The City Wire Person of the Month: Janet Menshek

Editor’s note: The City Wire highlights each month a person 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 and photo by Marla Cantrell
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In 1999, Janet Menshek was out of work.

She’d just come home from Dallas and had few job prospects. So she signed up with a temporary agency and waited for the phone to ring. The very next day it did. The Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority needed office help.

“I feel so lucky that I happened to be home that day,” Menshek said. “It’s funny because when they called me I hesitated because the assignment was only for a couple of days.  I thought, ‘Two days, I need something more than two days.’”

After the assignment ended, Menshek was asked to work another week, and then another. Finally, the secretarial position was posted. She applied and was brought on full-time. She liked the job. She also realized she needed to finish her undergraduate degree. Menshek had dropped out of college 10 years before when she realized she didn’t want to be an engineer.

“I think I kind of got pushed into it,” Menshek said. “At that time women were being advised to pursue non-traditional fields. I listened. I did well in math. As I got into the upper-level classes it became evident I didn’t belong there.”

Menshek thought about taking accounting classes from time to time. While living in Dallas, she picked up class schedules from a nearby college, circled the accounting courses, and considered enrolling. But the catalogs always ended up in the trash. This time was different.

Menshek drove to Westark College — now the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith — and became a student.

“I signed up for a couple of classes and it just clicked. I loved it,” Menshek said.

Menshek graduated UAFS with a bachelor’s degree in accounting in 2007. That same year she was promoted from executive administrative assistant to director of finance for the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority.

The agency is in charge of redeveloping 7,000 acres of former Fort Chaffee land into residential, industrial, commercial and recreational areas. With a staff of only nine, Menshek does much more than accounting.

“I’m the HR person, the health insurance coordinator,” Menshek said. “I help with the leasing program, assist with property sales, contracts, deeds, closings.”

The list goes on from there. And Menshek wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We’re a group that works as a team. We’re kind of like a small business. We do whatever it takes to get the job done,” Menshek said.

Their most recent win was the $100 million Mitsubishi wind turbine plant that should begin construction at Chaffee in 2011. And there’s been Mars Petcare, Graphic Packaging and Umarex build locate operations and jobs at Chaffee. She’s worked with the FCRA staff to help them all develop.

But there’s another part of Chaffee’s redevelopment that’s close to her heart. She wants to make sure its history is preserved.

The fort opened in 1941 as a combat training site, with 70,000 acres, mostly farmland, vacated to make that happen. In 1975, Fort Chaffee became a relocation center for the Vietnamese refugee program and it served the same purpose for Cuban refugees from 1980 to 1982.

And of course, Pvt. Elvis Presley got his first military haircut at the fort’s barber shop in 1958.

“We’ve already got the barber shop museum,” Menshek said. “We’ve gotten information about where Elvis stayed when he was here for those three days so we’d like to restore his barracks. … We’ve also talked about taking a barracks and splitting it up and make it like it was in WWII, and when the Cubans were here, and when the Vietnamese were here.”

It’s like a treasure hunt inside the old buildings.

“We’ve been going through the barracks and finding things in the ductwork along the ceiling,” Menshek explained. “Soldiers hid letters, beer cans and whiskey bottles, stuff from MRE kits, gun cleaning kits, shoe polish.”

She likes having a hand in multiple projects. It’s a trait that spills over into her personal life. Menshek volunteers at Barling Elementary where she helps second graders with reading and math. She serves as a lector at St. Boniface and for the Life Teen Mass at Immaculate Conception. She also sings in the St. Boniface choir.

She is left with very little free time.

“My mom gets on me all the time that I don’t get enough sleep,” Menshek said.

She might be sleep deprived, but she couldn’t be happier.

“I work a lot of hours but I can’t imagine working anywhere else,” Menshek said. “This is my dream job. The people are great. I get to do everything I want to do. I feel very fortunate.”