My name is Sterling R. Cockrill. I was a junior, but I dropped the junior. I was born in Little Rock. I'm a lifelong resident, except for a couple of years during the Depression. I've gone through public schools here. I am a very interested citizen in the affairs of the city, county, and state, who is totally enjoying my retirement after 48, 50 years of making a living during my adult life. And most of all, I am a happily married husband, father, and grandfather.
I have lived in Little Rock for most of my life. During the Depression, we moved, had to move really, to New Orleans and then to Memphis for my dad to have work. But we moved back, and I've lived here ever since except for the time away in the service.
I went to Little Rock public schools starting with Pulaski Heights Grammar School, Pulaski Heights Junior High School, Little Rock High School, and in the Navy, I went to Arkansas A&M College. I had about four months at Northwestern University in Chicago during the war. I was in midshipman school there. It was such a good school that I always claim it on my resume. When I got out of the Navy I returned to the University of Arkansas and got a degree in business.
I can look back on it now and see that we were not well-to-do, but we never missed a meal. My dad was an alcoholic and had trouble keeping a job. That's why during the early 1930's we moved to New Orleans and then to Memphis. He found work in both of those places, after having lost several jobs in Little Rock. He quit drinking in 1935. His old boss in Little Rock took him back, so we moved back home. He was sober the rest of his life.
I have a set of drums. I was given these drums in junior high and still have them. Since I was the only kid in junior high that had his own set of drums, I got to play drums in a little band. I never took any lessons. All I did was listen to records and imitate what I heard on the records. I really enjoyed them. I never played professionally. The little band we had in junior high was asked to play for a dance club, a dancing class dance. So we went out and played. We had music that was popular at the time, arrangements that Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman all used. So we would play those. Of course, we didn't sound anything like the big bands we were trying to imitate. Our moment of shame, not fame, was when the director of the dance club came over and asked us if we took requests, and we said, "Well, we'll try." And he said, "Please don't play anymore." It was very clear.
A couple of years ago, I decided I was going to learn the rudiments of drumming. I found out that I've been doing it wrong all my life with my left hand. So I'm practicing a lot to do it the right way. They're in our basement now. They are all set up because my grandson loves to come over here and play them, beat on them. He's in a garage band, plays lead guitar, but he still likes to beat those drums. He's a good little drummer, really. Never had lessons or anything, but he was like I was; he listens and imitates.
My father had been a professional musician. He was a very good trumpet player. But he discouraged me: he did not want me to be a musician because he associated his music with alcohol. He became an alcoholic during his college days. He just associated music and drinking together and really didn't want me to be a musician at all. He was well known in Little Rock and in Fayetteville. A traveling band came to Fayetteville and offered him a job, so he quit school. He played trumpet with this band. They were called Bud O'Rand and His Novelty Band. My dad couldn't read music either. He played strictly by ear. But he had such a good ear, he could play in any key. He knew the trumpet. He knew scales. He knew keys. So they would just tell him what key this tune was in. He had a good knowledge of melodies that they were going to play so he just played along. He was given a job in Fayetteville at the theater. The band had to play at the theater for plays that came through. Since my dad really couldn't read music, he was just hoping that he would get the right cue at the right time, and play the right thing.
One time there was a play came through. The musical director that hired the band to do the music passed out the music and everything, and my dad had one of the other musicians play the music for him. Read it and play it. But in this particular play, the music had to come in at certain times during the dialogue. And, of course, my dad didn't read the music and he didn't listen to the dialogue. Somebody else told me this later. He said, "Your dad was playing with this band, and the play was going on. In the play one of the actors came out on the stage and was talking to the other actors. `Hark. I hear the sound of a trumpet.'" At that time my dad was supposed to Da, Da, Di, Da, Di, Da. I don't know if he'd been drinking or what, but he wasn't paying attention. The actor came out and he said, "Hark, I hear the sound of a trumpet!" And nothing happened. So the actor repeated the line again. "Hark, I hear the sound of a trumpet!" Nothing happened, so finally the musical director got up there. He had a book of music in his hand, and he threw it at my dad and said. "He said he heard the sound of a trumpet, you idiot. Wake up!" That was towards the end of his career.
