the bottom of the fourth inning with the Pointers holding a 1-0 lead.

Van Buren scored four runs in the top of the fifth to take control, and doubled its lead with five runs in the top of the seventh. Seven of the Pointers’ 10 runs were earned.

Senior centerfielder Joe Bryant saved Cabot from a shutout in the bottom of the seventh when he drove in Ty Steele with a groundout to shortstop. Steele started the at-bat for Cabot with the Panthers’ second hit off Spoon and he advanced on a single by Brandon Surdam.

Cabot’s only other hit was byNo. 2 hitter Andrew Reynolds in the bottom of the first inning with one out. But Spoon got Matt Evans to pop out and cleanup batter Tyler Erickson to ground out and strand Reynolds.

The Panthers threatened to seize momentum in the fourth inning.

Cabot starter Cole Nicholson prevented a second Van Buren score after Allen Kino reached on an error to lead off the inning and made his way to third. Nicholson then induced a pop-up and a pair of groundouts.

Spoon gave up his only walk to Reynolds leading off the bottom of the fifth. Evans advanced Reynolds with a grounder to first that bounced off Parker Johnson’s glove and into right field.

Spoon struck out Erickson for the first out but hit Justin Tyler with a 3-2 pitch to load the bases.

Spoon kept his composure to strike out Steele, then Johnson made up for his earlier error with a diving catch of Surdam’s liner between first and second.

Things turned ugly for the Panthers in the top of the fifth when Nicholson surrendered four straight hits, including Kino’s double to center field that scored two runs. Nicholson then hit Garrett Hightower and was relieved by Chase Beasley, who held Van Buren scoreless until the top of the seventh when the Pointers got him for four hits and five runs.

SPORTS >> Beebe doubles fun at Sylvan Hills

Beebe’s Tanner Ball slides into second base while Sylvan Hills’ Greg Atchison waits to make the tag.

By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor

Once Beebe set a tone it stayed set at Sylvan Hills on Tuesday.

Griffin Glaude flirted with a complete game and added a two-run home run as the Badgers beat the Bears 13-3 in the first game of a 5A-Southeast Conference doubleheader at Kevin Mc-Reynolds Field on Tuesday afternoon.

Beebe completed the road sweep with a 10-2 victory in the second game as Logan Ballew struck out 11 and the Badgers posted a five-run fifth to break it open.

“We hit the ball well. We were aggressive with the ball,” Beebe coach Mark Crafton said as the Badgers improved their record to 17-2, 6-0.

Glaude went 4 2/3 innings in the run-ruled, first-game victory. He struck out seven, scattered five hits and walked three and helped himself with a two-run home run in the six-run fifth inning.

“He did good,” Crafton said. “Grif came out; it’s been awhile since he’s had good competition. He came out and he got some good defensive plays and finally we settled down and got some good hits for him with runners in scoring position.”

Sylvan Hills’ first-game starter and UALR signee Jordan Spears struggled with control early, forcing in tworuns with bases-loaded walks and leaving for reliever Blake Rasdon after giving up four runs in Beebe’s five-run second.

“We always want to get a kid that’s got some good stuff, like the Spears kid, get them up in their pitch counts and just let them labor a little bit and then be aggressive on pitches in the zone,” Crafton said.

Glaude (7-0) was 3 for 4 in the first game with two RBI and his home run. Ryan Williams was 2 for 3 with two runs and an RBI and Ballew, playing third in the first game, was 3 for 3 with a run and five RBI.

“A little help right there, that’s always a motivational thing,” Crafton said of Glaude’s homer. “Hitting is contagious and it’s a little spark for the team.”

Ballew hit a two-run single to left in the second inning as the Badgers built a 7-0 lead, and added a two-RBI single in the big fifth. All of Beebe’s runs in the second came with two outs and the Badgers scored one with two outs in the first.

“Out of the first, I think, eight runs, or seven runs, they were scored with two outs,” Sylvan Hills coach Denny Tipton said.

“They got one with less than two and we couldn’t get out of an inning. Hey, they made some good plays and hit the ball.”

