Joe Bodenhamer a Conservative Democrat
Although his family was a Baxter County fixture, Joe was born in Springfield on September 17, 1948. Attending Mtn Home schools he graduated from MHHS in 1967 after achieving All-State status for his football excellence. Right after high school he married Margie Priest . Their first born, daughter Angela, was born soon after. Son Shelby and daughter Tracy later filled out the family. Joe went to Arkansas Tech in Russellville but soon returned to Mtn Home and began his working life as an employee at a Douglas aircraft facility at the airport. Moving on from that he joined Calvin Czeschin’s Mountain Home Phone Company where he stayed for twelve years. With his love of sports he began a sporting goods business which he called The Lockeroom. Located in the old Village Mall, he later (1981) sold it to his employee, Mickey Huskey. Then parlaying his phone industry experience into another entrepreneurial venture, he and Margie began The Telephone Connection (now Telephone Connections Inc). Both businesses are fixtures of Mtn Home commerce and are still serving Mtn Home.
During these years Joe had successfully run for the school board. In 1984 he won in a landslide saying “I have a total spectrum of the school”. This overall view was to counter allegations that he was only interested in the sports (football) program. Board service was not such a leap for a non-scholarly guy, actually he became the third generation of Bodenhamers to be on the MH school board. Joe’s great-uncle Rex (Jickie) Bodenhamer was the first, then Joe’s uncle, Hal (Bud) served and then came our Joe on the Board. Joe served ten years on the Board. While there the junior high was built, the high school remodeled, Pinkston, Guy Berry, and Nelson -Wilks-Herron were all remodeled as campus reorganizations were implemented to deal with a rising school population and the need for upgraded facilities.
In 1984 Joe was a little leery of the new guy hired as junior high assistant principal. The newbie’s presence came with two areas of suspicion and worry. He was not from Mtn Home ( indeed from California!) and he had an advanced college degree. Joe and he had several back and forths at Board meetings but they gained respect for each other as they had a common goal of improving MH schools. This is evidence of Joe's cautious acceptance of new people and situations which he judged and then, if satisfactory, included in his desire to make things better.
Joe’s school board experience gave him a taste of serving and improving the MH community he loved. He must have felt that he could do more in a position with greater range, so he ran for county judge in 1994. His defeat of the incumbent put him in a position of power from which he could do more for Baxter County beyond just the schools. Joe’s Assistant was Sue Newton who described Joe’s tenure as “progressive, proactive, and working with everybody.” Indeed, reflecting his sports perspective Joe himself said upon taking office “I will have a good team and be a team player.”
Some of the highlights of his first five terms (1995-2004) included; over 70 community meetings, hundreds of thousands in grant moneys, restoration of the Wolf House, improvement of rural fire departments resulting in lower insurance rates for rural residents, cleanup of illegal dump sites, over 100 miles of road pavings, construction of five major bridges and many concrete culverts to make creek crossings safer, implementation of a 911 system that is one of the best in the state, and implemented the early storm warning system (testing of that is heard every day at noon), the Alternative to Jail Program which the state adopted offering non-violent prisoners the chance to work providing community service, reduce their sentences and reduce county costs, setting up the Animal Control Advisory board, setting up the hazardous waste recycling unit, and overseeing a Water & Sewer Master Plan.
Some of the unique interactions he facilitated included State of the County Interviews on KTLO, Intergovernmental Cooperation Council meetings, the Baxter County Infrastructure Committee, and monthly staff meetings, so each knew what the others were doing and how to work together as he had said “ When we all work together, we serve the public better.”
April 26 of 2004 saw a huge amount of rainfall in Baxter County. Over a three day period we had 9.5 inches of rain. This resulted in flood stage rivers, homes flooding, roads washing out, and much damage. Joe and Charlie Newton ( the Director of Baxter County’s Office of Emergency Management) were out checking riverbanks, homes and property damages. Joe was quoted as saying “ We've got two or three places where people have built out "on the river and now all of a sudden they’re in the river.” It wasn't meant to be funny then, but it’s kind of funny now. The fact remains, he was out there, not sitting in an office.
Brother Jim Bodenhamer summarized Joe’s noteworthy characteristics that while Joe was on the Quorum Court “He worked well with the others regardless of party affiliation. He enjoyed working with people and worked hard to accomplish as much as he could.” After winning five elections, Joe lost the judgeship in 2004.
