By Matthew Noble

Gertrude Witkowski, a natural green thumb who married into a family nursery business and helped nurture it with her friendly ways, died of heart failure triggered by diabetes and leukemmia on Thursday, Aug. 6. She was 80 years old.

"Gert," as family and friends called her, was born at Shoal Creek, one of nine children of a Catholic farm family who relied on their land for nourishment as well as their livelihood.

In 1932, an auto accident took the life of her father and left her mother to tend to the farm and Gert to take care of her siblings.

"She got out there and worked like a man," Witkowski's daughter-in-law, Lynn, said of her husband's grandmother.

"Her and the boys would go out and work in the field while Gert took care of the rest of the kids."

Three years later Mrs. Witkowski followed her sister Margaret to North Little Rock in search of work.

Here she soon found work as a cook for wealthy families living in the Heights and eventually met the man who would become her husband of 60 years, John Witkowski, whose parents owned a greenhouse in what is now the Baring Cross neighborhood.

The couple was married in 1938 and soon after built a house on the other side of the greenhouse from where John's parents, Frank and Theresa Witkowski, lived.

Having grown up on a farm, Gert knew her way around plants and quickly adapted to the business.

"She married the right fella, because she had a green thumb anyway," her daughter-in-law said.

The young couple had been married for barely a year when the elder Witkowski, Frank, passed away, leaving the family business to Gertrude and John. The couple ran the greenhouse for the next 53 years.

Former North Little Rock Mayor Casey Laman, who used to visit the greenhouse every spring to pick up things for his garden, remembers the Witkowskis reputation for quality plants.

"They used to have some of the finest garden plants in the area," Laman said. "If they sold you a plant, it was a good plant."

Family members say Mrs. Witkowski also seemed to love the business.

"She would always sing while she was putting the seeds in the cups," her son said.

And she had a real way with custoners, her daughter-in-law added.

"A man who owned a dress shop in Benton would buy petunias from her," she recounted. "And then he would come every year to pick her up and take her to his shop" to show her the flowers hanging from the second story.

For many in North Little Rock, the Witkowski Greenhouse was as much a palce to visit and ask questions about plants as to buy hardy varieties, she added.

"John and Gert loved visiting with all their customers," her daughterd..she was a very smart lady with a lot of common sense."

But she was also a great cook who insisted on making time to fix lunch not only for her own family but for the whole crew of the greenhouse and Witkowski lanscaping company. She was famous for her fried chicken, but she also know how to fix rabbit and some luscious pot roasts, family members recall.

"She would feed all of those men, from two to 20 of them, she would feed them everyday. Her kitchen was like grand central station," Lynn Witkowski said.

"That's probably why Daddy insisted on her cooking," said her daughter, Linda Bergshneider.

Now and then Mrs. Witkowski would have a free Sunday, however, and those she and her husband liked to spend on short trips with their best friends, her sister-in-law, Ruth, and her husband, Marion Witkowski.

"They would all load up in the car," Frank said. "They would take road trips to Scott to pick up pecans," or just explore the countryside.

She also had a great love for animals, especially her two dogs; Taffy, a cocker spaniel, and Charlie Brown, a Scottie.

If she saw a dog tangled in it's leash in someone's backyard, "she would jump over the fence to unwrap them," her daughter-in-law smiled. "I would tell her she was going to get arrested" for that some day.

A member of St. Mary's Catholic Church on 16th Street, Mrs. Witkowski was an active member of the Altar Club there.

But she and her husband will also be remembered for donating to the city a parcel of vacant land at 20th and Division streets for a neighborhood park named for her father-in-law, Frank M. Witkowski.

She was preceded in death by her husband, John. She is survived by two sons, Marcel Witkowski of Conway and Frank Witkowski of North Little Rock; daughter, Linda Bergshneider of Jacksonville; brother, Rudy Schmidt of Sherwood; sister, Rose Stinson of North Little Rock; and two grandchildren, Chris and Barry Bergshneider.

