Skip Rutherford is very aware of the doors.
They've been open for him, and he's never forgotten it.
"I just walked through a lot of open doors that people made available to me," he said. "The credit doesn't belong to me. The credit belongs to others who have paved the way. I just walked the walk that was laid out in front of me."
Rutherford, 71, is retiring at the end of the month after 15 years as dean of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock.
For decades, he has made an impact on Arkansas and its people, in public and behind the scenes.
Rutherford is being overly modest about the doors. His work ethic and dedication to the greater good are beyond that of anyone who merely meandered through some open doors.
But he has made it a mission in his life to open doors for others.
He's repaying a debt of sorts.
When Rutherford was editor of the student newspaper at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, his journalism professor, Ernie Deane, took him to an Arkansas Press Association meeting in Hot Springs and introduced him to editors from across the state, including newspaper editor-turned-congressman David Pryor.
Many of them gave Rutherford their business cards and said, "Call me when you graduate. Ernie says you're a good guy."
On the way back, the significance of making all those contacts was sinking in.
"About 15 miles out of Fayetteville, I looked over at Ernie Deane and said 'Professor Deane, I get it. No one has ever ever done that for me before. I want to know how I can repay you.'
"He said, 'You don't need to repay me, but let me tell you something Skip. Sometime -- and this will be long after I'm gone -- if you get a chance to help young people, and open doors for young people, do it. And you'll be paying me back.'
"And I thought 'Well, I'll never be in a position to help people like Ernie Deane.'"
But Rutherford was wrong about that. He's had many such opportunities over the years.
"He gave me a chance, and I'm forever grateful," said Jordan Johnson, who worked for Rutherford for six years and now runs JPJ Consulting in Little Rock.
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"He would literally take me to meetings I had no business being at," said Johnson. "He would take me to meetings and include me in discussions with these business titans of Arkansas and these political leaders of Arkansas. In hindsight, I probably didn't understand until years later how valuable of an opportunity that was. ...
"He never introduced or referred to me as his employee or his worker," said Johnson. "I was always his colleague or his friend. And that's how he would introduce me to the who's who of Arkansas."
At one high-level meeting, a plan that Johnson drafted was being presented to the group.
Rutherford wanted to make sure Johnson got credit.
"I want you know this is his idea, not my idea, and it's the best idea. This is what we need to do," Rutherford told the group.
"I was dumbfounded and shocked," said Johnson. "And I've seen him do it for others."
BATESVILLE
James Luin Rutherford III was born on Jan. 28, 1950, in Memphis.
He was the great-great grandson of James Rutherford, one of the early settlers and political leaders of Independence County, Ark.
There were too many Jims already afoot so James Rutherford III's mother decided to call him Skipper. By the time he finished college, it had been shortened to Skip.
Skip Rutherford grew up in Batesville, which he described as "America's best hometown."
"I grew up in a neighborhood of home runs and homemade ice cream," he said.
Next door to the Rutherford home was a vacant lot where neighborhood kids played baseball, football or basketball, depending on the season.
Rutherford's father was a banker, and his mother a nurse.
His father was from Batesville, Ark., and his mother was from Batesville, Miss.
"My interest in politics started as a young kid, probably 6 or 7, when I would spend a lot of time with my grandmother and my great-grandmother in Batesville, Miss.," said Rutherford. "My great-grandmother had two old rocking chairs, and she loved politics. She loved current events. And she subscribed to the Memphis Commercial Appeal and had a radio. So she was very well-informed. She knew her stuff. And she loved Dr. Peppers. And when I would go down there, usually about an hour a day, I'd sit in one rocking chair and she would sit in another and we'd talk politics."
His grandmother stressed the importance of voting and keeping up with current events. She said it was important to read newspapers.
"I found it just fascinating," said Rutherford. "So at a young age I developed an interest both in Mississippi politics and in Arkansas politics, and still have both today."
