When we least expect

It is evening last Monday; 31-yearold Jason Alan Adcock reportedly speeds away from a domestic dispute just south of Branson. Sheriff’s deputies responding to a call about that argument catch sight of his 2004 GMC truck and try to stop him. The Taney County sheriff later would tell a news reporter the suspect rammed their patrol car.

Adcock then flees southbound down the four-laned U.S. 65 into Arkansas toward Harrison. He is driving fast and swerving in the oncoming northbound lane.

Meanwhile, Terry Lee Stambaugh, 61 of Harrison, heads north in his 2007 Toyota, I’m told to a peaceful place he and his wife recently purchased along the lake at Branson. He’s likely entertaining reflections about their new place as he drives peacefully along the interstate highway.

Meeting his maker is probably the last thing on Terry’s mind.

Yet within a split second, and with no way to avoid the inevitable, these two men’s lives end as Adcock’s truck slams head-on into Terry’s smaller car. Just that quick, it is over, much like blowing out a candle or the momentary flash of a firefly’s tail.

This story deeply affected me and many others in Harrison who knew and appreciated Terry Stambaugh for the good and decent man he was, whether working as a vice president of the former American Freightways, or later in real estate and later still as a banker, motivational speaker and consultant.

A former police officer in California, Terry was my immediate supervisor during the 10 months I spent in 2000 as director of communications for the late Sheridan Garrison’s successful trucking enterprise. After a sale, it’s become Fed-Ex Freight. In our months together, Terry was always kind and understanding with an out-of-water journalist wedged rather awkwardly onto a trucking management team.

He stayed in touch from time to time over the years and we remained friends after I soon (and thankfully) returned to the ocean of a newspaper career and swimming in words.

What can anyone say when such events stun us? Nothing can offer solace to his grieving family. His friends deal with such unexpected loss in their own ways.

Terry didn’t go anywhere we all don’t. He just went years too soon. And the illogic and unfairness is always the rub, isn’t it?

We can’t know the moment of our individual departure from this strange world. As I’ve written ofttimes earlier, time’s a wastin’, my friends. Get on with living and doing all those things you plan for the years ahead that may or may not come to pass.

Godspeed, Terry Lee Stambaugh. Thanks for all your kindnesses to me and others.

Intentionally ignored

Some of you will recall how the whole controversy over our state’s wrongheaded permitting of C&H Hog Farms in our treasured Buffalo National River watershed arose when the National Park Service (official stewards of that river) complained loudly and publicly that the state and its Department of Environmental Quality (chortle) had never notified them it was allowing a swine factory into its purview.

Well, thanks to the 2014 master’s thesis by University of Arkansas civil engineering student Samantha Hovis, we learn a special committee appointed by former Governor Mike Beebe under Act 1511—comprised of the Department of Environmental Quality’s Water Division now-former director Ryan Benefield; a livestock operator and an agriculture grower, both members of the Arkansas Farm Bureau; an agriculture professor; and a Little Rock attorney—apparently made that decision.

What, no environmental, geoscience or what I’d consider genuine water-quality experts?

Hovis writes that this committee did not approve giving notification to the National Park Service superintendent of “possible CAFOs in the Buffalo River watershed.”

Oh, really? And so it was written and so it wasn’t done. Governmental transparency at its least transparent with the very people responsible for maintaining the purity of the country’s first national river.

Three helping strays

Washington County is blessed with three organizations devoted to the well-being of animals and strays. That alone can often make distinguishing between them confusing, which I might easily have done in my recent column about public funding for the Washington County Shelter. Let’s see if I can keep it all straight for valued readers.

The Humane Society of the Ozarks, founded in 1946, isn’t a shelter facility, yet does large-scale rescues, provides veterinary care, rehabilitates animals (by using fosters, vet clinics and boarding facilities) and adopts them to loving forever homes. This organization initiated the Fayetteville Animal Shelter in 1965 and transferred operation to the city in 1995.

Fayetteville Animal Services/Shelter currently accepts and answers calls concerning animals only within the city limits, although it formerly took in animals from rural Washington County prior to the county shelter opening in 2012.

Finally, the Washington County Animal Shelter (which has been the subject of considerable Quorum Court debate over financing of late) answers calls about and accepts animals from rural areas outside the boundaries of Fayetteville and Springdale. A fortunate county for people and strays, I’d say.