Long overshadowed by more visible remembrances of other wars, Arkansas' stories of World War I will be given more public attention over the next two years.
The newly formed Arkansas World War I Centennial Commemoration Committee began working last week to coordinate events and memorials to mark the war's 100th anniversary in 2017-18, and to make sure Arkansans' contributions are recognized and remembered.
"Our charge is to commemorate this important event," Department of Arkansas Heritage Director Stacy Hurst said at the inaugural meeting of the governor-appointed committee.
After the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission announced in January that it had chosen Fayetteville native Joe Weishaar from 350 entrants to design a World War I monument in Washington, D.C., "it became really important for Arkansas to have a voice," in the national observance, Hurst said. Weishaar is a 2013 graduate of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
As a first step, the state committee will have to get Arkansans' attention. There are a handful of World War I monuments in Arkansas, but no statewide memorial.
With 50th and 150th anniversaries, respectively, in past years, World War II and the Civil War have received much more attention in the state than the "Great War" has. U.S. involvement in World War I started in April 1917 and ended Nov. 11, 1918.
"It's a forgotten war," said Mike Polston, staff historian for the "Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture" at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. "There are not any of those soldiers left. Those who had a living, physical connection with that war are all gone. There are a few monuments around the state at county courthouses. I think most people don't even know those are there."
Even though the fighting was in Europe, the war touched Arkansas' economy and manpower, according to an "Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture" article. Camp Pike, now Camp Robinson in North Little Rock, was constructed for infantry training, and Eberts Field was created in Lonoke County as one of the first pilot schools nationally, Polston said. Soldiers and pilots came from throughout the country to train in Arkansas, with government dollars flowing in, too, he said.
Arkansas cotton was needed for uniforms and bandages, increasing the crop's price, according to the article. The mining of lead and zinc "increased dramatically" in the state, and a Phillips County factory made rifle stocks from local hardwoods, the article said.
The enlistment of 71,862 soldiers from Arkansas, according to the article, created a labor shortage, and colleges struggled with the loss of students. There were 2,183 deaths of Arkansans during the war, with about 500 of those killed in action. The rest died from illness, Polston said.
Another 7,000 Arkansans died in a flu pandemic, the "Encyclopedia of Arkansas" article said, an outbreak that caused more than 40,000 deaths nationally, according to other historical accounts.
"More people here died from the flu than from the war," Polston said. "Camp Pike had a bad outbreak of it, which was probably brought back from soldiers who were overseas or soldiers who were from other parts of the United States who came to Camp Pike to train. There were a lot of Iowa solders who trained at Camp Pike. It came from somewhere."
"Most of the Arkansas boys had never seen a body of water bigger than the Arkansas River or a pond nearby," Polston said. "Now they were going over the Atlantic Ocean. A lot of it [illness] came from being overseas."
Those experiences, as well as personal tales gleaned from letters and other accounts, will be important to the committee's work.
"There are a ton of stories that can be told," Mark Christ, the Department of Arkansas Heritage's representative to the nine-member centennial committee, said about the state's role in the war and the war's impact on the state. "We want to encourage folks to have live events."
Christ, who was the administrator for the Arkansas Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission that ended its work last year, said the committee can follow that commission's footprint: Develop a website, a logo, set up a speakers bureau, and sanction official centennial observances within the state.
Involving Weishaar as much as his schedule can afford would also be a plus, committee member Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at UA, said of his former student.
Committee members with Christ and MacKeith are: Chairman Shawn Fisher, history professor at Harding University; vice chairman Raymond Screws, director of the Arkansas National Guard Museum; Lisa Speer, state historian; Sarah Jones, Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs representative; Lt. Col. Joel Lynch, Arkansas National Guard public affairs officer; Maj. Gen. Mark Berry, director of the Military Department of Arkansas; and Retired Lt. Col. Ken Griffin, Military and Veterans Affairs liaison for the governor's office.
Metro on 05/01/2016