Transcripts Box 1 1. The value of education as told through the example of three University of Arkansas football players from Marianna in Lee County, one of the nation's 10 poorest counties. Education makes a difference for the Kearney family of Gould, sharecroppers with 17 children, and for the Moons of Bay and Wally Moon, a famous major-league baseball player. Three adults return to college, one in Benton County, another in the Ouachita Mountains, and a third in Pine Bluff. A degree is important, after all, and worth a lot of trouble to obtain.
Adult illiteracy is a big problem in Arkansas, but it can be overcome.
These examples come from a father in Fort Smith, a South Arkansas mother, and a young man in Harrison. Three women grasp education as the way to a future. All have been single mothers. Of all the community-based college scholarship programs, probably none can match the one in the South Arkansas community of Fordyce, a town known to most for its football tradition. A broadcast that ties to the 130th anniversary of the Civil War battle at Pea Ridge, one of the most important battles of the war fought west of the Mississippi River.