“The world is a pretty small place and it’s getting smaller every day. And everything that happens anywhere in the world affects us, and everything we do here affects the rest of the world. And we’re going to have to learn to live together. And I guess any way I can contribute to that, I will try to do that.”
Kyle Kellams: It’s Monday, it’s Ozarks at Large. It’s time to dip into the Pryor Center archives. Randy Dixon with the Pryor Center. We just heard?
Randy Dixon: That was Jim Blair, well known philanthropist and attorney here in Northwest Arkansas who died earlier this month at the age of 90. He was a man of many, many passions. Uh, art,
Kellams: Music.
Dixon: Literature, politics, education, well, and finance...
Kellams: Yes. And the law?
Dixon: And that’s just to name a few. Very much so. And we’re going to talk about all that in this next segment in the next few minutes and we’re going to hear from family and friends. But more importantly, we’re going to hear from him. And that is because of, a: the KATV archives, but also because in 2008, uh, Scott Lunsford and the Pryor Center, over a two day period, conducted a ten hour interview with him, which is available on the front page of the Pryor Center website. But we have some highlights from that, so I hope we do him justice. He was a big man with big ideas and a big heart. So let's start with a clip from this interview from 2008.
The thing that I think ties everyone that I’ve talked to and hearing from him is his love of books and reading and libraries, as we’ll hear about. He started reading when he was three years old.
“I was a copious reader, and I used to go, particularly in the summertime, to the public library with a cardboard box, and I would just fill it up. And the librarians, Mrs. Dean, uh, let me get away with breaking all the rules, because she knew that at the end of the week, I’d bring the box back and, uh, and get another box full. I really think it’s the most valuable skill you can have. And it’s for survival in today’s world.
“And I made a point when my kids were little. Uh, I didn’t trust the system to teach them to read. So I got a book called ‘Why Johnny Can’t Read’, which teaches phonics, which, as I say, I never learned myself, but I taught them all to read before they started school.”
Kellam: So love of the written word and libraries, and you can look over my shoulder out my picture window here in the Anthony and Susan Hoyt news studio and see Blair library.
Dixon: Exactly. Uh, he gave five million dollars over the course of his life, as a matter of fact. Um, and I had the opportunity to talk to Nancy, his widow, and she talked about his love of libraries.
“He loved the library. And he felt like the library was good for everyone. Not just for the elite, not for anything. It was good for everyone. And he wanted that for all people, for them to be able to access the library and access knowledge.”
Dixon: It's named after his late former wife, Diane, his grandmother Bessie, and Aunt Mary Grace. Alittle bit of a background on Mr. Blair. He graduated from Fayetteville High School. He was a local boy. Uh, he got his degree from the UA by the time he was nineteen and graduated from law school two years later and began practicing up here in the Springdale area in 1957.
Kellam: So he was early twenties. And he’s a practicing attorney? Yeah.
Dixon: He was also heavily involved in politics. He was attorney for the state Democratic Party at one time, and was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in ‘68 and ‘72, which made him a newsmaker.
Kellam: Yes.
Dixon: Which puts him in the KATV archives.
Kellam: Yes.
Dixon: So I went through to find everything about Jim Blair. And the earliest thing I found was actually from 1967, speaking for the Democratic Party and against Republican Governor Winthrop Rockefeller and his tax programs.
“Well, I would agree that there’s a problem. And we suspect that the governor’s handling of the problem has been exceedingly inept, and our investigation will try to find out what the facts really are.”
“Do you plan to offer an alternative to the governor’s tax program?”
“We hope to have some positive program, and if his is the only other program around, I would suppose it would be an alternative, yes.”
Kellam: The late Jim Blair in 1967.
Dixon: He was just kind of getting started in politics. He, uh, he supported Dale bumpers until Dale bumpers ran against Fulbright.
Kellam: And he stayed then with the Fulbright campaign.
Dixon: Yes, but let's talk. I spoke to his oldest daughter, Heather. I asked her about when did you, as a child growing up, first notice that your father was a lawyer and was so involved in politics.
“I remember him supporting different candidates. I think Dale bumpers for governor in 1970. But then he and Bumpers were on opposite sides when Bumpers challenged Senator Fulbright in 1974.”
Dixon: So here is Blair in 1974. This is from the KATV archives as a spokesman for William Fulbright. And he’s kind of calling out governor Dale Bumpers, uh, because Bumpers is sort of balking at the idea of doing a debate.“I’m very disappointed that the governor does not feel that he has one and a half hours of substantive information that he can give the voters of this state. And we agreed in this instance that we would tape the shows, if necessary, we would adjust to the governor’s schedule in any way. And what he has said is that he doesn’t feel the public is entitled to know what’s behind the smile.”
Kellams: And of course, in a prior segment, you and I have devoted time to that debate and to that race.
Dixon: So they did do the debate and Bumpers won. And of course Blair and Bumpers made up both being part of the Democratic Party and, and were for years and years to come. Politics aside, first and foremost, uh, he was a lawyer practiced for more than six decades. So here’s Nancy Blair again.
“He was a trial lawyer for over twenty years. And, uh, he was a very, very good trial lawyer. He was in the American College of Trial Lawyers. And for you to be a member of that, you have to be nominated by your peers. And only one half of one percent of all lawyers are accepted into it.
“And he was accepted into it at a very young age, because you had to have tried a lot of cases to and after that, you know, he went to Tyson Foods because they had been a client of his at Courtney Crouch, his firm. And he went to work for Tyson’s as their general counsel and was their general counsel until January of 2000.”