Glaude’s home run made it 9-0 in the fifth, then Bryson Scott hit a one-run double, Ballew added his two-run single and Jared Ashbrenner, one of 11 Badgers to bat in the inning, completed Beebe’s scoring with an RBI single to right that made it 13-0.

The run production was no surprise to Tipton.

“It was 16-6 last time,” Tipton said of the Bears’ previous loss to Beebe. “They’re a good club.”
Glaude, nearing a 100-pitch count, grew tired and couldn’t get out of the fifth as Sylvan Hills scored three runs. Austin Spears

hit a two-run double and Rasdon added an RBI single before Scott came in from right field to relieve Glaude and strike out Michael Lock to end the first game.

“We gave them a little breathing room with some walks and errors,” Crafton said. “We gave them some runners in scoring position and they took advantage of it and put three up on the board. But it helped getting that early cushion; it let us breathe a little bit but we’ve still got to be plugging away.”

Ballew (4-1) gave up four hits and three walks in the second game as Beebe handed the loss to Blake Hannon.

Glaude was 2 for 2 with three RBI in the second game, Williams was 2 for 2 with two RBI, Scott was 2 for 3 and Ballew was 2 for 4. Lance Hunter was Sylvan Hills’ second-game hitting star as he went 2 for 3 with a home run.

“We like where we’re at, Crafton said of Beebe’s position atop the 5A-Southeast standings. “We’ve played some good ballclubs here.”

SPORTS >> ’Hounds erupt to pound Travs

Arkansas and Midland managers swap lineups Thursday.

By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor

The Arkansas Travelers went 0 for Midland in their home opener at Dickey-Stephens Park on Thursday night.

The Midland RockHounds rolled to an 11-1 victory, a score identical to the season opener in Midland, and ran their record against Arkansas to 4-0 before a crowd of 7,144.

Midland got 11 hits and took advantage of four Travelers’ errors in its first visit to North Little Rock this year.

“It was one of those games we didn’t hit, we didn’t pitch, we didn’t play defense,” Arkansas manager Bobby Magallanes said.

In an annual scheduling twist, Midland and Frisco, of the Texas League South Division, play Arkansas, of the North, in the first 12 games of the year. Arkansas is the Class AA affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels and Midland is affiliated with the Angels’

American League West rival the Oakland Athletics.

Counting spring training games, the Arkansas and Midland clubs get to know each other fairly well in the early going of each season.

“We’ve had four games against them and two of them were really close, one-run games,” Midland manager Darren Bush said.

“And then we just had some games go our way in the other two where we took advantage of some opportunities.”

Midland made the most of its 11 hits and sent nine to the plate in a five-run fourth inning that featured a grand slam by designated hitter Archie Gilbert, batting in the No. 9 spot.

Arkansas’ lone run came on Paul McAnulty’s sacrifice fly in the sixth, but Midland responded with a three-run seventh that included Alex Valdez’s two-run triple.

“Actually, the first game of the season we lost 11-1,” Magallanes said. “So it’s like déjà vu. It’s like ‘Whoa, it’s happening again, 11-1.’ They’ve got a good team. They can hit. We can’t make too many mistakes against those guys. They really capitalize on them.”

Midland left-hander Carlos Hernandez (1-0) started and went 5 1/3 innings for the victory. Hernandez gave up two hits, one run, struck out four and walked three.

Travelers starter Jayson Miller (0-2) gave up seven runs, though just two were earned because of errors, in five innings as he took the loss.

Magallanes noted Midland has gotten away from a patient plate approach once encouraged by the parent Oakland club in favor of a more aggressive offensive style.

“They run,” he said. “They don’t go station to station anymore, they don’t take pitches anymore. They’re a lot more aggressive now.”

Midland improved to 5-2 and remained tied with Corpus Christi for first in the South. Arkansas dropped to 3-4 and was in third in the North behind Northwest Arkansas and Springfield.

The Travelers returned to action against Midland at Dickey-Stephens on Friday, and wrap up the three-game series with the RockHounds today. Frisco arrives for a three-game series that begins Sunday.

The two South Division clubs won’t play Arkansas again until the second half of the Texas League season begins July 1.

“We see them a lot but the games usually takes place,” Bush said. “They play hard all the time and we know that. So we have to be on our game.”

