Robert Alan McCaslin Another term for work

By Cyd King

Posted: August 16, 2009 at 5:18 a.m.

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LITTLE ROCK — SELF PORTRAIT

Date and place of birth: March 10, 1946, Hot Springs Growing up, I wanted to be a schoolteacher.

Anyone running for public office in Bentonville should be strong and committed.

If I could change one thing about myself it would be early on, work to be a bit more compassionate.

I reluctantly admit that I disappointed a lot of people with the 2008 fireworks decision.

Most valuable asset: honesty Worst habits: coffee and candy bars My most humbling experience was the birth of our two daughters and then the marriage of our two daughters.

My favorite spot in Bentonville is the downtown square.

I'm compulsive about schedules, time, order. My personal hero was my dad.

One goal I haven't achieved yet: driving a race car One word to sum me up: dependableBENTONVILLE - Mayor Bob McCaslin suffers the loud jackhammering outside his second-story window, just off the city square. It's a reminder of progress in this growing city that's home to the world's largest retailer and the much anticipated Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

The face-lift to city hall on Central Avenue will bring the building up to snuff with other refurbished storefronts on the square and extending arteries.

It's gratifying to McCaslin, who's big on appearances and first impressions.

Shortly after taking the oath in January 2007, he and his wife Lana (pronounced Lonna) redecorated his office and anteroom, with new paint and carpet and some key pieces of furniture, all of which they paid for themselves.

"We wanted that professional environment," says McCaslin, 63.

His dress pants and shirt are neatly pressed, and his desk is spotless except for a small display case of writing pens he has collected. One observer describes him as "an extremely neat little guy who never has anything out of whack." His daughter Regan Moser notes with a giggle that even Mc-Caslin's sock drawer is in perfect order - each pair is pinned together, then rolled and stacked so that he can see them.

He's known for taking a businesslike approach to governing, and his 30 years in sales and management with Kraft Foods underscore that. Rogers Mayor Steve Womack renders his neighboringcounterpart as "a CEO-type leader - a suit and tie guy." McCaslin says he's better than average at delegating. Womack agrees.

"It comes from realizing that every successful manager - and I underline every - must be able to delegate, because there is no manager that can be the lone ranger or a one-man team," McCaslin says. "My style would be to manage by walking around, letting people know, 'Hey, I'm trusting you to do this, but I want to know what you're doing.'"

Alderman Eddie Austin, a former foe of Mc-Caslin, differs. He says the mayor operates less like a corporate exec and more like the teacher he was in Mena many years ago.

"He'll say, 'Eddie, that's a math problem,' andthat's how he works his way through things, trying to figure out how to pay for things," Austin says.

McCaslin rides herd over some 400 employees and oversees a $90-million-plus budget. Though the elected position is nonpartisan, it's easy to decipher which side of the political fence he favors.

The couple attend The Church at Pinnacle Hills. He says he and Lana are "unashamedly practicing Christians" with no wiggle room between what they consider right and wrong.

"My faith is my lifestyle. I don't ever leave my faith to go do something, whether it's selling cheese, whether it's campaigning for councilman or mayor or being the mayor. I don't walk away from the principles of my faith to do anything," Bob McCaslin says.

"Faith's not a Sunday exercise. Faith is a seven-day-a-week exercise. It's just a way of life."

MAN OF MANY ZIP CODES

To grasp McCaslin's work ethic and moral ethos, one need look no further than his Montgomery County upbringing and the examples set by his late father, Clayton McCaslin, and his mother, Marguerite, who remains in McCaslin's hometown of Mount Ida.

"We didn't grow up with a lot, but we always took excellent care of what we had. They were always clean, neat," Mc-Caslin says of his parents.

What impressed McCaslin most was his father's disposition toward work, whether he was pumping gas or managing a workforce of up to 175 at the local textile plant. No job was too small, no task too menial.

"I saw Dad have a lot of success, and I saw him have a lot of disappointment, but he was the same guy through all of it." His dad died in 2007, shortly after McCaslin took office. Toward the end of the campaign, Bob McCaslin spent most weekends with his ailing father in Mount Ida, while his opponent was out knocking on doors. The son still talks to his mother every day.

When McCaslin started at the former Arkansas Polytechnic College (now Arkansas Tech University) in 1964, enrollment was around 2,200 - a population smaller than some Northwest Arkansas high schools. "You literally, after year one, knew everyone on campus by name," he says. He left Tech four years later with a degree in business administration and a new wife, a Fort Smith girl whom he met on a blind date just a year before.