Rutherford went to the UA for college. There, he became more interested in journalism and wrote for the student newspaper, The Arkansas Traveler, while still taking political science courses.
He graduated in 1972, and Betty Clark hired him as director of public relations at McIlroy Bank in Fayetteville.
While living in Fayetteville in 1974, a friend invited Rutherford over to his patio to meet a new university law professor named Bill Clinton. Rutherford was told this young man had political aspirations.
"I do remember how smart he was, how engaging he was," said Rutherford. "I remember thinking, 'I can see why he has a political future.'"
TITAN II
In 1978, Rutherford volunteered in David Pryor's second campaign for U.S. Senate.
After the election, he went to work in Sen. Pryor's Little Rock office in 1979.
That year, some airmen at Titan II missile silos in north Arkansas began contacting the office. They wanted to meet with the senator -- secretly and after hours -- about the nuclear missiles.
"The missiles had been in the ground too long," said Rutherford. "They had outlived their purpose. They couldn't find enough parts. They were antiquated, old. ... They were breaking down like an old car, like an old house."
Rutherford and Pryor toured one of the missile silos. Rutherford later learned that, during their tour, the mine safety detector, which monitors toxic vapors, wasn't working. The Air Force didn't want to tell anybody because it would have highlighted the problems at the missile sites, he said.
Rutherford drafted letters to the Air Force on Pryor's behalf asking about concerns at the Arkansas missile sites.
Not long afterward, about 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 18, 1980, an airman doing maintenance on a Titan II missile near Damascus dropped a wrench socket. It fell about 80 feet before hitting and piercing the skin on the rocket's first-stage fuel tank, causing it to leak, according to an Encyclopedia of Arkansas article by Mark Christ.
While the tank was spewing fuel, Rutherford got a phone call.
"They said, 'This missile at Damascus, there's been an accident. This missile's going to blow.'"
Rutherford asked, "What if the warhead explodes?"
"He said, 'It'll be quick. All of us will be disintegrated, and most of Arkansas will be disintegrated.'"
"And I thought, 'Dear God.'"
Rutherford called Pryor. They discussed what to do.
"If we tell people, we're gonna panic people," said Rutherford.
And if people try to leave, where are they going to go in the middle of the night? Surrounding cities like Memphis could be destroyed, too.
Later that night, Rutherford's phone rang again.
"It just exploded," the voice said.
"I looked around and I thought, 'Well, I'm alive,'" said Rutherford, realizing it was the accumulated rocket fuel in the silo that had exploded. "And I said, 'What happened to the warhead?'"
"He said, 'Well, it didn't explode but we can't find it.'"
Later, they found the nuclear warhead in a ditch, said Rutherford.
An airman was killed in the explosion, and the complex was destroyed.
"It was the scariest night of my life," said Rutherford. "It still remains the scariest night of my life."
ARKLA
In 1983, Rutherford left Pryor's office to work as vice president of public affairs for Arkansas Louisiana Gas Co.
Mack McLarty, the CEO of ArkLa who hired him, said Rutherford has a genuine commitment to community.
"He's been a force and a force for good, no question about that," said McLarty. "He just has a sense of real caring about people and institutions for the common good, making things better. That's just who he is and I expect that to continue."
Also in 1983, Rutherford founded the Political Animals Club of Little Rock. The group meets regularly to hear speakers, usually on the topic of politics.
LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL BOARD
In 1987, Rutherford was elected to the Little Rock School Board.
"I had three goals," he said: "I wanted to fix the student assignment plan so parents know where their kids are going to school. I wanted to get us out of court with the state and I wanted the state to compensate us for multiple years of wrong [including a poll tax passed by the state Legislature in 1956 to discourage Black people from voting]. And I wanted Little Rock voters to step up and support the local school district with a millage [an 8-mill tax was passed in 1990].
"And when those three got done, I said I'm done."
Rutherford left the School Board in 1991.