The ever-worsening score didn’t seem to bother the opening night crowd Thursday.

Fans were still lining up at the ticket windows in the second inning, families reclined on blankets in the outfield berms and customers in the ballpark beer garden, known as “Hook Slide Corner,” stood shoulder to shoulder most of the evening.

“We didn’t play that well but hopefully we can get them tomorrow,” Magallanes said.

SPORTS >> Jacksonville’s girls keep pace, take two

Jacksonville second baseman Jennifer Bock gets a hit against LR Parkview.

By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter

Jacksonville quickly took control against struggling Little Rock Parkview in a 6A-East Conference doubleheader at Dupree Park on Tuesday.

The Lady Red Devils routed the Lady Patriots 17-1 in the first game and shut them out 17-0 in Game 2 to improve their conference record to 4-6.

Over the weekend Jacksonville reached the championship of the Jae Lynn Russell Memorial tournament and took momentum into Tuesday. But coach Tanya Ganey said the real turnaround for her young team came in a 9-7 loss at Marion late last week.

“These young ladies have improved a lot,” Ganey said. “The first time we played Marion, we lost 15-0. We go back and get down 7-0, but we hit the ball well and stepped up our defense, and even had a chance to win it there in the seventh inning with runners on base. That was a big accomplishment for us.”

Jacksonville rolled past Parkview with a combination of big hits up the middle and poor fielding by the Lady Patriots.

Jacksonville earned 10 of its runs and was led by sophomore cleanup hitter Haley Hickingbotham, who went 2 for 2 with three RBI.

In the first game Hickingbotham drove in the first two runs for the Lady Red Devils with a single to center field that scored Alexis Oakley and junior Candice Howard.

Oakley was 3 for 3 with an RBI and two runs scored in the first game.

The junior all-purpose player singled twice in the top of the second and scored when Howard knocked her in with a single to center. Oakley’s second single, a blooper just over shortstop, drove in leadoff batter Jennifer Bock to give the Lady Red Devils a 12-1 lead.

Junior outfielder Riley Zink came to the plate only once for Jacksonville, but made the most of it in the top of the first with an RBI single that made it 3-0. Courtesy runner Chyna Davis scored, then took over for Zink as the No. 5 hitter and came away with a hit and two RBI.

Sophomore pitcher Alexis House gave up the only run to Parkview in the bottom of the first thanks to a walk and a single.

From there, House and the Jacksonville defense kept Parkview off the basepaths.

House gave up one more single and a two-out walk in the bottom of the third but induced a groundout to end the game by the 10-run rule.

Alexis House handled pitching duties in both games. Her sister Whitney House was absent from the bullpen because a stress fracture in her foot.

Bock, Jacksonville’s only senior, finished 2 for 4 after grounding out twice in the first inning. Bock doubled and scored in the second and drove in a run with a single in the third.

With conference sweeps over Hall and Parkview and six seeds available for the East in the 6A state tournament, the odds of the Lady Red Devils reaching the postseason for the 10th consecutive year look promising.

SPORTS >> Area players earn all-star accolades

By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter

Seven area basketball players were named to the Arkansas Activities Association all-star basketball teams released Thursday.

The all-star game, between the East and West squads, will be played at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville on June 24.

Lonoke’s Asiah Scribner and Searcy seniors Lauren Harrison and Kristen Celsor made the East girls team to be coached by North Little Rock’s Daryl Fimple.

North Pulaski’s Aaron Cooper and Daquan Bryant, Jacksonville’s Deshone McClure and Garrett Southerland of Abundant Life will play for Conway coach James Bates and the East squad in the boys game.

Scribner was named Leader girls player of the year after averaging 15.1 points and 10.2 rebounds a game as Lonoke reached the state semifinals. The 6-0 postplayer will play for UALR and coach Joe Foley in the fall after starting four years under

Nathan Morris on the Lady Jackrabbits.

Scribner received the most votes of any player in the 2-4A Conference, and will be joined by fellow post player and conference rival Whitney Donahue of Clinton.

“We’re certainly happy; actually, we’re as proud as we can be,” Morris said of Scribner’s selection. “It’s a great opportunity for her to complete her high school career on a big stage and showcase her abilities. Plus, it’s just an all-around fun week for the kids.”

