Ben Owens' contributions went beyond healthcare
By Roy Ockert Jr.
Ben E. Owens Sr., who passed away over the weekend in hospice, should be remembered as one of the leaders of the late 1900s and early 2000s who made Jonesboro what it is today — the “capital” of Northeast Arkansas and a star of Arkansas in many ways.
That was not always the case. In fact, when I came here to college in the 1960s, Jonesboro and Blytheville were about the same size, and Newport wasn’t far behind.
But Ben and a number of other local leaders joined together with a vision of developing Jonesboro into an economic force, and by the time I returned here in 2001 it was clear that they had succeeded. One of those key leaders was John Troutt Jr., long a mentor of mine and my predecessor as editor of The Jonesboro Sun.
Most of them are gone now, but what they did for the rest of us lives on.
I actually met Ben in the early 1970s in Batesville when I was managing editor of the Batesville Guard and he was working to turn a small rural hospital and clinic into a major healthcare institution.
He left Batesville in 1972 to become administrator of St. Bernards Hospital, and it wasn’t until 1976 that the White River Medical Center in Batesville opened. I covered the opening, and he got much credit for laying the groundwork.
White River Healthcare has grown tremendously — albeit on a smaller scale than what has happened at St. Bernards, much of it under the leadership of Ben Owens. When he retired in 2010 as president and chief administrative officer, The Sun did a special section to commemorate his achievements.
Later a new cancer center was named in his honor, and that’s just one of many innovative and needed facilities that came about during his tenure of about 38 years.
More importantly, he built a staff that would take St. Bernards to the top echelon of healthcare in Arkansas and keep it there.
Most of us take for granted the great facilities and medical professionals available to us in Jonesboro at St. Bernards and NEA Baptist Clinic and Hospital. They have also reached out into other NEA communities to bring needed healthcare. Meanwhile, too many rural communities in Arkansas and elsewhere are losing their clinics and hospitals.
You can attribute much of Jonesboro’s success to two major industries and the people behind them — (1) education, especially Arkansas State University and (2) healthcare, especially St. Bernards and NEA Baptist.
Ben and others, though, saw the need to look beyond the organizations they led.
In 2015 I had the opportunity to work with him on a city sales tax initiative, and at one point we asked him, as co-chairman of the campaign committee, to write an op ed piece. Some of what he wrote explains the philosophy that made Jonesboro great.
“As the CEO of the St. Bernards Healthcare system, I have always worked to have a true community focus,” he said. “It was my belief what was good for Jonesboro was good for business, so in that respect, the more that our city grew and prospered the more St. Bernards (and healthcare in general) would grow and prosper.”
“Jonesboro has become an economic oasis in Northeast Arkansas,” he continued. “For over 30 years now, we have had consistent population growth of 2 to 3 percent annually. As we continue to grow, according to every statistic we have seen, that trend shows no signs of slowing down … People are moving here at a pace that will grow us to be a city of over 100,000 in about the next 12 years.”
Unfortunately, that initiative failed, but the example that Ben, John Jr. and others set for our leaders to collaborate for the collective economic well-being of the Jonesboro region continues. Indeed, it is absolute that what is good for Jonesboro is good for business.
A few years after we both had retired, Mike Cameron invited me to join a coffee group at his engineering offices. I had a conflict on one of the two days a week but tried to make it on the other day as often as possible. The “klatch” included some regulars and some who, like me, showed up on occasion.
Ben was a regular and gave our group “star power.” He was soft-spoken, but you quickly learned to listen when he had something to say because it always included common sense and wisdom. And he never put anyone down.
Over the years our membership changed some, we had to find other meeting places after Mike sold his business, and I became a regular. Like most coffee groups of older men, we talk, argue and cajole each other over every subject imaginable. We have plenty of stories, and they get better each time we tell them. Laughter is abundant. We have solved many problems, at least in theory.
Unfortunately, Ben’s health began to fail, and eventually he was unable to join us. Occasionally, we would move our group to his house and even once or twice to the memory-care unit.
We are sadder today, but our group will continue for the foreseeable future. Like you, we are much better off for having known Ben Owens.
Roy Ockert is a former editor of The Jonesboro Sun, The Courier at Russellville and The Batesville Guard. He can be reached at royo@suddenlink.net.