LITTLE ROCK — Out of the past comes a very welcome voice, that of Randy Tardy.
Randy is one of this newspapers former business writers. Transportation was his specialty before retirement, and he brought to every task a storehouse of recollection, knowledge and context. His mental database always impressed me; he could bring to the fore the most interesting facts about a subject gleaned years before, speak to them with authority, even though he would carefully check the accuracy and clarity of his memory before writing a single word for our readers, and put the whole enchilada into a context relevant to the assignment at hand. One thing that set Randy apart from many of his colleagues was his observational skill. He had a great eye for detail.
One day last week, Randy put pen to paper in response to my unplanned series of columns on Arkansas’ role in World War II, primarily the internment and prisoner-of-war camps established here, and shared a few recollections of that time. Enjoy these excerpts.
“It was around 1943. I wasn’t yet a teen-ager, growing up in West Helena. The Phillips County Fair Grounds area had been converted into a prisoner-of-war compound.
“The first occupants, as I recall, were Italians from the African campaign. They would work the agricultural crops around and below Helena, chopping (weeding) cotton in the late spring and picking cotton in the fall.
“I would be out in our front yard playing as the open-air trucks would bring the men home from their labors, and you could hear them coming. The Italian men were belting out arias from various Italian operas! The male chorus was a beautiful sound in the evening in those early days of the war. They seemed happy to be away from the war and they showed it with their beautiful voices.
“Later, the Italians were replaced by German POWs from Africa and maybe Italian engagements. When they returned from the farm fields, they stood at attention as the truck went by. No music. No sound.
“Years later, I would read in the Daily World at Helena where a POW who was in West Helena during the 1940s would come back to visit the site, the farms where they worked, and they often brought their children and grandchildren to show them where Daddy or Granddaddy spent part of the war.
“The old POW building still stands, or did the last time I was over that way. The facility, when the county fair moved to Marvell, became a very busy garment factory for many years.”
Adding to previous entreaties about the importance of Arkansas history in education-everyone’s education, young and old-I hope that if no individual or group is collecting oral histories on this chapter in our state’s history, somebody will. Randy Tardy’s recollections wouldn’t be a bad place to start. Who knows, maybe I’ll do it. It’s something to think about because, speaking of retirement, I have no plans to do that, but for those of you who haven’t heard, I am moving on. One more week and a nearly 35-year stint at this newspaper, beginning with the Arkansas Democrat, will end.
Where I’m headed, no one knows. I gave two weeks’ notice last week because it was time. I hope to enjoy some down time before the restlessness sets in. Having worked at one thing or another since childhood-selling Christmas cards, candy and such door-to-door at age 10, busing tables in restaurants at 12 and then, at 14, beginning a nearly unbroken chain of after-school and weekend jobs through college that eventually landed me at my first newspaper job-I have never been “unemployed” for more than a few days here and there in 50 years.That’s just what we did in my family. We worked, knowing little else. Retirement didn’t agree with my parents and I don’t imagine it will agree with me, so let’s hope that chapter’s writing is a few years in the offing.
In the meantime, I’ll be wrapping things up here next week. I’m sorry I won’t be able to get to all the other wartime memories of the home front that readers have sent in, but know that the time you took to read this column and respond to it is very much appreciated.
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Associate Editor Meredith Oakley is editor of the Voices page.
Editorial, Pages 79 on 03/13/2011