Saddened and surprised

LITTLE ROCK — I was saddened and surprised to recently hear that Maylon Rice had been fired from his position as director of the Boston Mountain Solid Waste District.

It’s a responsible job serving Washington and Madison counties, which Rice was hired to do in 2009. He appears to have started on a high note. Yet things obviously began to unravel until the problems caused the district board to unanimously decide to fire Rice after several weeks on paid administrative leave.

I’ll pause to explain that Maylon Rice was one of the reporters during my tenure as the executive editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times between 1995 and 2000.

In fact, I hired Rice with an eye toward having him report mostly on governmental affairs, which he did prolifically. The strongest thing I can say about him during that period is that from ditch diggers to politicans and educators, Rice was a master of putting folks at ease with his banter-a natural born politico in his own right.

One of his finest moments as a journalist was his bulldog role in our investigation into numerous financial and behavioral irregularities inside the Area Agency on Aging under its former director and the close female sidekick he’d hired.

That series spanning a week led to their resignations from the agency. And their departures restored the valuable agency’s credibility and effectiveness on behalf of the elderly across Northwest Arkansas.

That’s one reason I was surprised to read that Rice himself had been canned for alleged financial irregularities involving the district’s various grant monies, as well as internal complaints about his behavior as the director.

Of all people, I’d have thought Rice(who also unsuccessfully sought the nomination for the District 85 state House seat this season) would never have found himself in such a predicament.

It has been difficult for me to accept that he could have followed a trail of poor choices that led him into a dead-end field of painful thorns.

The news account of his firing was prominently displayed in the local papers with a photograph of Rice smiling broadly.

The story also said he sat silently in the room as the board announced its decision. Then he shook hands with most of those members who’d just canned him as they departed. Finally, he hugged Washington County Judge Marilyn Edwards, a longtime acquaintenance.

That’s the Maylon Rice I knew during the mid-1990s, and it’s the Maylon Rice in 2012 that I prefer to carry in my memory banks.

Stigma dissolves

Speaking of hard times, you know it’s bad out there when the head football coach at the University of Arkansas has filed for bankruptcy citing $25 million in debts and the state’s lieutenant governor awakens to find his 3,100-square-foot Springdale home being foreclosed upon after four months of allegedly unpaid house notes he says he knew nothing about.

I’d say that after years of this lousy economy, the stigma that once readily rubbed off on those with serious financial debt problems has all but vanished. Seems we really are all pretty much in the boat together.

Seville needs savior

Count me among those who’d be sad to see the historic, 83-year-old Hotel Seville in my hometown of Harrison wind up in bankruptcy court come November unless a buyer or majority investor emerges with $2 million. Over the decades it reportedly has hosted the likes of Harry S. Truman and Minnie Pearl.

Yet, if a financial savior doesn’t appear by November 7, the three-story, 57-room Spanish Revival hotel will become the property of Cornerstone Bank of Eureka Springs, which holds a $1.6-million secured loan on the building. Plus, the U.S. Small Business Administration has a $1.2-million claim on the property. The group that owns the hotel, and has in recent years pumped a lot of money into extensive renovations, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in May.

This charming place of bricks, steel and soaring arches could be saved if someone with sufficient financial resources could come up with $250,000 and guarantee most of the remaining debt, according to Jack Moyer of Eureka Springs, one of the hotel’s owners who was quoted in a recent news account.

Called “the finest hotel in the Arkansas Ozarks” when built in 1929, the Seville over the years has provided a focal point for Harrison’s events and parties, the story said. I remember as a small child eating Sunday brunches with parents and grandparents in its elegant dining room after church when I was a small child. Lots of folks from Boone County share similar recollections.

———◊———

Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].