“You know, it sucks. That’s my statement on the matter: It sucks.”
— Steve Arrison, CEO of Visit Hot Springs, when asked how the coronavirus pandemic had affected tourism in the city
“It’s hard to emphasize just how bad April was, as a month, for organizations. April had operating margins to the tune of negative 35%. And 100% of the hospitals we surveyed had negative margins.”
— Erik Swanson, a vice president of Kaufman Hall of Chicago, which surveys some 900 U.S. hospitals
“Resilience is kind of the theme right now. It’s kind of day-by-day. It’s almost hour-by-hour. Everything changes so quick, so fast, the information and the misinformation. I think everybody’s so desperate for something concrete to sink their teeth into. We’re getting creative. We’re doing things we never have.”
— Ted Herget, owner of Gearhead Outfitters of Jonesboro, describing his company’s response to the pandemic
“It’s literally been like a holiday season for us, it’s been so busy.”
— John Akins, co-owner of Legacy Wine & Spirits in Little Rock and president of the United Beverage Retailers of Arkansas, discussing the boom in liquor deliveries after the state started allowing them in March
“Every job that I’ve ever had, I go into it to try to make it better than it was when I went in. And that trait was rewarded.”
— Lorie Tudor, the first woman to head the Arkansas Transportation Department
“My goal was to show people that literally anyone can do it. You don’t have to be a chef; you just have to be able to follow directions.”
— Chelsie Miles of Rogers, the CEO and head chef at CannaCook.com, a website devoted to cooking with medical marijuana that she started with her husband, Chris
“We have had a couple of calls from people saying, ‘I cannot be told to do this. I call that the ‘watch this syndrome.’ I can’t do this? Well, watch this.”
— Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce President Steve Clark after the city passed a mandatory mask requirement
“I’m a little sensitive to the issue to begin with. It is just the right thing to do.”
— USA Truck CEO James Reed, who has a multi-racial family, on creating an inclusion and diversity council and increasing the company’s minority recruiting efforts
“I do find it interesting that Tom Terminella ran for mayor as a businessman when in court filings he claims to own no businesses, make no money and own no assets.”
— Brian Ferguson, Rogers attorney trying to collect on an $806,300 judgment against the Fayetteville real estate broker.
“To me, it was just a pretty brutal and unnecessary execution of those deer.”
— Tommy Drew, an avid outdoorsman and land manager, on the three Arkansas Game & Fish Commission’s deer kills of 13 whitetails including two fawns on the University of Arkansas’ Cammack Campus in Little Rock at the request of UA System President Donald Bobbitt
“My wife has threatened me with harm if she sees me talking to an architect.”
— George Gleason, chairman and CEO of Bank OZK, on his time spent on the company’s new west Little Rock headquarters and previous building projects
“The first 30-40 days put everyone in uh-oh mode.”
— Tracy French, president and CEO of Conway’s Centennial Bank, on the opening wave of pandemic-fueled loan deferments
“I didn’t want to face it, but I need to own this. I got in a really, really bad spot. Divorce. Rehab. I’ve been sober and worked in the AA program for months now. I’m not hiding anymore. I was hiding the past two years.”
— Blake Smith of Little Rock on dealing with legal problems arising from his management of Oklahoma oil and gas investments
“A lot of the reason we took on the chore is that it is our hometown, and we’re big believers that local investment has to lead the charge in redeveloping downtown.”
— Derek Alley, an investor in the $20 million-plus redevelopment of Little Rock’s Hall-Davidson Building into the AC Hotel
“They’re working very long hours. It’s very stressful when you have patient after patient die.”
— Sue Tedford, director of the Arkansas Board of Nursing, on the pandemic’s impact on nurses
“It’s nice to have new businesses come in down here. It’s even better not to trip over concrete that’s broken.”
— Jan Robinson, who in 2017 opened Uptown Salon & Boutique at 204 S. Main St. in Pine Bluff
“We’re all still trying to figure out what happened.”
— Rose Hankins, who in 2015 partnered with former Craighead County Clerk Jacob “Kade” Holliday in a private enterprise, Twisted Foods of Jonesboro. He is accused of embezzling more than $1.6 million from taxpayers.
“We have a client here in Arkansas who had to get a million dollars in Western Union checks, put them in an envelope and send them to the IRS because the offices were closed. And you can’t trace that. You just have to hope that they got the money.”
— Curtis Winar of Frost PLLC in Little Rock, on difficulties his medical marijuana industry clients faced after the pandemic closed tax offices
“Technology and advancements, they’ve eliminated all kinds of work in my lifetime. I haven’t been able to pick cotton in 70 years!”
— RAO Video owner Robert Oliver, 82, who spent much of 2020 trying to sell his building on Main Street in Little Rock, a precursor to closing down after 43 years in business
“Before COVID, a report found that approximately 500 of about 1,500 malls in America were producing positive cash flow for their owners. Then there was nothing worse for enclosed malls than COVID, which might have been like the Death Star.”
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