Really, the finale? Not on your life. Not for Jane Hankins and her husband, Randy (better known as Craig O’Neill), the artist-author and anchor-entertainer power couple who were this year’s honorees at a fundraiser April 26 inside the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
The highlight of the night was the opening number by Melissa Thoma, half of another well-traveled and -heeled Little Rock couple who were honored last year. Dressed in a leotard and flanked by “Thomites” Gabrielle Confer and Hope Boyd, they danced and stomped around the stage, a la Beyonce, singing “If you like it then you better put a bid on it,” a spin on “Put a Ring On It” and a nod to O’Neill’s quirky, not-ready-for-prime-time auctioneering (though selftaught, most nonprofits will tell you he’s remarkably successful at wheedling high bids).
“He’s the Pied Piper,” said Carol Vick before the show, about her neighbor O’Neill.
“We’d have block parties, and every kid in the neighborhood and even some kids not from the neighborhood would come to hang out with him.”
Hankins is no shrinking violet herself. She has written two books and has had her sculptures exhibited in the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington. Who knows where this new acclaim - Finale - will carry her.
“I don’t know what’ll happen after tonight, maybe I’ll get a movie deal on my book,” she said, tongue in cheek.
The night raised about $64,000 for the college.
Along with O’Neill’s employer, KTHV-TV, Channel 11, and beverage distributor Glazer’s, Finale was presented by Sissy’s Log Cabin. O’Neill humbly, eagerly, accepted the microphone to auction a necklace-bracelet earrings set “with a retail value of $22,000 … unless you brought your program with you, then you know it’s $5,300,” won by Dr.
Ricardo Sotomora for $2,700.
Before this, O’Neill told a story from his radio past. Oneof the most memorable prank phone calls he made on air was to Sissy’s Log Cabin in Pine Bluff. Impersonating an Arab sheik new to central Arkansas, he spoke directly to Sissy Jones about buying slide bracelets for each of his wives. Jones, O’Neill said from the stage, never questioned the call or the caller but went about furiously scribbling down the details of the order. When Jones said she would like to personalize each bracelet with each wife’s name and perhaps the names of their children, the sheik said that would be 23 different wives’ names, and all together, 172 children.
Sometime shortly afterward, Jones told O’Neill that she received a lot of attention from the radio spot. The whole experience got her thinking, she said, about doing a little advertising.
High Profile, Pages 38 on 05/04/2014