STABILIZING FORCES: The Quapaw Quarter Association, which owns the William E. Woodruff house on East Sixth Street, is working with the City of Little Rock and the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program to stabilize the historic antebellum mansion in preparation to sell it later this year, the private, nonprofit historic preservation organization reports in its latest QQA Chronicle electronic newsletter. The association has hired V.R. Smith & Sons to undertake some roof and masonry repair as well as move a bee colony and clean out the home's first and second floors.
FROM THE GOOD NEWS DEPT.: Three statues in the historic Mount Holly Cemetery that were vandalized in April have been restored, thanks in part to donations from the public. Local decorative artist Tim Baitinger was hired to restore them and spent the past three weeks reinforcing, gluing, and installing the three life-size Italian marble statues that depict a mourner and two young Basham girls, Pearl, who died at age 6, and her sister Martha, who died at age 5 in the 1880s. "I finished installing them today," he told Paper Trails late Friday afternoon. To date, no arrests have been made in the case.
HISTORIC MOVE: In other preservation-related news, Rachel Silva has been named executive director of Preserve Arkansas. Silva previously served as the preservation outreach coordinator with the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, leading the "Sandwiching in History" and "Walks Through History" tours. She also currently serves as president of the Pulaski County Historical Society of Arkansas and on the Arkansas Historical Association's board of trustees.
STOP THE PRESSES! Ernie Dumas, a journalist formerly with the Arkansas Gazette, is arranging a reunion in Little Rock of that paper's former employees. Dumas is working to hold the gathering around the same time as the last in a series of Arkansas Humanities Council-sponsored lectures on the 100th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize journalism award. That lecture, by Ray Moseley, the newspaper's political writer during 1957-1958, is to be at 7 p.m. Oct. 4 in Ron Robinson Theater adjacent to the Central Arkansas Library System's main library. The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion by a group of Gazette writers from 1957 to 1958 which is set to include Moseley, Roy Reed, Bill Lewis and Jerry McConnell. Former employees plan to gather the afternoon of Saturday, Oct. 1 and the morning of Sunday, Oct. 2 in the Darragh Center Auditorium in the library's main branch. For more information, visit the Arkansas Gazette alumni page on Facebook. Dumas tells Paper Trails that, in connection with the Pulitzer lectures, there will also be one for/by others including this paper's Paul Greenberg, Ernest Hemingway (whom Arkansas claims), and poet John Gould Fletcher.
Contact Linda S. Haymes at (501) 399-3636 or lhaymes@arkansasonline.com
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