Early resident helped carve community
In 1965, when the first homes in the new development, Bella Vista Village, were being built, there was little else in the area. It had been farmland. The very first Bella Vista residents traveled to Bentonville for groceries and other supplies, as well as for restaurants and churches. In 1971, the first gas station opened in what is now Town Center.
While Cooper Communities engineers were planning roads, subdivisions and recreation amenities, early residents were helping to create the community they wanted. One of those early residents was Paul Parish.
A story that ran in the April 29, 1987, Weekly Vista, points out that Parish was one of very few Arkansas natives in Bella Vista. He was born in 1910 in Hope and moved to Fayetteville for college. He worked in the furniture business in Tulsa from 1942 to 1972.
He built a home in Bella Vista in 1968 but didn’t move until 1972. In 1974, he dismantled a log cabin and moved it pieceby-piece into his back yard near Lake Avalon.
Parish used the log cabin as a studio for his artwork. According to the same 1987 story, Parish was a self-taught woodcarver who won awards nationally. Some of his work is still displayed, including a relief carving of golfers that hangs in the pro shop building at Kingswood and another carving in the craft room at Riordan Hall.
The cabin is now an exhibit at the history museum.
Besides saving the log cabin, Parish is also credited with saving the barn that became Wishing Spring Gallery, according to Xyta Lucas of the Bella Vista History Museum.
In 1993, Jan. 28 was designated the Paul Parish Day. A Weekly Vista story from Jan. 9, 1993, quotes Parish about the time he checked out the old barn.
“It looked like it might have possibilities. I took a machete and cut my way through the high weeds and underbrush. It seemed a pretty good structure,” he said. He went on to describe swallows nesting in the rafters that kept flying into his head and “those darn black snakes.” He took one large black snake and put in a box to present to the Art Club president, but the president’s wife wouldn’t let him keep it.
Gilbert Fite, in his book “From Vision to Reality: A History of Bella Vista Village,” reports that Parish was the president of the Art Club in 1982 when it acquired the old Dairy Barn. It took two years for volunteers to restore the barn. It opened as a gallery in 1984 and is still operating.
The new community also needed churches and Parish was a charter member and a trustee of the Bella Vista Baptist Church, where he and his wife Thelma both sang in the choir. He gave some of his wood sculptures to the church.
In 1983, Parish was on the board of the new cemetery which was created when John Cooper Sr. donated 15 acres of land near the intersection of Lancashire and Forest Hills Blvd. The cemetery is still run by a board made up of members of various Bella Vista Churches.
A wooden tiger, probably carved by Parish, is still on display at Bentonville High School.
In 1993, when the community honored him, Parish was still busy helping the library find its permanent home. The library was also started by volunteers and moved to a few different spaces before building at its current site.
“I talked to John (Cooper) Jr., about plotting that land across from St. Mary’s Clinic (now the Mercy Clinic) for a library building,” he said, in the Vista story. The library moved to its newly built location in 1996.
Parish was living in Concordia when he died in 1997. His daughter still lives there and has much of his art on display. She told Lucas she plans to bequeath it to her children.