| Addie Goodman | Fred O. Roberson Sr. | Vergie Alma Stone | Helen L. Hayes | Roy S. McDowell |
"She went to any of them she could find," said Mary Waddle, of Little Rock, the oldest of Goodman's three daughters."She just went to a game one time and was hooked. She started about eight years ago. She loved casinos too."
Mrs. Goodman, of North Little Rock, died Monday, March 13. She was 84.
"We even put a pin on her dress for her funeral that said "I love bingo," her daughter siad. "It was just so exciting to her. The most she ever won was $500. It was never much higher than that. (But) she won more than she lost.
Waddle said even after Mrs. Goodman became ill with lung ailments she continued to recruit family members to take her to bingo games.
"I fussed at them a whole lot, but then I realized that bingo was about the only thing she could do that would bring joy to her life," Waddle said about the last eight years.
Born in Newport and raised in Augusta, according to her son Charles, Mrs. Goodman's real first passion in life had always been her eight children, Waddle said. Several years as a single mother took their toll on her, but she never gave up when the going got tough., her daughter said.
"She loved her children. Her children were her whole life," Waddle said. "She was always there for us, when we would let her be there. She would fight for us no matter what."
Goodman cared for her son, Donald, 45, who has Down's Syndrome, until her death. It was a task she undertook with love and enthusiasm.
"He was her whole life. She was so worried about who was going to take care of him when she passed away," Waddle said. "She wouldn't go anywhere unless she knew he would be taken care of. She gave him total care."
She was preceded in death by her husband, Jesse Earl Goodman, and one daughter, Judy Brown.
Besides Waddle of Little Rock, her son, Donald and her son Charles of Little Rock, Mrs. Goodman is survived by two sons, J.E. Goodman and Ed Goodman, both of North Little Rock; two daughters, Billie Woods of Hot Springs, and Nancy Goodman of Cabot; one brother, James Davis of Conway; 22 grandchildren; 40 great-grandchildren; and 10 great-great-grandchildren.
She was of Baptist faith.
Funeral services were held Friday at the North Little Rock Funeral Home Chapel with burial at Union Cemetery in Augusta.
The Times - 3/23/2000
FRED O. ROBERSON SR
By Stephen Ursery
Fred O. Roberson Sr. loved to enter sweepstakes.
A couple of times, he even struck gold; once, he won a Chevrolet Vega and another time he won a VCR.
When the VCR arrived in the mail, it came with an unexpected bonus; a second VCR sent to him by mistake.
Mr. Roberson promptly returned the extra gift.
"That's the kind of person he was," recalled his daughter, Gloria Adams of Memphis. "He was determined to do the right thing, to play by the rules."
Mr Roberson died of a heart attack at Cherokee Village on Thursday, April 10.
He was 82.
The only child of professional baseball pitcher John Henry "Rube" Roberson and his wife Dorothy, he was born in McRae, Ark.
For much of his growing up years, his father played for the Pittsburgh Pirates, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the New York Yankees, in addition to many years of service for the Little Rock Travellers minor-league baseball club. He was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1962.
The family would settle in North Little Rock in the late 1920's and Mr. Roberson would graduate from North Little Rock High in 1931, then go off to major in accounting at the Little Rock Junior College, then attend court reporters school.
In the late 1930's, he met Marie Aldrich at First Methodist Church in North Little Rock and the two were married at the church on Sept. 3, 1939.
In 1940, he joined the Federal Soil Conservation Service in Nashville, Ark., where he worked for two years doing clerical work for the field staff before moving back to North Little Rock to do similar work. By the time he retired in 1975 he was the lead purchasing agent for the agency, responsible for obtaining supplies, vehicles, books, office furniture, etc., for field offices thoughout the state.
According to his son and daughter, Mr. Roberson was a quiet, unassuming man with a strong sense of right and wrong that was rooted in his faith and family.
"He was a religious man. He grew up in the church, and he didn't stray from it," his daughter said.
At First United Methodist Church, he was active in the United Methodist Men, the Ambassador Sunday School Class, and during his retirement years, in the church office, where he worked part time balancing the church books, as well as keeping the pledge records and minutes of the Financial Committee meetings.
"He loved that job," his daughter said. "We were so proud of him. A couple of years ago, the church switched to a computer system, and he [quickly] learned that. He was determined to."
His motivation, family members say, was what he sensed was his own way of contributing to the broader mission of the church.
"He was very generous and wanted to help those less fortunate, and he saw his work through United Methodist Men as a way to do that," said his son Fred Roberson Jr. of North Little Rock. "He was concerned about humanity."
At home he was similarly concerned about family.
His children said he always made apoint of supporting the interest of his grandchildren by attending every possible event they were involved in from sports and plays to graduation and other milestones of their lives.
In his own leisure time, Mr. Roberson, like his father, enjoyed sports, particularly golf and Razorback football, basketball, and baseball.
"He liked to play at Burns Park," said Roberson Jr. said of his father's golf game. "He really liked to watch it on television. He followed John Daly. He was always hoping that Daly would overcome his problems."
