Tag Archives: Arch Ford

Arch Ford: “Looking Back”

Reprinted here by special permission of the author, Cindy Beckman, a retired Conway High School history teacher who writes local history.

This week, I would like to tell you a little bit about a project I have been working on for the past year. While gathering research for what I thought would be an article on Arch Ford, I discovered that Mr. Ford had deposited 75 scrapbooks with the UA Special Collections at Fayetteville. Once I went through the scrapbooks, I knew that it would take much more than an article to tell his story. Continue reading

Beckman’s New Book on Arkansas Education & Arch Ford

As commissioner of the Arkansas Department of Education from 1953 to 1978, Arch Ford served under five governors and ushered Arkansas education into the modern era. “His vision was to expand educational opportunities because he believed education was the foundation for improving people’s lives,” writes author Cindy Burnett Beckman in Man of Vision: Arkansas Education and the Legacy of Arch Ford, just released Continue reading