Photographer/author to speak Thursday at library

CONWAY — Bill Ward, author of Beyond the River: Stories of Life Near the Arkansas, will speak at the Faulkner County Library at 7 p.m. Thursday.

The Arkansas River enters the state near Fort Smith and leaves it near Arkansas City as it joins the Mississippi River on its journey to the Gulf of Mexico. The river brings lifegiving water, transportation, recreation and a kind of focal point for all the communities along the river’s length. A large diversity of people and ideas are marked by life near this third-largest river in the United States.

Ward has brought together photographs and stories of many of the people and places near this stream — some from long ago, some from not so long ago — in Beyond the River.

Ward published his first book, Conway As it was ... As it is, a photographic history of the city, in 2008.

His new book brings to light a number of people who have helped create the fabric of life in The Natural State, many of them in the Conway area. Ward said his new book “could almost be a volume 2 of the first one.”

The book includes information on many people and places — an elephant sanctuary, one of only two in the nation, near Guy; Dr. Jim Gray, the 1960s back-roads traveler who trekked through Conway and claimed to be an eyewitness to the Indian wars of the early 19th century; a photograph of the rescue of a 7-year-old girl who spent three weeks adrift on a raft in the South Atlantic during World War II (she now lives in Conway); families and organizations who helped shape the city, including the Hambuchens and Simons; an Arkansas soldier who was held for a year in the infamous Stalag 17 German concentration camp during World War II and kept a diary; the story of the Ozark Folk Center; a wall near Conway that is more than 800 feet long (and growing), built without mortar; actions of Nathan Gordon, a true war hero from Morrilton; new and compelling information about the Arkansas Rockefellers — Winthrop and Winthrop Paul; and a preacher in the Ozark Mountains who grew up learning the art of whiskey-making before turning in a different direction.

Beyond the River, which contains 120 pages, has been in the making for more than two years and includes more than 240 photographs. John L. Ward, brother to the author, developed the narrative of more than 50,000 words, and Emelene Russell of Castle Rock, Colo., designed the book.

Copies may be reserved by going online at www.billwardphotography.com, calling the author at (501) 450-2599 or mailing a request to P.O. Box 33, Bee Branch, AR 72013. The book sells for $110.

This event at the library is free and open to the public.

For more information, call the library at (501) 327-7482; email Nancy@fcl.org, or visit Facebook or Twitter.

River Valley Ozark, Pages 139 on 02/12/2012

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