Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Jerry Don Childers Honored As Gurdon Citizen Of The Year

It was a night of thrills and surprises. One filled with laughter and merriment.

Monday night, April 3, was the annual Gurdon Chamber of Commerce Banquet, and it surpassed its billing.

The evening began with the naming of the Teacher of the Year, Citizen of the Year and Chamber Member of the Year for 1999.

Few were surprised when Bobby Smithson, superintendent of the Gurdon School District, named Ann Clingan as the Teacher of the Year.

Smithson said she arrives first, leaves last and is the sponsor of the first ever Cabe Middle School yearbook.

Clingan, the only award recipient to speak, said she never goes to the Chamber banquet, but this year several people insisted, not giving her a way out.

She didn't realize they had ulterior motives for getting her there.

Clingan credited the Cabe Student Council for doing the bulk of the work on the yearbook. She said it takes a lot of hard work, but has been a lot of fun.

The annuals, she said, are due in by May 14 to give the students time to get one another's autographs.

Charles Shaver announced the Citizen of the Year as Jerry Don Childers.

Childers, he said, has a variety of interests, is involved in many activities, collects coffee cups, plays bridge and has taught music in the Gurdon School District.

This was followed by Chamber President Linda Bittle naming Valerie Bishop as Chamber Member of the Year.

Bittle said Bishop has done everything asked of her.

Then came the real fun of the evening, the address by Matt Mosler, keynote speaker of the event.

Mosler kept the audience in stitches telling about his family, his past jobs and how his hair seems to be sliding off the back of his head.

He began by letting the audience know he only just returned from vacation, which meant visiting his parents and then his wife's parents during spring break. Both sets of parents, he said, live in Alabama, just different cities.

He said the best thing about the vacation was crossing the Arkansas state line and leaving Mississippi.

Mosler talked about his love of Arkansas, even though he's a native of California, who studied broadcast journalism in Alabama.

His first job was in Tuscaloosa, AL and paid $11,000 a year. He told of calling his father to tell him he finally had a paying job and how his dad hung up on him when he found out what it paid. "He wanted to get me off his payroll," Mosler said.

When he asked his first general manager for a raise, Mosler said the man laughed and told him he would never make it in the TV business because his voice is too high pitched and he looked too young.

Both statements are true. Mosler does have a high voice and could still pass for someone 10 years younger with no problem.

But, he's survived the TV industry for 14 years, moving from Alabama to Mississippi, going to Texas and then "getting saved", as he called it, by coming to Arkansas.

Mosler all but had the audience rolling in the floor when telling the story of when his daughter was four and ill.

He called the doctor, who told him to get her prescription. Mosler told the doctor his child couldn't keep the medicine down and was informed it wasn't oral medication.

Mosler talked about being in his mid-30s, saying it's a strange time in a man's life.

"Strange things happen at 30," he said. "You start losing you hair but can still get zits.

"I'm starting to look like my dad. My hair's sliding off the back of my head and growing in places hair has no business growing."

Mosler said these are strange times in a man's life because there is a movement afoot for men to be better husbands and fathers.

In his father's day, he said, men showed their love by working their brains out, but things have changed.

Now the emphasis is to show love by being there, helping raise the children and being a man.

"It's a great thing," he said, "and the right thing to do."

However, Mosler pointed out, the mid-30s are a pivotal time in many men's lives as they are at the break point of their careers. This, he said, is the time they are becoming the "go-to" guy at work and it's where they want to be.

But, there is also the pressure to be a good husband and father at home and many men don't know how to handle this pressure. It can result, he said, in tearing families apart.

The mid-30s of a man's life, he said, are when the children are becoming more active in their lives, participating in sports and school activities.

Men and women pour so much time between work and the children they have little time for one another and can forget the person they married.

"There'll come a day when the kids are gone," he said. "You need to nurture your marriage and relationship."

In talking about his love for Arkansas, Mosler said it's a great place to live. "When I was on vacation all I thought about was going home.

"I have the opportunity, though my job, to go different places and share my love for the state with the people of the state. All you could want is within the borders. Arkansas could be fully self-sustaining and a lot of people don't realize it."

Mosler said too many people make a joke of being from Arkansas when they should be proud of where they're from.

"A lot of great people are from Arkansas," he pointed out, naming Mark Martin, from Batesville, Glen Campbell of Delight, and John Grisham from Black Oak.

"Somewhere in Arkansas right now," he said, "is a five-year-old boy or girl who will change the world. The more we tell our children they can do anything, they will do it."