Fort Northwest: River Town Supplies Region with an Array of Homegrown Talent

Tough. Blue collar. Proud. That’s Fort Smith.

The city known for its hanging judge, “True Grit” and its brawny workforce has been around for nearly 200 years, and as the seat of Sebastian County and anchor of the River Valley, has pride of place.

A proven survivor, Fort Smith was abandoned by Whirlpool in 2012, withstood a deadly tornado in 1996, and in 1980 had a sideline seat for the Cuban detainee riot at Fort Chaffee. Once a beacon of civilization on the rowdy Western frontier, Fort Smith dates back to 1817, when it was founded as an Army outpost at the junction of the Arkansas and Poteau rivers. Over the decades, it’s come to embody an American archetype — homespun, family friendly, Sunday church and host to a heated high school football rivalry.

While Fort Smith remains the state’s second largest city and the hub of a five-county metro of 279,000, in the last 20 years it’s been eclipsed in population and prosperity by its neighbors to the north, Washington and Benton counties, and their three Fortune 500 companies. South of the Bobby Hopper Tunnel, Fort Smith is worlds away from the luster of Pinnacle Hills and the good times of Dickson Street.

Yet the city endures, and if one thing can be said of Fort Smith these days is that it can still produce a winner. Plenty of them, in fact, live here in Northwest Arkansas, and from banking to beer to T-Bones and back again, they contribute to the state’s most dynamic region.

 

Coveted Position

Craig Rivaldo, the former president and CEO of Arvest-Fort Smith, didn’t think twice when offered the position of president and CEO of Arvest-Benton County.

“It was a no-brainer professionally and career-wise,” he said. “This is a pretty coveted position.”

A graduate of Fort Smith Northside, Rivaldo, 49, lived in Northwest Arkansas while working for Arvest through the 1990s. But his current tenure here just began in May. Mary Jo, his wife, and son Connor are expected to join him this month for what Rivaldo says will be the long haul.

“My plan is to stay here for the rest of my life,” he said.

While Benton County represents the future, his past is underscored by 15 years as a banker in Fort Smith starting in 1999, around the time city leaders realized their town was on the brink of irrelevance.

In Rivaldo’s opinion, two landmark events helped spark efforts to re-ignite Fort Smith. In 2002, Westark College, a two-year school, became the four-year University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. And in 1997, the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority was formed to administer 7,000 acres for civilian use. The chamber of commerce and the city joined hands, he said, and private and public entities at last embraced a unified vision.

“I’ll always be fond of Fort Smith,” he said. “It’s been good to see the city begin to hit on all cylinders.

 

“Folks finally said if we don’t step up and do something then we’ll get passed up.”

Core Values

Brewmaster Jesse Core moved to Springdale from San Diego in 2005 to be close to his older brothers, Andy and Matt.

The former Springdale alderman and graduate of Northside founded Core Brewing and Distilling Co. in 2011. Brewing beer, of course, is labor intensive, but his hometown prepared him for the task.

“Fort Smith defined my work ethic,” he said. “When you’re from Fort Smith, you’re raised not to complain about your work. You just do the job until it’s done.”

Core, 41, married Gina, herself a Fort Smith native, who grew up just a block down the street from him.

As Core continues to grow his brewing operation, he said the words of his mother, Jacquie “Pinky” Core, a career nurse at Sparks Health System, inspire him.

“She said go as high as you can go and do what you want to do, but never step on someone’s back to get there,” he said.

 

Main Menu

At one point restaurateur Scott Bowman, head of Bowman Hospitality Group, didn’t know if he’d ever return to Arkansas. Having spent a few years in Atlanta and Boston, he had his eye on a big market, San Diego, when he was preparing to open a restaurant of his own.

But as a Southside graduate from Fort Smith, he’d heard plenty about Fayetteville and Northwest Arkansas, so he decided to take a look before heading to the West Coast.

“This area was becoming cosmopolitan,” he said. “This was a great market. You couldn’t deny it. There was so much going on here.”

