Entries - Time Period: Divergent Prosperity and the Arc of Reform (1968-2022) - Starting with D

Paul E. Danielson served ten years on the Arkansas Supreme Court, and his wife, Betsy Williams Danielson, also was appointed to the Arkansas Court of Appeals, the state’s intermediate appellate court. Justice Danielson retired in 2016, owing to a statute that effectively barred judges from running for office again after they reached the age of seventy because it would cancel their judicial pensions. The couple then practiced together in a western Arkansas law firm with their son and Danielson’s brother. Danielson’s departure from the court at the end of 2016 coincided with its historic turn to partisanship and politics, despite a constitutional amendment ratified in 2000 that was intended to protect the courts from those dispositions. Paul Edward Danielson was …

Dawn Barlow Darter is a longtime golf professional. While she played some tournaments, three times qualifying for the U.S. Women’s Open, she has spent the bulk of her career as a club pro. She worked at a number of different clubs both in and out of Arkansas before becoming the pro at The Greens in her hometown of Sherwood (Pulaski County), on the course that backed up to her childhood home and where she first learned the game. Dawn Marie Barlow was born on July 7, 1959, in Sherwood to Owen Gene Barlow Sr. and Dawn Barlow. She has two sisters and a brother. As a child, she was torn between golf and softball, but with the family’s house backing …

Hester Ashmead Davis was an internationally known archaeologist, administrator, writer, and professor. She was Arkansas’s first state archaeologist, serving from the creation of the position in 1967 until her retirement in 1999. She was among the first academically trained archaeologists working in Arkansas. She took an unconventional route to a career in archaeology at a time when few employment opportunities existed for women in the field. The centerpiece of her career was teaching and educating the public about archaeology. With Charles R. McGimsey III, she cofounded the Arkansas Archeological Survey in 1967. Hester Davis was born on June 4, 1930, in Ayer, Massachusetts, to Edward Mott Davis and Dorothy Canning Thomas Davis. She was the youngest of five children. Her …

As a world-class speed skater, Kimberly Derrick represented the United States in the 2006 and 2010 Olympic games. According to U.S. Olympic records, she was the first U.S. winter Olympian born in Arkansas. Kimberly Derrick was born on April 28, 1985, in Blytheville (Mississippi County) to Ken Derrick and Holly Derrick. She grew up doing inline skating, and, by the age of eighteen, was a nationally ranked skater, winning and placing in numerous National Championships. Her family moved a lot, living in Arkansas—where she first started inline skating—as well as Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan, and Utah. She was homeschooled to facilitate her skating career and her family’s frequent moves. After watching the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, …

Bettye Fiscus Dickey was the first true female college basketball star at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). Over a playing career that spanned from 1981 to 1985, she set numerous records, many of which still stood almost four decades later. Bettye Brooks Fiscus was born on July 20, 1963, to Jack Fiscus and Brooks Maddux Fiscus; she had three brothers. She grew up in Wynne (Cross County). Years later, she recalled that when she arrived in Wynne High School, it did not have a girls’ basketball program, but when she and a group of friends tried out as a group, one of the teachers took on the job of coach, and the program developed from there. …

Jim Dickinson was a musician, record producer, and author. Born in Little Rock (Pulaski County), he briefly lived in Chicago, Illinois, before settling in Memphis, Tennessee, where he got his musical start. Dickinson later worked with legendary figures in rock and soul music, including Sun Records producer Sam Phillips and producer Jerry Wexler, as well as Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan. In the 1970s, Dickinson produced albums by legendary Memphis band Big Star and by the Replacements. He is also the father of Luther and Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi All-Stars. James Luther Dickinson was born on November 15, 1941, in Little Rock to Arkansas natives James Baker “Big Jim” Dickinson and Martha Huddleston Dickinson. At …

Donald S. “Skip” Hays, who was born in Florida and reared in western Arkansas, developed an early interest in literature and, after a vagabond career that included years of semiprofessional baseball, settled on writing and teaching. He turned out two ribald Southern novels, the more celebrated of which was The Dixie Association, published in 1984, about a wild band of misfits who made up a fictional professional baseball team at Little Rock (Pulaski County) in the late 1960s. The Dixie Association is about Hog Durham’s single season as a professional ballplayer; he is furloughed early from an Oklahoma prison so that he can join the team. Hog then engages in endless maneuvers with his manager, “Lefty,” and a Little Rock …

Don’t Cry for Me, published in 2022, is the seventh novel by Blackwell (Conway County) native Daniel Black. The author uses an epistolary style to explore the complex relationship between a father and his gay son. As in his previous literary works, Black explores the themes of race, class, gender, and sexuality with the ultimate provocation of communal love. The impetus of Don’t Cry for Me is the grief Black was experiencing with the death of his father from Alzheimer’s. As his father’s memory faded, they could not mend their relationship, which was fraught with silences, misunderstandings, and rejection, so consolation could now only happen in Black’s imagination. He uses his literary skill to share an internal conversation on transgenerational …

Connie Dover is a musician who has received critical accolades internationally for her interpretations of traditional English, Irish, and Scottish folk music, as well as folk ballads of the American West. She also is an accomplished arranger, composer, and poet. She is the founder and owner of the independent record label Taylor Park Music Inc. Constance Gail (Connie) Dover was born in Jonesboro (Craighead County) on October 10, 1958, to Doil Lee Dover, who was a businessman, and Janice Steed Dover, an educator and social activist. Her younger brother, Jeffrey (Jef), became a musician and restaurateur. The family moved frequently during her early childhood before settling in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1969. After graduating from North Kansas City High School …

Margaret Downing was a pioneer in women’s sports, especially basketball, in Arkansas in the second half of the twentieth century. Her coaching accomplishments covered a wide range of sports, and she did much to help Southern Arkansas University (SAU)—where she spent the bulk of her career—transition into the new world of intercollegiate athletics ushered in by the enactment of Title IX. Margaret Ruth Downing was born on August 22, 1931, in Waldo (Columbia County). She grew up in Waldo before pursuing her undergraduate education at Arkansas State Teachers College (now the University of Central Arkansas), in Conway (Faulkner County) graduating in 1953 with a BSE. She earned a master’s degree from the University of Tennessee in 1960 before earning her …

Hollie “Hot Stuff” Dunaway is a model, wrestler, and former professional boxer. From 2003 to 2013, fighting at the minimum weight (98–115 pounds) and flyweight levels, the diminutive Dunaway (her height is generally listed at about five feet) crafted a successful career in the developing world of women’s boxing, winning numerous flyweight and minimum weight world titles. Hollie Natashia Dunaway was born on October 18, 1984, in Van Buren (Crawford County). Little about her family or her youth is known. She first became attracted to boxing while watching female boxers training at the World Class Fitness Center in Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Even though she had never seen a professional boxing match, she decided that she wanted to pursue a …