His contacts established as judge led him to the Arkansas Office of Emergency Management. While there he was named Arkansas’s first Homeland Security Director. He had moved down to Conway and there learned how to help in emergencies from the giving side rather than the needing side. In August of 2005 Hurricane Katrina proved disastrous to Louisiana and New Orleans. Joe shifted to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. While with them he helped provide aid there and then in September Hurricane Rita damaged Texas and Louisiana, and the next month Hurricane Wilma wiped out parts of Florida and the Caribbean with winds of 185 mph! These and other tragedies kept him busy not only helping others, but learning how those systems worked. Perhaps missing Mountain home, he left FEMA in 2008 and again ran for judge.
2009 marked his re-election as County Judge. Running for reelection his slogan was “ I have learned government from a different perspective “ (referring to his FEMA years). Another big ice storm hit Baxter County in January of 2009. Thousands of trees were felled, blocking roads and locking people in without power, hundreds had to be housed in shelters, the local National Guard helped with their Humvees to check on rural residents, and 7,000 homes were without power. Eventually the City and County would haul between 400 and 500 truck loads of branches, tree trunks and other tree parts to be burned. It was a big problem for many.
With very little mainstream power available, generators were at a premium. Joe was driving down the road and saw a guy selling them at the side of the road. Joe pulled over, asked the price for a generator and then asked the guy if FEMA was going to reimburse the buyer for the cost of the generator. The guy said “Yes”. Joe said “That's not true” and called the police to come get the guy. By the time they got there he was gone, but at least the fraudster learned not to try his scheme in Mtn Home. That extra bit of care provides a glimpse of the commitment that Joe brought to the job.
Joe’s experience with OEM and FEMA came into play after this storm in his knowing how to work with these other agencies and what was needed to get the most out of them in the shortest possible time. He and Charlie Newton repeatedly pleaded with the population to let them know about their volunteer hours. It'd be more than just nice to know, because 75% of the storm expenses are reimbursed by the federal government. The state is expected to over 12.5% The remaining 12.5% comes from local governments. What Joe knew though was that the county gets reimbursed $10 for every hour that is recorded by the volunteers. According to former County Judge Joe Dillard, with the abundant volunteer hours input from citizens, Baxter County ended up with more than it needed to cover its 12.5%!
Shortly after this photo was taken Joe had had enough of Governor Beebe’s generic platitudes about helping Baxter and other counties. He got right in the Governor’s face and said “ I need to talk to just you.” Joe led the Governor to his truck, they got in, locked the doors, and some unadorned interaction took place. The result was that the Governor ordered Major General Wofford to send 100 National Guardsmen to Mountain Home to help clear the roads and check on people. They arrived the next day!
As genial as he was, Joe was also a redhead and inherited a temper from his father. During one contentious meeting of the North West Arkansas Solid Waste Management District Board Joe accused the leadership of running the meeting “like a kangaroo court”, the President called Joe a “Bigmouth” and threatened to have the police eject him from the meeting. Joe left on his own after delegating his vote to Mayor Osmon. The landfill was a vital issue to Joe although five other counties were in the NWASWMDB, the site was in HIS county so pollution leaking out from it would pollute Lake Norfork. The likely possibility of being outvoted made voting almost unfair. Joe had to be loud and work hard to make sure the Board also did right by Baxter County.
Demographics were shifting in Baxter County, as more and more folks moved in to take advantage of the improvements largely brought about by democratic legislators like the dams, lakes, bridges, roads that have made it such a desirable place to live. Democratic control seemed waning when on April 26th 2012 Joe wrote an editorial in the Baxter Bulletin in which he decried a lost vote for crucial road building equipment on those “whose political party was more important than representing the people of Baxter County.” Although his 2012 slogan was “Putting people first, not politics,” he lost to his old school board member/partner Mickey Pendergrass.
Joe gracefully retired and chose to devote his time to family and a new relationship. He and Margie had parted ways years before, and he and Sue had become a couple. They shared many road trips out west, Caribbean cruises and quality time together. One of his favorite pastimes was getting the Bodenhamer families of children, grandchildren, cousins, aunts, uncles together for family reunions in August. The barbeques are still strong in the memories of those who attended. Family values!
Like so many others, cancer invaded his body and his final year was difficult. Joe died peacefully surrounded by friends and family on August 15, 2023. Typical of Joe, he wanted no big service or ceremony and that is the way he was laid to rest in the family plot in the Mountain Home Cemetery. Interestingly he left word that any monetary memorials that folks wished to make should go to the Baxter County Historical Society. This final wish exemplifies his love for Baxter County and his desire to see that the story of Baxter County is preserved and shared. Quite a guy.
I can only imagine the smile on his face if he would have been told that the “new guy” would write a praiseworthy article about him some day. He would have laughed! I laugh now to think of it.
Thanks to Bodenhamer family members and co-workers for their poignant recollections. Thanks also to Vince Anderson for his research assistance.