That's my dad's trumpet over there. I had it worked over for my grandson who has one at his house, and he has one here. I blow on the trumpet. I don't really play it. I blow a few little tunes, and he is going to learn, so we can play together on them. I had a family band. My mother was able to play the piano, my father the trumpet, and my uncle Howard played the clarinet. They played together after we moved back to Little Rock from New Orleans.
My childhood memories were mainly of lots of good friends. We kinda grew up together. I remember being in the Boy Scouts of America, which was a real nice experience. I joined a fraternity in high school. We still have alumni meetings once a month. I worked one summer and earned the down payment on a Model A Ford with a rumble seat. I had lots of good experiences in the fraternity and in the car. Like all Model A Fords, it was black with cream wheels. It had real leather upholstery. It was a two-seater in the front, and the rear of the coupe opened up and formed the rumble seat. Do you know what a rumble seat is? Well, you know where the car slopes down and you open it up for the trunk? Well, this one, you opened it up from the top and it formed another seat. It cost $150 and rode two people.
When I was seventeen and a senior in high school, I joined the Navy in order to get into an officer training program. By doing that you were not to be drafted. Of course, you joined the Navy, you actually signed up. You would go on active duty from four to six months later. During that time you were expected to have one semester of college. January of 1943, I was at the University for one semester before I was called into active duty. I went to Monticello with the navy program for a year and a half, and then on to midshipman school, and then on to active duty in the Philippines. I started out at the bottom— apprentice seamen. After I got my commission at midshipmen school, I was an ensign, which is the same as a 2nd lieutenant.
I met my wife in high school. Although she has a picture of us in kindergarten together, we really didn't know each other. I met her in high school in my freshman year. We began dating. I guess, in my junior year. She went to the University and I went to the Navy. While home one time on leave, I proposed and she accepted. And we got married on September 4, 1945, just before the war ended.
I stayed active in the reserve, but not all that time. During the Korean War I was called back as a communicator and sent to a naval communications station on Guam. That communications station handled all the communication for the Seventh Fleet, which was committed to the Korean War. I was trained to put messages into code and take messages out of code. Cryptography, it was called. I liked it as well as I liked anything. I was really not much of a military enthusiast.
When I left Guam to come back to Monterey for more training, I had been there long enough to be eligible to bring my family over. So Adrienne and our daughter, Mary, met me in Monterey. We lived there a short while during my training. Then they both went with me on ship, back to Guam. We had a little Quonset hut. It was a little round metal building with steel straps around it with concrete anchors sunk in the ground to weather the hurricanes that they had. They were divided into two bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen. They had partitions that didn't go all the way to the ceiling, so it could have circulation. Every room had at least one or two electric fans going from the time we moved in until the time we moved out. It was so humid that in your closets there would be a light bulb burning all the time to keep your clothes dry.
We had some really odd animals over there. We had little lizards that were about four inches long. They were called geckos. They were so cold natured that they could walk on a light bulb that was lit. We had to put the bed's legs in empty vegetable cans filled with water to keep the ants off. Sometimes the ants would outsmart you though. They'd walk up the side of the wall and drop down on your bed. We had huge rats and huge frogs. The frogs were a threat to dogs and cats because if they killed one, they had a poison in them that would make the dog or cat sick. We had the large lizards called monitors on the beach . They were about the size of this couch. They were harmless but terrible to look at.
This was in the 1950s, and there were still renegade Japanese on that island, that had never given up. Our little Quonset hut and our communications station were right on the edge of a jungle. Our next door neighbor was broken into two or three times by renegade Japanese. He was the closest to the jungle. There was one group of them, about seven, who became convinced that the war had ended. They gave themselves up by coming marching out of the jungle onto a road, hailing a bus, and surrendering to the bus driver.
The island was filled with caves and still had lots of unexploded grenades, mortar shells, and things like that. So you had to be very careful when you went exploring to avoid stepping on something. Children were not allowed to go. I got a permit to make that trip one time. It was interesting, but I didn't want to go back. We found rusted machine guns and war equipment in the caves.
