A former chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court died Wednesday at the age of 87, according to Ruggles-Wilcox Funeral Home in Hot Springs.
William Howard "Dub" Arnold served as chief justice on the state Supreme Court from 1997 to 2003. Before that, he was a prosecutor, municipal judge and circuit judge.
Annabelle Clinton Imber Tuck said Arnold became chief justice the same year she and Ray Thornton joined the Supreme Court.
"Justice Arnold was really a beautiful soul because he really worked at making sure everyone felt heard in conference as well as when we went to lunch together," she said. "The bottom line is the chief really had a heart of gold."
Arnold began the process of modernizing the justice system as far as technology is concerned, said Tuck.
"If there's any profession that's set in its ways, it's the legal profession," she said. "To move this along and make it happen, you have to work at persuading in a way that was respectful for people to come into the 20th century."
"He was the chief really at the dawn of the internet for the Arkansas Judiciary," said Tim Holthoff, director of the court information systems division for the Administrative Office of the Courts. "I think he was pretty instrumental in his support of bringing new technology to our courts."
Robert Brown, a retired justice from the state Supreme Court, described Arnold as "a great jokester."
"Keeping things light when deciding cases was a good thing, and Dub tried to do that during conference when things became tense," said Brown. "Dub used to say when he was chief justice that being chief with six other associate justices in the Justice Building -- which was isolated -- was like working in a nursing home. When one of the justices wandered out of the office into the hallway, he would take his or her arm and guide that justice back into the office."
Arnold was born May 19, 1935, in the back room of a country store in a community called Oakland, midway between Arkadelphia and Gurdon.
His father, Howard Arnold, was a farmer, store owner and semi-pro baseball player who was later elected Clark County sheriff. Dub Arnold's mother, Melvia Taylor Arnold, was a housewife who ran the store while her husband was farming.
In an interview for the Arkansas Supreme Court Project, Arnold said he was about 10 years old when they got electricity.
"Every time the wind blew, the electricity went off because the lines were built through the woods," he said. "But it was a good experience for me."
For the first grade, Arnold went to a two-room country school known as the Oakland Academy. From the second through ninth grades, he attended school in Gurdon.
In the 10th grade, after his father was elected sheriff, Arnold began attending school in Arkadelphia.
The family lived in an apartment under the jail. One time, a boy trying to escape from jail rode the dumbwaiter down into Mrs. Arnold's kitchen. The sheriff found him hiding behind a hot-water tank and returned him to jail.
Another time, a man came banging on the door, saying he'd shot someone and feared the other man was after him. The sheriff walked with the man to the scene of the shooting and found the victim dead in the street.
"So my dad was the sheriff and naturally he would work with the prosecutors," Arnold told Ernest Dumas in that 2012 interview for the Arkansas Supreme Court Project. "I guess I got the idea that someday I would like to be a prosecutor because that was fascinating to me."
While attending Henderson State Teachers College (now Henderson State University), Arnold married Earlene Aud of Arkadelphia. They eventually had two daughters and a son, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
Arnold graduated from Henderson with a degree in economics in 1957.
"I was rodeoing in those days," Arnold told Dumas. "I would bull ride and calf rope."
He was injured during one of those bull rides and spent a few months on crutches with a broken ankle.
In 1962, Arnold graduated from Arkansas Law School in Little Rock, according to the encyclopedia. He passed the bar the next year and moved home to Arkadelphia to join a local law firm.
Arnold was hired as deputy prosecutor for Clark County in 1965.
The following year, he ran unsuccessfully for prosecuting attorney for the 8th Judicial District, which included Clark, Hempstead, Miller and Nevada counties. He won the seat two years later and served two terms, leaving the post in 1972, according to the encyclopedia.
In 1973, Gov. Dale Bumpers appointed Arnold to be chair of the Arkansas Workers' Compensation Commission, where he served a six-year term.
In 1979, Arnold was elected municipal judge in Arkadelphia, but he resigned the next year.
"I had all the municipal judging I think I wanted," Arnold told Dumas. "All I was doing was fining my friends as they came in, speeding tickets and stuff like that. Every one of them wanted me to take care of it, and I couldn't do that."
Arnold was then elected as the prosecuting attorney for the 9th East Judicial District, which included Clark and Pike counties.
He was elected circuit judge for the 9th Judicial District in 1991 and reelected in 1994.
Arnold ran for chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1996, defeating Lamar Pettus of Fayetteville. Running unopposed in 2000, Arnold won another term on the court.
An important case heard during Arnold's term as chief justice was the Lake View case, which found the funding of public education in the state to be unconstitutional, according to the encyclopedia. Arnold ruled with the majority of the Supreme Court on the decision.
Arnold decided to retire from the Supreme Court in 2003. He returned to Arkadelphia and practiced law with a firm until 2006.
The Clark County court complex was named for Arnold after it was reconstructed following a 1997 tornado, according to the encyclopedia. Arnold's papers are held by Henderson State University.