Brenda Mitchell Fulkerson

She likes to talk, Brenda Fulkerson admits. She did as a child, when her grandmother promised her a quarter if only she’d stop talking for 15 minutes.

Didn’t get that quarter; probably wouldn’t today.

Talk. About what?

About her pecan grove. About when she was a Christmas Club teller. About failing to win the Miss Dallas County crown. About selling ads for the Yellow Pages and beating the men at it.

And about the impact of Winthrop Rockefeller, a Republican governor in Arkansas when the state’s party members could fit in a phone booth. (An exaggeration, but slight. In 1970, the state House and Senate each had one Republican. When the Legislature convenes this month, the House will have 64 Republicans, 35 Democrats and one independent. The Senate will have 24 Republicans and 11 Democrats.)

That impact continues Tuesday, when historian and author Jon Meacham lectures in Little Rock as part of the Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series, which has brought notable speakers to Arkansas since 1973. Fulkerson is chairman of the board that governs the lecture series.

Fulkerson didn’t know Rockefeller personally. He was governor in 1967-71 when she worked in business. Later in life she developed a friendship with Winthrop Paul Rockefeller, the governor’s son who served as lieutenant governor, and naturally she knows the history of the governor who was a bridge between Democrats Orval Faubus and Dale Bumpers.

She also knows the history of the lecture series as keeper of records that include the original document of trust, plus a list of the speakers. The list, unfortunately, doesn’t go back to the first speaker in 1973.

Some of those speakers included civil rights leader Julian Bond, journalists Helen Thomas and Tom Wicker and Dr. Red Duke, the famous mustachioed Texas trauma surgeon whose 1993 speech was titled “Limiting Health Care Costs.” Presidential inaugural poets Maya Angelou and Miller Williams were speakers, as was astronaut Buzz Aldrin. In 1997, historian Paul Hutton spoke on “The Life and Legend of Davy Crockett.”

“[Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller] was a catalyst for Arkansas politics and government. Brenda [Fulkerson] takes that legacy seriously.” — retired Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Robert Brown

Winthrop Rockefeller, Fulkerson says, was a pioneer himself.

“He had a tremendous impact on the two-party system in Arkansas. He gave people who weren’t in the social or money classes an option, and related to the needs of the state and people.”

How could a man of Rockefeller’s great wealth relate to ordinary people?

Rockefeller, Fulkerson says, “showed the people of Arkansas the assets they had and how to benefit from them. He put his time, money and dedication into it.”

And, she says, “he never talked down to the people of Arkansas. He wanted to be one of us.”

That last part sounds a lot like what Robert Brown, a former justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court, says about Fulkerson.

“Brenda lives in a classless society,” Brown says. “She acts the same way toward you no matter what your status in society.”

“I would say that is completely correct,” says Lisenne Rockefeller, widow of the late lieutenant governor. “That is exactly who she is.”

Brown serves on the lecture series committee with Fulkerson.

“I like her because she’s interested in the project, and the legacy of the Rockefeller name,” Brown says. “He was a catalyst for Arkansas politics and government. Brenda takes that legacy seriously.”

“She has an upbeat personality, she loves people and loves people who have a story to tell,” Brown says. “At her core is a willingness to do something for the state of Arkansas, and that’s what led her to the Rockefeller committee.”

“I think Brenda’s real contribution was to put the series back on track, get the board involved and really try to figure out what the original intent of the donors was,” Lisenne Rockefeller said.

Avay Jaynes, a longtime friend and colleague, sees Fulkerson another way.

“She’s inquisitive.”

ONE OF THE BOYS, UGH

It’s a long way from Carthage, in Dallas County, to running a commercial real estate company from the 16th floor of a downtown Little Rock office building. Brenda Fulkerson made the journey with her sense of humor intact.

Carthage had 623 residents. Fulkerson clearly remembers a sign at the edge of town. By the time of her most recent pass through, her old home was gone, as was her grandmother’s. The most recent census shows the population as 343.

Her parents were Bert and Sue Mitchell. He was an “outof-towner,” having moved to Carthage from Kingsland. Fulkerson grew up with a younger brother, James Mitchell, who has passed away. Her uncle owned a sawmill, and her father was a forester and pulpwood contractor.

“After the logs were cut, you had the top of the tree left to make pulpwood. You sent it to the International Paper plant and they made the paper you’re writing on.”

The family later had a grocery store.

One year in high school, Fulkerson ran for Miss Dallas County and finished second runner-up. The winner was her cousin, Nan Sturgis. The secret to the success of Nan and the first runner-up? “They had better dresses.”

Fulkerson moved to Pine Bluff after graduating from Carthage High School in 1960, just one of 13, and one of the four salutatorians. There were more employment opportunities in the city, one of which was “the shopping center of southeast Arkansas, when all the farm money came there.”

Her first job was at National Bank of Commerce. She was a teller. “I had the Christmas Club window. I had a little coupon book and a rubber stamp.”

Christmas clubs had their origins in the Great Depression. Customers would deposit a set amount of money each week into their account. They’d get the money back in time for Christmas.

