Trilogy of good things ends badly in Ashdown

Les Minor, columnist
Les Minor, columnist

With age comes a greater appreciation of certain things:

  • Remarkable old buildings.
  • The sacrifice of veterans.
  • Public officials who are tightfisted with our tax dollars.

There are many more examples, of course, tailored individually based on a person's sensibilities.

These three recently came into conflict in Ashdown, Ark., clashing in a way that damaged one leg of this tripod.

The county's veterans service officer, James Oden, was fired by the Little River county judge. His sin was carping about the judge's decision to move the veterans office to the second story of the courthouse. Oden felt he was looking out for his charges.

The courthouse is a beautifully preserved, 110-year-old building and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of course, it doesn't have an elevator, and that's the rub. Oden said some veterans who use the office have disabilities, and others need to discuss medical matters in private. He said moving the office from a ground floor annex to the second floor makes serving them more difficult.

The judge, Mike Cranford, who himself is in a wheelchair, said he would find a way to accommodate the vets' need for access and privacy, but the office was still going upstairs.

The state pays for a fraction of these operations; the county pays for the rest, and the judge controls them.

Now, the courthouse isn't going to get an elevator, and the judge is duly elected. That makes Oden the odd man out.

The office is being relocated because the judge had an opportunity to create some revenue-about $30,000 a year-by renting it out to a federal agency. This sounds like a smart plan for taxpayers.

It also should be noted that Oden was a part-time, hourly employee. This is not to say that the work he did wasn't important, only that in the scheme of things, he didn't have much clout.

Now he doesn't have a job and has filed for unemployment, and Cranford is looking for his replacement.

So who's the bad guy?

Hard to tell. One bit of information currently lacking is how many veterans are served by this office and how often?

But on the surface, moving this office to the second floor with only access by stairs doesn't seem the right way to treat vets. It seems dismissive.

And our instincts are to applaud someone who works to help veterans, no matter the pay grade.

But there is also a time when persistent complaining to your boss won't deliver the desired results. It's the human version of the law of diminishing returns. It seems the judge had had enough.

But we don't know the whole story here. Judge Cranford has elected not to explain why
he fired Oden, calling it a personnel issue.

It also is difficult to fathom why a man in a wheelchair would not be sensitive to this issue. So maybe his make-shift, patched-together plan to accommodate veterans will be adequate.

We'll never know if Oden crossed some unspoken line in how he approached his boss. Leaders shouldn't always surround themselves with yes-men or yes-women. And they should give some consideration to someone trying to help others. But in the end, these are their decisions to make.

While Cranford absolutely had the right to fire Oden, that doesn't mean he should have.

When airport police physically pulled a passenger off a United Airlines flight last week in an episode that went viral and cost the company millions of dollars and even more in goodwill, they had every right to. It doesn't mean it was the smart thing to do. If they could get a do-over, they surely would, in a heartbeat.

In this, and in so many of life's other challenges, it's not about right and wrong. It's about how an action resonates with the people involved, the audience-however large or small it might be-which leads us to one final thought.

Of all the voices we've heard on this issue-including this one-the ones most conspicuously absent are those of veterans themselves, particularly those in Little River County.

Maybe the most telling response is that there hasn't been one. The people the office serves don't seem to be in an uproar about the changes.

If veterans aren't outraged over this, maybe it isn't such a big deal.

It's just a shame when three stars that should line up don't.

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