John Thomison (Photo courtesy of Lawrence County Times Dispatch)
For more than 30 years, John Thomison, the 6-foot-4 former power forward for Williams Baptist, class of 1977, drove a school bus over the gravel roads of Lawrence County.
Dale Freeman (Photo courtesy of Mary Freeman)
He has seen the mess that mid-winter snows and early spring rains make of the roads. He remembers the havoc that the flood of 1982 wreaked on his county. Lawrence County just broke ground for its new jail, and the court house is in continual need of upkeep.
So as he becomes the new county judge of Lawrence County, he has a pretty good idea of the job that awaits him.
“I’ve got to have multiple focuses from the git-go,” Mr. Thomison said in a telephone interview from the road Friday as he and his wife, Rita, drove to her birthday lunch. “They’re trying to get the concrete down (at the jail) before wet weather. We’ve got courthouse maintenance, got to maintain buildings, keep those up and running.”
The Democrats of Lawrence County met Thursday night and chose Mr. Thomison to replace County Judge Dale Freeman, who died Saturday from injuries he suffered in a car crash last month. Mr. Freeman’s name will remain on the November 8 ballot. Mr. Thomison is assured of the job – no one was running against the incumbent.
In the event that Mr. Thomison didn’t know what he was biting off, Walnut Ridge Mayor Charles Snapp had offered words of experience earlier in the week, when Mr. Thomison had time to change his mind about taking the job.
“It’s going to consume your life,” Mr. Snapp told him. “You have to hit the ground running.”
Construction of a new county jail had been one of the 75 year old judge’s top priorities.
“Dale understood without a doubt that if that jail had not been built, and the sheriff’s office and Walnut Ridge and Hoxie police department had been forced to use an out-of-county jail, that would have bankrupted the system,” Mr. Snapp said. “It’s not just the housing. It’s the manpower, the vehicles to transport them back and forth.”
Mr. Freeman had continued his work as county judge even as he lay in the hospital, Mr. Snapp said. “I talked to the sheriff this morning. Dale freeman had signed some of the papers (for jail construction) while he was in the hospital in Little Rock.”
Mr. Thomison, who grew up in Tennessee, moved to Arkansas in 1975 to play basketball on scholarship for what was then Southern Baptist. “I never left,” he says.
He married one of the cheerleaders, Rita Bilbrey, she of the Smithville Bilbreys, a family that has lived in Lawrence County for more than a century. John and Rita own more than 400 acres of her family’s land, which is designated as a century farm because it has remained in the same family for more than a hundred years.
He and Rita taught school in Lawrence County for more than 30 years. He was mayor of Smithville for 10 years. He has served on numerous city and county boards. They have retired from teaching, but not from working. They run cattle and raise hay on their ranch.
“I still shoe my own horses,” he says.”My wife holds them for me, which she’s been doing for 40 years.”
