2020.07.16 THROW BACK THURSDAY - TWO HEIGHTS HOUSES IN A SCHOOL CRISIS plus Class News
THROW BACK THURSDAY - TWO HEIGHTS HOUSES IN A SCHOOL CRISIS plus Class News
The following tells a little about two Heights households involved in the closure of schools 61 years ago. The red brick home is the former Tucker residence and the one-story home is the former Ashmore residence. Mr. Ashmore is pictured reading the newspaper he helped write; and Mr. Tucker is seen leading a school board meeting in the heart of the crisis.
A Sense of Hope...
from Two Heights Houses in a School Crisis
Our schools were closed in spring of 2020. No athletics, no graduation, no prom. The last time we experienced this was 61 years ago. In 1959, our high schools were closed by the governor, who would sacrifice our children’s education rather than agree on a plan to integrate the schools and comply with the law.
In the late 1950s when Rett Tucker was nine years old, he ran into his family’s brick two-story home on Kavanaugh from a noisy basketball game in the driveway, and the phone rang. When he answered the call, he remembers hearing a scary voice which he now compares to a klansman in To Kill a Mockingbird. The voice spoke an accusatory racial epithet and hung up.
Later that night Rett peeked from his window and spotted a police car in the driveway.
Around the same time period, eleven-year-old Anne Ashmore was doing her homework in her quiet family home on Southwood in Little Rock’s Heights neighborhood, about three blocks from Rett’s house. The phone rang and as Anne reached for it, her father curiously told her not to answer it. Soon, a second phone was installed in her home with a private number which Anne could only reveal to her closest friends.
Both Anne and Rett, in separate recent interviews, recall these instances as the times when they realized “something big was happening.” Rett’s father was Everett Tucker, president of the Little Rock School Board during the turbulent Central High crisis.
Anne’s father was Harry Ashmore, executive editor of the Arkansas Gazette, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials on the same events. What both Ashmore and Tucker had thought would be a challenging but successful compliance by Little Rock with the Supreme Court Brown vs Board of Education decision, had turned heartbreakingly to violence, racially motivated teacher firings, and ultimately school closure. Both men were leaders in securing a lawful resolution and reopening of our schools.
Rett Tucker later graduated from one of the same high schools his father had helped reopen and is a prominent local real estate developer who helped build our beautiful River Market area. Anne Ashmore went on to Vassar College, later obtained a law degree and retired from a position at the United States Supreme Court - the same court whose decisions had propelled her father into international news.
The two houses, the Federal-style Tucker home on Kavanaugh built with a distinctive semicircular porch, and the rambling Ashmore cottage on Southwood, each about ninety years old, have survived to remind us of their powerful histories. Successive occupants of the Ashmore home include Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Steele Hays and longtime president of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, Tom McRae. The Tuckers bought the Kavanaugh home in 1954 from Dr. Homer Higgins, Dean of Surgery at the U of A Medical School, and they occupied It for over fifty years.
Rett and Anne’s youthful experience with their home phones was but a small part of the extremist behavior of the time. Both fathers suffered repeated verbal attacks, sometimes from both sides at once. What both offered the community was what we look for today from our heroic scientists and physicians and that is … hope. In an Arkansas Gazette editorial, Harry Ashmore wrote of Everett Tucker, Russell Matson and Ted Lambs’s victories in an election which ultimately reopened the schools: “A majority chose to stand behind honorable men who have courageously attempted to do their hard duty. The same majority rejected men who ruthlessly sought to impose their will and their prejudices upon the people of Little Rock.”
Appreciation for help on this article is due to Anne Ashmore, Rett and Kathryn Tucker, Sandra Taylor Smith, Allan Brown, Jim Clinton, Roslyn Knutson, Judge Morris Arnold, Patricia Blick, and Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.
Jim Pfeifer
CLASS NEWS
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In Memoriam
FRANK LAWRENCE AGEE JR.
Sep 4, 2019
Frank Lawrence Agee Jr., 80, went home to be with the Lord on September 4, 2019. He leaves his wife of 44 years Raema (Rae) Agee; his daughter and son-in-law Megan and Brian Baker; three beautiful granddaughters Sarah Rose, Katherine Grace and Hannah Elizabeth; and his beloved Oregon and Louisiana families.
Born in Arkansas on February 2, 1939, to Frank and Margaret Agee, he spent his childhood in Little Rock and later graduated from the University of Arkansas. He then moved to Oklahoma and graduated with a Master’s Degree in Psychology from the University of Oklahoma.
He met his wife in Seattle, WA in 1972 where they were both working for the State of Washington. Frank went to work for Bank of America, which brought the family to Dublin, California in 1981. Upon his retirement, 14 years ago, Frank and his wife moved to Butte County. He loved Jesus and used his retirement years sharing his testimony, mentoring, and working for Perspectives on the World Christian Movement.
Interment will be at Restlawn Memory Gardens in Salem, Oregon. The family will receive friends at the Clubhouse in Sterling Oaks Apartments (100 Sterling Oaks Dr. in Chico, CA) on Sunday, October 6th from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Memorials may be made to Firm Family Church, 25 Bellarmine Ct. Chico, CA 95928 or online at www.firmfamilychurch.org. If giving online, please select the “Missions” fund.
“He fought a good fight, he kept the faith, he won the race!”
ML