DE QUEEN, Ark. - Quarantine downtime has afforded the director of the Sevier County Museum plenty of opportunity to add to the rich history that awaits visitors here.
The Sevier County Museum portrays life as it's been lived in these rural towns and communities situated about halfway between Texarkana and Mena, ranging from De Queen to Gillham, Lockesburg to Horatio and all points in between and elsewhere inside the county confines.
From a room honoring a country music star and one of De Queen's favorite native sons to old school books and local arrowheads to historical novelties like vintage radios and a rotary telephone, a 19th century petticoat, photographs of World War II soldiers, a scale model of the Paraloma area and so much more, the Sevier County Museum has much to explore with its curiosities and intrigue.
With a public health crisis shuttering this showcase for history, though, Karen Mills, the longtime director here, has devoted her time to adding even more history to the mix, primarily by adding a sports wall along the hallway and by sifting through old issues of the De Queen Bee to research the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
"We stripped this thing down to nothing and redid it. This covers De Queen, Gillham - used to have a school, of course - and Lockesburg and Horatio. Now the only two schools in the county are Horatio and De Queen," Mills said about the new sports displays.
Vintage memorabilia portray the days when De Queen High School teams weren't known as the Leopards. Does the phrase Orange Owls ring a bell? If you lived in De Queen between 1924 and 1930, it would. That was the team name back then.
"Leopards is the fourth name they picked," Mills said. In the school history room nearby, an Orange Owl annual book is displayed. "In 1923, for one year they were Wampus Cats. And then the Zephyr back there is a 1911. They were Zephyrs," she explained about yearbooks on display. A little black cat peeks from one cover.
"They just could not make up their mind," Mills said.
A program (10 cents was the price) for a De Queen Leopards versus Mena Bearcats game memorializes a mid-November competition that was one of the last during the football team's 1958 season. Gillham's girls basketball team is represented here in a photograph dating from 1936. Another photo captures the 1945-46 De Queen Leopards boys hoops players; all of five players assembled to stand dutifully at attention for the photographer.
Gillham's school teams were called the Tigers, while Lockesburg was the Blue Darters. (Side note: De Queen had a semi-pro baseball team called the De Queen Hustlers, the museum director said.) What sort of memorabilia does Mills have to portray these olden sports days?
"Mostly pictures. Some old homemade things that they made," Mills said, plus report cards and ballgame souvenirs. She'll be adding more names to the displays, too. It's the type of thing that out-of-town visitors and locals both love.
In a typical May, when no pandemic is happening, Mills will guide local students through that school history room, where they can see a Mt. Pleasant community school desk from the late 1800s to early 1900s. Don't sit in it, however. Uniforms and cheerleader outfits hang from the wall.
"May was my biggest month before the pandemic hit. I would usually have about 200 second-graders come, a busload at a time," Mills said. They typically can't guess what the hole in the desk is for, but then she takes out an ink bottle to show them.
"They love the stories on how things used to work," Mills said.
Also in this room of school history is a Falls Chapel community school replica, inscribed with the years 1902 to 1964. "All the community schools are gone, so we want to remember them by having that here," Mills said.
There's an Orange Owl plaster mascot, photography equipment used in the De Queen schools and even a name plate for a former Horatio principal, one Miss Othelma Shull.
Mills has also used this downtime at the museum to cast a roving eye back to when the United States last experienced a horrific pandemic, the Spanish flu that started in 1918. She's been reading old issues of the De Queen Bee.
"They did shut down the schools and the businesses. Not so much the local businesses but they shut down all the theaters - any kind of plays, any kind of large functions shut down. And then they had a big relapse of it. They had to close again," Mills said. That was De Queen, circa 1918 and 1919.
"Our cemeteries are full of people that died in those years," Mills said. "There's one whole family that died, except maybe the mom and dad."
But then came a town resurgence once the flu cleared. "In 1920 there were businessmen building new businesses, they were adding on to their businesses, they were starting new businesses, and we were booming again," she said.
The newspaper chronicled the lives of those who died of the Spanish flu, including an account of a local woman who went up North to visit a daughter and died up there. "They brought her back down to the cemetery," Mills said. It was the same with a soldier stationed in Washington, D.C.
Although closed temporarily, the Sevier County Museum should reopen at some point not too far from now.
"I have not been open because most of our visitors are from out of state, and I just feel like it would be safer right now. But we are planning on opening sometime in the future, I'm hoping," Mills said.
She suspects they may re-open the outside antique village first, likely over the July 4 holiday, and then open up inside. She'll announce it on the museum's Facebook page. She has projects to keep her busy in the interim.
(On the Net: Facebook.com/SevierCountyMuseum. Or call 870-784-0039.)