Tony Alamo, the former music-promoter turned self-styled evangelist, was controversial almost from the day he and then-wife Susan started preaching on the streets of Hollywood in the late 1960s.
Part of the so-called "Jesus Movement" of the counterculture years, the Alamos focused on the young searching for meaning. They offered salvation and purpose, a deliverance from sin and drug addiction.
Some say they delivered just that. Others told tales of total control, abuse and near-slave labor to raise money for the couple's lavish lifestyle.
Alamo relocated to Northwest Arkansas in the 1970s, but most folks down this way knew didn't know much about him. There was an occasional news story of his brushes with the law, including a bizarre struggle over his wife's body after her death from cancer. But the only real contact most of us had with his ministry were the newsletters with Alamo's sermons and screeds left under our windshield wipers from time to time. Those few who bothered to read them usually just laughed and wondered how anyone could fall for the guy's line.
That would change.
It was just a bit more than two decades ago that Alamo's followers started moving into the small town of Fouke, Ark., just down the road from Texarkana.
They came because Alamo was in prison at the Federal Correctional Institution here on the Texas side. He was doing time on tax charges and, the story goes, his congregation wanted to be near him. He was released in 1998 and rejoined his flock.
But it wasn't long before some Fouke residents became convinced the move had a darker purpose. They worried Alamo and his people were going to try and take over the town. The group was buying property, holding services and making donations. They had done much the same years earlier in Alma, a small town in Northwest Arkansas. And Alamo and his then-wife Susan had become well-known and powerful in that area.
Relations between Fouke and Alamo Christian Ministries soured. They each kept a wary eye on the other. And while the church might not succeed in South Arkansas as it had in Alma, there was no sign Alamo and his folks were going anywhere, either.
Until 2008. Federal and state authorities had been investigating Alamo for two years. They raided his properties in September of that year. There were allegations of physical and sexual abuse of girls as young as 8, some of whom were allegedly forced to become the leader's "child brides." Alamo was not there, but he was later picked up in Arizona. He went on trial in 2009 and was convicted of 10 counts of transporting minors across state lines for sex. He was sent away for 175 years.
Over the next few years, his Fouke operation withered away. Followers moved on, some leaving the area for other Alamo churches in Fort Smith and Los Angeles, some leaving the group entirely. The Southwest Arkansas properties were seized to satisfy court judgments and sold off.
And Alamo himself died Thursday in federal prison, age 82.
Tony Alamo was something from "out there," the kind of cult leader you heard about but never saw. An affront to mainstream religion maybe, but the kind of guy who was almost a joke as long as he was at a safe distance.
And then he became very real to the people of Fouke and our area. No one was laughing anymore.
He will not be missed.