CLINTON
That same year, he was part of a small group that encouraged Gov. Bill Clinton to run for president. Rutherford was chairman of the state Democratic Party at the time.
Rutherford was a volunteer fundraiser and an "Arkansas Traveler" for Clinton's campaign. Rutherford later joined the campaign staff and was a senior adviser and a special assistant to campaign manager David Wilhelm, according to an Encyclopedia of Arkansas article by Griffin Coop.
During Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, Rutherford stayed in Arkansas and worked as a campaign volunteer.
After the 1992 presidential election, Rutherford took a position as executive vice president at Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods, a public relations and advertising agency in Little Rock. That's where Jordan Johnson worked for him.
Rutherford created the agency's public policy division.
CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL
In 1997, Rutherford coordinated the 40th anniversary commemoration of the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School.
Rutherford said he wanted what happened there in 1957 to become a part of Arkansas history rather than neglected. He wanted people to go there and reflect on the mobs and the hate and learn from it.
Rutherford also wanted the nine students who integrated the school in 1957 to tell their stories, in books or through other means. That way, future historians will cite them, and the Little Rock Nine will be telling their own story.
Most of them have subsequently written books.
When the Little Rock Nine ascended the steps after the 40th anniversary event in 1997, President Bill Clinton and Gov. Mike Huckabee opened the doors for them.
"That is one of the messages of this, that these doors are open," said Rutherford.
"It was a momentous occasion," Carlotta LaNier, one of the Little Rock Nine, said of the 40th anniversary. She said the opening of the doors was "a welcoming gesture we would have appreciated 40 years prior. You can say better late than never."
CLINTON CENTER
From 1997 until it opened in 2004 -- while still working for Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods -- Rutherford supervised the planning, construction and opening of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park, informally known as the Clinton library. During that same time, he also served as president of the Clinton Foundation.
Rutherford said there were four major focuses for the presidential center:
- Archival -- to preserve Clinton presidential material and provide a place for historians to do research.
- Economic development -- to help revitalize downtown Little Rock.
- Education -- to create the Clinton School of Public Service and to provide a place of insight and inspiration for thousands of school children to visit every year.
- Tourism -- to be a tourism magnet for the state.
"An ardent supporter of a vital downtown Little Rock, Rutherford's work on the presidential library contributed to a rebirth of activity in Little Rock's long-dormant area that became the River Market District," Coop wrote for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
Rutherford said he's pleased with how everything turned out.
"It wasn't just me," he said. "There were a whole lot of people heading up that project. It's just great to see all the positive things that have come out of it.
"I met Skip during the 1992 presidential campaign and later worked alongside him as we planned, built and opened the Clinton Presidential Center," said Stephanie Streett, executive director of the Clinton Foundation. "One of things I admire most about Skip is how he always goes out of his way to help young people. It has been memorable and exciting working with Skip over the last two decades. He is a tireless advocate for our city and our state."
TEACHING
In the mid-1990s, Gerald Jordan, a journalism professor at the university in Fayetteville, asked Rutherford if he would head up from Little Rock to teach a seminar one day a week.
The journalism department had no money to pay him and couldn't even pay his mileage.
Rutherford thought about his day job and his kids in school.
"There's no way I can make that work," he told Jordan.
But then he heard the voice of Ernie Deane echoing in his head: "Sometime -- and this will be long after I'm gone -- if you get a chance to help young people, and open doors for young people, do it. And you'll be paying me back."
"I said, 'Gerald I'll do it.'"
"He said 'What? What changed your mind?'"
"I said, 'I have a debt to pay.'"
So Rutherford taught for free at the UA in Fayetteville. Then he did the same for the University of the Ozarks, the University of Central Arkansas and Lyon College.
Since 2017, he's also been co-teaching a Sunday School class for young couples at Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church in Little Rock.
Jimmy Faulkner, the other co-teacher, said Rutherford wasn't sure about teaching that class, but he agreed to show up for a meeting. Then the class participants began to filter into the room. Five of the first six who walked in had been Rutherford's college students.