A funeral Mass was at 10 a.m. on Monday at St. Mary's Catholic Church with the Rev. Paul Worm presiding. Burial was in Calvary Cemetery.

The family asks that memorials be made to the Pulaski County Humane Societh at 14600 Colonel Glenn Road, Little Rock, Ark. 72210.

The Times - August 13, 1998


RICHARD E. HALL

Retired Air Force Pilot, instructor dies at 63

By Stephen Ursery

Lt. Col. (Ret) Richard E. "Rick" Hall, 63, who died of a stroke on Dec. 20 at Baptist Memorial Hospital, is remember by his family as a man with a distinguised record of military service, a passion for woodworking, a great sense of humor, and a deep pride in his family.

"He was a very detailed person and an outgoing person," said his son, Doug Hall of North Little Rock. "He made friends easily and like being around people."

Col. Hall was born in Geneseo, Ill., the son of a coal miner and a housewife. He graduated from Farmington Community High School in Farmington, Ill, and from the University of Illinois, Fine Arts School, where he studied music education and played in the concert and marching bands.

In kindergarten, he met his future wife, Marilyn Petrini. They attended grade school, high school and college together and were married on Dec. 25, 1954.

Joining the Air Force in December 1953, Col. Hall attended basic training in San Antonio, Tex., and flight training at Bartow Air Force Base in Florida, then moved on to advanced training at Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Okla.

In June 1955, Col. Hall was assigned to Kirkland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, NM and stayed there until June 1958. While stationed at Kirkland, he participated in the federal government's test of nuclear bombs. After the bombs exploded, he flew through the mushroom clouds to collect samples for testing. After Kirkland, he transferred to Sumter Air Force Base in South Carolina.

From 1959 to 1962, Col. Hall was stationed in Japan where he flew KB-50's in and out of Vietnam, refueling fighter planes. At his next stop, Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, he flew C-130's during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as over the Suez Canal and in Vietnam.

Col. Hall was later an instructor pilot at Sewart Air Force Base in Tennessee and at Little Rock Air Force Base. He retired from the Air Force in January 1973.

After his retirement, he was appointed director of Donor Resources for the American Red Cross Arkansas Regional Blood Center, a position he held for ten years.

After his stint at the Red Cross, Col. Hall pursued a full-time career in woodworking, which had been a passion of his since childhood. He became manager of Hardwoods of Little Rock and later served as manager of the Paxton Beautiful Woods Store and the Woodworkers Supply Center, both in Sherwood. There he taught Basic Woodworking, Intermediate Woodworking, and Fundamentals of Wood Finishing at the Arkansas Arts Center.

"He loved teaching. He was outgoing and very organized, so he made a good teacher," said his wife, Marilyn Petrini Hall.

He also spent a great deal of time working in the wood shop that he had built over the years on his property. In this shop, he made beds, tables, cabinets, bowls, and a cradle for his daughter's baby, among other things.

"He could do just about anything," Mrs. Hall said.

Col. Hall will be remembered by many people for his sense of humor. "He wasn't a big joke teller or anything, but he was always coming up with funny things to say, always coming up with witty response," his wife said.

And his daughter, Lynette Stoffer of North Little Rock, added: "He and my daughter teased each other a lot. It wasn't mean of sarcastic, but they had fun together."

"Having fun" with his family was something that was important to Col. Hall. Whether it was teasing his granddaughter or bass fishing with his son, Col. Hall relished the time he spent with his family. "He was very proud of his family," Mrs. Hall said.

Col. Hall was a member of Park Hill Baptist Church. He is survived by his wife; son; daughter; a sister, Carole Deford of Dearborn, Michigan; and five grandchildren, Josh and Cassie Stoffer, and Taylor, Michael, and Tony Hall.

Funeral services were held Dec. 23 at Rolelr-Owens Funeral Home Chapel, with Dr. S. Cary Heard officiating. Interment was in Rest Hills Memorial Park with military honors.

Memorials may be made to Park Hill Baptist Church, Fellowship Baptist Church of North Little Rock, American Red Cross, or Arkansas Arts Center.

