What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/1183130
Annie Oakley With A Crossbow BECCA MARTIN-BROWN NWA Democrat-Gazette It was the late 1950s. War Eagle Mills Farm had a crafts fair. Eureka Springs had a folk festival. And an enthusiastic druggist named Arlis Coger knew exactly what the community of Huntsville needed to stake its claim to fame and tourist dollars — a crossbow tournament. Coger was a crossbow competitor, but he was not the originator of the tournament idea. George M. Stevens, an artist, inventor, crossbow maker and romantic fancier of the Middle Ages, put together the first National Crossbow Tournament in 1954 in Blanchard Springs. Coger and other civic leaders worked to lure Stevens and the tournament to Madison County, explains Marie Demeroukas, photo archivist and research librarian of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale, and in 1958, the medieval-themed event was held for the first time on Governor's Hill overlooking Huntsville. Demeroukas comes into the story much later, in the early summer of 2019, when the museum opened a new exhibit called "Scenes of Madison County." A photograph announcing the exhibit ran in the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Sunday, and by the time the museum opened to the public on Monday, Shirley Duncan Franklin was there to see the display. When she was a student at Huntsville High School, she told Demeroukas, Franklin had been a Crossbowette, part of a team of young women who were community ambassadors for the tournament and celebrities because of it. By the time Demeroukas was done talking to Franklin that morning, she knew the museum had to pursue this largely untold story. Over the next few months, Demeroukas spoke with more than Sharpshooters were unique in Huntsville history NOVEMBER 10-16, 2019 WHAT'S UP! 5 FAQ Crossbowettes Reunion WHEN — 2 p.m. Nov. 15; exhibit through Dec. 14 WHERE — Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale COST — Free INFO — 750-8165 See Sharpshooters Page 6 Courtesy Shiloh Museum of Ozark History / Northwest Arkansas Times Collection, Pat Donat, photographer Crossbowettes take aim on Governor's Hill in Huntsville in October 1962. Pictured from left are Beverly Alverson, Shirley Duncan, Susie McDonald, Linda Owens, Diane McKinney and Juanita Thompson. SPRINGDALE