Hope and Hempstead County encountered serious rough patches in 2008; but, the year here was largely one of swimming against the tide.
That idea was no better evidenced than in the top story for the year, which has essentially carried over for the past two years - the progress of the John W. Turk, Jr., Power Plant.

Fought at every turn by environmental and wealthy private land interests from Hempstead County and across the country, the $1.5 billion project to build a 600-megawatt coal-fired, baseload electrical power generation plant for AEP/Southwestern Electric Power Co. began 2008 where it ended 2007... before the Arkansas Public Service Commission.

After losing an appeal before the PSC in late 2007, interventor interests turned to the appeallate courts and U.S. District Court early in 2008.
The anticipated appeal came in February before the Arkansas Court of Appeals, but was later consolidated and transferred to the Arkansas Supreme Court on SWEPCO’s motion. That case remains in the state supreme court; while a federal lawsuit by opponents to enjoin SWEPCO from construction, based upon a reading of the U.S. Clean Air Act, was rejected in August by U.S. District Judge Harry F. Barnes.

Opponents had sought to stop SWEPCO from conducting site preparation activities, but Barnes ruled in August that those activities did not fall within the proscribed areas defined by the Clean Air Act. That ruling has since been appealed to the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In the meantime, SWEPCO continued to develop the project and its impact in Hempstead County with the announcement of a $1 million gift to the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope in February. The gift funded a program of studies in power plant operations and provided scholarships to students at UACCH, Texarkana College, and Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas.
In November, the draft air permit for the plant was made final by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, and SWEPCO immediately began primary construction work at the plant site. Environmental opponents filed a last-minute appeal which halted that construction work and threatened some 400 jobs in the midst of the holiday season, and an emergency appearance before the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission resulted in SWEPCO being given a green light to continue construction.
Trial of that appeal will be conducted in March, 2009.
In December, SWEPCO gave notice to the PSC that it would file a proposal to raise its base electricity rates in early 2009, the first such increase by the company is more than two decades. At the same time, UACCH launched an enrollment drive for the new power plant operations degree program facilitated by the SWEPCO gift.
UACCH growth
Hempstead County continued to swim against the economic tide in March when voters narrowly approved a revnue bond issue to fund the construction of Hempstead Hall, a $10 million fine arts and conference center on the UACCH campus.

Final tallies from Hempstead County Clerk Jackie Ridling’s office showed the first part of the ballot to authorize the issuance of revenue bonds to finance the construction passing with 698 votes in favor and 627 votes against, a 71-vote margin.

The second part of the ballot, a 3/4-cent countywide sales tax to finance the construction over a five year, nine month estimated payout passed with 681 votes in favor and 649 votes against, a 32-vote margin. The 3/4-cent tax will sunset upon the payout of the construction bonds.

The third part of the ballot, a 1/4-cent countywide sales tax to fund maintenance and operations for the facility passed with 696 votes in favor and 633 votes against, a 63-vote margin. The 1/4-cent tax will be on-going.
The proposal envisions a 50,000-square foot facility with an auditorium seating capacity of 2,100 seats, divided between fixed seating of 1,210 seats at stage level and 890 retractable balcony seats. Lobby capacity of 2,100, as well as established banquet seating for 800 served by a fixed kitchen would also be included.

The proposed auditorium is to have a full-sized performance stage with dressing facilities which can accommodate theatrical, lecture, musical, organizational, educational, and community events. Offices for staff and non-profit organizational purposes are proposed along with conference rooms. An alcoved outdoor amphitheater is also planned for the south side of the building.

At the same time, UACCH began construction this year on a new $2 million sciences and medical technology studies building which had been in the planning stages for more than two years. The building, designed by Hot Springs architect Ricco Harris, a UACCH graduate, is due for completion in 2009.
Renovations begun in 2007 on the UACCH administration building are now expected to be completed with the announcement in November of a $300,000 General Improvement Fund grant through the UA System. The announcement was made by newly-nominated UACCH board member State Senator Jim Hill, D-Nashville, in his first meeting with the UACCH Board of Visitors.
Meanwhile, the Southwest Arkansas Educational Cooperative approached the UACCH Board of Visitors and the Hope City Board of Directors in March about the possible construction of a new $3 million headquarters facility for SWAEC on the UACCH campus. The proposal calls for construction of the three-storied facility on the south end of the UACCH campus, with UACCH leasing it back to the City, which, in turn, would issue general obligation bonds to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to finance a loan to SWAEC for the project.
The development of the final agreement went before the city board in December.
Economy/forces of nature
The year was also an economic rollercoaster for Hope and Hempstead County, as the bankrupt Champion Parts, Inc., was resurrected by a company which Champion’s former owners had previously purchased.

Cash Technologies, Inc., CEO Bruce Korman, of Los Angeles, Calif., said in February that his company was negotiating to purchase the assets in bankruptcy of Champion. Cash Technologies is the parent company of TAP Holdings LLC, of which Tomco Auto Products was a wholly-owned subsidiary before its assets were sold to Champion in October, 2006.
 