Searcy’s Celsor and Harrison will have one final game together after growing up as teammates on various AAU teams, as well as being a part of the Lady Lions program since junior high and helping the Lady Lions to this year’s 6A state final.

McClure will lead a strong contingent of local boys players from the area. McClure, the Leader pick for boys player of the year, averaged 18.3 points a game for the Red Devils under coach Victor Joyner.

North Pulaski’s Cooper averaged 16.9 points a game and will play at Missouri State in the fall. Cooper, Bryant and McClure have all won AAU national titles together on the Arkansas Wings.

“They deserve it,” North Pulaski coach Ray Cooper said of the Falcons’ all-star selections, who helped North Pulaski to the state semifinals. “It’s really rewarding for them. They have made sacrifices.

“They played unselfish and didn’t worry about stats, and a lot of times they didn’t even play in the fourth quarter because we were beating teams so badly. They never complained.”

Southerland led the Owls to the 2A regional tournament this season, and has been a three-year starter for Abundant Life. At 6-6, Southerland is noted as one of the best outside-shooting post players in the state.

SPORTS >> Perssons of interest: No Rivalries within Bears' family

Jacob Persson, left, Philip Persson and Joshua Persson all have vital roles on Sylvan Hills’ soccer team, and will make their third trip to state next month.

By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter

There are a lot of Perssons responsible for Sylvan Hills’ soccer success in recent years.

For Bears seniors Philip Persson, Jacob Persson and Joshua Persson, that success has included back-to-back appearances in the state tournament and one conference championship in their first two varsity seasons.

And for their final run — this year as team captains — the three will most likely lead the Bears into the 5A state tournament as the No. 2 seed from the 5A Southeast Conference after two close losses to league-leading Pulaski Academy.

But those two losses have been the only setbacks for Sylvan Hills (10-2-1).

“It’s been a really good year so far,” Philip Persson said. “We’re getting more and more of a reputation at school. Soccer is kind of growing, and we’re getting more respect for it, which is kind of exciting for us.”

Forward Jacob Perssons and mid-fielder Joshua are twin brothers who were both named all-conference last year, while goalkeeper Philip is their cousin. But the family connection doesn’t end with Phil, Jacob and Josh.

Philip’s brother Sam Persson has been head coach of the Bears for five seasons while his sister Jody was a standout of the Lady Bears in 2005-06 and now helps coach girls.

Sam Persson, who will also coach sophomore and cousin Jeremiah Persson the next two seasons, said having relatives on the field together is a great benefit when it comes to communication and unselfishness.

“They look for each other,” Sam Persson said. “When the game is on the line, they know they have somebody they can trust, because they’ve worked together so long before. Especially the brothers; they know what each other’s going to do before the other guy does it.”

Jacob led the team with 24 goals last year and has 17 this season, tying him with Joshua for the lead.

“Last year, we had a chance, but it’s actually turned out better for us this year as far as a team,” Jacob Persson said. “We’ve gained a lot more people. A lot of the other players have progressed more than expected. So we’ve actually turned out to be a lot better.”

Jacob has produced more goals than anyone for the Bears in the past two years, but Sam Persson looks to him for much more.

“Jacob is the most natural athlete that we have on the team,” Sam Persson said. “He has skill, he has speed, and he’s left footed, which is a rarity, especially at this level. He can head the ball, he can score the ball, he can pass the ball — he’s got good vision. He’s hard to take down. We would probably get a lot more free kicks if he wasn’t so stubborn about staying up and being direct.”

Sam Persson praises Joshua as the headiest player Sylvan Hills has on the team.

“Josh is probably one of the more underrated players in the state,” Sam Persson said. “He’s not the best athlete on our team, he doesn’t have the strongest foot, but he has a better tactical understanding than anybody I’ve seen play at the high-school level.

“If there’s a spot that needs to be filled on the field, he sees it, and he fills it. When he has to, he’ll take the game on his shoulders.”

Joshua is just as happy to see members of his family in the stands as on the field.

“We get a lot of support from our family,” he said. “They always come to all of our games. It’s definitely not the biggest sport at Sylvan Hills, but we get a fair amount of fans.”

