Boulden works to sell ‘authenticity’

Editor’s note: The City Wire seeks to recognize accomplishments of those living and working in the Fort Smith region. Special recognitions, accomplishments, philanthropic support and input from The City Wire readers are considered when selecting a person to profile.

story by Aric Mitchell
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Jennifer Boulden is a shy and reserved person when she is not speaking about her passions. She’s comfortable with the written word and admits that she knew early on that whatever she did for a living, she wanted words to be a part of it.

But there is a little uncertainty there when she first meets you. Speaking is something she is good at, although it takes her a while to be convinced she is. That is, until she’s asked about her involvement as the communication and event services manager with the Fort Smith Convention and Visitors Bureau.

For the past two years, Boulden confesses to “eating, sleeping, and dreaming” True Grit — so much that it led her to organize the successful Gritapalooza effort, which picked up steam during the buildup, release and aftermath of the Coen Brothers 2010 film based on Arkansan Charles Portis’ novel.

“We have people come through every day that are visiting Fort Smith because they love the book or movie. We’re not having Gritapalooza hoopla all the time anymore, but it is still an ongoing campaign due to the popularity of the material and its connection to Fort Smith,” Boulden said from her office in a corner of the Miss Laura’s Visitors Center.

Miss Laura’s is a renovated home just off Garrison Avenue that once served as a legal (and post-1924, allegedly illegal) bordello.

“My dad’s a minister,” Boulden said. “I had a lot of fun telling him that I took a job in a bordello.”

Inquiring with Boulden about the True Grit story and the history beyond the book opens up a wealth of information from someone who has made Fort Smith her adopted hometown.

Boulden attended Pine Bluff and Fordyce High Schools before graduating from Hendrix College in 1996 with a degree in English. She came to the area in 2005 and married Ben Boulden, a writer for the Southwest Times Record. From June 1999 to the present, she has worked as a freelance writer and editor with some of her work appearing in Medical News of Arkansas and Entertainment Fort Smith. Tiring of the full time freelance lifestyle, she took the position with the Convention and Visitors Bureau in April 2009 and says she loves the work.

It isn’t difficult to believe.

While talking with The City Wire, Boulden shared story after story about Fort Smith’s history. One of the most fascinating to Boulden is Henri Stewart, a Harvard- and Yale-educated physician, who inexplicably left his family and fell in with a gang of train robbers only to meet his fate at the end of Judge Parker’s rope on Aug. 29, 1879.

She is also drawn to stories about the lives of women in Fort Smith’s history. Boulden cites Thyra Samter Winslow, a Jewish writer for The New Yorker, who was born and raised in Fort Smith before splitting her time between the publishing industry in New York and motion pictures in Hollywood during her 76 years.

On a tour of Miss Laura’s, Boulden points to framed pictures featuring some of “the girls,” who once “worked” at the facility.

“I love looking at these old pictures,” Boulden admits. “Pictures from back then are usually so stern and serious, but these — these look like something you’d see on Facebook!”

Boulden is speaking about the pretty young brunette with a skirt riding up over her knees. She’s speaking about the group of girls huddling together in a group embrace while smiling broadly for their unseen cameraman. She’s talking about the skirted female standing between two older looking gentlemen with one leg kicked up in a “very unladylike position.”

“You just don’t see things like this in the old pictures, and it’s just fascinating to see that these were people, like us, never mind the fact that it’s been 100 years,” she explained.

When asked about where she would like to see Fort Smith in the next five to 10 years, Boulden cites the Marshals Museum and the Regional Art Museum as examples of where the city is headed.

“There are just a ton of things happening that we’ve not done before as a community, and there are all kinds of ways we can grow. Other communities in the state — Hot Springs, Little Rock, Eureka Springs — they’re defined. People know what they are. Fort Smith is yet to be shaped, and there is just so much potential here. We already have the stories, histories and artifacts. All the things are in place. We just need to work on our marketing infrastructure.”

Boulden continued: “I feel that Fort Smith itself has a bit of an inferiority complex. I’ve had one myself most of my life so I kind of understand that. We compare ourselves to Northwest Arkansas, but we need to realize that we don’t need to be Northwest Arkansas. We don’t need to be Dallas, New York, or any of those places. The buzz word in our profession is ‘authenticity.’ Tourists want authentic experiences; they want to do something real. We (Fort Smith) just need to be our cool authentic selves and it will sell itself.”