John Christopher McLarty

Mapping past, future

SELF

PORTRAIT

Date and place of birth:

Aug. 6, 1951, Lubbock, Texas

Occupation:

Assistant director and transportation study director for the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission

Family:

Wife Lynn, 8 children, 10 grandchildren

Something I’d like to be better at is

playing guitar.

The best part of my job is

working with professionals and the public to develop a consensus on transportation needs and projects in Northwest Arkansas.

My advice to parents is,

“Every child is different.

Get to know them well, and help them develop their strengths and talents.”

The question I get asked the most is,

“Can I get a copy of that map?”

Of all the jobs I’ve had, the toughest was

being a tile setter.

My secret talent is

Dutch oven cooking.

The thing people would be most surprised to learn about me is

I lived in a teepee off and on for two years.

My dream vacation would be

a trip to Scotland and a tour of Europe.

Five years from now, I’d like

to be retired, doing some volunteer teaching at Fayetteville Christian School, and floating more rivers.

A phrase to sum me up:

“Let’s do something !”SPRINGDALE - John McLarty’s classmates were certain he was messing with their heads.

In January 1996, McLarty was a freshman at the University of Arkansas - a 44-year-old freshman. Befitting his inquisitive nature, he chose a seat at the front of the classroom.

His classmates, most of whom were less than half his age, wondered what the heck he was doing.

“Everybody thinks I’m the teacher,” he says of that day. “They thought I was pulling a trick on them. I said, ‘I’m just a student like y’all are.’”

McLarty, now 61, couldn’t have known it in those early days of college, but his life was undergoing a remarkable transformation.

He would emerge with his faith, his dedication to his family and his work ethic intact. He left behind a life of hardscrabble jobs - existing “in survival mode,” as he calls it - everything from janitorial work and setting tiles to owning a restaurant.

Soon after McLarty’s graduation from UA, he was hired by the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission. Today, he is the commission’s assistant director and transportation study director, anticipating the needs of Benton and Washington counties decades down the road and then building a consensus to lay out a road map for the future of the region’s transportation.

Through a project he worked on in college, McLarty became fascinated with the Butterfield Overland Express route. Through his post-college research on the stagecoach road and his work with the planning commission, he became similarly interested in the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation west of thousands of American Indians by the U.S.

government in the 19th century, and other 19th-century passages taken by settlers, explorers and Civil War soldiers. These routes became the components of the Heritage Trail.

Today, McLarty is president of the Heritage Trail Partners and the Arkansas Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association. His day job demands he look forward; both of these volunteer positions ask him to look backward.

“At first blush, you might not think of a regional planner as someone who’s interested in regional history,” says Susan Young, the outreach coordinator of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale. “But he’s interested in both worlds - progress, the roads we can build, and also localhistory, how we incorporate that, and what we stand to lose from this standpoint if we build a highway here.”

Perhaps no spot in Northwest Arkansas better illustrates McLarty’s impact than the one he chose for his profile photos. It’s along the trail around Lake Fayetteville, one the planning commission will ultimately connect all the way to Bella Vista as part of the Razorback Greenway, an ongoing project it is administering.

Along the trail, there’s an information kiosk. It’s on a stretch of the Butterfield road, which was started in 1858 as the nation’s first attempt to build a nationwide mail route. The Heritage Trail Partners and the cities of Northwest Arkansas work in tandem to mark these historic sites.

And within shouting distance, there’s a stretch of Arkansas 265, which is currently undergoing a major expansion. The trails, the kiosk and the two lanes being added to the highway all have McLarty’s fingerprints on them.

“A nicer guy you’ll never find,” says Marilyn Heifner, the executive director of the Fayetteville Advertising and Promotion Commission. “He builds a consensus, and uses history as a basis for looking forward.”

BACK TO THE LAND

The first time McLarty went to college, he lasted all of one semester.

He grew up in Lubbock, Texas, and after graduating from high school he enrolled at Texas Tech University. He dropped out after a semester, destined not to return to college for another quartercentury.

Soon thereafter, he and three friends decided to move to Arkansas, as part of the “back to the land movement.”

“In Lubbock, you couldn’t drink the water,” he says. “One of us picked up a gallon of water, and said, ‘This stuff came from Arkansas. Let’s move to Arkansas.’”

Lubbock is flat, so the friends chose Northwest Arkansas because of its hills.They originally contemplated living in a national park, but figured they would eventually get kicked out, and decided to buy land instead. They pulled into the first realty office they found in Fayetteville, and wound up buying 32 acres with a spring by Devil’s Den State Park.

“We thought, ‘Let’s simplify ... why don’t we just camp out forever?’” he says with a laugh. “It’s nutty when you think about it.”

McLarty grew up in a family that loved nature. In the 1960s, his parents bought 160 acres with a cabin in the mountains of Colorado that backed up to the San Juan Wilderness Area.

His parents would take their four sons there every summer, and they still go to the land every year. When McLarty was a teenager, the family would go on long floating trips at Big Bend National Park in Texas or go backpacking in Coloradoalong the Continental Divide and be gone for a week at a time.

Today, McLarty takes trips with his own family to places like the Colorado River and the San Juan River. Next up is a trip to Utah’s Green River, which the family will float in May.