Cash Technologies disclosed its intention to buy Champion’s assets in its quarterly report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in January, three days before Champion’s board of directors decided on Jan. 25 to liquidate the company. Champion had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October, 2007, and had been operating under a “cash collateral” order from the U.S. Bankrutpcy Court.

But, the company had been under pressure to shore up its liquidity from its chief secured creditors. PNC Bank, N.A., of Pittsburgh, Pa.,  held the lien against the Tomco assets bought by Champion, and a consortium of banks headed by Elk Horn Bank in Malvern held the lien against Champion’s plant property.
The company completed the purchase of Champion in March for an aggregate bid of some $3.2 million, or 21 percent of the $13.63 million book value of Champion’s assets.

While the Champion resurrection helped restore some lost jobs to Hope, Harvest Foods announced in October that it was closing its Hope store, costing some 25 employees their jobs.
Harvest Foods had been in business in Hope since 1958, beginning with the Safeway chain, and was sold to a group of Affiliated Foods store owners in 1997 operating under the name Harvest Foods. The store had seen its longest serving manager, Winston Davidson, retire, and had grown from its original location at Third and Grady streets, moving to its last site at Third and Hervey streets in 1968, and rebuilding and enlarging at that location in 1982.
Rapidly rising gasoline prices in Arkansas in the aftermath of two Gulf Coast hurricanes in September sent drivers into a tailspin here, as prices at the pump hit an astounding $4 per gallon in September. Gas prices began to drop in late fall, and by December were below $2 per gallon.

The storms, hurricanes Gustav and Ike, wrecked havoc along the coast and brought drenching rains inland, with gale-force winds sweeping into Southwest Arkansas in the wake of Ike, resulting in Hempstead County receiving part of a massive exodus of storm victims and sustaining some wind damages, as well. The county was included in a disaster declaration in Southwest Arkansas to provide funds for public cleanup operations.
The county also felt the brush of a massive Arctic cold front in December, which created driving havoc along Interstate 30 and on bridges and overpasses, resulting in one serious accident and numerous minor collisions along a lengthy stretch of I-30 near Fulton.

And, 2008 was the year in which the Hope City Board of Directors addressed a growing problem with finances in the another of the City’s enterprise funds, raising sanitation collection rates by about 15 percent in November to provide for improvements at the City landfill to prevent running out of landfill space.

Medical Park Hospital
In February, Nevada-based Shiloh Health Services announced plans to purchase Medical Park Hospital from Signature Hospital Corporation of Dallas. Shiloh Health Services owns two hospitals of similar in size to Medical Park, a 79-bed hospital. Highland Community Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, and is a 123-bed hospital. It also owns an 80-bed hospital, Riverwest Medical Center, in Plaquemine, La.

The hospital celebrated its 25th anniversary in September with a ceremony featuring U.S. Senator (Ret.) Dale Bumpers, D-Ar., which also inaugurated a community walking track at the facility.

MPH opened in 1983, and was part of the Columbia/Health Corporatio of America from 1997 to 1999, when it was spun off into a 17-hospital group formed under the Triad Hospitals brand, and then it became a regional property under Triad in June, 2003.

Change at top
UACCH underwent more change, this time at the top, when Chancellor Dr. Charles Welch was tapped in February to become president of Henderson State University in Arkadelphia in July.
A campus search committee was put into place in March by University of Arkansas System Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Dan Ferritor, and a flood of 58 applicants sought the position, which the panel narrowed to two in July, Dr. Dusty Johnson, president of Ozarka College in Melbourne, and Eighth Judicial District-North Prosecutor Chris Thomason, of Hope.
Both men were interviewed in day-long sessions on campus, capped by public presentations of their “vision” for UACCH, and Thomason, a native of Hempstead County, a Hope High School graduate, and a lawyer by training, was selected in June. He resigned as prosecuting attorney at the end of July and assumed duties at UACCH in August.

Election tide
Hempstead County, again, swam against the tide of Democratic Party politics in Arkansas to deliver the county for Republican presidental contender John McCain at the top of the ballot in a year when Hope native and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee had narrowed the field to himself and McCain on the big stage.

Huckabee announced his intentions to run for president in 2007, and mounted a year-long campaign, which national pundits said showed surprising tenacity. After winning GOP caucuses in Iowa, West Virginia and Kansas, and  surprising showings in New Hampshire and Michigan, Huckabee won in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and Louisiana, but stumbled in South Carolina.
But, he remained in the race through the February “Super Tuesday” primaries, which included Arkansas, which he won statewide and in Hempstead County. Still, the momentum and financing for McCain’s candidacy grew too fast for Huckabee to overcome, and he formally closed his bid in March.

In the general election in November, McCain won Hempstead County with 4,252 votes over U.S. Senator Barack Obama, who tallied 2,861 votes to mirror the trend across Arkansas, where McCain won with an estimated 52 percent of the vote.

But, Hempstead County followed the state in approving ballot initiatives to refinance state water bonds; to prohibit individuals of the same or opposite sex cohabitating outside of marrifage from acting as foster parents or as adoptive parents; to establish a statewide lottery and the funding of college scholarships from its proceeds; and, to clarify voter eligibility requirements.