The Times - January 2, 1997


ANNIE STIVERS MATTHEWS

Community activitist in Oak Grove dies at 78

By Kitty Chism

Annie Stivers Matthews had a knack for identifying things in her community that needed fixing and helping to get the job done.

Appalled by how youngsters in Oak Grove Elementary had to go outside to get to the cafeteria in the late 1940s, she pressed school officials to build some steps so that the children could go directly from their classrooms to the lunch building.

And as president of the PTA, she pushed to keep the school gym open after hours and on weekends so that local teenagers could have a chaperone-supervised place to play and hang out.

Mrs. Matthews, who was stricken with Alzheimers disease in the last several years of her otherwise active life, died Dec. 26 at the age of 78.

Born in Levy, she was the oldest of five children of a Little Rock trolley car driver who later drove a city bus and then worked at Vestal's nursery.

She graduated from North Little Rock's Ole Main. Then in 1936, at age 18, she married Si Matthews, also from Levy, riding to Benton for the ceremony in the rumble seat of an old sedan, driven by the two friends who would serve as witnesses.

It was a marriage that would last 60 years. The couple would move to Oak Grove in the early 1940s and raise a son and a daughter.

And while Mr. Matthews worked as a pharmacist at Spriggs drug store on Pike Avenue, Mrs. Matthews immersed herself in a variety of community projects, including the cake walks and candy sales that helped raise money for uniforms for the school athletic teams.

When poll workers were needed in Oak Grove, she volunteered to be the clerk who read off the names of the voters as they came in to cast their ballots. When substitutes were needed at Oak Grove Elementary, she filled in.

She was active in the Oak Grove Home Demonstration Club, which later became the Golden Hour Club, a social club of homemaker and friends.

But over the years she also served as chairman of the Pulaski County March of Dimes as well as the first female member of the Oak Grove Volunteer Fire Department's board of directors.

And when in her later years she had time for herself, her daughter Marilyn Wilson said, you could usually find this high energy woman outside, working in the yard, cutting the grass, planting azaleas or transplanting iris, all activities she loved. "She did like to be involved," her daughter said.

Besides her husband, Si Matthews of Oak Grove, and daughter Marilyn Wilson, who lives in Vilonia, Mrs. Matthews is survived by her son, Gary Matthews, also of Vilonia; one brother Joe Stivers of Conway; three sisters, Hazel Walker of Center Town, Mo.; Erma Ohls of Tulsa; and Doris Cory of Little Rock; six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Funeral services were held on Saturday, Dec. 28, at the North Little Rock Funeral Home Chapel with the Rev. John Hamby of Vilonia officiating. Burial was in Edgewood Memorial Park.

The family asks that memorials be made to the Marcus Hill Cemetery Fund, c/o Nina Hoggard, Enola, Ark.

The Times - January 2, 1997


LOUIS J. OBERSTE, JR.

A Pioneer in the tourism industry dies at 74

By Nancy Dockter

Promiting the state he loved was Louis J. Oberste Jr.'s passion, and as a former state tourism director, he will be remembered as an industry pioneer who turned a fledgling state agency into a major engine for the Arkansas economy and whose initiatives became models across the country.

Mr. Oberste, a longtime resident of Park Hill, died Monday, July 19, after a lengthy battle with kidney disease and other health problems. He was 74.

A photographer for the state's first television station, KRTV, before he began his tenure under five governors as publicity director then head of the Tourism Division of the state Parks and Tourism Department, Mr. Oberste is credited with launching many programs that are still in place today.

Mary Lou Davenport, director of North Little Rock Advertising & Promotion and former co-worker of Mr. Oberste, noted that his accomplishments included establishing Arkansas on the national travel show circuit, creating point-of-entry centers and lobbying the state legislature to provide matching funds to aid all regions of the state in travel promotion.

He also came up with the idea of using writers from across the state to visit points of interest to produce media promotions. "Tourism truly was his life," Davenport said.

