Lakeport Legacies to Feature Southeast Arkansas’s Leaders in Arkansas Historical Association
LAKE VILLAGE — "Influence of Southeast Arkansas in the Arkansas Historical Association " will be presented in the latest Lakeport Legacies monthly history talk, Thursday, Oct. 19, at the Lakeport Plantation, 601 Hwy. 142, in Lake Village.
Maylon Rice, a member of the Arkansas Historical Association board of directors, will make the presentation at 5:30 p.m. The event gets underway at 5 p.m. with refreshments and conversation before the program. It is free and open to the public. For additional information and to register, contact Dr. Blake Wintory, assistant director and facilities manager, at 870-265-6031.
Rice will discuss the early leaders of Arkansas Historical Association (AHA) that came from southern and southeast Arkansas. Formed in 1941, the AHA publishes the Arkansas Historical Quarterly and is Arkansas’s foremost organization for the preservation, writing, publishing, teaching and understanding of the state’s history.
Its early leaders included many prominent southeast Arkansans, counting Desha County Judge J. L. “Jud” Erwin and Dermott native Capt. John C. Hammock, a graduate of West Point. Both served as president of the AHA. Early board members also included oilman Col. T. H. Barton of El Dorado and State Sen. Lee Reeves, the first director of the Arkansas Educational Television Network (AETN).
Rice is a native of Warren, and it was there he started as an eighth grade “printer’s devil” at the Warren Eagle-Democrat, the second oldest continuous business in Warren and Bradley County. He first ran across an issue of the Arkansas Historical Quarterly in the Eagle office as the late Bob Newton, longtime editor/publisher of the weekly newspaper, told him, “Read this, it will tell you more about Arkansas history than any textbook at Warren High or any current college textbook in Arkansas.” So Rice’s love affair with history and journalism began.
He was awarded the Arkansas Associated Press’ top correspondents award for his coverage of the University of Arkansas campus while at the NW Arkansas Times. Always interested in history, Rice has been a member of the AHA and became a life member in 1998. He currently has a newspaper column in the Prairie Grove, Farmington, Lincoln, Siloam Springs and Bella Vista newspapers.
In 2015, Rice was elected to the Arkansas Historical Association board of directors. He is the president-elect of the Washington County Historical Association in Fayetteville. Rice is an avid reader of Arkansas books and Arkansas newspapers.
