GRAVETTE -- The Gravette Historical Museum is celebrating its 20th year of existence and, at the same time, the museum commission's chairman is celebrating his 20th year of membership on the commission. John Mitchael remembers how the idea for the museum first developed. Back in 1993, local barber Johnny Varner wanted help to build a model of the town for Gravette's centennial celebration.
"Every time you'd go in to get a haircut he'd try to recruit you," John recalls.
Finally Varner was able to round up 10 or 12 people, including Mitchael and Dean Fladager, who built a town layout centered around a railroad track. They put it on display on Gravette Day that summer and were delighted when about 1,000 people filed through to see it.
Varner died the next spring and several folks suggested pursuing his dream of using the diorama as the basis for a museum. The model was displayed in a city building at the corner of Main Street and First Avenue. When the city decided it needed that space for a police station, the group went to the city council and proposed moving it to a vacant room on First Avenue. An ordinance was passed creating a museum commission in June, 1995, and the model was moved there soon afterward.
Mitchael's been a part of Gravette history for decades. He was born in 1933, southwest of town at Georgia Flats, on a farm where his grandparents lived. Those were Depression years. Mitchael said his grandfather bought 80 acres in 1936 for only $800. Many properties could be purchased by just paying the back taxes, he recalls.
The economy was still depressed in 1951 when Mitchael graduated from high school. There were only eight months of school that year. The state quit sending money and graduation was on the last Saturday in April. Employment was scarce at home, so he went to Wichita, Kan., and took a job with Boeing Aircraft Company.
Boeing did a lot of military work and John was employed in the administrative, planning and finance departments, writing proposals and negotiating. When the Cold War was over, Boeing's military contracts were ending and few new ones were forthcoming. Where once the Wichita plant employed 35,000, the work force had dwindled to 5,000. John retired from the firm in 1991 after 40 years and he and his wife, Ruth, decided to move back to Arkansas.
While in Wichita, Mitchael earned his bachelor's degree and master's degree in business administration from Wichita State University. He met his wife in Wichita. She was from Mindenmines, Mo., just across the state line from Pittsburg, Kan. They married in 1953 and raised three children. Sons Steve and Jay both live in Gravette, and daughter Jan Thurman was a resident before recently moving to Bella Vista.
Mitchael said the house where Jan lived, on Fifth Avenue, S.W., was once the one-room Lee School on Beaty Road where he began his formal education. The school was closed during the war years and, when John's uncle came home from the Army after World War II, he and John's dad moved the building to town.
After returning to Gravette, the Mitchaels built their present home west of town, about three miles from where John was born.
Mitchael says he has no particular interest or skill to benefit the museum. However, there are plenty of jobs to be done, most performed by volunteers, and he tries to be available to help with whatever task comes up. A cutout of a cow was added to the front of the museum annex last month and, one day recently, he was headed to a neighbor's pasture to collect some material to "hay" the cow.
Mitchael keeps pretty busy with his membership on the commission. With his attitude of being ready and willing to do whatever needs to be done, he is the ideal volunteer.
He has served his community in several other ways too. He is a member of the First Christian Church, where he is an elder on the church board and helped with the church's Feed My Sheep food pantry. He is a former member of the Care and Share board and of the Hillcrest Cemetery commission. Building the columbarium at Hillcrest was his project during his tenure on the commission. He was also very involved with developing the Water West rural water system.
General News on 08/26/2015