He was the oldest of five children born to Louis J. Oberste and his wife Hermina, both of prominent families of German immigrants who had settled in the western part of the state. His father was postmaster of Hartman, a town near Clarksville before taking a job with the Internal Revenue Service in Little Rock, where Mr. Oberste was born the day after Christmas, 1924.

As a boy, Mr. Oberste attended the Morris Institute in Searcy, where a serious accident occurred that changed his life. During a basketball game, Mr. Oberste broke his back as he jumped to block a shot then tumbled over another player who had fallen down behind him.

For 18 months, Mr. Oberste was out of school recuperating from the injury that left him partially paralyzed and would contribute to kidney problems that plagued him for the rest of his life. However, the years of struggle with poor health rarely got him down, family members recall.

"He had bad health all his life but the best outlook on life," his brother, Ken Oberste of Little Rock, said. "Nobody enjoyed life as much as Lou did."

His would be a journey of surprising twists, unexpected opportunities, and, by all accounts, rich rewards.

When he could return to school, he attended Subiaco Academy but left soon after when the United States entered World War II. Because of his injuries, he was classified 4-F, so he became a teletype operator with the Army Engineers, assigned to the night shift since he was the only male. Spare moments were spent learning photography, which led to a job with the Navy Department's Office of Special Services in Washington, D.C., followed in 1946 by a job back in Little Rock as photographer for Secretary of State C.G. "Crip" Hall, setting up the capitols' first microfilm storage program.

In 1953, a favor for the state's first television station, KRTV, Channel 17, on its first day of broadcast, led to the next step in Mr. Oberste's career. With a rented camera and little experience, he filmed the Easter sunrise service on the steps of the capitol. The next day, the stations' general manager offered him a job as news photographer, which led to a nine-year career that included a stint as news director at Channel 7 KATV and as a commercial photographer. During his work as a cameraman, he won many honors, including a Pulitzer-prize nomination for his breaking news coverage of the killing by police of an escaped mental patient brandishing a rifle.

In 1962, the job opened at the state Publicity and Parks Commission, and according to a 1977 profile in the Arkansas Gazette, Gov. Orval Faubus offered it to Mr. Oberste on a temporary basis because he was the only applicant of 34 who did not have a legislative backer - the better to avoid offending someone he needed during the next legislative session.

Mr. Oberste stayed in that job for 15 years, transforming the state Tourism Division from a tiny agency with eight employees and a budget of less than $700,000 into a sophisticated, multi-million dollar operation that established Arkansas as a vacation destination. Promoting Arkansas became Mr. Oberste's passion. He even dug into his own pockets to help cover the cost of manning a booth at travel shows around the country, family member said.

"He Worked 24 houses a day. He would have worked for free," said his brother Ken.

But in 1977, his career as tourism director was cut short when he was fired by then Gov. David Pryor for reasons that are still not entirely clear.

"Lou was a fovorite with the legislators," his brother recalled. "The governor couldn't quite compete with that kind of popularity."

Mr. Oberste moved on to build a career in the travel industry, working for several local agencies, organizing group tours.

In recent years, declining health that forced him to rely on dialysis plus the care of his wife Kathryn, now in the early stage of Alzheimer's, kept Mr. Oberste close to home. But he stayed in touch with friends, especially treasuring a lunch gathering at a downtown cafe every Friday that he and his friend Randy Tandy started 15 years ago.

"Gosh, I'm going to miss him," Tandy said. "He had such an upbeat personality, he made us all feel better. He conquered a lot of adversity."

Mr. Oberste was preceded in death by his parents. Besides his wife, Kathryn and brother Ken, he is survived by two brothers, George Oberste and Jerry Oberste, both of Little Rock, and a sister, Rosemary Bergeron of Hot Springs.

Funeral services were held Thursday, July 22, at St. Patrick's Catholic Church with Father Warren Harvey officiating. Burial was at Calvary Cemetery.

The Times - July 29, 1999


WILLIAM A. "BILL" SPRINGER

Ward 1 alderman of the 1940s dies at age 82

By Kitty Chism

William A. "Bill" Springer, the outgoing, politically connected owner of several grocery stores in North Little Rock in the 1940s and 1950s who served one term on the North Little Rock City Council, died Saturday, Aug. 12, in Richardson, Texas, of emphysema. He was 82.