Philip refers to Sylvan Hills’ 3-0 victory over Paragould in the first round of the 5A state playoffs last year, when he stopped a close-range free kick in the final seconds, as his best goalkeeping performance.

“He has the personality traits that you need in a keeper, which is a strong individual personality,” Sam Persson said of his younger brother. “Someone who doesn’t need kudos from other people; he’s self-motivated.

“And he’s fearless, which is important when you’re coming up against the big athletes that tend to be at the forward position.

He’s not afraid to take somebody out.”

All three players plan to attend UALR for two years after high school. From there, Philip plans on transferring to Letourneau University in Longview, Tex., while Jacob and Joshua will most likely head north to the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.

UALR only has a women’s soccer program, but the Perssons plan to play club soccer until they transfer.

As for the remainder of this season and the brothers’ battle for the scoring lead, Joshua said that takes a back seat to teamwork and victories.

“I mean, we pass each other the ball,” Joshua said.

“It’s not like we intentionally keep the ball from each other or anything. If we win, we’re happy.”

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EDITORIAL >> So long Mike, Janet

Tell us it isn’t so! The morning prints reported yesterday that Mike and Janet Huckabee have adopted Florida as their home and have moved into a $1 million rental abode in Miramar Beach, a resort community on a narrow spine of land between the Gulf of Mexico and Choctawatchee Bay. They are nestled among four championship golf courses.

By declaring themselves as domiciliaries of Florida, the Huckabees will not have to pay Arkansas income taxes on Mike’s high six-figure income from Fox News and book royalties, but we are sure that had nothing to do with their decision to become Floridians. Actually, only Janet Huckabee has made it official that she is a Floridian. A spokesman for the former governor, the daughter who is running the Arkansas Senate campaign of John Boozman, wouldn’t say whether her dad was an official Floridian or an Arkansawyer.

They still own the stately home that they bought in Shady Valley just west of us after he left office in January 2007. But we are quite sure that the couple who repeated their vows in a celebrated covenant marriage would never be separated even by a legal distinction.

This poses a dilemma for Arkansas media such as us, who give inordinate attention to the exploits of Arkansawyers who have moved on to the national stage. If Mike Huckabee is not an Arkansawyer but a Floridian, do we continue to mark the sparrow’s fall when he utters a banality or falsehood in some eastern venue, such as a Fox telecast or column, or when another criminal that he freed while he was governor goes on a killing spree outside our borders? We don’t do that with, say, Sarah Palin or Mark Sanford or Mitt Romney.

Were he not a Floridian, for example, we would take note of Huckabee’s interview this week in which he equated gay and lesbian people with drug users, polygamists and people who have sex with their sisters, brothers and children and opined that people who did not believe in a god live completely devoid of morals. Or the column he wrote for Fox the other day praising the idea of a national sales tax, which he said would be wonderful because prostitutes, pimps, bookies and drug dealers would be required to collect a big sales tax from their customers and remit it to the federal treasury. (Imagine the federal bureaucracy that would be needed to enforce that rule.)

See, wherever his abode is, the man is just too interesting to ignore.

It has been our habit to mark the governor’s philosophical pilgrimage after he left the Arkansas Capitol. For nearly 10 years he was a pragmatic and often compassionate if slightly quirky public servant. He raised taxes over and over to improve education, vastly expanded government-paid health care to the poor (he called it socialism when President Obama tried it), employed a wildly liberal policy toward long-term inmates of the penitentiary and tried to enlarge the rights of immigrants living illegally among us before a Democratic legislature beat him down.

But nothing he says or writes anymore reminds you of that incarnation. We think it is important for purely scholastic reasons that we record the philosophical journey of this modern prodigal.

No matter where he pays or avoids taxes and registers to vote, until Mike Huckabee is caught wearing a Florida Gators cap, he is going to be an Arkansawyer to us. —E.D.

EDITORIAL >> Sen. Baker disappoints

Disappointments, disappointments. Now we read that our favorite Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, the joyful and sweet-tempered Gilbert Baker of Conway, has joined the little rearguard clique that wants to substitute a giant national sales tax for corporate and personal income taxes.

