At the age of 12, while visiting her sister’s college town of Jonesboro, Freda Cruse Hardison racked up a $51 phone bill after using third-party phone calls to reach everyone she knew back home in Mountain View. Per her mother’s orders, Cruse Hardison paid her dues by penning a daily report on the 51 days she spent with her great-grandfather laying rock, repairing fences and cleaning cemeteries in the area.
Along with helping her learn more about the area around her, the process allowed Cruse Hardison to hone the skill of using the written word to record history — and the talent stuck.
Cruse Hardison, an author, artist and photographer, is the recipient of the Folklife Award, a 2017 Governor’s Arts Award presented through the Arkansas Arts Council, for her works of folklore documenting the history of people and music in Stone County. The Arts Council promotes arts programs and aids in funding for cultural and educational programming in the arts. Cruse Hardison was nominated for the award, then was chosen by a panel of arts professionals.
“I got a phone call, and it was like, ‘Oh, really?’” she said of discovering she had won. “To me, yes, I do this, but there are all kinds of people who help me. Yes, I’m the mover and shaker, the person that brings it together, but I couldn’t do it without all of these people and organizations that I work with.”
Cruse Hardison will receive her award at a ceremony in the spring; the date has yet to be announced. Cheri Leffew, special projects and events manager with the Arkansas Arts Council, said the Folklife Award was created in 1997 and is awarded to someone who produces and encourages the “continuation of folk life and tradition through the arts.”
“The selection committee was impressed by Freda Cruse Hardison’s dedication to documenting and preserving the history of the Ozarks region,” Leffew said in an email. “Through her book series and photographs, she has documented the stories and faces of a quintessential Arkansas locale.”
Cruse Hardison grew up in Stone County, a place she said is filled with wonderful traditions. Her mother was a schoolteacher, and her father was a bootlegger who had a behind-the scenes role in politics.
“He always said it’s not who you know; it’s what you know on who,” she said.
She attended the University of California San Diego with the hopes of becoming a historian until discovering sociology was a better path of study for her. While in California, she strengthened her interest in both photography and people. As a model, she worked with portrait and fashion photographer Richard Avedon.
“He was really comfortable behind the camera instead of in front of it,” she said. “As fashion shoots and things like that would happen, I found myself talking to people for him. I was a model, but I ended up helping him more, and I had the opportunity to help with In the American West, a photography book that initially received harsh criticism because the work was more about capturing life in the American West and not about glorifying it.”
Cruse Hardison later became a research assistant to her mentor, Jack D. Douglas, who was the head of the school’s sociology department, and helped him prepare material for his books Creative Interviewing; The Nude Beach; and Love, Intimacy, and Sex.
“What I did as a research assistant was I went out and I spent time in family homes talking to people and developing this book,” she said. “We developed the best way to interview people, regardless of their circumstance. This was not about who we were interviewing; it was about the interviewing process, how to get information.”
After moving back home to Arkansas in 1989, Cruse Hardison spent 17 years as a case worker, supervisor, area program specialist and contracts coordinator with the Arkansas Division of Children and Family Services, where she employed her creative-interviewing skills and learned more of people’s family histories.
“I found the stories of the people really interesting and would try to do life histories and intake studies and [determine] how could we help them or not help them,” she said. “When I left DHS, I had this huge reservoir of knowledge of the area.”
After her time at the Department of Human Services, she began writing articles for a number of local papers, which led to her book Voices of Our People: Stone County, Arkansas in 2009, a collection of 52 interviews, and later Places of Our People: Stone County, Arkansas in 2011. The books were published using the name Freda Cruse Phillips.
“What I realized was that it was more about the places than it was the people,” she said.
Cruse Hardison noticed during her interviews that many subjects had a Frank and Jesse James story, which she took notes of and put aside in a folder until the folder overflowed, and she had no choice but to take notice. She dug further into Frank and Jesse James, discovered a journal he kept and learned more of his role during the Civil War.
“His job was what the current duty is of bagging the dead,” she said.
Her book Frank and Jesse James: Friends and Family published in 2015, and for her work, she won the Sons of the Confederacy Literary Award for “the most accurate depiction and storytelling of the Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas.”
Though Cruse Hardison enjoys preserving the history of Stone County, she also loves providing opportunities for others pursuing artistic endeavors. In 2002, her daughter Nikki Lee Atwell, then a student at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, was killed in a single-car accident after falling asleep at the wheel. Instead of receiving flowers, the family opted to accept donations for the newly formed Nikki Lee Atwell Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes art, music and the humanities in Independence, Izard and Stone counties.
The nonprofit does not award scholarships. Instead, it helps children 10 and older achieve their artistic goals, with the foundation paying for ballet lessons, purchasing a musical instrument or buying a hearing aid.
“In 2012, we had nobody apply,” she said. “The Calico Rock Museum is really a phenomenal little museum. I said, ‘Y’all don’t have a Native American exhibit, so we installed the Native American exhibit at the museum [that year].”
The foundation also received funding for Cruse Hardison to complete the Mountain Music Project, a series of portraits and interviews on local musicians in their element. The photographs can now be found in the Stone County Museum.
Currently, the foundation is working on a historic driving tour that will use information from area families and historical societies. The tour will go through Mountain View, Calico Rock and Norfork, and will include 10 signs near the main road detailing the history of the areas. Cruse Hardison said that when the tour is complete, she hopes it will be added to the National Geographic Guide to Scenic Highways and Byways.
“Each little town along the way will be able to promote the tour and their town as a beginning place. It’s just a historic loop,” she said. “The overall goal will be to bring tourists into the area.”
Cruse Hardison said recording and celebrating the history of Stone County is important for everyone in the area.
“I think that, for me, it gives people of every socioeconomic status something to be proud of,” she said, “particularly people whose families have been here prior to the Civil War.”
Outside of photography and writing, Cruse Hardison said rock laying is her favorite creative outlet.
“I can do it by myself. I don’t have to have help,” she said. “I can see an end product. Basically, the worst thing I can do is knock a fingernail off. There’s no downside to it. There’s typically no criticism.”
Cruse Hardison said the Stone County area is rooted in tradition and that she works to promote that.
“These families may have nothing, but they have family pride,” she said. “I celebrate people.”
Staff writer Syd Hayman can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or shayman@arkansasonline.com.