Banks may have had plenty of money, but they weren’t giving much of it to tellers. Fulkerson made $1 an hour. Overtime pay was 50 cents an hour, so she up and went across the street to Arkansas Power & Light. “I got $54 a week and was paid overtime.”

Ambition got the better of her again and she quit AP&L, now Entergy Arkansas. “‘You’ll regret quitting the best job you ever had.’ That’s what my boss said.” She made her way to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock as it became part of the UA system, graduated as fast as she could — in 2 ½ years, with a business degree — and went to work for an ad agency. Then she heard the phone company, Southwestern Bell, “might hire a girl.”

She was. It did.

Hired her as part of a team of 14 — she and 13 men — who travelled the state selling advertisements for the Yellow Pages.

“I worked all day, every day,” she says. “The men worked until 1 o’clock and played golf every afternoon.”

After a year of Yellow Pages selling, Fulkerson says, she was the top salesman in terms of revenue, and moved into management. She left the phone company in 1991 to work for Floyd Fulkerson’s real estate company. Fulkerson was instrumental in building the Pleasant Valley and Longlea neighborhoods in Little Rock, and in developing office warehouses. He and Brenda married in 1987.

Floyd Fulkerson will be 95 this week. He’s in assisted living, Brenda Fulkerson said, and checks in by phone every morning.

Floyd’s presence is all over the office. On a coffee table is a small model of a P-38 Lightning, an aircraft Floyd flew for the U.S. Army Air Corps in the Pacific Theater in World War II. On the wall his medals are displayed, including the Silver Star awarded to him by the U.S. Navy for shooting down a Japanese kamikaze while he and it were under naval anti-aircraft fire.

“Floyd says that friendly fire wasn’t so friendly,” Brenda Fulkerson says.

AN INTEREST IN POLITICS

Fulkerson grew up in Arkansas when it was a yellow dog Democrat state. She has witnessed the state’s transition to the other side of the political spectrum. As for her, “I don’t vote a straight ticket.”

She has been interested in politics, Fulkerson says, “since I was a child. We voted in July back then,” in the primary elections. “On Saturday afternoon before the election my father would put on a starched white shirt, starched khaki pants, and we wouldn’t see him again until after the voting on Tuesday.

“I don’t know what went on Saturday night, Sunday night and Sunday morning after church, but that was politics in the South.”

Something else that has changed in the South is agriculture. Fulkerson has direct knowledge of the change, given that she and Floyd own 2,000 acres of farmland near Scott on the Baucum Plantation, which has been in Floyd’s family since 1888.

“World War II changed agriculture,” she says, “away from sharecroppers and mules to mechanization.” Men went off to war and to the war industries, and machines took their place.

In today’s combines, Fulkerson says, a computer tells the operator how many bushels of grain are in the hopper, how many bushels are harvested per acre, “and you can sell it right there in your combine.”

Baucum Plantation grows soybeans, rice, corn and “winter wheat, when the price is right.”

Sixty acres of the farm is planted in pecan trees. This is Brenda Fulkerson’s favorite part. She once decided there was money to be made in pecans and set up shop at the orchard. An old truck rattled by, and an old boy bought every pecan she had for 80 cents a pound, after which Fulkerson went to Cotham’s for lunch.

“Heard you were selling to the skinner,” the waitress said to Fulkerson. “He skinned you out of your crop.”

Another time she and Floyd drove by the orchard as thinning was in progress. Fulkerson, by her own account, went “nuclear.”

“There’s a spot there where nothing will ever grow, because I scorched the earth I was so mad.”

Eventually, she says, Floyd got a scientist from a university to write her a letter, explaining why the orchard needed to be thinned.

The plantation is now inside the city limits of North Little Rock, which aids in the Fulkersons’ plan to develop the property into residential and commercial tracts. Some of that development has happened. Willow Beach is an example, “but it won’t be developed completely in my lifetime,” she says, adding that “the melon is ripe.”

MUCH IS EXPECTED

Rockefeller lecturers are expected to work hard. None of that fly in, speak and fly out.

“Speakers are expected to interact with the student body,” Fulkerson says.

Meacham’s work begins at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday with a class visit. He’ll do an interview at the Clinton School of Public Service, lunch with faculty and students, conduct media interviews, lecture, hold a book signing and then dine with community leaders.

Deborah Baldwin, associate provost of collections and archives at UALR, is part of the campus committee that selected Meacham and made his schedule.

“Brenda knows what it means to that student who has a special opportunity to interact with someone of the caliber of Jon Meacham,” Baldwin says.

“She put herself through school and doesn’t forget what it was like,” she adds. “She understands the UALR student and what it takes to graduate.”

Fulkerson, as a business major, was in a field not especially welcome to women at the time, Baldwin says.

“She not only stuck with it, she excelled. She’s been a very adept leader of the board, always prepared, and she encourages all of us to do our very best.”

Jon Meacham will speak at 4:30 p.m. at the UALR Center for Performing Arts on what the presidency teaches about the art of leadership. Seat reservations are available by emailing publicprograms@clintonschool.uasys.edu, or calling (501) 683-5239.