We have lost count of how many Republican candidates for the Senate and House of Representatives from northwest Arkansas have come out for the “Fair Tax,” the name that its authors dreamed up 20 years ago, but we should have guessed that Gil

Baker would eventually try to get ahead of the parade. He does that.

Still, it is disappointing. In spite of his right-wing pronouncements in this race, Baker was always a pragmatic lawmaker in his stints in the Arkansas House of Representatives and Senate. He was known even to vote for taxes for good causes. His transmogrification into a reactionary follows the pattern of his mentor, Mike Huckabee, including his embrace of the national sales tax. (See comment below.)

Substituting a broad sales tax for income taxes would shift the tax burden more radically from the rich to working people. Its adherents, like Huckabee, claim that its regressive effect would be offset by a government rebate to everyone to offset the taxes on what it costs to live in poverty. But the tax rate would need to be so huge — more than 30 percent by independent estimates — that it would lower the lifestyle of people of median incomes and less, and also accelerate the shift of wealth to the top one percent of Americans.

If Huckabee, Baker and the other politicians who have climbed on the sales tax bandwagon are serious and not merely grandstanding, they will climb on board with the AR One Tax. That is the nutty constitutional amendment that some ideologues who call themselves the Arkansas Progressive Group are trying to get on the Arkansas ballot this fall. The attorney general and secretary of state have approved the popular name and ballot title and have asked the Arkansas Supreme Court to certify that it would not mislead people about what they are voting on. We don’t think the Supreme Court will do that because the name and ballot title are not only bewildering and stupid, but also dishonest. But the amendment may get on the ballot and, who knows, the voters may approve it.

It purports to repeal all taxes levied by the state, although by deceit or oversight the authors leave many taxes untouched. The $5.5 billion of state revenues that support schools, highways, health care, prisons and all the other functions of government would be replaced by a sales tax on everything you buy, from groceries and cars to haircuts, doctor visits and the services of your gardener and your tax preparer.

Businesses wouldn’t pay any taxes, but all 2.9 million Arkansawyers would get a big check each month from the government to pay for the necessities of life. Just for an example, the Jim Bob Duggar family in Little Rock — the 21 of them —would get about $70,000 a year from the state. You would, of course, buy your new car and appliances in Memphis to save a fourth of the cost.

If that sounds like a plan, vote for our friend Gil Baker, or one of his Republican foes. They’re for it.

TOP STORY >> Paramedic helped Haiti

Jacksonville Fire Battalion Chief Joe Bratton tells Rotary Club members he saw devastation in Haiti while he worked to save lives in that poor nation.

By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader senior staff writer

“Pray for the people of Haiti,” Jacksonville Fire Battalion Chief Joe Bratton told Jacksonville Rotarians at lunch Monday.

Bratton, himself an associate Baptist preacher in Sherwood, traveled to Port-au-Prince in February, just weeks after the devastating earthquake that flattened the capital city and killed about 230,000 people. Bratton was part of a six-person team organized by a Baptist group in Arkansas.

As a paramedic, Bratton was part of a three-person medical team, accompanied by a three-person construction team.

“With the earthquake several weeks old when they arrived, we found ourselves dealing with infection and parasites as opposed to traumatic injuries,” he said.

“We were trying to get people as healthy as possible for the rainy season,” he said.

“After a while, we stopped testing for worms and wormed everyone.”

Bratton and his companions paid their own airfare and expenses. The suitcases of medications—which quickly ran out—were donated, as was the water purification equipment they set up and left behind.

“They are the third world of the third world,” he said. Maybe the fourth world.’

“They were economically and resource challenged before the earthquake.”

He worked with a doctor, a nurse practitioner and a registered nurse.

He found the conditions hot and humid. They slept inside a church that survived the earthquake, ate there most of the time and held their clinics either in the church or outside under a tree.

“We called it the Mango Tree Clinic,” Bratton said.

“We lived and stayed with the Haitians,” he said, “and saw 1,227 patients in five days.”

The people were friendly, gracious, grateful and resilient, with a good spirit for people who have lost the little they had before the earthquake.

