The continuing education of Fufa
“I see them pass still, the little old tiny-headed women of Clinton, Miss., in the 1950s, in their giant cars on the brick streets. Or on their porches or at their azalea beds scolding dogs, then me; nestled in the pews and bobbing heads in the aisles of the church. Bringing in their covered dishes to church suppers. They established the tone of my world.” — Barry Hannah, 2002
No one would ever call Fufa Fullerton a little old tinyheaded woman. Her head held a broad mind, well cultivated by the study of Latin, Greek, Russian, law, and anything else that attracted her attention.
Nor did she scold, not to my knowledge, though I remember her objecting to a reflexive “yes, ma’am” or two. As for giant cars on brick streets, well, the brick streets of Warren, Ark., are on the National Register of Historic Places, and it’s not hard to imagine Fufa piloting a giant car.
The only child of Vashti King and Arthur Fairfax Triplett, Fufa was born in Pine Bluff on Aug. 28, 1934. Her given name was Tomme Fairfax; she acquired the nickname as an infant. Her father’s father’s parents came to Arkansas from Virginia before the Civil War.
Fufa began her formal education at Mrs. Cooper’s Kindergarten in Pine Bluff. Members of her class (1939-1940) started getting together for reunions after college, calling themselves “Mrs. Cooper’s Kindergarten Gang.”
The kindergarten gang held annual reunions throughout my childhood in the 1980s (my stepfather is a member), and those gatherings persisted into the 2010s. Along with their husbands and wives, members of the kindergarten gang went along wonderfully divergent paths. Several bushwhacked their own. In your so-called “traditional marriage,” meaning the kind of marriage that became the norm after the radical social changes brought by World Wars I and II, wives usually deserve a good part of the credit (or blame) for the work of their husbands, so I’m including spouses as I rattle off this incomplete list:
From the handful of little kids who attended a private kindergarten in Pine Bluff at the end of the Great Depression came a grocery magnate who founded a familiar chain restaurant, a jazz aficionado and piano dealer/ travel agent, a cinema enthusiast who built a Chinese pagoda in Hot Springs, a geologist who farmed in Costa Rica decades before it became a tourist destination, and an early computer programmer for Arkansas Power and Light who founded her own real estate company. (Next time you see a “girls who code” sticker, please think about Marcelline Giroir in 1960, working a mainframe for Arkansas Power and Light.)
And there was Fufa. The main thing I know about her childhood is that she had a large playhouse in the backyard of her house at Seventh Avenue and Poplar Street in Pine Bluff. When her parents sold the house to Sears Roebuck in 1955 and moved to the storied Roane-Bell house (c. 1852) at 811 West Barraque, Fufa had the playhouse moved to the backyard of the house in Warren where she raised her children.
Fufa insisted that she was a liberal, and she was, in the best sense of the word. But along with hanging onto her kindergarten friends, hanging onto that playhouse is evidence of a conservative streak, again in the best sense of the word. As Wallace Stegner said of the character who had the same hairdo her whole life, anything good was worth sticking with. If you’re lucky enough to have your own playhouse, do not let it go.
Fufa graduated from Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Conn., then attended Smith College for a year. She left Smith to marry Sam Fullerton, who was five years her senior.
We have allowed our idea of education to be confined to institutions and have become obsessed with certifications, licenses, and degrees, and in doing so have forgotten that one year at a great liberal arts college is sufficient to set up many women for a lifetime of self-directed learning.
So while she ran her household and raised her children in Sam’s hometown of Warren, Fufa directed her own education. After her children were grown, she returned to college at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, and in the 1990s commuted to Little Rock to attend law school, graduating in 1999.
When Warren raised its utility rates in 1986, Fufa ran for city council to represent those who were burdened by the change. She won, and won again and again, serving for 30 years.
In her homily, Fufa’s daughter, the Rev. Fairfax Fair, noted that many people regarded Fufa as a second mother. To others she was a flesh-and-blood patron saint, always keeping up with you, watching, inquiring, curious. Her accent was Southern, but there was no drawl. Her manner of speaking was soft, but her meaning was pointed. A question might come as an italicized statement while she held your hand and held you in her blue-eyed gaze.
My favorite, a month after bumping into each other at a restaurant: “I want to know what you were doing with Paul Greenberg.” Did she scold? No. The question contained only mischief, encouragement, delight. Whatever she thought of Greenberg’s political opinions, he’d given a good homily at Dolf Kastor’s funeral in 1988, and Dolf, of Saenger Theater fame, had been Fufa’s first beau. That’s what mattered.
Fufa might have had a more expansive reach than the Clinton, Miss., women whom Barry Hannah had in mind, but she and her friends established the tone of my world. They were not afraid of the future; they led the way, in unusual directions. They tolerated eccentricities and encouraged them. But they shared a place and shared a past, and for some of us, that is all.