The third to the youngest of eight children of then Cato grocer Matthew Thomas Springer and his wife Ada, he attended North Little Rock High School but dropped out after the 10th grade at the height of the Great Depression and worked for a time as a salesman for Meyer's Bakery.

He would join the Army and be sent to the South Pacific during World War II, only to be injured when his troop ship was sunk by enemy fire and the crew was rescued at sea.

He returned home in 1943 and purchased Melrose Grocery from his sister and her husband, Della and Bob Green. Coincidentally the same year the young woman from Dumas who would become his wife of 55 years, Margaret Pounder, bent on attending business school in Little Rock, moved in with her aunt who lived a few blocks away from the store.

The story goes that she went into the store one day to buy a dozen eggs and he allowed as how she couldn't carry those eggs all the way back alone - and walked her home. The two were married on Dec. 23, 1944.

Three years later, Mr. Springer purchased the old Watson Grocery, then located in a faded, wooden storefront at 18th and Main streets, which he quickly replaced with a streamlined concrete building and a store that offered such "modern" amenities as a butcher shop, free home delivery and charge accounts.

But even all of these services were not enough to compete once the supermarket chains with self-service aisles and lower prices moved into town. In a few years, Mr. Springer gave up the grocery business for a career in automotive equipment sales, though he did open Springer's Market, a small bait shop and quick market on the Old Conway Highway for a short time in the late 1950s.

Eventually, however, his knack for selling tire changers and car jacks landed him jobs in Oklahoma and then Dallas, where he lived for the remainder of his life and established his own independent Springer Sales Co.

"He was gregarious, what can I say, he was a salesman," said his daughter Sherry Harper of Dallas.

Growing up, she also viewed him as an attentive father who liked to play jacks with her on their front porch and took her, her mom and her younger brother over to Sunday night dinners every week at his parents' house behind a grocery they eventually owned in Levy, where all his brothers and sisters and their families would gather.

He was similarly attentive to keeping in touch with old friends, who include Henry Topf, the longtime president of Twin City Bank, who Harper believes approached her dad about running for a vacant Ward I alderman seat in 1947. He ran against L.W. Herscher and won by one vote, according to a story in The Times of that day.

But he would find the politics of the post disillusioning, his daughter said, and he did not choose to run for a second term. Still he was supportive when his brother E.E. Springer ran several successful times for Ward 2 alderman, and he remained interested in the political landscape - and an opponent of Bill Clinton - for the rest of his life.

"His funeral was the day Clinton gave his speech at the Democratic Convention, and, of course, none of us turned on the television that day," his daughter said.

"And I thought 'Daddy would do anything to keep people from watching him speak'," she joked. "He did not like Clinton."

In his spare time, Mr. Springer was an avid horseman and raised several Tennessee walking horses, which he kept at the old stable near where Fisher's Armory stands today. His pride, his daughter recalls, was "Buttermilk Sky," a horse that won numerous trophies and ribbons at shows around the state in the 1950s.

An avid hunter, Mr. Springer also loved dogs, raising mutts and hunting dogs when he was a young man but falling in love with niniature dachshunds somewhere along the way.

He also loved North Little Rock, his daughter said, and his last journey back here was 18 months ago for the annual homecoming at Cato.

"I think he always felt that North Little Rock was home," his daughter said.

He was preceded in death by one son, William A. Springer Jr., who died at nine months of age; his brothers, Floyd, E.E., Leonard and Kelly; and his sisters, Della Brown and Ruth Hemphill.

Besides his daughter and wife Margaret, he is survived by a son and daughter-in-law, Donald and Susan Springer; five grandchildren, Matt and Holly Harper and Adam, Will and Jessica Springer; and one sister, Grace Bahill of Cabot.

Funeral arrangements were by cremation, and burial was at the National Cemetery in Dallas.

The Times - September 14, 2000