An hour before the switches were thrown Dec.
19, the lights were already arcing along an ever wider half-radius around the First Security Amphitheatre.
These were headlights, directed by helmsmen seeking parking spaces. By one estimate, 5,000 came out to see the River Lights in the Rock ceremony introducing the LED lights added to the Main Street, Junction and Clinton Presidential Park bridges.
The $2.4 million project is a gift from Entergy Arkansas on this, its centennial year, but the whole project and event was a collaboration among the company and the Downtown Little Rock Partnership, the cities of Little Rock and North Little Rock, the William J. Clinton Foundation, the Pulaski County Junction Bridge Authority, Phillsips Lighting Co. and Koontz Electric Co.
Elena Mielusanu of Constanta, Romania, and Marcela Grigorescu of Buzau, Romania, flew all the way in and had a front-row seat for the lighting. (OK, Grigorescu’s Maumelle-dwelling daughter Liliana MacPhee had something to do with the trip, too.)
When the lights were tripped, all three Ooh-ed and Ahh-ed, but, asked afterward, all Mielusanu could say (translated by MacPhee) was, “I never thought I would see Bill Clinton in my life!”
The former president, recently nicknamed the translator-in-chief himself, took the opportunity to moralize about our current political climate - call it partisanship, gridlock, dysfunction or something else.
He pointed to Jerry Maulden, sitting just in front of the stage, and said, “I spent a lot of time trying to build bridges … Jerry Maulden,president of Arkansas Power and Light for a long time … the first time I met him I was fighting with AP&L over a rate issue, and we argued, and we argued periodically for years, and over the years of our argument I came not only to respect but to love him. It bothers me when we get to the point in America when we lose the sense that the people who disagree with us are human beings, are real people. … The whole purpose of having a free society is not to have everybody agree but for people to honestly disagree and then figure out some way to get the show on the road.”
In several ways, the event was one decidedly more memorable than it might have been, evidenced, perhaps, by its afterglow.
High Profile, Pages 39 on 12/29/2013