Let’s give a damn

The two daughters at the Tilley home are frequently encouraged to be aware of the world around them; keep their head on a swivel; to make the attempt to walk smartly through the distractions of daily life.

Such instruction ranges from the perspective of global politics to walking through a busy parking lot.

Not all folks value a 360-worldview. Many months ago, a member of a Fort Smith area civic group indicated that he spends less time reading The City Wire because it now includes stories about Northwest Arkansas.

“I don’t give a damn about Northwest Arkansas,” he said, with the combination of a smirk and arms crossed that added a non-verbal F-you bomb to the verbal declaration.

Then there was a recent conversation with a person in Northwest Arkansas who suggested The City Wire should move to Northwest Arkansas and quit covering news from the Fort Smith region because “that place is so yesterday.”

Sometimes you have to go looking for it. Sometimes it just plops out and warmly splatters the ground as if you were standing near the backside of a relieved cow. It, of course, being indifference-fueled ignorance that, if left unchecked, will do to a region’s economy what generations of inbreeding will do to a family tree.

If you don’t give a damn about the socio-economic and political happenings on either side of the Interstate 540 tunnel, you are uninformed about the positive possibilities from existing and emerging inter-regional connections and collaborations. Please take the damns you don’t give, pack them up and travel to your yesterday.

My instinct is that such indifference has a minority position among business and civic leaders in the Fort Smith and Northwest Arkansas regions. There has emerged in recent years a comforting increase of inclusive efforts between leaders in the two regions.

Fayetteville Mayor Lioneld Jordan and Fort Smith Mayor Sandy Sanders have held a few meetings to talk about areas in which they can work together – like lobbying for a 12-foot Arkansas River channel depth.

Mike Malone, head of the Northwest Arkansas Council, and Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce CEO Paul Harvel have in the past four years worked to improve connections. Just recently, former Tyson Foods CEO John Tyson encouraged Northwest Arkansas business leaders to continue reaching out to the Fort Smith business community. He said together there is more the two regions can accomplish, much the way Little Rock and Conway combine efforts on larger issues.

Tyson made the comments at the annual meeting of the Northwest Arkansas Council. Invited to and attending the meeting were Sam Sicard, president and CEO of First National Bank of Fort Smith, and Tim Allen, president of the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce.

To not be aware of the real and potential business connections between the two regions is to be woefully ignorant or willfully senseless.

With several company stores and distribution centers in the Fort Smith region that likely employ at least 1,000, it would be foolish to not give a damn about what happens within the walls at Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Fort Smith-based companies like First National Bank, Beall Barclay and Preferred Office Products are just a few of the many professional service companies that do a lot of business in both regions.

Many law firms in both regions have clients in both regions.

Officials with Arvest Bank, Benefit Bank, BancorpSouth and Liberty Bank have operations in both areas. What happens at Fort Smith-based Arkansas Best Corp. or Lowell-based J.B. Hunt Transport pegs their radar. The folks with Cox Communications have shown an interest supporting the socio-economic health of both regions. For these officials, neither region is “so yesterday.”

Steve Clark, president of Fort Smith-based Propak Logistics, also has financial interests in Northwest Arkansas. His more than $2 million renovation of the historic Friedman-Mincer building on Garrison Avenue in downtown Fort Smith will use the services of a Fayetteville architect. Why? Because he wants to “create a buzz in Northwest Arkansas about what’s going on in Fort Smith.” He gives a damn.

The Crawford County housing industry has benefited from folks who work in Northwest Arkansas but prefer to live just a few miles south of the tunnel.

If I were a city or chamber official in the Fort Smith region, I’d give a damn about the tremendous and numerous entrepreneurial programs in Northwest Arkansas. Those programs are “so tomorrow” for any region able to recruit the best and brightest minds that emerge.

The 3rd Congressional District includes parts of both regions, and several Arkansas legislative districts overlap the two regions. Folks in the Fort Smith region have for too many years played political checkers while other regions played political chess. Someone should give a damn about changing that reality.

As noted earlier, there is a growing confidence that leaders in the two regions are aware of the need to work together and are becoming more comfortable in turning that awareness into action.

Let’s hope my confidence is warranted. I implore Kind Reader to ignore the arm-crossed smirkers and the hollow superiority of the shallow arrogant.

Let’s instead seek and support leaders who gave a damn yesterday, did all they could today to give a damn, and will give a damn tomorrow so that present and future generations in our regions may find more opportunity in the world around them.