Gretchen Goodnight

Goodnight earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) at University of Central Arkansas while working at Conway Regional Hospital. She also worked at both Arkansas Children’s Hospital and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock.

Upon arrival in Mena, Goodnight worked at Same Day Surgery, Mena Regional Health System, while completing her master’s in nursing.

time at HCI. Simultaneously, she served as a clinical mentor to four family nurse practitioner students from four different universities.

Goodnight returned to private practice with Mountain View Clinic from October 2018 to April 2021. Shortly before Mountain View Clinic merged with Mena Regional Health System, she made the move to provide primary care services to our area’s military veterans at the Mena VA Community-Based Outpatient Clinic from April 2021 to August 2022.

If you have driven up Morrow Road to the Mena Regional Hospital, Nidec, or one of the health-related clinics along the way, you may have noticed Goodnight Family Healthcare has hung up their shingle and been open for business since Sept. 6, 2022.

The clinic is run by Gretchen Hays Goodnight. If the name sounds familiar, it may be because Goodnight has been nursing around Mena and Acorn for a dozen years.

As an Advanced Practice Nurse (APN), she joined Mountain View Clinic from 2011-2015. She then participated in an outreach of Healthy Connections, Inc. (HCI). Goodnight staffed the Ouachita River Health Center, which was Polk County’s only school-based health clinic. The HCI clinic is located on the Acorn School Campus. She worked there full time for three consecutive school years, 2015-16, 16-17, and 17-18, adding vaccine for kids and private vaccine programs for patients there.

She participated in the National Health Service Corp’s student loan repayment program during her

Arkansas HB 1258 of 2021 enabled Advanced Nurse Practitioners to apply for full independent practice authority, making Goodnight’s dream of opening her own practice attainable. In August 2022, she applied for full independent practice authority through the Arkansas State Board of Nursing and was soon able to open Goodnight Family Healthcare, PLLC.

In addition to her professional acumen and helping raise her four children with Justin Goodnight, Gretchen has also become involved in community service.

A few examples include serving as spring little league soccer coach in 2020 and 2021.

Goodnight laughs because she was more or less guilted into being the soccer coach. “I’m not good at saying ‘no,’” she admitted. Goodnight had once played basketball but had never played soccer and wasn’t confident in coaching the kids. “The first year, I don’t even recall if we got to play an official game before COVID happened. The next year, they asked if I wanted to coach again. That second year we only scored one goal. I know it was frustrating for the kids to not win, but when we were so excited by that goal you would’ve thought we won the championship. We were so happy.”

She did end up assisting in coaching a basketball team.

She mentioned that she enjoys all of the parks in the area and what they have to offer to give children and families activities to do, not to mention how nice they are. She believes Mena does a great job in keeping the parks in great shape.

Goodnight was also on the Polk County Extension Advisory Committee in 2017-2018. Additionally, she was both an Awana leader and a Vacation Bible School volunteer at Grace Bible Church.

Pasha Watson’s duties and title have changed over the course of her nearly-five years with the City of Mena. Originally, she was the assistant for Ashley Smith (now Moore) at the Mena/Polk County Chamber of Commerce. When Smith left, Watson took over as the director. At that time, the Chamber had a contract with the Mena Advertising & Promotion Commission (A&P).

Watson said, “We were doing their marketing and festivals. When the Chamber didn’t renew the contract with A&P, I wound up getting all of the marketing, the festivals and the books. I do all the A&P functions. The Chamber doesn’t do A&P functions anymore.”

Watson is now the Mena Advertising & Promotion Commission Administrator

“Under the Advertising & Promotion Commission, we have Lum & Abner Music and Arts Festival, the July Fourth Fireworks Festival, I just added the Ouachita Mountains Jeep Jam, and the Christmas Festival in Janssen Park, and we’re also working on the 2024 [Solar] Eclipse Festival.”

Multitasking, organizational skills, prioritizing and a patient, cool demeanor is a necessity with such a job.

