Arkadelphia Promise

LITTLE ROCK — I like to joke that there’s one traffic jam per year in my hometown of Arkadelphia.

It only lasts a few minutes following the annual Battle of the Ravine football game between Ouachita Baptist University and Henderson State University.

Last week, though, there was another traffic jam, this one stretching for miles along Pine Street as people drove toward the high school stadium. The crowd wasn’t headed to a football game. The Arkadelphia High School Badgers had been eliminated by Monticello the previous Friday in the first round of the state playoffs. Arkadelphians instead were driving to hear an announcement that will have more of a lasting impact than any football game, team or championship could ever have.

The Arkadelphia Promise scholarship program, which was unveiled that Tuesday evening, will give many students a chance at a college education that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. Starting with the class of 2011, Arkadelphia High School graduates will be eligible for scholarships that will pay the difference between what the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship pays and the total tuition and fees charged by any public college or university in Arkansas. The scholarships can be used at both public and private institutions of higher education.

The announcement came almost four years after Murphy Oil Corp. began a similar scholarship program for El Dorado High School graduates. Murphy invested $50 million in the future of the city it calls home. The El Dorado Promise has been a tremendous success with students coming to El Dorado from 31 states and 13 foreign countries since the program started. The El Dorado School District, after years of declining student population, has seen its enrollment grow 4 percent in recent years.

While El Dorado is blessed to have Murphy Oil, Arkadelphia is blessed to have the Ross Foundation and Southern Bancorp. I’m sure Jane Ross, who died in July 1999 at age 78 from complications following heart surgery, would be immensely pleased by last week’s announcement. She never married or had children, but in a sense she considered all Clark County residents her children. Her story is a remarkable one.

Her grandfather, J.G. Clark, began buying up South Arkansas timberland in the 1880s. Ross graduated from Arkadelphia High in 1938 and Henderson in 1942. Photography was her passion. She worked as a Navy photographer in Washington for six months in 1943 and then enlisted in 1944 in the Women’s Army Corps. In 1947, she received a degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology, where she had studied color photography.

Her Arkadelphia portrait studio, known as Photos by Ross, operated from 1948-55. Ross gave up the studio following the death of her father, Hugh Thomas Ross. She knew the management of her family’s extensive timber holdings would be a full-time job.

Ross believed in the

maxim “to whom much is

given much is expected.”

That’s why she established

the Ross Foundation in 1966, using those pine forests to produce money for charity. She remained the foundation’s chairman until her death, though a relative named Ross Whipple later took over many of the day-to-day operations.

Along the way, Whipple also became one of the South’s most successful bankers. He began Summit Bank in February 2000. During the past decade, Summit has grown into a 20-branch network serving large parts of Arkansas.

Whipple, who is also a Henderson graduate, is chairman of both Summit and the Ross Foundation. Additionally, he runs a family partnership that manages about 65,000 acres of timberlands.

Just two blocks down Arkadelphia’s Main Street from Summit’s offices are the headquarters of Southern Bancorp, the largest and most profitable rural development banking organization in the country.

In 1986, then-Gov. Bill Clinton joined officials of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation to announce the formation of a rural development bank in Arkansas. Proceeds from commercial banking operations would be used to fund development activities rather than pay dividends to stockholders. Founding directors included Hillary Clinton, Mack McLarty and Rob Walton. Southern now operates banks not only in Arkadelphia but also in Helena-West Helena, El Dorado, Blytheville, Trumann and even the Mississippi Delta.

Under Phil Baldwin’s strong leadership, Southern has expanded its reach and impact. But nothing in its history likely will equal the impact of the Arkadelphia Promise on a city. What happened last week was the culmination of a commitment that began with Jane Ross and continues today with Whipple and Baldwin. Though they compete as bankers, Baldwin and Whipple have a common desire to see their part of southwest Arkansas thrive.

“Educational success requires more than student success,” Gov. Mike Beebe said that night at Badger Stadium. “It requires opportunity, and that’s what Arkadelphia, the Ross Foundation and Southern Bancorp are stepping up to provide. These students will pursue their college degrees without tuition concerns hanging over them.”

If there has been a more exciting announcement in Arkansas in 2010, I can’t think of it.

Free-lance columnist Rex Nelson is the senior vice president for government relations and public outreach at The Communications Group in Little Rock.