LITTLE ROCK — It has been 16 years since Ruth Hawkins, an administrator at Arkansas State University, first stood in the yard of the Pfeiffer home atop Crowley’s Ridge in Piggott. It was the day after Thanksgiving in 1996, and it was raining. I joined about 50,000 of my fellow Arkansans at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock on Nov. 29, 1996, to watch LSU defeat the Arkansas Razorbacks by a final score of 17-7. It was much quieter where Hawkins was standing in the northeast corner of the state.

At the time, Hawkins was leading an eight-county effort to attain national scenic byway status for the Arkansas segment of Crowley’s Ridge, the unusual natural formation that extends more than 200 miles from just below Cape Girardeau, Mo., to Helena. The ridge was named for Benjamin Crowley, one of the early settlers of what’s now the Paragould area. Hawkins needed an attraction in far north Arkansas, and she thought Piggott might provide fertile ground.

“Crowley’s Ridge includes six state parks, one national forest and numerous small rural museums, county parks and recreation areas,” Hawkins says. “The Delta Cultural Center and the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena anchor the southern end. Identifying a northern anchor for the ridge, however, was somewhat problematic. While efforts were under way to create a recreational lake as well as to capitalize on Civil War history in Clay County, there were no alreadydeveloped major attractions.”

Hawkins knew Piggott had potential. Famed Hollywood film director Elia Kazan (whose son later would write for the Arkansas Gazette) and writer Budd Schulberg decided in 1956 to film A Face in the Crowd, the film debut of Andy Griffith and Lee Remick, at Piggott. Piggott also had gained a reputation in the late 1940s and the early 1950s as a place to get married. Most states had a three-day waiting period for marriage licenses in those days, but Arkansas allowed the waiting period to be waived, and Clay County took the position that all marriages were special cases. In 1950, there were 5,960 marriages in Piggott, more than twice the city’s population.

Hawkins ultimately focused on the fact that Piggott had been the home of Paul and Mary Pfeiffer, who moved there from St. Louis in 1913. Paul Pfeiffer would acquire almost 63,000 acres in the area, making him one of the country’s largest plantation owners. He set himself apart from many of the Delta planters by providing his sharecroppers and tenant farmers with quality homes.

In 1927, the couple’s daughter, Pauline, became Ernest Hemingway’s second wife. During the marriage, which lasted until 1940, there were regular visits to Piggott. A barn adjacent to the home of Paul and Mary Pfeiffer was converted into a place for Hemingway to write. He wrote parts of A Farewell to Arms at Piggott. Hemingway disliked the humidity of an Arkansas summer, but he enjoyed quail hunting in the fall and winter. In the February 1934 issue of Esquire, he wrote that one of the places he would rather be other than France was “Piggott, Arkansas, in the fall.”

“As the 1996 inventory of potential attractions along Crowley’s Ridge proceeded, the report came back to ASU that not only did the historic Pfeiffer home and barn still exist, but the house was for sale,” Hawkins later wrote. “If nothing else, it sounded like a good prospect for a bed and breakfast along the new national scenic byway. Standing in the yard for the first time, even before extensive research indicated the true impact of the Pfeiffers on the development of northeast Arkansas and on Hemingway’s life and writing, I became convinced that this property was more than a bed and breakfast. That day marked the beginning of ASU’s Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center.”

The house might have been for sale, but the barn was not. The properties had been acquired by Tom and Beatrice Janes in 1950 after Mary Pfeiffer’s death. The Janes raised six children in the home and made only minor alterations. Beatrice Janes had the home and barn placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Janes, a widow since 1976, moved to North Carolina in 1996 to be with a daughter. The barn earlier had been deeded to her son, Bruce. After several meetings with Hawkins and other ASU officials, Bruce Janes decided to sell his property also.

Hawkins went to nearby Rector to meet with Sherland and Barbara Hamilton, longtime ASU supporters, and asked them to head a fundraising committee. After telling her they didn’t like committees and didn’t like asking other people for money, they agreed to donate $200,000 for the project. Sherland Hamilton said at the time: “We always knew we wanted to do something for ASU in our wills. This project gave us an opportunity to do something important now while we are both still here to see it.”

The Legislature appropriated $135,000, and the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council came through with another $280,000. The museum opened July 4, 1999.

Hawkins has written a book on the Hemingway-Pfeiffer marriage, Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow, released earlier this year by the University of Arkansas Press. It has received positive reviews.

“Hemingway’s other wives spoke, but Pauline didn’t, making her the least understood of the four women,” says Hemingway scholar John Fenstermaker. “She never stopped loving Ernest, and the reverse is also true.”

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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities. He’s also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

Editorial, Pages 20 on 12/19/2012