Mike Cameron: One of a kind
By Roy Ockert Jr.
Friends come in all sizes, shapes, colors, personalities and political persuasions — if only you open your eyes to the possibilities.
For me, Mike Cameron, who died Jan. 15 after a battle with small cell lung cancer, was an unlikely friend. I had known him a long time because we went to college together, but we were in rival fraternities, and rivals don’t fraternize much. Later you learn such things don’t matter.
After college he stayed here and made a name for himself as an engineer, then a road builder — often a news maker. I went elsewhere and made a career as a newsman, returning here in 2001 as editor of The Jonesboro Sun. In such a position you have to keep an arm’s length from those who make news.
Our respective careers had mostly wound down when a few years ago he invited me to come by his office downtown for coffee. He’d had a coffee group twice a week for several years, with regulars like Dan Pierce and Ben Owens Sr. A workaholic, I didn’t take time for such things until I retired.
Once I did, though, I learned the value of those coffee sessions. Though I made it only occasionally, it was a chance for informal discussions with other local leaders who dropped in, also occasionally. That was especially helpful in my role as a consultant to then-Mayor Harold Perrin.
The pandemic shut down the coffee group for a time in 2020, and sometime after that Mike sold his building. When the group resumed, another venue had to be found. I became a regular after that, and so did Jimmy Cooper. We met twice almost every week after that, discussing politics, education, religion, sports, movies, music, whatever came up. We had old stories to share, and we could argue without taking it personal.
Once we met instead at his farm, where Jimmy cooked fish and Mike made a hominy dish that could have won a state fair ribbon.
Mike organized a fishing trip to Calico Rock, and I declined — to my everlasting regret. As the sage Ben Owens said later, “You learn a lot of things on these trips, but most of it is unusable."
One day about a year ago Mike told us about having an accident at his farm, resulting in a sharp pain in his side. We kidded him about trying to do things that he was too old to do. Eventually, he got the injury checked out and learned he had fractured a rib or two. Further examinations, though, determined that he also had cancer.
After that he endured a battery of treatments, many of them sickening and painful. He wasn’t able to join us for coffee the last few months. And in the end he lost the battle.
I’ve heard Mike described as “larger than life,” a “force of nature” and other things. He was certainly one of a kind.
One thing we had in common is that we both came from poor families and would not have been able to finish college without lots of help.
Mine came from a $500 scholarship, one of many handed out to Central Arkansas students in an effort to extend the reach of then-Arkansas State College. That doesn’t sound like much today, but that $500 paid my tuition and most of my room and board for a year. From there I was able to find other help.
Mike’s first aid (a year after I started at A-State) came in the form of a Kiwanis scholarship, probably also $500, named after the late B.H. “Pop” Parrish and funded with the local club’s annual Pancake Day.
About 10 years ago, as a Kiwanis Club member I hit Mike up to buy some tickets, and he said, “Sure, give me 50.” He explained that he’d been one of our early scholarship recipients and how much it had meant to him. He wanted to pay it back by helping other students.
Every year after that, Mike bought 50 tickets from me — $300 a year — so he paid that scholarship money back many times over.
He was similarly generous to a wide variety of causes.
One year I got the bright idea of inviting him to speak at the meeting when we announce and present the new year’s scholarship recipients. He agreed but not long after he started speaking, he got so emotional he had trouble getting through what he wanted to say.
Another thing we had in common was a strong belief in Jonesboro and Northeast Arkansas. An engineer and builder, he was all about infrastructure as the hope for our future. There’s a good chance you drove yesterday on a road that Mike’s company built.
Mike “last hurrah” was indeed about infrastructure. At coffee one day said the leaders of Jonesboro should get back to talking more about what Northeast Arkansas needs. We agreed, thinking it was a grand idea but nothing would come of it, and moved on to the next idea.
Mike was serious, though, and the next thing we knew, he had a table reserved for us at a big community meeting at the Chamber of Commerce. Even though he was already being treated for cancer, he made it happen and got credit for it, but he didn’t even take part in the program.
What a great tribute it would be if we could make something like that happen every year.
Roy Ockert is a former editor of The Jonesboro Sun. He can be reached at royo@suddenlink.net.