Connected to life, Mr. Roberson lived to tend his backyard vegetable garden, where he grew tomatoes, strawberries, squash, carrots, and potatoes. But he was also attentive to the bird feeders he had installed there and to watching the varieties of birds they attracted.
It was just part of his gentle nature and scrupulous principles, family members say. "He is the only person I know who I never heard say a bad thing about someone else," his son said. "That's just who he was. He wanted to do things properly and treat people properly."
Besides his son and daughter, he is survived by five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Funeral services were held on Monday, April 14, at First United Methodist Church of North Little Rock, with Rev. Don Nolley officiating.
Interment was in Edgewood Memorial Park. The family requests that memorials be made to First United Methodist Church.
The Times - 4/17/1997
VERGIE ALMA STONE
A native of rural Mount Vernon in Faulkner County, the daughter of Dutch transplants from the Carolinas who came here to farm the land, she attended public school through the eighth grade.
But "she was a prayer warrior Her appearance was very meek, but you just knew that she had God on her side." her son Hulan Stone said.
Mrs. Stone died of natural causes Oct. 12. She was 97.
She began courting Cecil Stone of Mount Vernon when she was 17, and family members say she never left his side spiritually from the day she married him and never considered remarrying after his death in 1957.
Before the Great Depression, the two had set up their own household in Mount Vernon, buried a 4 year old child and started raising four other children.. But in 1934, fearful that they could not feed their children if they stayed in the country, they moved to Levy, where Mrs. Stone raised cows and pigs and planted a survival garden.
As the war effort gathered steam and a building boom began in North Little Rock in the 1940s, Cecil Stone went into real estate, and Mrs. Stone immersed herself even more in church and family. The Stones were charter members of the Glad Tidings Assembly of God church in Levy in 1948, and she passed her religious discipline and moral convictions on to her children.
"She taught us to always go to church, never to indulge in sin," her son Hulan said. "She said very indignantly, 'My kids would never do that...And every letter I ever got from her said, "I'm praying for you.'"
The 1950s were difficult for Mrs. Stone as she lost two loved ones, first her 19-year-old son Eugene to pneumonia in 1952 and then her beloved husband, Cecil, to a massive stroke five years later.
"It is so sad really," her daughter Martha Cox said. "I've read over their old love letters to one another. Mom and Dad loved each other so much...Mother never once thought about remarrying."
Mrs. Stone's children also say theirs was a warm and nurturing home environment. "She loved to take us picnicking and strawberry picking - she always went shopping and stuff with us," her daughter said.
And when her sons gave her daughters-in-law, she embrace them as her own, said Hulan Stone's wife, Betty. "I was closer to her than I am to anybody, What a great, godly lady she was."
But Mrs. Sone also had a certain spunk that she displayed even after she was elderly. She fearlessly jumped on a motorcycle one day when she was 70. "She just hopped on her grandson's motorcycle and took off." said Hulan Stone. "She had never learned how to drive a car, so we were all so surprised, " though, as far as anyone can remember, she never rode the cycle again.
But for as long as she was able, she walked from her home to her church, where she remained active until late into her 80s. Thereafter, she lived at Robinson Health Care Center where the things she missed most were her beloved Chihuahua dogs.
"Mother loved dogs." her daughter said. "She would hold them in her lap and take such great care of them."
Mrs. Stone was preceded in death by her husband, Cecil Stone and two sons.
She is survived by two sons and daughter-in-law, Hulan Stone and wife, Betty, of North Little Rock, Verlon Stone and wife, Bobbie, of Conway, daughter and son-in-law, Martha Cox and husband, Clarence, of North Little Rock; eight grandchildren; 16 great-grandchildren; and seven great-great-grandchildren.
Funeral services will be held 10:30 a.m. today at Roller-Owens Funeral Home with Rev. George Wood officiating.
Burial will follow in Edgewood Memorial Park. Memorials may be made to Robinson Health Care Center Activities Group.
The Times 10/15/1998
HELEN LUCILLE JACQUELINE JONES HAYES
By Kitty Chism
Her father was a physician, her brother was a physician, and she married a physician.
So for years, Helen Lucille Jacqueline Jones Hayes, the youngest of five children, was content to pursue her artistry in the medical profession, studying medical technology, working for her urologist brother, Fay H. Jones but focusing much of her energy on doing pen and ink enlargements of the photographs in medical texts for her father, Dr. William E. Hayes, who was also a medical school professor.
It was much later in life when she found her real niche in oil and pastel painting, setting up a studio in her two-car garage in Lakewood, where, independent and outgoing, she also taught classes for many years and continued to produce a wide range of colorful works despite her deteriorating eyesight and arthritic hands.
"She like color," said her daughter Libby Gilbertson of Dallas, Texas. "She liked the French Impressionists for their use of color, but she was very diversified. She also did a lot of abstracts."
Mrs. Hayes, a charter member of the Arkansas Art League who was active in the local art community for several decades, died Wednesday, Dec. 16, of congestive heart failure. She was 90.
Born in Charleston, Ark., she moved to Little Rock with her family when she was school-aged, graduated from Central High and majored in medical technology at the University of Arkansas Medical School.
