Ronnie Dedman grew up in a small town, watching his mother and his grandmother working odd jobs for white folks while black male role models performed hard labor for their paychecks. He saw how being black dictated even where his family was allowed to sit in a car.
“When my grandmother and mother were working across town and were brought home by whoever they were working for, they would sit in the back seat. They weren’t allowed to sit in the front seat. At the time, I was thinking, ‘That’s kind of the way things are. But it’s just not for me.’ My mother and grandmother said, ‘If you want out, there is a way out — education.’”
Dedman knew he wanted something else in life.
In June, Dedman was promoted to president of AT&T Arkansas. Forty years after graduating from Arkansas State University, Dedman, 62, has had one employer — AT&T (and its predecessor Southwestern Bell). His story demonstrates how grit, purpose and perseverance helped overcome not only historical racial barriers but also fueled a rare climb from the lowest rung of the corporate ladder to the top floor corner office.
Dedman first worked at Southwestern Bell during the summer of 1974 after graduating from Tuckerman High School in northeast Arkansas. He was what was called a “cord board operator,” meaning he would connect calls by plugging cords into sockets corresponding to a number, something often depicted in old movies. Things aren’t done that way anymore, of course. AT&T is a massive operation now providing smartphone, Internet and television service.
He has embraced the technological revolution. Along the way to his current position, he has worked in such diverse posts as head of company facilities, manager of a sales team, manager of directory assistance operators, head of governmental and external relations in the Delta, to lead company lobbyist at the state Capitol.
“I’ve worked here in five decades,” Dedman said. “We’ve gone from the cord board experience to a modern entertainment company. I’ve lived that evolution and experience. You’ve got to change with the times — or get left behind.”
Morgan Gilbert, the longtime basketball coach at Tuckerman, saw something special in the teenage Dedman, who, at 5-foot-11, played forward and led the team with 18 points per game as a senior.
“As far as being a leader, the other players on the team looked up to him,” recalled Gilbert, now retired. “Ronnie was the best player we had. When it got down to clutch time, they always felt comfortable feeding him the ball. He was not selfish. They just looked up to him. They felt like he would make the right decision. There is an old saying that some people got it. Some players are just natural leaders. Whatever ‘it’ is, he had it.”
Ronald Louis Dedman was born July 4, 1956, in Newport in Jackson County. He and his older sister, Charlotte, were raised in nearby Tuckerman, about 10 miles north of Newport, by his mother, Alice Stephenson, and grandmother, Myrtle Dedman. They weren’t educated but were nonetheless intelligent, hardworking and driven ladies. His father wasn’t a part of the family’s life. Later, his mother married another man and had two other children, Renard and Jackie. Ronnie spent most of his time as a child at his grandmother’s house, helping her tend a 7-acre farm.
“People say that the most ideal situation is to have a mother and father raising children. Ideally that’s the way it needs to be. But people turn out OK raised in single parent homes with a mother and grandmother, as long as there is love and discipline and direction. I’m an example of that.”
“As I look back and reflect, I guess we were kind of poor,” Dedman said. “My grandmother never allowed us to accept welfare. She was a very determined lady and felt like between her and my mother and other relatives, we would get by. I never remember being hungry. We ate a lot of beans and things like that. We didn’t have a lot of clothes but they were always clean clothes.”
During an interview in his 10th floor executive suite in the AT&T Arkansas headquarters in downtown Little Rock, Dedman holds back tears when discussing his deceased grandmother.
“I was her guy,” Dedman said. “Looking back, I probably didn’t see her enough [after leaving town] as I should have. She was only 4-foot-11, but, brother, when she spoke, you listened. She didn’t have to say it twice. I remember one Friday night I had a 10 p.m. curfew. I showed up at like 10:15 or 10:20. The door was locked. She made me sit on the steps. She knew I was there. The biggest thing was that I had disappointed her.”
He remembers the community, including the only movie theater in town, being segregated when he was a kid. In the school for black children, the fourth- and fifth-graders shared a classroom. The teacher would teach the fourth grade in the morning and the fifth grade in the afternoon.
That changed in 1968, Dedman’s sixth-grade year. Black students joined the white students, which held the classroom majority with about 85 percent.
“At the time it was pretty traumatic,” he said. “There was a lot of tension on both sides. We really didn’t want to go there and they didn’t want us to come. I would say for the first couple of years things were pretty intense. I wouldn’t say a lot of fighting, but a lot of tension in the air. By eighth or ninth grade, things got so much better. I think sometimes when adults get out of the way, young people can be young people. Young people don’t always see color. They see you for who you are. I would say sports brought us together. We had a heckuva basketball program. When you win, people come together.”
A n n a b e l l e P rove n ce taught Dedman literature and grammar at Tuckerman High School. She recalls him being an A and B student who was popular with his classmates.
“I’m just very proud of him,” said Provence, now retired and living in Louisiana. “He had a really good sense of humor and was always dependable. He was well spoken. He never misbehaved. I knew his mother and grandmother a little bit. That’s where he got his work ethic. He was always hardworking but fun to be around.”
She said she had a feeling Dedman would be a success in life while teaching a course on practical education, which focused on how to write checks, how to fill out an application form and the like. He asked lots of questions, “thinking more deeply” than most of the children.
