Jerry Cole has seen the city of Cabot grow during his more than 50 years of serving the community through his service station and the breeding of Quarter horses. So it is natural for him be the roastee to help raise funds for scholarships.
Cole, 71, will be the honoree for the Cabot Scholarship Foundation’s Roast & Toast on April 16 in the Cabot Junior High School North Cafeteria. The roasters will include his sister Robin Standridge and former Cabot mayor Mickey “Stubby” Stumbaugh, who worked at Cole’s service station when he was a teenager.
“Mike Verkler called me first,” Cole said. “He’s on the scholarship foundation board. Then there’s Fred Campbell. I was raised with Fred, and Mike’s dad was the police chief. I’ve been around Cabot all my life.”
Nancy Feland Bard, a member of the scholarship board, said Cole was a logical choice to be honored.
“He’s a longtime member of the community,” Bard said. “He’s done a lot behind the scenes for Cabot schools and students without a lot of show. He’s going to be a fun one to roast because he’s very comical and joking, and people will have a lot of funny stories.”
Cole was born in 1947 to Dick and Elsie Cole. As a young child, Cole lived in Richmond, California, with his parents and older brother before moving to Cabot, where his dad is from, when Cole was in the third grade.
“When we moved back, it was The Beverly Hillbillies in reverse,” Cole said. “We went from city life back to the country.”
When moving back to Cabot, Cole and his brother rode in a small cubbyhole in the back of a 1947 Dodge pickup with a tarp over them while the truck pulled a U-Haul trailer.
“We rode back there with our dog and a parakeet,” he said. “We had some holes cut in the tarp so we could see outside.”
The Coles used a water hose as a way of communication with their parents inside the truck.
“We had a water hose that ran from the front seat to the back where we were at so we could talk to my mom and dad through the water hose,” he said. “My mom was really worried. She was afraid we’d get carbon-monoxide poisoning. She’d call us on the water hose quite a bit to check on us.
“I tell people that, and they can’t believe it.”
The Coles lived in a farmhouse in Pulaski County near Arkansas 5.
“We had no running water,” Cole said. “We had to draw water. To me, it was fine. It was like camping out all the time. We had chickens and cows after we came back. It was hard on my mom. We had to draw water out of a well to wash with. During the wintertime, the only time we were able to take a bath was with water heated on the stove. We’d take sponge baths.
“In the summer, we’d go down to the creek to swim and take a bar of soap with us or draw up some water in the washtub and let the sun warm it to take a bath.”
When Cole was in the seventh grade, the family moved to town, across the street from the service station he worked at for years on Second Street in Cabot.
Cole graduated from Cabot High School in 1965. At the time, the population of Cabot was less than 3,000 people. Today, it’s more than 26,000.
His father was co-owner of the Goforth and Cole DX Gas Station.
“I worked for my dad and uncle,” Cole said.
When he was in the 11th grade, the family moved back out to the farmhouse.
“After finishing high school, I attended Arkansas State University-Beebe for 2 1/2 years,” Cole said. “In 1966, I started dating Susan Pedersen, a CHS student who became my wife in 1970. That same year, I finished college with a Bachelor of Science degree. I went to work for Midco Equipment Co. as a bookkeeper.”
It did not take Cole long to figure out he wasn’t made to be kept inside.
“I wasn’t cut out to be in an office all the time,” he said “I went to work at the station, and I worked there for two years for my dad and uncle. In 1974, I bought out my uncle’s half of the station. Then my dad and I were partners until he retired in 1992. After that, I ran it by myself.”
Cole brought in another partner, Stewart Stumbaugh, for a while before Cole retired in 2004. Stewart and Mickey Stumbaugh are brothers.
Cole worked for the city of Cabot after being hired by Stubby Stumbaugh, working for both the water and street departments before retiring again in 2014.
Cole said he thinks it’s an honor to be asked to be recognized by the Scholarship Foundation.
“I think I’ll be glad when it’s over,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t know what all to say, but I bet there are almost 20 boys who worked for me and my dad at the station who went to school at Cabot. We had the best help in the world. It was like they were family.”
Cole said Cabot has great teachers, remembering a few of his, including coach Jack Carrington and Don Elliott. And that would help lead to business at the station.
“For years, he was the only service station in town that was full service,” said Susan Cole, Jerry’s wife. “The teachers at the school would call them, and they’d go pick up their vehicles and service them and take them back to the school.”
Jerry Cole said it reminded him of Mayberry from The Andy Griffith Show.
“A lot of people would say it was like Mayberry … our old service station,” he said. “We had a bench where old-timers would come and visit. It was just that kind of place.”
Until six years ago, the Coles bred Quarter Horses for more than 30 years, starting in the mid-1980s.
“Together, we raised over 200 American Quarter Horse Association and American Paint Horse Association babies,” Cole said. “And with a lot of good advice and luck, we were able to have several world-hampionship horses.”
In the last crop of horses the Coles bred, Chasing A Dream won a world championship three years ago.
“He was born with a little white spot on him,” Cole said. “He won the NSBA (National Snaffle Bit Association) world championship. It was really something. We also had another world champion about 15 years ago.”
Cole said he’s not sure how he and his wife were able to breed horses when they were both working.
“I don’t know how we did it when we both worked,” he said. “We’d haul horses to Texas, Kentucky and South Carolina to breed.”
Jerry Cole said his wife always loved horses, and it was her dream to own one after they got married. A friend, Tommy Ray, told him he could make some money raising horses.
“Tommy said, ‘You’ve got those horses, and they are registered. You can feed a registered horse just as cheap as one that isn’t registered. You might get a baby out of her that might bring good money,’” said Cole, who eventually went to an auction nearby and purchased a mare to breed.
“Tommy said, ‘Bring her out to the house, and I’ll breed her for nothing,’” Cole said. “We got the first registered colt we ever raised. We kept that horse and raised babies.”
While the Coles no longer have horses, they still have seven donkeys on their farm to eat down the pasture.
“We had donkeys when we had horses,” Cole said. “We’d have stray dogs come by or coyotes. The donkeys would chase them or let us know if something was out there. We’ve had some for over 20 years.”
The Cabot Scholarship Foundation was formed in 1992 by the Cabot Centennial Committee to encourage and recognize academics in Cabot schools. The Roast & Toast banquet is the foundation’s only fundraising event. Tickets are $30 per person or $240 for a table of eight. Tickets are available at the Cabot High School office or through current board members, including John C. Thompson, Fred Campbell, Mike Verkler, Angela Wallace, Leann Carlie, Renee Calhoun, Nina Butler, Sarah Hagge and Bard.
“Thanks to my parents, siblings, wife and her great parents and siblings and all my friends and kin I was raised with for making my life experience the greatest there could be in my hometown of Cabot, Arkansas,” Cole said.
Staff writer Mark Buffalo can be reached at (501) 399-3676 or mbuffalo@arkansasonline.com.