Community suffered a great loss

Pea Ridge and the community served by this newspaper lost a historian and a friend last week when Jerry Nichols passed away unexpectedly.

Jerry was more than a fixture in our community, more than a recorder of his growing up in the area. He was a friend, a neighbor and someone who devoted his life to serving mankind without seeking worldly fame or the wealth the world associated with financial success. Jerry had the greatest gift any of us could hope for or desire — he was a friend, a neighbor, a giver of himself. He was a minister of the Word, a servant of the Church and active in the community he loved.

In sharing the experiences of growing up in the Pea Ridge area as he lived them, he gave a much younger generation a glimpse of a small community this next generation will miss. Pea Ridge is no longer the out-of-the-way, small town, north of Rogers or east of Bentonville. Farms as we knew them growing up have given way to acres and acres of new homes — new communities in themselves. The high school has now entered its third generation of growth with a sprawling building complex that Jerry’s generation could not have envisioned when they were in high school in the 1950s.

Part of Pea Ridge’s legacy will be the weekly contribution Jerry made to share his growing up in an earlier era, in a much different “small town.” Without the Jerry Nichols of an earlier Pea Ridge, the special events of long ago would be lost. It will continue to be a part of northwest Arkansas and rural America. His contribution of leaving his story in writing will remain a part of Pea Ridge — recorded for those who follow as the area continues to grow.

Jerry’s life was more than growing up in Pea Ridge and sharing his earlier years. He gave his life’s work to serving others through his years of ministry as a pastor in the Methodist Church. Jerry’s service was primarily in smaller rural communities where the need for servants of the Church met the rural communities needs beyond the Sunday morning church service. Jerry and his history articles will be missed by many who barely knew him and the contribution he made to the churches he served.

But by most of us older generation readers, he will be missed as a friend, a neighbor, a gift to our city that cannot be replaced. A gift we honor and thank God that he was a familiar part of Pea Ridge.