I liked to draw and things like that when I was a kid but never took any art courses. I had temporary duty at a communications school in Monterey, California. Monterey had a good artist community. So between classes and on the weekends, I would visit a lot of these artists' studios and galleries. I became interested in art. After I got out of the service in 1953, I still had some credits on the GI bill. I had two or three hours of credit left. I spent those going to an art class. On Louisiana Street between 7th and 8th there was a huge building called the Arcade Building. It filled up a whole city block. Right down the middle of it was a large arched hallway. During high school, I used to drive my Model-A up and down that thing honking the horn. There was an artist at the Arcade Building by the name of Clifton King. He taught drawing and painting. I spent two years under his instruction once a week until my GI bill ran out. I worked in charcoal and oil, but I didn't have a whole lot of painting ability.
One day in the late 70s I was working in some weathered wood, paneling an old kitchen over at our log cabin in Hot Springs. I started noticing the designs in that weathered wood. I became interested in that and started cutting shapes out of it. That's my hobby now, one of my hobbies. I started out doing traditional things like a reproduction of weather vanes. I now do a lot of different things. I do traditional and contemporary both. I get my ideas, mainly, from the modern art of Pablo Picasso, which is very two-dimensional. I call my things boardworks; they are Picasso inspired. My favorite period of his would be his modern period. He did lots of traditional painting, but that didn't appeal to me as much as the weird, flat two-dimensional things; that's what my boardworks reflect.
My family likes the way I use a sense of humor. I do a thing called fantasy fish which I make out of weathered wood and found objects. I have real funny names for these. These are fish that may or may not live in the depths of Arkansas rivers and lakes that have never been explored by humans. I make up funny names for them; they kinda look like their names. I have an Arkansas Holy Mackerel. It's got angel wings and a halo over it. I've got a number of whimsical creations. I do dogs that are all straight lines; they are curveless dogs. I have a dog that I call a Springer Spaniel, and for feet it's got little springs on it. I've got a police dog that's got a police hat, a belt, a night stick, and dark glasses. I express myself with things like that.
Sterling Cockrill's family has a lot of experience in politics. His great, great, great-grandfather Chester Ashley, after whom Ashley County, Arkansas, is named, was a pioneer to Arkansas in the early 1800's. Chester Ashley served as a United States Senator from Arkansas from 1836 to 1848. Sterling's great-grandfather, Sterling Cockrill, served as the Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court from 1884 to 1893. His grandfather Chester Ashley Cockrill was a distinguished attorney. One uncle, Judge Mitchell Cockrill, served several terms as Circuit Judge for Perry and Pulaski Counties.
The legislature came into my life back in the 1950s. My wife, Adrienne, worked for the legislature. She would get a ride from one of her friends down to the legislature when it started. Then when I was leaving work, I would go by and pick her up. I had a cousin and a good friend who were representatives for Pulaski County. They were in the legislature, and the same age as I was. So I would go watch the action there and check on how and what they were doing, and then leave early to get Adrienne. I became interested in how the legislature works.
There was a lawyer from our county that I had been at the University with that was there, and I would watch him while I was watching the legislature. I noticed he was always sitting around not paying attention. In fact, one time he was sitting around knitting some. He was doing some knitting during the debate, and was just absolutely irresponsible about his duties there. So I decided, OK, that's the guy I'm going to run against.
I had two uncles that were lawyers. I went to them, and they said, "Oh yeah, that will be good for you. You'll learn a lot out there. You'll meet a lot of people. It will help you develop your life." They served as my campaign committee for raising filing fees. You had to pay $200 to run for the legislature. They went to some of their lawyer friends and raised it. I think the biggest contribution they got was $25. I think each of them put in $25, and they tried to get $20 to $25 from their other friends. They raised the money, so I filed at the county court house for that particular seat.
I served that two years, and I wanted to run again. Everybody said go for it. The next time nobody even ran against me. The third time I said, "I'm not sure." They said, "The longer you stay out there, the more experience you get, the more influence you will have, and the more you can get things done." So I ran again the third time, and a young lady ran against me. She was the sister of a friend of mine at the DP&L, Democrat Printing and Lithograph. Her name was Patty Peek. I said, "Patty, why do you want to run against me?" She said, "Well, you're the only one I know out there. I don't want to run against some stranger." I missed the logic of that, but anyway, she ran. She changed her name from Patty to Pat because she didn't think that she might get elected as a woman. Her slogan was, "If it's progress you seek, Elect Patty Peek!" Lucky for me there wasn't anybody wanting progress, and I got elected. I served seven terms.
