75¢
Slovak church holds dinner. (See pictures on p. 6.)
Volume 120 Number 32 - USPS 225-680
Community Calendar of Events
Serving all of Prairie County and the Grand Prairie
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Beautification projects going on in Des Arc
Tuesday August 10 Quorum Court Meeting 6:00 Annex Building in Des Arc Thursday August 12 DeValls Bluff City Council Meeting 6:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m. City Hall Hazen School District Open Houses Starting at 5:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. Monday August 16 Hazen School District starts back to school! Thursday August 19 Hazen City Council meeting 6:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m. Hazen City Hall Tuesday August 24 Hazen High School Alumni meeting 6:00 p.m. Thursday August 26 Commodities distribution Hazen First United Methodist Church 10:00 a.m. - noon Junior High Hornets vs Riverview Hornet Field 7:00 p.m. Friday August 27 Senior Hornets vs McCrory McCrory Field 7:00 p.m.
Community events brought to you by Hazen Chamber of Commerce
and the Please call F&M Bank (255-3042) or The Grand Prairie Herald (255-4538) to list events.
The Des Arc Walking Trail beginning on Fifth Street and extending along the White River through the Tom Roe Memorial Park and ending at Dondie’s Restaurant has seen a sea change in the landscape! Credit worthy of kudos is owed to Mr. Charles Walls and Mr. Jerry Greenwood of the City Utilities Department for the work being done. The South side of the trail owned by Mr. Walls was already manicured perfectly but the North side was overgrown in weeds and unwanted scrub brush. Mr. Walls and Mr. Greenwood have informed me that they are not finished. The photo on the left pictures Eddie Richards doing his normal great job of maintaining the greenery in the park. The photo on the right shows the work being done on the new pavillion in the Des Arc Lakeside Cemetery. Both of the photos and the information are courtesy of Harvey Joe Sanner.
Stuttgart Museum announces 2021 AR Waterfowler inductees Stuttgart, Ark. The Museum of the Arkansas Grand Prairie is proud to announce inductees into this year's Arkansas Waterfowler Hall of Fame. An induction ceremony will honor these individuals as well as the 2020 class of inductees on September 23 at Chenal Country Club in Little Rock. This year's honorees include: W.R. “Witt” Stephens, Jr. of Little Rock is a passionate land manager involved in countless conservation-related efforts that benefit Arkansas wildlife and sportsmen. Stephens was recently named President Emeritus of the Arkansas Game & Fish Foundation for which he has served various terms over 25 years. Stephens served a
seven-year term on the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission from 1993 to 2000. While on the commission, he played key roles in the 1996 campaign to pass a Conservation Sales Tax as well as major changes in deer management, trout and implementing the first elk season in Arkansas. Stephens also served on The Nature Conservancy board and is a lifetime member of Ducks Unlimited and Delta Waterfowl. Dr. Harold V. G l e n n / T h a d McCollum/Verne Tindall are recognized for the creating what is now known as the World's Championship Duck Calling Contest. The first National Duck Calling Contest was held in 1936 in conjunction with the annual
Arkansas Rice Festival. The Festival was the precursor to the popular Wings Over the Prairie Festival held each Thanksgiving weekend in Stuttgart. McCollum is credited with originating the contest, while Dr. Glenn sold the American Legion on sponsoring the event and Tindall was a chief organizer. The advent of the contest is still the pinnacle of competitive duck calling and coupled with the festival, is a chief economic driver for the Stuttgart area. Carl Hunter may have achieved as much renown in his retirement career than as a long-time leader in wildlife biology and conservation. Hunter turned his hobbies of photography and wildflowers into a popular
book and became in demand as a speaker to garden and other clubs. He was a leader in Arkansas’ deer restoration, joining the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission in 1945, leaving to help industrialist Edgar Monsanto Queeny develop Wingmead in eastern Arkansas then returning to AGFC and becoming assistant director until retirement in 1986. Last year's honorees include Wallace Claypool, John Olin, Pat Peacock, Dr. Scott Yaich and thArkansas Game and Fish Foundation "Dedicated to Ducks" winner George Purvis. Event proceeds will benefit the Museum of the Arkansas Grand Prairie in Stuttgart, which houses the Arkansas Waterfowler
Hall of Fame. "The waterfowl industry in Arkansas is among the best in the nation largely due to the time and talents these individuals have invested," said committee Chairman Jim Ronquest. "The Waterfowler Hall of Fame is simply a small opportunity to highlight significant efforts and impact of inductees while honoring their legacies." The September 23 "southern comfortable" induction ceremony will include a pre-dinner reception from 6:00 pm 7:00 pm, live music, a live auction and a local flare spread. Additional information and sponsorship opportunities are available by v i s i t i n g waterfowlerhof.com.
Local school districts added to Arkansas ACHI COVID-19 list LITTLE ROCK ― The Hazen, Carlisle, and Des Arc school districts have been added to the list of one hundred forty Arkansas school districts that have COVID-19 infection rates of 50 or more new known infections per 10,000 district residents over a 14-day period, up from 100 a week earlier, the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement said Thursday. The information is based on Arkansas Department of Health data obtained Monday, August 2. Of those 140 districts, 16 have 14-day COVID19 infection rates of 100 or more new known infections per 10,000 district residents, or more than 1% of residents, up from 12 a week earlier. The local-level COVID19 data can be found on ACHI’s COVID-19 in Arkansas web page at achi.net/covid19. On ACHI’s map of Arkansas school districts, a district with 50 to 99 new known infections per 10,000 residents is shaded red, and a district with 100 or more new known infections per 10,000 residents is shaded purple. ACHI temporarily paused its reporting of local COVID-19 data in February, because low testing rates made it
impossible to provide accurate data, but resumed its reporting last week. Although testing has increased, it is still low, which means that infections are underrepresented. A bill filed in the Arkansas House on last Wednesday proposed to amend the state’s ban on mask mandates to allow school boards to require masks in school districts with 14-day infection rates of 50 or more new known infections per 10,000 district residents ― the red and purple districts on ACHI’s map. ACHI President and CEO Dr. Joe Thompson said the bill would be preferable to legislative inaction, but the proposed threshold is too high. “No school district should be legally barred from protecting Arkansas children from harm,” Thompson said Thursday. If the Legislature takes no action and allows the ban on mask mandates to remain in effect in all schools while the Delta variant rages in our communities, children will be avoidably exposed to the virus, some will be hospitalized, and likely some will die.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal masking, social distancing, fre-
quent hand-washing, and ventilation in all U.S. schools. Thompson also explained how ACHI arrived at its system for classifying community infection rates. “Many people have asked why our classification system is different from the one used by the CDC, which classifies 100 or more new known infections per 100,000 county residents over a seven-day period as a high rate of community transmission and 50 or more infections per 100,000 residents as a substantial rate of infection,” he said. “When we created our approach last year, we modeled it
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after one used by the Minnesota health and education departments because that state, like Arkansas, is mostly rural, whereas the CDC applies its system across all states, including ones with dense population areas like New York.” Thompson said ACHI’s system also allows the tracking of trends. The use of a 14-day rather than a seven-day time period allows more stable observation of trends over time, he said. The school-district infection numbers reported by ACHI refer to infections among community residents living within the geo-
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graphical boundaries of the school districts and are not specific to school employees and students. Known infections include confirmed and probable cases. Probable cases are based on verbal reporting and antigen test results, as identified by the Department of Health. Infection rates and counts are not shown for districts with fewer than five reported infections to reduce the possibility of identifying individuals. School district counts do not include infections among incarcerated populations, in nursing homes, or in human development centers.
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