Rex Nelson
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Recent Stories by Rex Nelson
Remembrances of Sen. John L. McClellan
posted: 12/14/2011 4:21 a.m. Discuss
They gathered at a home in Roland on a recent Friday night to share stories. It has been more than three decades since they worked on the staff of Sen. John L. McClellan, the Democrat who represented Arkansas in the U.S. Senate from January 1943 until his death in November 1977, but they remain in touch.
The boys of 1976
posted: 12/07/2011 3:38 a.m. Discuss
It has become a tradition in our home. I head to Little Rock’s War Memorial Stadium the first two weekends each December to witness the six high school state championship football games.
Catholic High brotherhood
posted: 11/30/2011 5:07 a.m. Comments 3
It was dreary on the Monday morning before Thanksgiving as I drove my youngest son to Little Rock’s Catholic High School for Boys. A pall seemed to permeate the campus that gray morning.
Roiling the ravine
posted: 11/16/2011 3:37 a.m. Comment 1
As the national media focused on the child-sex-abuse scandal that has engulfed the once-proud football program at Penn State, almost 10,000 people crowded into a small football stadium alongside U.S. 67 in Arkadelphia on Saturday afternoon. They were there to watch one of the oldest, most intense college football rivalries in America.
The Delta’s dilemma
posted: 11/09/2011 4:22 a.m. Comment 1
The Delta Regional Authority will hold its annual meeting in Little Rock next week, and people from several states will earnestly discuss how to revitalize a once thriving region.
The cotton conundrum
posted: 11/02/2011 3:58 a.m. Discuss
It’s cotton-picking season in the Arkansas Delta, and gins are operating around the clock. With the cotton harvest in full swing, it was an appropriate time last month for Mississippi native Gene Dattel to appear at Little Rock’s Clinton School of Public Service to talk about his book, Cotton and Race in the Making of America.
Bethune’s amazing adventure
posted: 10/19/2011 4:21 a.m. Discuss
In 1968, as Republican Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller stepped up efforts to root out what was known as the Old Guard of the Arkansas Democratic Party, the governor asked a 32-year-old former FBI agent named Ed Bethune to help him remove Conway County Sheriff Marlin Hawkins from office.
The next great city?
posted: 10/05/2011 5:02 a.m. Comments 5
The first thing they need at Little Rock City Hall is a good editor. There’s a catchphrase the folks there like to use. They call Little Rock “the next great American city in the South.” If they’re going to engage in hyperbole, they should at least make it a bit less convoluted: “The next great Southern city.” I went to my polling place last month and voted for both the threeeighths-of-a-cent and the five-eighthsof-a-cent sales-tax increases.
Harvest time at Pickens
posted: 09/28/2011 4:09 a.m. Discuss
Each Monday through Friday, the pickup trucks—along with the occasional Lexus or Mercedes—fill the parking lot at the Pickens Commissary in the company town of Pickens, just off U.S. Highway 65 south of Dumas.
Atop Petit Jean Mountain
posted: 09/07/2011 4:07 a.m. Discuss
It’s quiet atop Petit Jean Mountain as summer nears its conclusion. Mather Lodge, the centerpiece of Petit Jean State Park, is closed until next spring as it undergoes renovations to its 24 guest rooms, restaurant, lobby, meeting room and swimming pool.
