As a cub reporter at the Arkansas Democrat in 1951, Jerry McConnell was dispatched to cover a luncheon speech by Gov. Sid McMath.
The governor was speaking at 12:30 p.m.
McConnell’s deadline? Also 12:30 p.m.
So before lunch was served, McConnell borrowed the only copy of McMath’s speech, rushed to a pay phone and dictated a story to the newsroom.
It took a little longer than he expected.
McConnell returned to the ballroom to find everyone waiting on him so the governor could commence speaking.
It was one of many interesting adventures in McConnell’s long journalism career.
McConnell, 92 , died Thursday at his home in Greenwood.
He was born in the Cornish community in what is now part of Fort Chaffee, and he attended Greenwood schools.
After serving in the Army, McConnell attended the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he majored in journalism and graduated in 1951.
Two days after graduating, McConnell went to work for the Arkansas Democrat.
“My starting salary was $45.12 a week for a six-day week,” McConnell said in a 2008 interview for The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History in Fayetteville. That’s $447 a week in today’s dollars.
McConnell covered the police beat and other news stories, including the Little Rock Central High crisis, before going to work at the Arkansas Gazette as a sports writer.
McConnell stayed in sports at the Gazette for 16 years.
Sports editor Orville Henry put McConnell in charge of the Gazette’s coverage of high school sports, and McConnell began the state’s first listing of top track and field performances.
Henry hired Wadie Moore, the first black reporter at the Gazette, in 1968. Moore said McConnell trained the young sports reporters.
“Over the years, I learned a lot just being around Jerry and the things he did,” Moore said. “I wouldn’t have made it in the business without this guy.”
In 1971, McConnell went back to the Arkansas Democrat to be managing editor.
“I was ready for a new challenge, and I was ready to get back into ‘real’ news,” he said in 2008.
McConnell served as managing editor of the Democrat for seven years.
The Hussman family bought the Arkansas Democrat in 1974. Walter Hussman Jr., publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, said he remembers working closely with McConnell during that time.
“He was a great newsman,” Hussman said. “There was a lot that was good about his standards and values. I always enjoyed working with him.”
The Arkansas Democrat became the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 1991 after Gannett, the owner of the Arkansas Gazette, closed that newspaper and sold its assets to the Democrat.
Lynn Hamilton, president of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, also remembers working with McConnell in the 1970s.
“Jerry was a key person in getting the Arkansas Democrat published every day during a really dark, difficult period,” Hamilton said. “I worked with Jerry many nights when we had inadequate computer systems. They would break down, and Jerry himself, even though he was a newsroom person, an editor, would go down to the basement and restart the computers. He was our go-to guy for making sure the Democrat got published.”
“Jerry is probably one of the smartest guys I ever knew,” said Collins Hemingway, who worked for McConnell at the Democrat. “He had a great zest for life. … Jerry always struck me as a pioneer. He was always looking for new ways to do things and always looking for good people. And he hired good people.”
Garry Hoffmann said Mc-Connell hired him as a reporter for the Democrat in 1976.
“He was a consummate gentleman — calm, quietly firm, and deliberate in his decision-making,” Hoffmann said. “I admired him greatly.”
In 1978, McConnell left the Democrat to become the executive sports editor of the daily and Sunday Oklahoman and the Oklahoma City Times.
McConnell retired in 1992. He and his wife, Jo, moved to Greenwood. She died in 2018.
In 2005, Jerry McConnell was asked to direct the oral history project on the Arkansas Democrat and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. A book of the interviews was published by the University of Arkansas Press as The Improbable Life of the Arkansas Democrat: An Oral History.
“His book is outstanding,” Hamilton said. “Like everything else Jerry did, it was really well done, and an important piece of work to capture what went on at the Arkansas Democrat.”
Patti Cox of Fort Smith said she worked for McConnell in 1975.
“Jerry hired a lot of people out of college who didn’t have a lot of experience,” she said. “He hired people, and then he mentored them. He was just a great journalist who loved newspapers and the people who worked at them.
“He was a lovely man, a lifelong friend and great journalist. We loved him, and we miss him.”