Joyce Ferguson, WM first female mayor

Spry 97-year-old shows no signs of slowing down

By DON WILBURN

donaldfwilburn@gmail.com

“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it” is a quote often erroneously originally attributed to Sir Winston Churchill. Indeed the solder, writer, and statesman did say it in his 1948 address to the English House of Commons in between terms as Prime Minister it is thought that he was paraphrasing the Spanish philosopher George Santayana who said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

And so it is in that spirt The Times continues to delve into the local history of the area in which we all live as we sat down for a fireside chat, quite literally, with the first (and to date, only) female mayor of West Memphis, Joyce T. Ferguson.

At a spry 97 years young, Joyce began the interview in the most professional of manners wishing to speak of her accomplishments as mayor, of which there are many, but we asked her if she wouldn’t mind a more personal chat and to take us back to he beginning and she happily obliged.

Born Joyce Tenent in Memphis in 1925, she moved to Little Rock until the age of nine when she moved back to Memphis and attended Messick High School where she met T. Murray Ferguson, her high school sweetheart whom she would later marry. Joyce says she remembers the day in the school gymnasium when the principal announced that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Murray had previously joined the Air Corps in 1943 and was among the first to go overseas at the outbreak of World War II.

“It was a turning point in our lives.” she said as she went on to talk about how their first born was ten months old before Murray would be granted leave from his European flying missions to finally meet his daughter Nancy.

In Joyce’s own writing’s she says that she could relate to what it was to grow up poor and to struggle. Even though after two years of active service her husband, now a second lieutenant making $400 a month, they did not own a car when the couple moved to Alliance, Nebraska and then to the Air Force base in Malden, Missouri where they rented a small

See MAYOR, page A2

Mayor Ferguson today at 97 years young.

Photo by Jane Russell MAYOR

From page A1

apartment. They had no washing machine, much less a dryer, and Joyce used a kerosene stove to heat up water to wash clothes.

“My hands were rough from scrubbing and washing clothes. I hung them on a clothesline and ironed them” she said.

After the war in 1947 they moved back to Memphis, where by now they had another baby girl and a boy and lived in a duplex while Murray used the G.I. Bill to attend the University of Tennessee Medical School graduating in 1951 and Joyce attended Memphis State and Mississippi College for Women where she studied English and history. During this period the Fergusons bought a car and much needed washing machine.

“We moved to West Memphis in 1955 and bought a house in 1956. We almost didn’t come but our good friends Dr. and Mrs. Jay talked us into it. We had a new baby girl and after 12 years and four children I was overjoyed to get an electric dryer!”

From then on Joyce was fervently active in the West Memphis community. So much so that, without exaggeration, it would be too much list here, however some of the highlights would include president of the Bragg Elementary and West Junior High PTA, a member of the Senior High PTA, one of eight founding members of the West Memphis Junior Auxiliary and even winning the award for West Memphis Woman of the Year in 1960.

Joyce’s _rst brush with politics would be in 1962 when she became the chairwoman of the Fluoridation Project, a successful community effort to add uoride to the West Memphis water supply. The _rst city in the United States to do so by referendum.

Obviously having a natural talent for community leadership it was to be that Joyce decided to run for Mayor of West Memphis in 1974 winning in a clear landslide victory receiving 2,104 of 5,257 votes cast and beating out 6 other men vying for the position. For context, her closest opponent, Alderman Billy G. Smith, received 839 votes. She took of_ce, taking over for Tilden Rodgers who did not run for re-election, on Jan. 1, 1975. She would serve eight years or two terms as the _rst female mayor of a First Class City in the state of Arkansas. The _rst female mayor of any city in Arkansas was Maude Duncan of Winslow, Ark in 1925.

Mayor Ferguson says her primary focus as mayor was to encourage citizen participation and to meet her constituents’ needs. She says that she had a “real education in those eight years” and received ‘much help and encouragement from fellow city of_cials, family and friends” and that jokingly she lost “30lbs in those _rst 2 months.”

It should be noted that we even asked Joyce if being a woman in politics, indeed a female mayor, nearly 50 years ago if she experienced any misogyny or prejudice during her tenure and she quickly brushed the notion off with a wave of her hand and a knowing smile that seemed to imply “they wouldn’t dare”. However, it is said that even Bob Hope “took notice of the 5-foot-1-inch package of matronly dynamite and while in town for a football game made a joking comment about ‘the woman mayor’”. However what that joke might have been seems to be lost to history and deservedly so.

Not one to mince words, Mayor Ferguson let her record and accomplishments speak for themselves. Again, attempting to list all of them would constitute an another article entirely but she pointed out what she was most proud of. City Hall, the Civic Auditorium, the Neighborhood Service Center, Tilden Rodgers Park, Holiday Plaza Mall, the 19th Street _re station, West Memphis City Shop and the Mississippi River port were all built during her administration.

One of her proudest moments, she recounts, came in late 1976 after making exhaustive attempts to get the Tennessee Valley Authority utilities to include West Memphis for economic development in order to lower extremely high utility bills at the time. It was denied several times. However, in an example of her dogged insistence, she found a loophole in the law that allowed West Memphis to purchase 1 percent of two of the TVA’s coal-_red generating plants, which resulted in the lower utility rates she sought for her constituents.

Mayor Ferguson did not run for a third term wishing to spend more time with her family and seek out many of her other interests. In 1983 she went to work for Omega Travel Agency which allowed her to explore her passion for travel. Some of her favorite places are Egypt, Chine, France and Italy.

After the passing of her _rst husband, in 1989 Joyce married retired Eastern Airlines pilot Robert Wyatt and spent “ten wonderful years” with him until his death in 1999. It is said that she spends her days bouncing from one passion to another. Visiting art museums, traveling, playing bridge and that after becoming a “professional grandmother” she is now a professional great-grandmother. At 97 she still shows no signs of slowing down and ‘birthdays are nothing more than one more eventful year under her belt.”

As The Evening Times wrote of her in her last interview 18 years ago “She feels blessed. She is still as active as she was when visiting the voting polls in the 1950s and when she fervently championed the causes of West Memphians’ lives as their mayor. Part modern career women, part old-fashioned gal, wherever Joyce stands, the ground ourishes. She is a role model to all women, for she devotes her valuable time and energy to her family, her church, her community – and even sometimes – herself.”

Mayor Joyce Ferguson riding high in 1975.

A 1975 photo taken at the ground breaking for the R.F. Scruggs Building. Pictured from left to right are Richard Scruggs, Judge Jack Brawley, L.H. Polk and Maor Joyce Ferguson.

A “palm card” given out to voters in 1974. Ferguson won by a landslide.