“When we did it, we’d be the only ones on the river,” he says. “I just loved camping out, so when I became 19-20, I thought, ‘You know, I’m perfectly happy in a tent alongside a river or trail, why don’t I just live like that? Why do I need paperwork and a desk?’”

The intentions may have been noble, but the reality was harsh. For a few months, McLarty and his friends lived in tents on their land. Then they encountered their first Arkansas winter, and they rented a house in town, moving back to the land when itgot warm.

By then, they had come to realize that they were going to be unable to just live off the land. McLarty got a job as a lifeguard in Devil’s Den, the first of countless jobs he had during the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.

“It’s been an interesting life with John,” says his wife, Lynn. “It’s been an adventure, but I wouldn’t change a thing.”

A GROWING FAMILY

By McLarty’s second summer in Arkansas, he was living in a teepee.

Then he met a woman who had a teepee of her own, Lynn, and they married in 1975. Between them, they hadfour children, three from her first marriage and one from John’s.

McLarty adopted his three stepchildren and the family of five settled into their teepees on 40 acres near West Fork - or something a little warmer when winter rolled around. (His son stayed in Texas, but they stayed close; he is a regular on the family wilderness adventures.)

“When I married Lynn I thought, ‘You need a job,’ so I worked building wooden trusses in West Fork,” he says. “Marriage equated a full-time job for me.”

Life wasn’t easy for the newlyweds, certainly not as easy as it appeared for the Latvian family they became acquainted with. Shortly after getting married, John and Lynn met the family when they needed someone to dig a well for them, and they were astounded at how well-behaved their 10 children were.

They were also impressed by how much better the Latvian family’s lives seemed to be, how their garden and cows were so impressive. The family said their success was the result of their Christianity.

The McLartys accepted Christ that day. For a few years they worshipped at the Latvian family’s house; later they joined Mission Boulevard Baptist Church in Fayetteville. It’s been an integral part of their lives ever since.

“That really stabilized our lives,” says John, a trustee at the church. “I’m not saying we wouldn’t have stayed married, but it just locked inthat Christian lifestyle. It was a small church, 50 people, and we just really felt like it was our home church.”

John launched several business ventures with church members. There was a janitorial company, where he would strip and wax floors and clean offices. There was Little Italy, a restaurant they ran on Dickson Street.

There was KOFC-AM, 1250 Christian radio, where he worked as station manager, and there was A Plus Mini Storage, which the McLartys have owned since 1992.

“He’s always been one to get into some kind of business,” Lynn says. “He’s been a great example to the kids, a real encouragement. He just inspires you to want to do your best, in whatever you do.”

Then there was the time they recruited and trained prospective foster parents.The McLartys had become foster parents in the early ’90s, originally to care for a 17-year-old friend of their daughter, but quickly wound up taking more children into their home.

To date, they have provided foster care to more than 100 children. They’ve added four children to their household over the years, bringing their total to eight.

“We never thought this was what we were going to do,” Lynn says. “But it’s been a real blessing. John’s a great dad; he keeps everybody positive.”

PATIENT PLANNER

There was no class in high school that bored McLartymore than geography.

It wasn’t the subject; as a kid, he loved looking at road maps and his grandfather’s raised-relief map of the United States.

His high-school geography class was sheer torture, though. It was taught by a coach who thought teaching consisted of reciting facts from the World Book.

“The population of India is blah, blah, blah; it’s major ethnic groups are...” McLarty says before breaking into a mock snore.

Conversely, the geography courses he took at Arkansas were fascinating. Tired of doing physical labors like laying tile, McLarty enrolled at UA as a full-time student in 1996.

He began as a civil engineering major, but when he realized all the cutting-edge computer mapping was being done in the geography department, he switched majors. He excelled in the classroom, finishing with a grade-point average just a shade below 4.0.

After graduating in 2000, he was accepted into graduate school. He was planning to be a teacher’s assistant with a stipend, but when a job as a regional planner with the planning commission opened up, he took it. He was promoted to his current position in 2005.

“He’s one of the best people I work with,” says Cristina Scarlat of Fayetteville, the planning commission’s geographic information systems coordinator. “I’ve never seen him anything other than calm, which is really important. He can handle any kind of stressful situation.”

McLarty’s calm, patient nature makes him well suited for his work. The projects he works on are often years, if not decades, in the making.

For example, money was allocated for the Arkansas 265 expansion in 2007. Time was needed for public comment, environmental-impact studies and right-of-way acquisition before construction began in 2012.

McLarty’s role is to gather input from the general public, elected officials and the planning staff of cities in Northwest Arkansas. He loves this part of the job, facilitating discussions and building consensus.

“Every time I meet with John, I walk away thinking ‘I love this guy,’ because he listens,” Young at the Shiloh Museum says. “He finds some way for everybody to contribute.”

McLarty is excited when any project is finished, but the one he’s really looking forward to is the Razorback Greenway. The 36-mile trail is expected to be completed in December 2013.

He loves going for walks and bicycle rides on the trails in Fayetteville with his wife and youngest daughter, and he can’t wait until he can go all the way up to Bella Vista.

“He loves any kind of outdoorsy project,” Scarlat says. “He’s been great on managing this project, through all the little bumps in the road. He can handle any kind of new or unknown situation, [because] he can talk to anybody in the same friendly manner. He has a real warm quality to him.”

Northwest Profile, Pages 33 on 09/30/2012

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