Gift to UALR honors Bowles

Walter “Dixon” Bowles was the leader of the Dan Blocker Singers, a popular 1960s group that performed on “The Milton Berle Show” and “The Lucille Ball Show,” according to Angie Faller, news director at UALR.

LITTLE ROCK — The University of Arkansas at Little Rock will add another endowed professorship courtesy of a $250,000 donation from Elizabeth Bowles in honor of her father, musician, educator and entrepreneur W.D. Bowles.

“My father was passionate about education and passionate about helping people,” Bowles, CEO of Little Rock-based Aristotle Unified Communications, said in a news release from UALR. “I thought that honoring him with this endowment would be fitting because he cared deeply about the power of music and was a gifted choir director. I wanted to honor his roots.”

Walter “Dixon” Bowles was the leader of the Dan Blocker Singers, a popular 1960s group that performed on “The Milton Berle Show” and “The Lucille Ball Show,” according to Angie Faller, news director at UALR. The musicians grew disenchanted with Hollywood by the late ’60s, however, and several members of the Dan Blocker Singers relocated to Big Piney, Ark., at the invitation of a local minister, where they opened a dinner theater and ran the minister’s guest ranch.

“As he was driving to a screen test in Hollywood one day, my father realized he didn’t want a life in show business,” Bowles said in the news release. “My father was being hailed as the next James Dean, but that’s not the life he wanted.”

Bowles spent the rest of his life in Arkansas, where he went on to become a successful entrepreneur. In 1995, he co-founded the internet service provider his daughter now leads, according to Faller. Previously, he had founded The Group Inc., an intentional community that managed the Lodge at Mount Magazine in the early ’70s and opened popular dinner theaters in Greers Ferry and Memphis in the late 1970s.

“Throughout every iteration of my father’s entrepreneurial journey, music always remained important to him, as it is to me,” his daughter stated in the news release. “I was a member of the youth choir my father directed, and in law school, I performed with the school’s a capella choir.”

The W. D. Bowles Endowed Professorship in Music — the eighth endowed professorship at UALR — in the School of Literary and Performing Arts will attract and recruit highly qualified individuals to the position of professor, supplement university support for outstanding faculty and provide the holder with the resources to make contributions in teaching, research and public service, according to Faller. It’s only the latest significant gift to be part of UALR’s Centennial Campaign, which celebrates the university’s 100-year anniversary in 2027 and is the largest fundraising effort in university history.

Endowed professorships like this one are a critical piece of the Centennial Campaign, Christian O’Neal, vice chancellor for university advancement, said last fall. “We’ve brought in 65 new endowments since the start of the silent phase, and those will only improve as the university grows older.”

As of Feb. 1, UALR has raised more than $167 million — the goal is to raise $250 million by 2027 — as part of the Centennial Campaign — and 148 new endowments have been created, according to UALR.

Under the leadership of Lorissa Mason, director of choral activities, UALR’s choral program “has flourished,” Stacy Pendergraft, co- director of the School of Literary and Performing Arts, said in the news release from UALR. Kris McAbee, co- director of the School of Literary and Performing Arts, said “I am so grateful for Ms. Bowles’ recognition and support of the choral program at UA Little Rock.”

Bowles, who worked for five years at the law firm of Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., before moving back to Arkansas in 2000 to join Aristotle, has deep ties to UALR. She graduated summa cum laude in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in international studies, and she’s an alumna of the Donaghey Scholars Honors Program, which provided her a full scholarship and the opportunity to study in Europe. After her father’s death in 2010, she took over as chairperson of the board for Aristotle.

“The Donaghey Scholars Program provided excellent preparation for a career in the legal profession,” Bowles said in the news release. “The Socratic teaching methods, the debates with teachers and the small class sizes all prepared me for law school. I think UA Little Rock gave me exactly what I needed to be successful at Vanderbilt Law School, and in fact, I graduated first in my law school class.”

With this gift, Bowles hopes to provide other students with the same opportunities she had as a student at UALR.

“I hope the donation helps the school attract a fantastic choral professor and that, as a result, other students get to have the type of experience at UA Little Rock that I did,” Bowles said in the news release.