The year 1957 was a devastating year for the City of Little Rock. I was a brand-new member of the legislature. I barely knew where my chair was at the legislature, much less know how to deal with that situation. They shut down the schools, and we had to put our kids in private school. There was just strife, daily strife, between Little Rock people and Faubus people. People from outside Little Rock that supported Faubus would come with protesters to try to keep the black kids from going to Little Rock High. It was just constant turmoil. Business slowed down. We got a terrible reputation worldwide. Faubus really, just really, did us in on that deal. I was anti-Faubus in my years in the House of Representatives. He got out in `65 or `66, and Rockefeller came in from `67 to `69, which were my last years. I could see the strife. I tried to do something. My second term in there, I introduced a couple of bills to let the local people control the running of their schools. They didn't get anywhere. They got about 40 votes, needing 51. I was not a friend of Governor Faubus.
My last term, the new Speaker of the House, whom I helped elect, appointed me as Majority Leader. I said, "Why Majority Leader?" He said, "Well, we are going to have some Republicans this time. Rockefeller has gotten some people he's going to run, and some of them are going to get elected. So you'll be the Democratic Majority Leader." "Ok, great." There were four Republicans elected. I had already made friends with two of them in the legislature, and the other two were real nice guys. We worked together on a lot of things. This group that we called the Old Guard Democratic Party was always against the Governor, Win Rockefeller. Anything he wanted to do, they were against, regardless of the merits of it, how good it was for the state. They didn't want him getting credit for anything. If he would introduce a good measure and call it a Rockefeller bill, they would come along and copy it and introduce it as a Democratic bill. Well, it was supposed to be my job to get that passed, and I thought that was ridiculous. So I actually found myself being a Majority Leader but having a Minority position, of trying to support the Governor in opposition to all the other old Faubus people that were opposing everything he did. I just got fed up with that.
I decided by that time to go into some other line of work. I was thinking about being a trust officer at a bank. I liked to help solve problems. My next door neighbor was Maurice "Footsy" Britt who was the Lieutenant Governor for two terms under Win Rockefeller. Since I was Speaker of the House, we had a lot of working together, besides just being next-door neighbors. So a friend of mine, John Ward, that I had met during Rockefeller's first term, said to me, "Why don't you change parties? `Cause Footsy's gonna get him a Federal job, and Rockefeller needs a Lieutenant Governor. It would help if that person had legislative experience."
I had to change parties from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. Well, the Democratic Party never had a whole lot of love for me, nor I for them, so it wasn't really hard for me to do. I had some good friends there, but the disadvantages of being a Democrat were not as strong as I thought the advantages were to becoming a Republican and being Lieutenant Governor. So I changed parties.
A campaign is a real intensive thing. You go from one place to another, to another. I always remembered where I was, not like Governor Rockefeller. Sometimes they would helicopter him from one town to another. They were covering several towns in a day. Governor Rockefeller would always open up, "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, it's very nice to be with you today in—," and he would name the town. Once, in Wynne, Arkansas, he was confused about where he was. He said, "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, it's very nice to be with you today in . . ." He looked to one of his aides for help. The aide said, "Wynne." The Governor said, "Win, Win, I know who I am. I just don't know where I am!"
I think some of my gaffs were notable, and they are humorous now. I was in Batesville, Arkansas, and I rushed into a restaurant and put on my coat and tie. You travel as comfortably as you can; then you make yourself up after you got to the town. Pull up your tie, put on your coat and everything. Well, I had this suit, that I had for years, but it was a good travel suit. It was a seersucker that didn't wrinkle; I had worn it quite a bit. The zipper didn't come up all the way. It didn't click like zippers do, and going in and out of the car that zipper had worked its way down. I found myself in a meeting talking to about forty people for thirty minutes with my fly unzipped. I noticed I had everybody's undivided attention! I made a gesture and my little finger caught that and I realized what had happened. I said, "Oh, excuse me!" I turned my back to the audience, zipped up my pants. I turned around, and luckily, I said, "My campaign manager wanted me to get exposure, but I'm not sure if this is what he meant." Everybody just broke up. And I pulled it off in Batesville that way, but people still remember that. It was embarrassing, but it's just one of those things.