“It takes months of preparation,” Watson said. “You have to get all of your entertainment, all your contracts, and all of your vendors in, what activities you’re going to do, and who is available. There’s lots of moving pieces to all of these.

“You’re working on multiple projects at the same time. You can’t do one and stop and start the other one. They all have to be in their particular phases of completion so you’re ready to go on that date.”

When working with vendors or entertainers who do a festival circuit, many of them are booked a year or two out. It requires research and a lot of communication to pull off a big event successfully, and the flexibility and foreknowledge that the job is not a 9 – 5 gig.

“There’s a lot of marketing opportunities that are lost. The sooner you can get things out there, the better off you are just from an awareness perspective of drawing a crowd if nothing else.”

Due to the amount of time, preparation and advertising dollars spent, most events are “rain or shine” unless the inclement weather is considered dangerous. Anyone who went to the Christmas parade and the festival surely recalls the dreary, wet evening, but hundreds of people stuck it out to meet Santa and watch the fireworks and light show that followed the parade.

“You just have to go with it,” Watson said.

Watson has an associate degree in business management and intends to get her BBA. The most foolish thing she said ever did was changing her major in mid-stream while attending the University of Texas at Tyler.

“I was going to get my teaching certification. My Bachelor of Science is in history as a major and social studies as a minor.

Although Watson has a long history in marketing, her current position was not one she saw herself in. “I’ve been in marketing over 25 years now. I started out in the healthcare industry in their marketing company, putting out big insurance proposals to American Airlines and different municipalities and things like that.

“I’ve got my real estate license, again, in the marketing and sales. I’ve done East Texas Out- doors Magazine, marketing and Sales. That part of it, I’ve been doing a really long time.

“I’ve worked out at Rose Aircraft. That stayed pretty true. That’s been kind of my vein.

“The event planning, I did not know that was going to be participated in a lot of things for different organizations I’ve worked with, setting up at different event fairs and showcasing their products — in the events, not coordinating them. There’s a lot to it from just being a participant. Being the ringmaster is a whole different, and you want to make everyone happy and that’s an impossibility, but you do the best you can.

Some events, such as the upcoming total solar eclipse that will occur April 8, 2024, has had cities and towns within is projected path planning for months in advance.

“The first time we were exposed to it was the 2020 Governor’s Conference in Fort Smith. But then COVID, and everything stopped, or we might have been planning a little bit earlier.

“Mayor Smith had the foresight to say let’s get on this list and be at these meetings. We’d be way ahead of the game that way. Starting that early, you kind of burn some people out. They get to hearing it too much. Some people don’t think there’s going to be that many people here. We have to plan for it to be that many people here. We want to show off Mena. This is a really great opportunity to have people that may not have been here for any other reason to come here for this incredible event. We want them to come back.

“That was one of the things going to those meetings and listening to Brook Kaufman from Casper, Wyoming. They’ve been an incredible resource for us. They did not capitalize on all those people that came there. That was one of their biggest — in their after-action reports — regrets, I guess. We want, when they do come here, to make sure they have a great experience. That they do want to come back and see all things they didn’t get enough time to do and they can do [next] time.”

For those who have never traveled to the Ouachita Mountain region, they tend to find themselves surprised by the splendor and the many things to do, especially if you like the great outdoors.

“It’s incredibly beautiful here. I think sometimes living here you kind of get in your circle of home-to-work, home-to-work and you forget to look around and really appreciate what a beautiful place that we live in.

“And the people… we are a friendly and charming and beautiful community. What’s not to like?

“Having the Wolf Pen Gap Trails. Having our art district. Having the Talimena Drive. We have a lot for a small area for people to take advantage of.”

Watson belongs to a few other organizations and boards:

She is the secretary for the Mena Downtown Partners. “In that vision of what can we bring downtown and how can we elevate that for our guests’ experience and for our community?”

She is also on the Western Arkansas’ Mountain Frontier board of directors. “That looks at this region as a whole from Fort Smith and all on the western side. We meet in different places.