He said that despite the lack of water, the people he saw appeared fresh and appeared to be wearing clean clothes. “They smelled better than we did,” he said.

Children played and carried on, he said. “Kids were kids and teenagers were teenagers.”

He saw youngsters flying a kite made out of a plastic bag.

He saw no evidence of roving gangs or people stealing or looting, but relief supplies were on hand by then, as was armed security from several nations. He was mostly in the Canadian zone.

Water from broken water mains ran down the streets, which were also where the garbage was thrown.

“The garbage lay on the street, where it was burned or hogs rooted through it.”

Bratton said it would take Haiti at least 30 years to recover. Landlords and homeowners had no insurance and wouldn’t be rebuilding homes. Many he saw had improvised shelters in the medians of the highways.

TOP STORY >> Stumbaugh says he’s a candidate for Cabot mayor

Former Cabot Mayor Stubby Stumbaugh addresses supporters at city hall.

By JOAN MCCOY
Leader staff writer

Standing on the steps of Cabot City Hall with 15 U.S. flags behind him, former Mayor Stubby Stumbaugh told about 100 supporters Monday evening that he is running for a second term.

Stumbaugh is the third candidate to announce. Bill Cypert, secretary and spokesman for the Cabot Water and Wastewater Commission, and Alderman Eddie Cook also are running.

Stumbaugh told the group, which included friends, family, fellow Republicans and members of his church, Christ Worship Center, that if elected he will be a “more humble servant” than he was in his first term.

Stumbaugh, now in his mid-40s, had taken a leave of absence from the Little Rock Police Department to run for mayor eight years ago. He did not seek another term but ran for Congress instead and lost.

Today, he works with large accounts for the garbage company IESI.

Stumbaugh counts among the successes of his first term the new community center and animal shelter which he pushed for.

When money to build those projects fell short, construction required the extension of a one-cent sales tax, which he opposed.

Cook and former Alderman Odis Waymack sponsored the referendum that put the question of extending the tax to the voters.

The extension of the tax raised more than $30 million and also paid for the construction of the wastewater treatment plant without raising sewer rates, the city’s part of the railroad overpass and about $2 million for street repairs.

Although the community center and animal shelter were built during Stumbaugh’s term, the other projects were completed under Mayor Eddie Joe Williams.

Williams, who is running for the state Senate and not a second term as mayor, was the only candidate Stumbaugh alluded to during the 15-minute announcement.

Just before 6 p.m., the traffic light at Second and Main Streets allowed only two or three cars to cross Main at one time.

Without using his name, Stumbaugh said that despite Williams’ attempts at improving traffic flow, it is at its “all-time worst.”

“We rerouted traffic; we timed lights and it wasn’t like it was today,” Stumbaugh said.

Stumbaugh also counted among his successes the special census that brought in new tax revenue mostly for streets and the construction of sidewalks around the schools with a grant that started under his predecessor and ended under Williams.

Although he didn’t elaborate, Stumbaugh told the crowd of well-wishers that he had made some mistakes during his first term because he was human.

But he said he had always worked hard to “protect kids and families” and to build better police and fire departments and that he is the candidate who will be proactive in seeing to their needs.

The announcement started with a prayer by his pastor asking God to sanctify the start of Stumbaugh’s campaign and an introduction by longtime friend Robin Standridge.

“I’ll do anything for Stubby because he’ll do anything for me,” Standridge said, adding, “Stubby’s promised that if he wins this time, he’s going to listen to me.”

As mayor, Stumbaugh was often embroiled in controversy. He hired his friends, sometimes to positions for which they proved to be unqualified, his critics said.

Several lawsuits against the mayor, council and city were filed during that time, including a suit by City Clerk-Treasurer Marva Verkler, who wanted back the duties Stumbaugh had asked the council to take from her.

That suit was eventually dropped and her duties were restored when Williams took office.

Stumbaugh feuded with the Cabot Chamber of Commerce and his working relationship with the Lonoke County judge was poor. When Judge Charlie Troutman asked during a council meeting for financial help building the road that connects Hwy. 5 to Walmart, Stumbaugh asked Troutman if he owned land in the area.

And since some council members supported the mayor and some didn’t, council meetings were often long and confrontational.