Category Archives: Inspirational

Tiffany Wright is looking for child welfare warriors

Tiffany WrightDo you remember the U.S. Marines’ recruiting slogan, “We’re looking for a few good men”? Tiffany Wright is looking for 130 child welfare warriors.

Wright is director of the Division of Children and Family Services, which responds to reports of child abuse and neglect and administers the state’s foster care system.

DCFS has more than 130 job vacancies, including 69 for front line workers who manage an average of 24 cases. It is advertising job opportunities through social media, recruitment webinars, and a new webpage, humanservices.arkansas.gov/u/dcfs-jobs.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ state employee pay plan last year increased front line workers’ starting salaries from $36,155 to $52,137. Average annual turnover has since fallen from 60%-70% to 43%, which is still high.  Continue reading →

‘Mama’ from Marianna still touching foster kids’ lives

Her name is Mary Thornton, and she’s from Marianna. For foster kids like Billy Riggs, she’s “Mama.”

Thornton, 67, has been a foster parent for 32 years. She specializes in teenagers, three of whom live with her now, and many of them considered to have challenging behaviors. Her first placement, she said, was “terrible. I almost gave her back.” 

But she has persevered, the result being many lives changed. 

“I had one, she went to the Army,” she said in an interview. “Still in the Army. I have one that was an RN. Some of them do good, and some of them don’t. But basically, I had more to achieve than I had to not achieve.”

Thornton is the Department of Human Services (DHS) Foster Family of the Year. She and nine other families from across the state – two of them single foster mothers like her – were honored May 14 at a Foster Family of the Year Gala at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.  Continue reading →

The Class of ’26 and the Class of ’87

I had the honor of driving a school bus full of Bryant High School seniors to graduation practice at Little Rock’s War Memorial Stadium. Police officers escorted us through town. Families held signs and cheered their graduates as we drove down Reynolds Road. It’s a nice tradition.

While they rehearsed, I corresponded by text with a Wynne High School classmate about our next reunion – our 40th. Life goes by fast.

The Class of ’26 had a different school experience than my Class of ’87.

For one, schools today emphasize workforce preparation and technical skills in ways schools in 1987 did not. College was the highest goal when I was a student; other paths were less valued. Continue reading →

Arkansas250 playing part in America’s 250th birthday party

Arkansas250The United States is celebrating its America250 semiquincentennial, and Arkansas is joining the party through its Arkansas250 efforts.

The semiquincentennial (pronounced simee-quin-centennial) marks 250 years since the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. 

It’s the second major national milestone during my lifetime. The country’s 200-year Bicentennial in 1976 was a huge deal. An American Freedom Train featuring historical artifacts rolled past our house in Wynne. I went to school one day dressed as Abraham Lincoln with a stovetop paper hat that Mom painstakingly had made, and which I ditched in favor of some flimsy headgear I glued together in class.

Now it’s 50 years later, and another party is in the works.  Continue reading →

A Pearl Harbor ceremony without Pearl Harbor survivors

By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

This year’s commemoration of the attack on Pearl Harbor in Honolulu on Dec. 7 was missing one irreplaceable element: Pearl Harbor survivors. 

As reported by the Associated Press in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, none of the 12 living survivors, all now past 100 years old, were able to make the trip. It was the first time no survivors were present to mark the attack other than 2020 during COVID.

The news was another reminder that the World War II generation is now all but gone.  Continue reading →