WORKING THE CORD BOARD
Although he didn’t realize it at the time, Dedman’s life changed forever in 1972 when his mother took a job as a cord board operator with Southwestern Bell. Two years later, he took a summer job working alongside her. She was there to help whenever he made a mistake.
Back then, did he think of himself as embarking on a lifelong career with the phone company?
“No, I did not,” Dedman said. It was a “means to an end,” simply one of many summer jobs he held in high school and college.
He wanted to be a lawyer. He saw that job prospects around town for black professionals were pretty much limited to being schoolteachers. But those were barriers he refused to accept. He was encouraged by his mother and grandmother, who always stressed education and hard work, but a different kind of hard work.
“They were telling me, ‘Work hard at whatever you are doing, but picking cotton is not the work you want to do,’” he said. “Not demeaning what anybody else may have been doing at the time, but I didn’t want to do those things. I realized I wanted something different. I just had an inner drive to do more in life, to get out of that situation.”
So, he went to Arkansas State University at Jonesboro. To pay tuition, he received financial aid and worked, but his mother and grandmother assumed the bulk of responsibility, “somehow” paying in regular installments. He graduated in 1979 with a degree in political science, which he had figured would help him in law school. But he decided the law wasn’t for him, and instead accepted a full-time job with Southwestern Bell.
He worked as an operator and later a manager of operators in Pine Bluff and Little Rock.
“It’s always been one of my strong points, supervising and managing people,” Dedman said. “Employees were represented by a union and there were occasional disagreements, but there was never anything I couldn’t work through.”
O v e r t h e y e a r s , h e learned many aspects of the company. In the early 1980s, he managed company facilities. By 1985, he accepted a position managing a sales team. He didn’t have any marketing experience but he knew how to manage. He would learn the rest as he worked.
Dedman described the attitudes of Southwestern Bell and later AT&T toward promoting black workers as “very progressive” and having recognized early on that “diversity would make them stronger.”
He befriended Larry Cooper, like himself a manager who was also black. Cooper had more experience and soon became a mentor. They played together on the company basketball team, which won a Little Rock city recreational league championship one year.
“I was very impressed from the get-go,” said Cooper, now retired and living in Las Vegas. “He had very very good communications skills and carried himself in a professional manner. [He is] very assertive, but not aggressive. He has character and integrity, plus he’s a fun guy to be around.”
Cooper recommended Dedman take a job in external relations, where he could put his interpersonal skills to work on regulatory and governmental issues critical to the company’s operation and future. Dedman jumped at the idea and in 1995 became the company’s point man in the Delta, meeting with local government officials and assigned as the contact for legislators in that area. He spent long days in his car traveling, but keeping his residence in Little Rock was a good trade-off.
“I thought it was better to be here where people could see you,” Dedman said.
MR. PRESIDENT
By 2001, he switched territories to central Arkansas, after the lobbyist for that area at the time, Eddie Drilling, was promoted to Arkansas company president. Dedman now had responsibility for keeping up with 30 central Arkansas legislators, plus the Legislative Black Caucus.
Drilling’s later promotion to a national position allowed for the promotion of Dedman to Arkansas AT&T president this year. In the role, Dedman isn’t responsible for everything that AT&T does in Arkansas. He describes a “dotted line” on the organizational chart connecting him to Internet, smartphone, and television service operations. He’s directly in charge of external relations and business, which includes legislative and community affairs in the state.
In 2010, Dedman married Margaret Preston, a retired news anchor and public relations director. The couple met at a charitable function sponsored by AT&T. From a previous marriage, he has an adult son, Ronald Mitchell Dedman, 30, who runs a janitorial company in Little Rock. He has one grandson. His mother, 81, lives in Newport.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson, a longtime friend, said it’s “very significant” among black people for Dedman to hold such a high-ranking corporate position. He said his friend is a role model, not only because of the color of his skin but because of “the kind of person that he is.”
Dedman’ volunteerism includes the Watershed Human and Community Development Agency, the Daisy Bates Board and the Little Rock Boys and Girls Club. He’s also a former president of the Pulaski Technical College Board.
“It was two ladies — my grandmother and mother — that I give all the credit for what I am today,” Dedman said. “People say that the most ideal situation is to have a mother and father raising children. Ideally that’s the way it needs to be. But people turn out OK raised in single parent homes with a mother and grandmother, as long as there is love and discipline and direction. I’m an example of that.”
SELF PORTRAIT
Ronnie Dedman
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: July 4, 1956, Newport
MY FANTASY DINNER PARTY GUESTS: My deceased uncle, Mitchell Dedman, deceased cousin Larry Dedman, my Grandma Myrtle, of course. We would have white beans, cornbread, coleslaw and something fried.
MY FAVORITE SINGER: Smokey Robinson
A BOOK I’M READING: Communicate to Influence by Ben and Kelly Decker
MY FAVORITE MOVIE: Home Alone . I remember watching that movie over and over with my son, Mitchell.
I LOVE TO TRAVEL: To see the Arkansas Razorbacks and Dallas Cowboys.
MY GUILTY PLEASURE: Eating a jumbo barbecue sandwich on the sofa while watching two TVs, each with a different football game.
ADVICE FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO ADVANCE IN BUSINESS: You’ve got to be prepared for the next change that is coming. You’ve got to be ahead of it. You can’t wait until it’s here.
ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE ME: Resourceful
