Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
‘If This Walk Could Talk’
Foley film chronicles 150 years of UA’s senior tradition
“The Senior Walk: To the freshman, it is a white strip in the distance; to the sophomore, it is a novelty; to the junior, it is a goal; [and] to the senior, it is the highway to success.”
— Dorothy Ann Brewer, UA Class of 1937
Think of Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” and then translate that intimate style of storytelling to something even closer to home — the Senior Walk at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Larry Foley’s latest film, “If This Walk Could Talk,” created as part of the UA’s celebration of its sesquicentennial, is that story, told in the words of those who remembered the first days of Arkansas Industrial University and those who graduated in 2021, in the midst of a pandemic — and the 150 years in between.
“The state legislature approved establishment of a land-grant university, to be known as the Arkansas Industrial University, on March 27, 1871,” the UA’s website recalls. “The federal Morrill Land Grant Act granted lands to Arkansas that could be sold, the revenues from which could then be used to pay for creation of the university.
“The Board of Trustees set about determining a location, asking for cities and counties in the state to put forward bids for the university. Only two bids could be called serious, one by the town of Batesville and a second from Washington County, which offered $100,000 in bonds, and Fayetteville, which offered an additional $30,000 and 400 acres of land. This latter bid proved successful, and the board visited Washington County to determine a location, choosing the hilltop farm of William McIlroy as second to none.”
Imagine, then, being William Hayden McIlroy Jr., graduating from the University of Arkansas — as it became known in 1899 — seeing your children and grandchildren following literally in your footsteps on the Senior Walk and being in a film about it. That’s how close the history of the UA still is — and why “If This Walk Could Talk” was a challenge, even for a veteran like Foley, whose films have earned eight Mid-America Emmys from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and 22 Emmy nominations in writing, journalistic enterprise, history, cultural history, special program, community service and directing, along with four Best of Festival of Media Arts awards from the international Broadcast Education Association.
“How do you do justice to a story [that’s] 150 years old?” muses Foley, a 1976 journalism grad of the UA himself. “And I’d already produced a historical chronology on the UA a few years ago when Dale Carpenter and I collaborated to produce ‘Beacon of Hope.’ I wanted to produce something meaningful, that would be unique. But what, and how? Finally, after months of stewing on this, I had an idea.
“Down the hall from my office is a student media room filled with a collection of old Razorback yearbooks, dating to the late 1800s,” Foley explains. “Each is filled with photographic snapshots, moments frozen in time, and some wonderful prose written by students, down through the years. Those stories spoke to me, and we use them liberally throughout our film. They are firsthand accounts of what students, and campus leaders, thought of the UA when they were here.
“We also sent out several ‘calls’ for folks to meet us on campus with their favorite stories, and I reached out to more folks who had told me stories in the past that I knew I wanted to include.
“Every name on the sidewalk has a story,” Foley says about the 6 miles of the Senior Walk, which is mapped out through the class of 2035. “Some of the stories are told by well-known alums, like the late Donna Axum, former Miss America, who roller-skated on the walk as a little girl. But many of the richest and most diverse stories are told by people who just showed up to talk with us, like the young man from India who loved the UA so much he dreaded graduation, and the man who graduated with his granddaughter.
“One of my favorites is told by a former student of mine, Ana Aguayo, a ‘Dreamer’ who tells the story of how she and her mom walked across the Sonoran Desert at night, hearing the sounds of rattlesnakes, hoping to elude authorities and praying for a new start in America,” Foley adds. “It will make you cry.”