Archie Monroe may have more in common with Southern Arkansas University than anyone else in Columbia County. As the University celebrates its Centennial, so does Monroe who turns 100-years-old on November 23. That means that Monroe, who was born in 1909, has been around as long as the University and has witnessed the changes the institution and the world have undergone since that time.
On Saturday, September 19, he will be in the lead wagon at the Great Southern Arkansas Mule Ride, an event held in celebration of the University’s Centennial and created to honor the history of the University’s mascot, the Mulerider. Alumni such as Monroe, community members, faculty, staff and students will ride on mules or ride in wagons to McNeil, Ark., four miles away, just as football players of yesteryear had to when they had no other transportation to get them to the train station where they would catch a train and make their way to away football games.
Monroe said this will be his first wagon ride in about eighty or so years. He said his 99 years of living has not included one ride directly on a mule.
“I haven’t been in a buggy in a long time. I guess it has been since I was a kid, back in the late teens, early 1920s,” he said.
Riding with Monroe will be other distinguished guests with SAU ties: Mildred Greer Ruff, who was a cheerleader at SAU during 1934-1935, and Josephine Davis, a longtime friend of the University and supporter of the SAU Foundation.
Monroe, who attended Magnolia A&M from 1927-1929, received his associate of arts degree in 1929. The Mulerider name was already in place and as a Mulerider Monroe played the trombone in the school orchestra. The school orchestra would practice in a building known as the Armory because that is where the local National Guardsmen met. The building also contained classrooms and a gym which served the basketball players and theatre students who could use the area as a stage. Monroe can still remember the campus layout and how remarkably different it looked compared to the modern day campus which spreads across 1,418 acres and includes the most modern science and technology building in the region currently under construction and scheduled for opening in summer of 2010.
“It is unbelievable how progress has been made,” Monroe said. “We were so proud of our buildings then too. There was a chemistry lab and a physics lab in the armory.”
To contrast the students during Monroe’s era who attended school at Magnolia A&M and students who attend modern day Southern Arkansas University, consider that students of Monroe’s time did not have television to keep up with current events, the internet or text messaging to keep up with friends. They had to call their friends from a landline or read about news in the newspaper or hear about something on a piece of technology that was new at the time—the radio.
“The radio station would play jazz music that was very popular during the time,” Archie said, recalling listening to the radio as a student. “There were news items too, but the radio station would not stay on past bedtime and it would not start back up the next day until around noon.” The Great Southern Arkansas Mule Ride, which Monroe will participate in, will be mentioned in area newspapers, radio stations and perhaps even a television station or two. Monroe said he is prepared to talk to any reporters about his experience with the University and how he feels “fortunate” to have lived such a long life and to have lived to tell about it.
“I feel like going to (Magnolia A&M) was a good start for me,” Monroe said. “The education I received there helped me further my studies at Fayetteville.”
Monroe graduated with a bachelor’s of science and business administration degree from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and began working in banking in Little Rock for the next eight years. Then in 1939, he came back home to Columbia County and began working as the manager of the Magnolia Insurance Agency where he spent the next 39 years. He has lived in Magnolia ever since and has become a historian of sorts because frankly, he may be the only person living who still remembers things that happened half a century ago like they were yesterday.
His civic contributions have included being the first member of the Magnolia Rotary Club when the club was established in 1939, president of the Magnolia Chamber of Commerce in 1941 and again in 1954, member of the Columbia County Library Board, eight years of service with the Magnolia Municipal Water System as a commissioner and 45 years of service on the Magale Foundation Board which operates out of Shreveport. He was named the Magnolia Citizen of the Year in 2000 and was the 2002 recipient of the SAU Alumni Golden Rider Award. He served on the SAU Foundation Board and is a Friend of the Magale Library.
Although Monroe will turn 100 in less than three months, he does not shy away from modern day conveniences such as computers. He has his own e-mail address and he keeps a busy social schedule. Folks still have to call him before they pop over, else they may miss him because he is at a meeting or taking his afternoon walk in his neighborhood.
If you plan to go to the Muleride on Saturday and are looking for Archie Monroe, look for a man in the front wagon with a straw hat. He said that is what he is planning to wear on the historic mule ride which is made even more historic by his presence and participation.