"So he's been teaching Sunday School ever since," said Faulkner. "He's been a real silent power at Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church. The Scripture says to feed the widows and the orphans and take care of those who can't take care themselves, and that is Skip Rutherford's bailiwick. He will do anything he can to help somebody who hasn't got a chance. He is a champion of the little guy."
Faulkner said Rutherford weaves webs with invisible gloves.
"He does so much but he's a backroom kind of guy," said Faulkner. "He doesn't want any part of the marquee deal. Skip Rutherford is always weaving webs for the good of somebody else. It's never about him. He doesn't even want people to know that he's got gloves that spread these webs."
CLINTON SCHOOL
The Clinton School of Public Affairs opened in 2004 on the grounds of the Clinton Presidential Center. It was the first master's degree program in public service in the country. Former U.S. Sen. David Pryor was the founding dean.
One day in 2006, B. Alan Sugg, president of the University of Arkansas System, asked Rutherford if he would like to be the school's second dean.
"He said 'You built a good public library. Besides that, you've been teaching for over 10 years.'"
"I said, 'Alan, that was a debt paid to Ernie Deane.'"
"And he said, "'Well, go build me a good school.'"
"Again, it was Ernie Deane who inspired me, who got me teaching, which the UA counted as experience," said Rutherford.
The Clinton School has a project-based learning curriculum that's different from schools of public affairs or public policy.
"The students do direct field-service work," said Rutherford. "We have done over 1,150 projects, about 500 of them in Arkansas."
The school also has a speakers series that has offered more than 1,400 programs, free open to the public.
Among the Clinton School speakers were 48 ambassadors, 25 Pulitzer Prize winners and eight Nobel laureates.
Speakers were from both sides of the political spectrum, Democrats and Republicans.
"An educational institution ought to be about hearing from people with whom you disagree," said Rutherford.
Clinton said Rutherford has been part of the Clinton School since it was just an idea.
"From the very beginning, he was working with our foundation to plan the library, to plan the Clinton Center, to do everything that helped bring the school to life," said Clinton. "He played an important role in bringing the unique curriculum to life and he has worked hard to bring inspiring speakers from all around the world to share their experiences with the students and the public. I'm very, very grateful for his service and I wish him well in his next chapter."
RETIREMENT
A retirement reception was held Thursday for Rutherford at Trapnall Hall in Little Rock.
An email about the event also announced the creation of the James L. "Skip" Rutherford III Student Leadership Endowment Fund. Endowed at the University of Arkansas Foundation, the fund will grant awards to rising student leaders at the Clinton School and other campuses within the UA System.
Rutherford said he arrived on the UA campus in 1968 without the three Cs -- cash, car or connections. By the time he graduated, he had a used car and some connections.
"I was blessed with people who opened doors for me and helped provide 'boosts' along the way," he said. "I hope this endowment fund will do the same for others. What I particularly like about it is that students from all UA System campuses will be eligible."
Contributions can be made at clintonschool.uasys.edu/donate by selecting "Skip Rutherford Student Leadership Endowment" in the drop-down menu or mailed to the Clinton School at 1200 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock, Ark. 72201.
When asked what he's going to do after he retires, Rutherford said a friend advised him not to make any major commitments for at least a year.
"That makes good sense to me," he said.
Rutherford said he has plenty of interests, so he won't be bored. Rutherford and his wife Billie have three children, one of whom lives in Singapore. And Rutherford is a gentleman farmer of sorts. He manages two of his family's farms, in Independence and Jackson counties.
"He's never ever forgotten where he came from," said Jordan Johnson. "A lot of people abandon their roots, are ashamed of their roots or move on from their roots. He remains as committed to Batesville today as he did the day he left."
Faulkner said it won't be a retirement like most. Rutherford has spent his life helping others. He can't just stop now and lead a life of leisure.
"The good Lord's got that man on a journey," said Faulkner.