There she met James Donald Hayes Jr., who was studying to be a physician at the time, and after they were married in 1934 they moved to North Little Rock. Active in the Medical Auxiliary for many years, she also served as a volunteer for the Red Cross and on the local blackout patrol unit during the war years.
But as a young married woman the Park Hill Garden Club was her joy, finding there an outlet to express her love of flowers and nature.
"She also took in all of the stray dogs and cats[in the neighborhood]," her daughter fondly recalls.
A creative woman who made friends easily and had a knack for staying in touch with people of all ages she met along her way, her daughter said, Mrs. Hayes, who started studying art seriously soon after the war, got together with six of her women artist friends in 1972 and formed the North Little Rock Artists League, which still provides support, competitions and showcases for local artists today.
Widowed in 1969, she volunteered in the Arkansas Art Center's gift shop for more than a decade and was a member of the North Little Rock Woman's Club, Winfield United Methodist Church and North Hills Country Club.
But art was her passion, and she simply would not let age diminish her enthusiam for it.
"Now that I can't see the fine detail anymore," she told a reporter a few months ago, "I have developed a greater appreciation for the interplay of colors."
She was preceded in death by her brothers Arthur, Fay and Everet, sister Hester Thomasson, and husband, Dr. James Donald Hayes.
Besides her daughter and son-in-law, Libby Gilbertson and Paul Clark of Dallas, she is survived by a son and daughter-in-law, James Donald and Maxine Hayes of North Little Rock; grandchildren, Alfred G. Gilbertson Jr., Karen Gilbertson Cowden III of Dallas, and Jacquelyn Michelle Hayes of North Little Rock; great-grandchildren, Allison Clara Cowden and John B. Cowden IV, both of Dallas, Texas; a step-granddaughter, Cynthia Renee Lide and her husband, Bradley, of Nashville, Tenn.; and step-great-grandchildren, Michael and Adam Farnam of Nashville, Tenn.
Funeral services were held Saturday, Dec. 19, in the chapel of Griffin Leggett Healey & Roth Funeral Home with the Rev. David Bentley officiating. Burial was in Roselawn Cemetery.
The family requests that memorials be made to the Laman Library, 2801 North Orange Street, North Little Rock, AR 72114, or to the Arkansas Arts Center, MacArthur Park, Little Rock.
An overflow crowd of parents, teachers and students packed the chapel of Roller Owens Funeral Home late last Tuesday afternoon to pay their last respects to an energizing and imaginative teacher who had made English and speech and drama and music not only interesting but contagiously fun to a generation of local youngsters
Roy S. (Clancy) McDowell III, of Little Rock, affectionately dubbed "Pappy" by his closest colleagues, died Saturday, Jan. 31, of a sudden heart attack, leaving behind a legacy of pranks and humor, good fun and magical moments for those around him.
He was 45.
"His biggest interenst was people. He loved kids, but he was also a real family guy who kept up with elderly aunts and uncles...and he had so many friends," his sister Janey McDowell of Prairie Village, Kan., said. "He also threw a great party."
But his passion for life also made him a good teacher because he forced his students to stretch and meet life head on, may of his students and colleagues said.
"He would ask us to do things that just seemed too hard," one student recalled in a eulogy read by Karen Cobb, a parent of two of Mr. McDowell's former students. "I remember the day he made us all sing a solo in front of the class. It was one of the scariest days of my life and yet one of my most cherished memories. I did it - and lived!"
Born in Bonne Terre, Mo., the youngest of two children of a pharmaceutical company sales representative, Mr. McDowell moved to Little Rock with his family when he was a toddler and to Sherwood when he was in the second grade, his sister said.
In High school, his band teacher Bill Haskett was his mentor, who pushed Mr. McDowell not to just play the French horn, but to excel at it, Janey McDowell recalled.
After graduation he went off to major in education at Henderson State University, and his first jobs out of college were at the Central seventh grade school and at Ridgeroad Junior High, where he taught English and speech for nine years.
Later he would move to the East Campus department of speech and drama, where he worked until last fall, when he decided to take a year off to regroup and recharge, his sister said.
Indeed, colleagues said, his nurturing energy was his greatest gift.
"Clancy used to put fake messages on our desks. When we would return the fake phone call, it would be some outrageous business," one colleague recalled in Cobb's eulogy. "If you left a 'to do' list on your desk, you could be sure Clancy would add an item or two of his own; Buy Clancy a nice gift, give Clancy $50, or some other suggestion."
Said another colleague; "For Clancy, teaching wasn't about lesson plans, objectives, sets. It was about passion, joy, love, the relationship with his fellow teachers and students. He could make you smile no matter what kind of bad day you were having. That's what he taught me. How to smile."
Added one of his closest friends: "He knew how to enjoy life. And when you were with him, you enjoyed it, too. And that is one reason that I am going to miss him so much. I am going to miss the sparkle that he lent to the ordinary. The excitement that was so contagious when you were with him."
Mr. McDowell was preceded in death by his father 10 years ago and by his mother one year ago. Besides his sister Janey of Kansas, he is survived by his partner and friend Larry King of Little Rock.
The family requests that memorials be made to the North Little Rock High School East Campus Speech and Drama Department.
The Times - February 12, 1998