Terry Mohajir is always "on." The athletic director at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro is one of the most energetic, focused people I've ever met.
We're touring the north end zone facility at Centennial Bank Stadium, and Mohajir sounds like a proud new father as he points out the bells and whistles of ASU's football operations center. I must admit it's impressive for a school that's not in one of the so-called Power 5 conferences.
Little Rock insurance executive Greg Hatcher, whose son Layne transferred to ASU from the University of Alabama and ended up starting much of the 2019 season at quarterback, told me that he thinks the Red Wolves have a nicer dressing room than the Crimson Tide.
Mohajir talks a lot about the ASU "brand," and there's no doubt that the sports programs (especially football) have gained ASU a great deal of attention since Mohajir became athletic director in September 2012. A starting safety for the football team as a student at ASU, Mohajir graduated with a major in sports management and a minor in business marketing in 1993. The athletic department budget was $15.3 million when he arrived. It's now more than $43 million.
The department has completed or begun more than $80 million in facilities improvements since Mohajir was hired. New stadium lighting and seats went in at Centennial Bank Stadium, more tennis courts were constructed and the outdoor track was replaced. The south end zone facility at the stadium received updates to its weight rooms, dressing rooms and training area.
Things have really taken off during the past few years. ASU alumnus and well-known Arkansas banker Johnny Allison donated $5 million, and that allowed the start of a $26 million project that saw a renovation of the press box, concourse improvements and new private suites and meeting areas on the west side of the football stadium.
In 2017, a $5 million contribution came from First National Bank of Paragould, and the name of the Convocation Center (the school's basketball facility) was changed to First National Bank Arena. New seats were installed while dressing rooms and training areas received updates.
Next came work on the $29 million north end zone facility. Allison gave another $5 million and his Centennial Bank kicked in $5 million more. Construction began in December 2017. Also on the north side, $11 million was spent on the construction of a 78,000-square-foot indoor practice complex. The next step is the addition of state-of-the-art control rooms and studios so multiple ASU sports can be televised.
The ASU football team went to its ninth consecutive bowl game at the end of the 2019 season. The Red Wolves posted a 34-26 victory over Florida International University in the Camellia Bowl at Montgomery, Ala., on Dec. 21 to finish with an 8-5 record. Blake Anderson, the ASU head coach, has received awards from organizations ranging from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes to the Orange Bowl for the courage he showed following the death of his wife Wendy from cancer just before the start of the season. Anderson has been the ASU head coach since 2014.
We can have the debate at another time as to whether too much attention is paid to and too much money is spent on intercollegiate athletics. The fact is that the strides made under Mohajir have helped change the perception of the university in the minds of Arkansans.
After seeing the stadium improvements, we walked next door to the new Embassy Suites Hotel and Red Wolf Convention Center. Only a handful of college football programs in America can claim a hotel of this quality adjacent to a stadium. The first guests stayed in the hotel on New Year's Eve. Numerous conventions and conferences already have been booked.
Kraig Pomrenke, the general manager, calls the 203-suite facility "a game changer for Jonesboro."
The hotel's restaurant, Houlihan's, opened Monday. It seats 140 people. The hotel and restaurant will have almost 150 employees.
The hotel and the 40,000-square-foot convention center are part of a joint project between ASU and O'Reilly Hospitality Management. Students in the university's hospitality program will take classes in a working environment and then serve as interns. Ground was broken in May 2018, and a wet 2019 slowed construction.
While the athletic department, its improvements to facilities and now the hotel put ASU on the radar screen of additional Arkansans, the work to change the perception of the school began years earlier. Ruth Hawkins, who joined the ASU staff in 1978 and retired last year, played a key role in getting ASU recognized as the flagship university for the eastern half of the state. After achieving a national parkway designation for Crowley's Ridge Parkway, Hawkins began developing nationally significant historic properties in her role as head of the ASU Heritage Sites program. She directed that initiative from 1999 until her retirement.
Going from the far northern part of the Arkansas Delta at Piggott to the far southern part of the region at Lake Village, ASU developed these facilities:
• The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center at Piggott, which opened in 1999. The museum and center focus on the internationally connected Pfeiffer family of Piggott and their son-in-law, Ernest Hemingway, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1953 and was named the Nobel Laureate in Literature in 1954. The complex includes the Pfeiffer-Janes House along with the Hemingway barn and studio. A visit here gives one a feel for what life was like in the Delta in the 1920s and 1930s.
• The Southern Tenant Farmers Museum at Tyronza, which opened in 2006. It focuses on the tenant farming system of agriculture, which dominated cotton farming in Arkansas for decades following the Civil War, and the farm labor movement that arose from it. The museum is in the Mitchell-East Building, which during the 1930s was a dry-cleaning operation for H.L. Mitchell and a service station for Clay East. Mitchell and East were two of the founders of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union. The union was established in July 1934 by 11 white and seven black founders at Sunnyside School near Tyronza. It grew to have almost 35,000 members in five states.
• The Historic Dyess Colony interpretive center and the restored boyhood home of musician Johnny Cash, which opened in 2014. The site consists of the Dyess administration building and the nearby Cash home. A visit to Dyess allows a visitor to understand the reasons behind the development of such New Deal agricultural resettlement colonies. Ray and Carrie Cash, the parents of Johnny Cash, moved their family to the Dyess Colony in March 1935 from Kingsland in south Arkansas.
• The Lakeport Plantation home near Lake Village, which was donated to ASU by planter Sam Angel in 2001. The home was restored, and a museum and education center opened in September 2007. Construction of the plantation home began in the late 1850s. It's the best remaining example of antebellum Greek Revival architecture in the state.
Through the development of these facilities, Hawkins got Delta residents from the Missouri border in the north to the Louisiana border in the south thinking of ASU as their school. That wasn't an insignificant development during a period when the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville was relying on students from Texas for enrollment growth.
Terry Mohajir and Ruth Hawkins. Sports and history. They're unlikely pairings, but they've taken ASU to the next level.
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Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 01/19/2020