But before there was Kraft, there was teaching - four years of high school math and chemistry, first in Hatfield,then in Mena. He'd wanted to teach since he was a kid.

"I remember thinking, 'I could explain that easier and more thoroughly.'"

Summers were spent working in grocery stores, as he'd done as a teenager, eventually becoming a butcher. So the transition into grocery sales was a natural one.

McCaslin's first job with Kraft was calling on accounts in Fort Smith, western Arkansas and parts of eastern Oklahoma. The couple's first big move - to Olathe, Kan. - was their first leap far from home. They'd move to the metropolitan areas of Houston, Memphis, Dallas and Atlanta before settling in Bentonville in 1996. Uprooting daughters Lauren and Regan became increasingly difficult with each move, but a character-building experience nonetheless.

"I think they'll say now that it helped them a great deal, that they know that there's a world out there besides right where they are," Lana McCaslin says.

Wherever they'd go, the drill was the same: find a church, find a school, find a house.

"We had a good prayer life and a strong faith and that's what got us through it," the wife says.

The couple's 41-year marriage is based on mutual respect and trust.

"I think our mutual commitment to our faith is wortha lot. We just genuinely like each other, trust each other, enjoy each other," Bob Mc-Caslin says.

He was 55 when he retired from Kraft on Feb. 1, 2002, just 3 1 /2 months shy of the 30-year mark. He was elected Bentonville alderman later that year and was in his second term when he sought to unseat the incumbent mayor, Terry Coberly.

The decision came after nearly two years of prayer.

"He had things he saw that needed to be done, and he thought he could get them done," Lana McCaslin says.

MISTER MAYOR

Austin, the alderman, had served alongside McCaslin, but was loyal to Coberly and campaigned for her. He vividly recalls driving a car in a parade with Coberly's campaign signs displayed.

"I considered Terry to be my best friend," Austin says. "When Bob beat her, I told him - no surprise - that he was not my choice, but he was the people's choice, and I could live with that."

"I think that surprised him more than me," Austin says with a laugh. McCaslin is the fifth mayor with whom he has served.

Friend and former alderman Rod Sanders, who campaigned for McCaslin, says the mayor forged ahead, and didn't look back.

"It didn't matter whether they were for him or for hisopponent, he got in there and worked with everybody and helped solve problems," Sanders says. "I think you can look at the success that he and Eddie Austin have had and how well they worked together."

The 1990s were a period of unprecedented growth, and McCaslin's predecessor was charged with making sure Bentonville remained financially solvent, Austin says. Improvements to water, sewer, fire and police service were needed to handle the influx of new residents. While those areas require ongoing attention, Mc-Caslin is also addressing more "quality of life" issues, such as upgrading parks and sprucing up the gateways to the city.

"Sometimes it's more soap and water than it is capital expenditures," he says. "The last thing you want to do is waste that first impression."

The Crystal Bridges museum, under construction across a steep ravine near downtown Bentonville, carries a nine-figure price tag - a major investment, even for founder Alice Walton and other Wal-Mart heirs who have contributed to it. McCaslin says the majority of Bentonville residents have yet to grasp what the museum will bring. Museum press material estimates that the facility will draw 250,000 visitors annually from all over the world.

"How are they going to gethere? We don't want them to have that experience that many, many years ago, Branson had. People would go to Branson and spend most of their vacation on [Missouri] Highway 76 either trying to get to their motel or their attraction. It was terrible.

"We have to find a way for people to get in and out, not only for the additional visitors, but for those who live here and want to go to work, or soccer practice, dance lessons, or where ever they might have to be going. They have to get across town."

McCaslin sits a little taller when he talks about his role as mayor in a city with an employer the size of Wal-Mart. He's sympathetic to the 700 or so Wal-Mart workers who were displaced earlier this year, but defended the move as "more of a restructuring." Is he afraid the retailer will move?He doesn't have time to waste on such "negative, theoretical scenarios."

"There [are] so many positive things we need to be doing. It's not my nature to sit around and dream of something negative that might happen. It'd be an absolute waste of time, counterproductive, for sure."

He's already committed to running for at least one more fouryear term.

As he said during his campaign for mayor, "I'm a windshield guy. I don't live in the rearview mirror a lot."

Northwest Profile, Pages 37, 40 on 08/16/2009

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