Joe Purcell
Joe Edward Purcell (29 July 1923 - March 1987) was the Democratic governor of the U.S. state of Arkansas for six days in 1979. He was the state's attorney general from 1967-1971 and its lieutenant governor from 1975-1981.
Purcell developed a reputation for integrity which led many to encourage him to run for governor in 1970. In that race, he placed third, behind former Governor Orval Eugene Faubus and Dale Leon Bumpers, a 45-year old Charleston lawyer. Bumpers went on to defeat Faubus in the runoff and then Republican Governor Winthrop Rockefeller in the general election. Purcell ran again in 1982 and secured a runoff berth, but he lost to former Governor Bill Clinton, who went on to topple incumbent Republican Governor Frank D. White in November, avenging a 1980 defeat by the latter.
Purcell was elected lieutenant governor in 1974. He handily defeated the Rockefeller Republican Leona Troxell of Rose Bud in White County. He was reelected to the post in 1976 and 1978. He became governor for six days in 1979. Purcell resided in Benton until his death at the age of sixty-three.
Movies
Pictures
Several global companies are headquartered in the northwest corner of Arkansas, including Wal-Mart (the world's largest public corporation by revenue in 2007), J.B. Hunt and Tyson Foods. This area of the state has experienced an economic boom since the 1970s as a result.
In recent years, automobile parts manufacturers have opened factories in eastern Arkansas to support auto plants in other states. Additionally, the city of Conway is the site of a school bus factory.
Tourism is also very important to the Arkansas economy; the official state nickname "The Natural State" was originally created (as "Arkansas Is A Natural") for state tourism advertising in the 1970s, and is still regularly used to this day.
In 1971, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon appointed Thomasson as an administrative law judge of the Social Security Administration, a position that he retained until his retirement in 2000.
Thomasson was born in Arkadelphia, the seat of staunchly Democratic Clark County in south central Arkansas, to Joseph Baron Thomasson and the former Gertrude Dean. Thomasson graduated from Arkadelphia High School in 1949. He attended Henderson Teachers College. He was a veteran of the Korean War. In 1959, he received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Arkansas Law School at Fayetteville.
As a representative from Clark County between December 31, 1962, and December 31, 1966, he introduced the bill to establish Henderson State University. This action encouraged other legislators to seek four-year status for other educational institutions in their districts. Thomasson maintained a lifelong interest in HSU and its athletic programs. And he was involved in Arkansas Razorbacks sports history.
Thomasson also introduced legislation to add the white safety lines to the outside edges of Arkansas highways. His colleagues during his four years in the legislature included Dr. Lu Hardin, the president of the University of Central Arkansas in Conway north of Little Rock, and future U.S. Senator David Hampton Pryor, then of Camden in south Arkansas.
When Thomasson ran for attorney general, he expected to face the Democratic incumbent, the scandal-tainted Bruce Bennett of El Dorado in south Arkansas. Purcell, however, defeated Bennett in the primary, and the complexion of the race changed overnight. Like Thomasson, Purcell ran as a reformer. Purcell received 287,983 votes (53.9 percent) to Thomasson's 246,133 (46.1 percent). Thomasson carried twelve of the state's seventy-five counties, having received more than 60 percent of the ballots in Searcy, Baxter, Sebastian, Benton, and Washington counties. He also won in Crawford County, which Rockefeller lost. His strength was concentrated in the northwestern portion of the state.
In 1968, Thomasson again challenged Purcell. He received 240,725 votes (41.4 percent) to Purcell's 341,233 (58.6 percent). Thomasson won nine counties, again all in northwestern Arkansas, three fewer than he had in 1966.
From 1959-1960, Thomasson was the librarian of the Arkansas Supreme Court when James Douglas Johnson of Conway was an associate justice. They remained friends until Thomasson's death even though Johnson was the Democrat who lost to Rockefeller in the 1966 gubernatorial race. Thomasson's obituary said that he received a tie each Christmas from Johnson. Years later, "Justice Jim", as Johnson preferred to be called, switched to Republican affiliation.
Thomasson was in private law practice for eight years with Huie, Huie & Thomasson in Arkadelphia. He was a referee for the Arkansas Workmen's Compensation Commission from 1960-1961. He was also a past chairman for the Legal Aid Committee of the Arkansas Bar Association.