Bowman, 42, started out with Theo’s in 2005 and has since opened East Side Grille, Theo’s Steak, Deluxe Burger, City Pizzeria, and Craft Bar. He’s in the process of opening four more restaurants in Rogers and Conway.

Bowman said he met plenty of Arkansans in Atlanta, but up in Massachusetts he had to make a few adjustments.

“Boston was such a different world,” he said. “The hardest thing to do was find the Razorbacks on TV.”

Bowman took what he learned in Atlanta and Boston and used it to build his food empire in Northwest Arkansas.

But his father and business partner, Ted, is still based in Fort Smith. And when he looks back on his hometown, he sees a comforting portrait of Americana.

“It’s the classic small- to medium-sized town with two high schools and a rivalry,” he said. “It’s just a good place to grow up.”

 

High Heels

After graduating from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Patti Kimbrough, 47, returned home and worked as executive director of the Alzheimer’s Association for western Arkansas. When she moved to Fayetteville in 2005, at the direct behest of UA athletic director Frank Broyles, to work as director of guest services for the athletic department, she went back home to Fort Smith for church every Sunday for two years.

“Leaving home was hard for me,” the Northside graduate said. “It was bittersweet.”

But then things like marriage, motherhood and career sunk in, and her new life in Fayetteville took over.

“I did what was best for my growth,” she said of her move.

Though life has settled down since she joined the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce in 2012, Kimbrough was on a wild ride for six years staffing luxury suites and sky boxes for the glitterati attending UA’s biggest sporting events.

Opening the gates at dawn, striding through Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium in high heels and appeasing an oftentimes demanding clientele took its toll, and for the sake of her family life, she called it quits in 2011. The experience was not one to regret, she said, but it did make her dig deep.

“Fort Smith gave me a foundation I can’t attribute to anything else,” she said. “I feel like Jesse Core. You do get tough [being from Fort Smith]. You can’t deny the grit.” 

 

Arkansas Roots

The Church League. Emmy’s German Restaurant. Chicken tenders at the Dairy Freeze. Immaculate Conception Church and skate parties at Crystal Palace. 

If you ask Shannon Frederick about her hometown, those are the first things that come to mind. A senior director for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s global associate communications team, Frederick, 37, moved here from Dallas in 2006 with her husband, Jake, and their daughter, Allyson.

A graduate of Oklahoma State University, Frederick started out her career with a bang at energy giant Williams in Tulsa and, right after that, Kimberly-Clark Corp. in Dallas.

But then everything changed.

“Big city life was fun, but after our daughter was born we started talking about how it would be nice to live closer to our families,” Frederick said.

She and her husband realized the appeal of Northwest Arkansas during visits to see her father.

“We noticed how much this area was starting to grow,” she said.

Job offers from Walmart to both she and her spouse sealed the deal.

Frederick still has a big family in Fort Smith and she still goes down there often.

“I so appreciate being raised in a community that allowed me to dream big and then prepared me to pursue those dreams,” she said. “My daughter recently told me that there’s no place in the world better than Disney Land — except for Fort Smith.”

 

Tight End

Barry Lunney Jr. knows the Southside-Northside football rivalry — the Battle of Rogers Avenue — just as well as anyone. A standout quarterback at Southside who would later star for the Razorbacks, he started from 1989 to 1991, and went 2-1 against his crosstown rival.

He arrived in the golden age of Fort Smith football, as Northside beat Southside for the state title in 1987, and Southside beat Northside to win it in 1988.

Lunney, 39, was the signal caller in 1990, the first year Southside hosted the showdown in its own stadium. Upward of 10,000 people were in the stands that night.

“It was intense,” he said. “We were able to win and it was a cool moment in the history of the school.”

Since his years at Fort Smith, Lunney has coached in California, Oklahoma and Bentonville. As a former Hog and current tight ends coach, he’s competed against some of the biggest programs in college football — Alabama, LSU and Tennessee.

And though the stakes are always high in the SEC, there’s something about the Friday night lights in Fort Smith that Lunney just can’t forget.

“That rivalry is right up there and it’s very personal,” he said. “Everybody knows each other and it intensifies the rivalry.”