I think everyone in Pea Ridge and at least half of the people of Benton County knew Fred McKinney. An amazing number of people came to pay their respects during the family visitation and funeral for Fred, held on Aug. 25 and 26. People knew Fred as he provided feed and seed for our area farmers over long years, as he provided baby chicks for the laying flocks and broiler houses, consulted with them about poultry practices, nutrition, disease prevention and marketing. He knew people through church, through business associations, and through political campaigns about the county. He just knew a lot of people.
Fred was usually involved in the civic club activities of our town through the years, such as the Kiwanis Club, which helped bring about Pea Ridge's first fire truck and Fire Department around 1950. One of the pictures I cherish from that period of time is a picture of the 1948 Dodge fire truck, in front of the little white building on North Curtis which housed it, and beside the truck and on top of it were the members of the Kiwanis Club. In the picture, Fred is one of the young men perched on the top of the truck, along with Mayor Ralph Miller and others. Standing on the ground beside the truck were such men as my grandfather, Scott Nichols, Hugh Webb (Fred's father-in-law), Roy Broadhurst (real estate man), Clint Mount (grocery & feed store), Mr. Wilson, the telephone company man, and others. That group of men worked together to bring numerous milestones of progress to our town at the mid-20th century, milestones like our city water department, the new dial-anywhere telephone system, and paved streets and highways. In the years following that fire truck picture, Fred served as mayor of Pea Ridge for several years, and then as City Recorder for some 20 years after.
Fred grew up on what we now call County 40 or McNelly Road. The McKinny home place was on the north side of the road, about a mile west of Blackjack Corner, and about a half-mile east of today's Mariano Road. The farm also included land which bordered on Mariano Road on either side of Tommy Hawk Road. In addition to their son Fred, Jim and Ruth McKinney also had daughters Zadie, Beulah and Margaret McKinney. Being born in the early 1920s, Fred bridged the time when several rural schools educated the children around Pea Ridge. The McKinneys, like my own family, were part of the Shady Grove School District and community. The old 1922 Shady Grove Schoolhouse, sometimes called SCUD, still stands on Ark. Hwy. 94 a few miles northwest of Pea Ridge. I think Fred would have gone to school there in the early grades. In 1929, the Shady Grove School was consolidated with Pea Ridge, along with such other rural schools as Sassafras School (northeast of town), Cross Lanes School (east of Buttram's Chapel), Possum Trot School (Walnut Grove, west of White's Housemoving on a road that no longer exists). From third grade and on, Fred would have attended the Pea Ridge School, first in the old college building, and from 1930, in the new red brick schoolhouse where so many of us attended.
Fred graduated from Pea Ridge High School in 1940, and very soon after went to work for Hugh Webb at Webb's Feed and Seed. Hugh Webb had started the feed and seed business in town four years earlier, in 1936, and also moved his electric hatchery business into Pea Ridge from his farm. Fred once told me that on his first day on the job at Webb's, they showed him a large truckload of feed which had just arrived from the supplier, and told him to unload the truck and store away the feed in the back room. He did so, single-handedly, loading the 100-pound burlap bags on a dolly and wheeling them, a few at a time, to the back storage room. In those days, the area where the store now is was the truck bay, where trucks could be backed in for unloading or where customer's trucks could be loaded out.
Back about 1970, Fred had his wife Mabel in the hospital in Memphis, Tenn., for a critical surgery. At the time, I was pastor of a church in east Arkansas, so when I saw in the Pea Ridge newspaper that Mabel was there, I went over to see them at the hospital. I always remember their surprise, and seeming pleasure, at seeing someone from "home," when they were far from home. Many times in the years thereafter, Fred has recalled that visit. He remembered, and appreciated, and let it be known. Thoughtfulness like his is encouraging, and many times has buoyed me up as the years have passed.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 09/09/2015