Lightheart, Kohl’s Get More Press
by January 22, 2001 12:00 am 100 views
We thought it was interesting that the Fayetteville Free Weekly named Mary Lightheart its “person of the year” and ran an advertisement from Kohl’s department stores in the same issue.
Lightheart got a Page 1 photograph and Page 3 story in the Jan. 11 issue of the publication. The ad for Kohl’s ran on Page 12, seeking employees for the store, which is scheduled to open this spring in Fayetteville’s Spring Creek Center.
For several weeks last year, Lightheart perched in an oak tree at the site of the proposed Kohl’s store in an effort to save a grove of 150-year-old trees there.
Ultimately, Lightheart came down and so did the trees. But the sit-in, which brought attention to then-Mayor Fred Hanna’s stance on the issue, is generally considered the event that gave Dan Coody the edge in the November mayor’s race.