I knew, having been in politics and being involved in a statewide race, the people who governed, county judges, mayors, all over the state and had been involved with them. Community development appealed to me, and it was my contribution to HUD.
I went in under the Nixon administration, through Governor Rockefeller. He got me an appointment to meet the Secretary of HUD, who was George Romney, former Governor of Minnesota, Republican, under the Nixon administration. I met him, and he quizzed me about my background. He said, "You'll be a good special assistant for community development for this new idea of revenue sharing. I've got some ideas, too, that we're gonna put into play. We need people who can understand that concept and who know how to get it done." So he approved my appointment. It was a civil service job, not subject to politics. But I was indeed a recognized political appointment. This particular job was so new that they hadn't developed any real criteria for it. They knew generally the kind of people they wanted, but they had not developed any kind of exam for it. All I had to do was prove I could read, write, and talk, and that I had experience that would be valuable to HUD, and to compete on the merits of my resume with other applicants who had resumes. I think, fortunately for me, that having never served in the federal government helped me because the only other applicants were people who had been in civil service a long time and were trying to advance in grade.
George Romney said, "We've got so much trouble with those people already. They insert their views over the administration's views. They're long term civil servants who have been yellow dog Democrats all their life. They're hard to deal with if you get a Republican administration. They'll throw up road blocks, so the more outsiders we can get in the better." Being an outsider served me. It served me to get that particular job, but then you had to perform in order to advance. It was a meritorious advancement from then on. Politics didn't hurt me until the Carter administration came in. I was branded as an enemy of the Carter administration.
In Civil Service you are guided by the Hatch Act of 1927, which says what kind of political activity you can and cannot participate in. You can contribute, you can put a bumper sticker on, but you can't influence your employees to do that for Republican or Democrat. Well, a friend of mine up in Corning, his cousin wanted to run for the U.S. Senate as an independent, not as a member of either party. To get on the ballot in Arkansas, you have to get so many signatures on a petition to qualify to even run. So he sent me a petition, and I circulated it among my friends, including some people at HUD. I said, "Do you have any objections to signing a petition for a independent, someone seeking to be an independent candidate?" Some said, well no, or I'm a Democrat, or I'm a Republican, or I don't want to. However, I got some signatures at HUD, and the lawyer heard about that. He presented to the Regional Director a case saying that I had violated the Hatch Act. I knew the Hatch Act. It talks about partisan politics. You can do anything you want to do for an independent, just not for a partisan. I don't know why the law was written that way, but they claimed that I was violating the Hatch Act by getting some HUD signatures on that independent petition. After they looked into it, they found that I was going to be needed elsewhere. Because of all the media coverage of the investigation, people in Little Rock had lost confidence in me, so they thought I'd be better off going to Camden, New Jersey. They offered me a job up there. My mother was ill at the time, so I just resigned. It all turned out for the best. I just think things happen that way.
I was always in favor of conservative spending and a moderate on social issues. Sometimes I was dubbed as a "liberal" because I opposed the wasteful things that were going on. I always thought that it's our money, the taxpayers' money, and we shouldn't spend it on things that don't work. I still feel that way, which is a Republican philosophy, although many Democrats feel that way too.
My philosophy is more local control, less Federal control, and less money to spend on unnecessary programs. We need to worry about national security, education, social security, and welfare reform. There are a lot of people who have different ideas on those things and that can be hashed out.
I would thank anyone who is interested in making their city a better place. I think that's a commendable interest to have. You will make a difference somehow. If you want to, you can join a Chamber of Commerce, become active on committees, see what they're doing, and how you can add to that effort. I think everybody ought to have some sort of civic activity. They owe it to make their place a better place.
I don't know what I contributed to the state other than to be a sort of renegade, anti-Faubus. That was my doing and turned out that was the way the state felt, too. But it was coincidental. I've just enjoyed what I've done, and through that have been able to do some things that I feel good about. People who may read about them, like you have, may feel good about them, too.
It's my work and my satisfaction, being happy in life and feeling like I'm a productive citizen. That's what I want all my kids and grandkids to do; just be a good citizen, and contribute.