NOTABLE ARKANSANS

She was born Lucille Thornburg in 1921, the granddaughter of a Little Rock writer, newspaper society page editor and civic leader. Her father abandoned the family when she was still a baby, leaving them in dire straits, so they moved into a barn on her grandmother’s property. She attended Little Rock public schools, where her fighting to defend the underdog often got her into trouble: “No one ever told me fighting was wrong.” She dropped out of school before the 10th grade.

When World War II started in Europe, she drove a Greyhound bus from downtown Little Rock to Maumelle Ordnance Works. When the United States entered the war, she got a job in Washington as a Pentagon filing clerk. She joined the Women’s Army Corps and was assigned overseas. A suicide bomber hit her ship while it was docked in the harbor in Naples, Italy, killing more than 300 Americans. Because she had experience driving buses, she became an ambulance driver. Her back was injured when a German rocket struck her ambulance, causing her pain for the rest of her life. For the duration of the war, she drove supply trucks in Egypt.

She attended what was then Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway, but after two years, left for California, to study at the Pasadena Playhouse. She changed her surname to that of her grandmother’s before moving to New York, where she performed in TV soap opera and dramas.

After returning to Little Rock in 1954, she worked for the county sheriff’s department as a humane officer, investigating crimes against people and animals. She became the host of KARK-TV’s Saturday morning show, Aunt Lucy’s Animal Fair.

She established the city’s first community theater, often casting Philander Smith College students in productions, which drew the ire of segregationist groups, along with Gov. Orval Faubus. After a cross was burned in her mother’s yard, she returned to New York. Between Broadway shows, she would come back to Arkansas and work with small theaters across the state. In 1962, she moved back to Little Rock for good.

In 1987, although in poor health and wearing a back brace, she came to the rescue of a young woman during an active assault, beating the attacking man with her cane. National newspapers and magazines published a photo of her brandishing her cane, making her a national hero. Who was this actress and civic leader, whose cane was requested by the Smithsonian Institute, but never received, because someone had stolen it from her grocery cart?

Who was this actress and civic leader, whose cane was requested by the Smithsonian Institute, but never received, because someone had stolen it from her grocery cart?

Lucy Babcock