Arkansas 39th
Soldiers of the Arkansas Army National Guard 39th Combat Infantry Brigade came home from combat duty in Iraq in December. Some 400 soldiers from Hope, Texarkana, Prescott, Arkadelphia, and Malvern arrived at Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center near Hattisburg, Miss., to return to civilian life after about a year overseas. The return represents the completion of the second deployment of troops from the 39th Brigade to combat duty in Iraq. The brigade was mobilized and called up in October, 2007, and deployed through Camp Shelby in January, 2008.

Crime
Mysteries continued to develop for law enforcement in Hope and Hempstead County as lawmen began to unravel several major crimes, some of which remain unresolved as the year comes to a close.

In January, a Fulton woman, Sandra Sue Knighton, 55, was found murdered in the kitchen of her residence. Pronounced dead at the scene, Knighton was believed to have died from a “wound to the front of her body,” according to investigators. That determination was clarified later as her having been stabbed several times, and the death confirmed as a homicide, according to the state medical examiner’s office.

The murder remains an open investigation, and no “person of interest” in the investigation has been ever been confirmed.
In February, Michael Gentry, 18, of Columbus, was arrested at a Columbus area residence after a search for a shotgun-wielding robber who held up the Sonic drive-in by entering through a rear door about 10 p.m. and taking some $2,600 from six employees. No-one was injured in the robbery.
 
Gentry subsequently escaped from custody after being taken to Medical Park Hospital for stomach cramps in late February, and was captured without incident by Hempstead County Sheriff’s Reserve Officer Keith McGhee in Saratoga. Gentry allegedly obtained a ride to Saratoga from an Oklahoma man whom he knew.

A man sought for questioning in connection with the burglary of an Evening Shade residence was killed in a shootout with lawmen in March. Fred Moore, 43, of 383 Hempstead County Road 145, was killed in an exchange of gunfire with Arkansas State Police special agents Scott Clark and John Bishop, and Hempstead County Sheriff’s Chief Investigator Frankie McJunkins on March 12. Clark was wounded in the gunfight, but made a full recovery.

The three investigators had gone to Moore’s mobile home residence to question him in connection with the burglary of the residence of Donald K. McGee, 56, of the Evening Shade area, and the disappearance of McGee’s pickup truck. McGee’s body was discovered March 12 inside his residence by his landlord, and he was determined to have been dead for several days.

Shotguns recovered in Miller County, and the recovery of McGee’s vehicle at an apartment complex in Texarkana were connected to the burglary, but no formal determination has ever been made to connect them with McGee’s death. Investigators subsequently submitted the handgun Moore used in the shootout to the state crime lab for testing to determine whether it was connected with McGee’s death, but no formal disclosure of that testing has been forthcoming.

Eighth Judicial District-North Prosecuting Attorney Chris Thomason, in a letter written in May, determined, based upon an investigation by Arkansas State Police, that none of the officers involved were culpable in any manner in the shooting death of Moore.
McGee’s death remains an open investigation.

In May, Nevada County authorities confirmed that a body discovered by a logging crew may be connected to the disappearance of Hope man being sought in connection with the September, 2006, murder of his mother.

The body discovered near a pond on property adjacent to Nevada County Road 5 in the Bodcaw area is believed to be that of Jon Michael Fincher, 37, of Hope, also known as Mike Fincher, who has been missing since October, 2006, when he became a “person of interest” and then the sole suspect in the murder of his mother, Donna Fincher, who was found dead Sept. 29, 2006, in a bedroom of her Pine Street residence.

Fincher had been missing for six months when a first degree murder warrant was issued for his arrest in March, 2007, as well as a federal warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, in connection with the death of his mother. Both warrants remain in force.

Remains collected at the site were subsequently sent to the state crime lab, along with a DNA sample which Fincher had given authorities subsequent to his mother’s murder. Samples from the remains were subsequently sent to the University of Arkansas Anthropology Department for forensic anthropologic analysis, and have most recently been sent to a world-renowed forensic anthropology institute in Fort Worth, Texas.
A report from the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas Science Center in Fort Worth has yet to be completed.

People
In July, former deputy prosecuting attorney Jonn Gilbert Burke, 42, was killed in a single car accident near Monroe, La. Burke was driving a 1987 BMW along a stretch of Louisiana Highway 139 in rural Ouachita Parish about 10 miles north of Monroe proper when the accident occurred  approximately one-half mile from the Morehouse Parish line. Louisiana state police said Burke’s car apparently ran off the right side of the roadway as it was northbound along the highway.

A long-time deputy prosecutor in the Eighth Judicial District-North of Hempstead and Nevada counties, Burke had returned to private legal practice in Hope in May, 2007. He was originally a partner in  the firm of Wright and Burke, and later Wright, Burke and Thomason, in Hope.

In October, longtime Arkansas State Police Troop G Commander Captain Ron Stovall retired from the ASP after 35 years in local and area law enforcement. Stovall was honored by some 300-400 local residents at a reception where he was recognized by ASP Commander Col. Winford Phillips. Stovall won election as sheriff of Miller County in November, and will assume that duty in January.