Hot Springs’ ‘best friend’
Family, friends reflect on Farrar’s life, legacy
Family and friends of civic leader Clay Farrar reflected on the life and legacy of Hot Springs’ “best friend” at a memorial service held Tuesday in the Hot Springs Convention Center.
“I don’t know anyone who knew more about the history of Hot Springs, cared more for this community and did more for this community for a greater span of years than Clay Farrar,” his childhood friend, Eric Jackson, said during the service. “Clay gave 42 years of community service to this community; project after project, organization after organization. Any time this community called on Clay he said, ‘Yes.’”
Jackson illustrated Farrar’s devotion to the community with an anecdote of the time he — in short — saved Hot Springs National Park.
“I’m sitting at home one afternoon … phone rings; it’s Clay,” Jackson said. “He’s unhappy. … He said, ‘I’m sitting here reading the 10-year master plan from the Department of the Interior that covers all the public lands in this country, including the national park lands, and right here on page 982 — clear as day — they’re planning to mothball our national park because they plan to decommission it; demote it to a National Historic Site or something like that, and we’ve got to do something about it.’”
Jackson said this statement from Farrar left his head spinning.
“The first reason it’s spinning is, I’m sitting here thinking who, but Clay Farrar, on a Saturday afternoon would be reading that
10-year master plan that the Department of Interior put out? And second, you’re talking about the United States of America and massive government agencies. What are a couple of goobers like us in Arkansas going to do about this?”
He said for the next three years he watched Farrar, a “grandmaster,” at work.
“Hot Springs was his chessboard and he was moving pieces all over his chessboard,” Jackson said. “United States senators, people in Congress, cabinet-level officials. We even went over and knocked on Gov. Bill Clinton’s door and said ‘We need your help,’ and he said, ‘You got it.’
“Clay was moving all these pieces around … the board for three years, and at the end of three years Clay was able to look up at the Department of the Interior and its 10-year master plan, and he said ‘Checkmate. You are not taking away our national park status.’”
Jackson said more recently, Farrar was getting “revved up” once again on a project involving the old Army and Navy General Hospital, “the greatest threat to our national park since that 10year master plan.”
“It’s not the building, per se,” he said. “It’s all of the toxins and everything that is up there, they’re sitting right on top of the spring water. He’s not that much concerned about the building, he’s concerned about the national park. Right up until the end, we were with him the night he passed away. He is giving us chapter and verse who needs to do what, what needs to happen, when we need to do it. Now that I look back on it, I realize he’s playing chess again; he’s trying to save this community.”
Lara Farrar spoke of her father’s devotion to saving the old hospital, and, essentially, Hot Springs National Park.
“My father was working tirelessly to save the Army-Navy Hospital in downtown Hot Springs. … His mother and father met there,” she said. “The building meant, personally, a lot to him, but also he felt like should it decay and collapse it would be just absolutely catastrophic for the national park.”
She then called on community leaders to now carry on her father’s legacy with the old building that sits above the bath houses downtown.
“I know it would mean a lot to him if we could find a solution for that building, so please, try, if you can,” she said.
Among other remarks she made for her father, Lara Farrar included a “very frank discussion” she described as a difficult but necessary discussion to have.
“As many of you know, several weeks ago my dad took his own life,” she said. “We are all left with many questions. Honestly, I’m still in shock. … Did he think that he was terminally ill? Was he severely depressed? What happened? Unfortunately, we likely will never have answers to those questions, and this is the tragedy of suicide.”
“I am not ashamed to talk about it — it is not a secret — it is what happened and it is a tragedy,” she said. “But honestly, and very honestly, I am not sure that my dad would have died any other way. My father deeply feared losing control of his health and ending up in a nursing home. His own father, Clayton, died from Alzheimer’s, and I know that Clayton’s death imprinted my father with a very, very deep fear of his own mortality of suffering and of pain. I also know that the pandemic was very hard on my dad. I think the isolation directly contributed to his depression and a decline in his mental health.
“I want to talk to you about what happened because I think it’s important. In the past few weeks I have been amazed how many people’s lives have been touched by suicide. … It’s epidemic and it’s pervasive.”
Lara Farrar went on to quote a 2007 speech from former President Bill Clinton, who was also in attendance at the service.
“It’s too bad,” she said, quoting Clinton, “that we spend much more time thinking about the .1% that divides us, than the 99.9% that we have in common, because that imbalance keeps us from making positive changes in the world.
“There is no challenge we face — no barrier to having our grandchildren here 50 years from now — that is greater than the ideological and emotional divide that continues to demean our common life and our ability to solve our common problems.”
To take the theme of common humanity a “step further,” she talked about the commonness of human frailty.
“I do not know what was going on with my dad,” Lara Farrar said. “Sadly, he did not share his pain, his sadness, his fears; he just wasn’t that type of man. I don’t know whether it was shame or fear, or just, I don’t know. I wish I would have. I wish I knew more, understood more, had more answers. I don’t.
“In our common humanity is our shared human frailty. It is something that we all have in common, and it is something that we must not be afraid to share. Now, more than ever, in the aftermath of one of the greatest crises that you, me and everyone will ever see in our lifetimes — this pandemic — we need each other.
“In our strength, there is vulnerability. In our confidence, there is shame. In our love, there is pain. In our humanity, all of its greatness, there is also all of our frailty. It is something we must not be afraid to share. We have to share so that it does not destroy us, so that it does not kill us and so that we do not kill ourselves.”
The 24/7 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 800-2738255.