Thomasson was particularly interested in research on the American Civil War and learned that he had a great-grandfather from Georgia who fought for the Confederate States of America. He was a direct ancestor of another family member who fought under George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
Despite his past Republicanism, Thomasson was a friend and supporter of former President Bill Clinton and was mentioned in Clinton's autobiography, My Life. He was pleased that he lived to see an Arkansan become president.
Thomasson was survived by his wife of forty-six years, the former Dortha Juanita Yates (born July 6, 1937). The couple wed in Bismarck in Hot Spring County on October 15, 1960. Thomasson had a daughter, Grace Ann (husband Jeff) Weber of Bryant; a son, Bryan (wife Shannon) Thomasson of Benton; a sister, Faydean (husband Orville) Roberts of Benton; one brother, Jack Thomasson of Arkadelphia, and four grandchildren.
Services were held on May 3, 2007, at the Ruggles-Wilcox Chapel in Arkadelphia. Burial was in DeRoche Cemetery in Bismarck.
Mrs. Troxell was born in Johnstown in east central Fulton County in New York to Frank and Clara Anderson. She was the dean of women at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, before she married Nolan Troxell (1904-1971) and moved to tiny Rose Bud in White County north of the state capital of Little Rock.
In 1968, when Rockefeller was re-elected to his second term as governor, Mrs. Troxell was the unsuccessful candidate for state treasurer. She was defeated by the Democratic incumbent Nancy J. Hall (1904-1991). Troxell polled 218,804 votes (37.4 percent) to Hall's 365,540 (62.6 percent). Troxell won five of the seventy-five Arkansas counties: Searcy, Baxter, Benton, Carroll, and Washington counties, but she did not prevail in her own White County. Hall, the wife of the late Secretary of State C.G. "Crip" Hall, was first elected treasurer in 1962 and served until 1981. Mrs. Hall was also the first woman ever elected to statewide constitutional office in Arkansas.
In 1974, Troxell ran for lieutenant governor on the Republican gubernatorial ticket headed by the more conservative Ken Coon. She pledged to bring "decorum" to the Arkansas State Senate, over which the lieutenant governor presides. However, she was handily defeated by the former Democratic Attorney General Joe Purcell (1923-1987) of Benton, the seat of Saline County. In a heavily Democratic year, Mrs. Troxell received only 121,302 votes (23 percent) to Purcell's 406,040 (77 percent). She carried no counties in what turned out to have been her last venture on a ballot. Coon was defeated by David Hampton Pryor, but he ran some 65,000 votes ahead of ticket-mate Troxell. Purcell served as lieutenant governor until 1981.
In 1981, Mrs. Troxell questioned the appointment of former Governor Orval Eugene Faubus as director of the scandal-plagued Arkansas Veterans's Affairs Department. The selection was made by Governor Frank D. White, only the second Republican governor of Arkansas since Reconstruction. ". . . Obviously, I don't want to go back to the kind of regime we had when he was governor . . . Believe me, that was machine politics at its worst," Mrs. Troxell said of the Faubus era (1955-1967. Other leading Republicans, such as former gubernatorial candidate Len E. Blaylock of Perry County and U.S. Representative John Paul Hammerschmidt of Harrison, defended White's selection on grounds that Faubus was ideally suited for the particular position.
Troxell also questioned Governor White over the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. When White declined to include ERA in the agenda for a special legislative session in the fall of 1981, Troxell attempted to meet with White. "I asked if there was any opportunity for a group to see the governor, but his schedule was completely full," Troxell told the Arkansas Gazette.
Mrs. Troxell was an active member of the Rose Bud First Baptist Church, having worked over the years with the youth, the choir, and the Women's Missionary Union. She established the Nolan and Leona Troxell Perpetual Church Scholarship. In 1994, the Rose Bud congregation named its new church education building after her.
She was a past chairman of the Arkansas Heart Association and a member of Order of the Eastern Star.
Mrs. Troxell Dodd died in a nursing home in Judsonia in White County. She was survived by two nephews, Karl Gustafson of Boulder, Colorado and Dick Gustafson of Oneonta, New York. She was preceded in death by her parents, her first husband, her second husband, Russell Dodd, and a sister, Jeanette Gustafson (1919-1997). Services were held at the Rose Bud First Baptist Church. Interment was in the Little Rock National Cemetery.