Kellams: I’m speaking with Randy Dixon from the Pryor Center this week. Our subject, the late Jim Blair, who died earlier this month.
Dixon: That’s right. As a lawyer, he, uh, I get the idea that he sort of liked the David and Goliath type lawsuit, and he liked to, uh, represent the little guy. And he did that several times during his years as attorney. I did find an interesting case in the KATV archives. Remember how hard it used to be to get Coors beer? Are you old enough to remember that?
Kellams: Let me tell you. My parents, we lived in north central Arkansas.
Dixon: Right.
Kellams: And they would make special trips up to Missouri to get Coors, and then they would have a Coors party, invite their friends over, and they would have Coors because it was this exotic beer you could not get in Arkansas. And I can’t remember why you couldn’t.
Dixon: Cause, uh, Adolph Coors Company had a rule. They did not want their beer distributed a certain distance from their brewery so they could have quality control.
Kellams: Quality control?
Dixon: Exactly. And there was this little distributor in North Little Rock who apparently sold to another distributor who went beyond the limit or something along those lines. But the Coors Company dropped this distributor. Uh, Jim Blair represented that small distributor in court. And here’s a report from Tony Gate, and you’ll hear Jim’s response to the verdict.
“The lawsuit was filed on behalf of this beer distributorship at Pine Bluff. South Central Coors is owned by North Little Rock businessman Tony Rand. He claims Adolph Coors Company unjustly terminated his contract to drive him out of business. But in testimony Tuesday, Peter Coors, the great-grandson of the man the company is named after, said the Rand firm violated the intent of their contract by allowing some beer to be sold outside his designated market area.”
“No member of the family was in court when these decisions came from the jury today. Jury question number 13 read, ‘Is South Central Coors entitled to any actual compensatory damages?’ The jury entered $180,476. Jury question number 23, ‘Is Tony Rand entitled to any actual compensatory damages?’ The jury entered $1,200,000.”
“I’m very pleased with the verdict on the compensatory damages, which I think was fair and consistent with the evidence”
“Jury question number 24 read, ‘Is Tony Rand entitled to any punitive damages?’ The jury entered $175,000.”
“I’m pleased we got a verdict on punitive damages. I wish it could have been bigger, because I don’t think it is enough to really punish, uh, Adolph Coors Company. But, uh, you know, I have to believe in the jury system, and that’s what the jury felt was appropriate. So I have to accept that.”
Dixon: Hey, I’d be happy with $1.2 million. Yeah. Yeah. So he had many cases like that throughout his career. But that was just one example that Channel 7 covered.I think he’s best known as an attorney for being the lead counsel for Tyson Foods from 1979 until 2000. And I understand he didn’t retire from Tyson until 2000, so he could say he was the only attorney for Tyson during the entire 20th century.
Kellams: I see.
Dixon: So, uh, let’s bring it up to the current day. Uh, he just turned 90 in late October, and there was a big party for him. Larry Foley, filmmaker, recently retired professor here, produced a documentary on Blair’s life. Many of the clips—actually, all the historical clips that were in that documentary—came from the KATV collection from the Pryor Center. Well, here’s a clip from that. He spoke to Barbara Tyson about Blair’s connection to the Tyson company and the Tyson family.
“Through the years of him being our corporate attorney and just seeing what he did, his concept of business and how supportive he was of those people in the company who were building the business. His relationship with Don Tyson was so important, and not only did they have the business relationship, but they were dear friends, and Don had the highest regard of respect for him. But what means so much to me is that I think rarely, and in a lot of cases never, are we ever so fortunate to be in proximity of someone that is that gifted and that intelligent and that has that depth and breadth of brilliance. But he’s also this kind and caring person that cares about people and truly loves his friends and family. He’s just a good soul.”
Kellams: This was a time of major expansion for Tyson Foods from ’79 to 2000.
Dixon: Including the purchase of Holly Farms.
Kellams: So this is the late ’80s, early ’90s. And this wasn’t done in a day. This was a constant news story.
Dixon: ‘89. No, right. And he orchestrated the whole thing. It was a matter of outbidding ConAgra and—yeah, it was a major event in the poultry industry.
“The company flag was flying high at Tyson’s corporate headquarters in Springdale today. The reason: the last obstacle standing in the way of a Tyson-Holly merger was removed. Yesterday, ConAgra pulled out and the judge cleared the way. This morning, the Holly board said yes.
“Here’s how the three-way agreement works. Tyson will buy Holly Farms for $1.4 billion, and Holly will pay ConAgra $50 million in settlement claims.”
“It is a tremendous achievement for Tyson people, and it is going to make the world’s not only strongest poultry company. We’re going to be the world’s best poultry company. It’s been like trying to catch a greased pig on a football field. But we finally tackled the little rascal.”
Dixon: In addition to all of that, he served nine years on the Arkansas Board of Higher Education and ten years on the UA Board of Trustees. Here’s a clip from that 2008 interview with the Pryor Center about why he joined the Board of Trustees for the University of Arkansas.
“One of the reasons I went on the Board of Trustees of the university was to try to protect its status as the major university in the state, and every university in the state wants to give Ph.D. programs in every discipline there is. And those programs are prohibitively expensive. And every university in the state wants to have a world championship athletic program. And those are prohibitively expensive. And really every university in the state or college in the state—they call themselves universities—wants to be the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.”
Kellams: Okay. We mentioned that he was the head legal counsel for Tyson during a time of expansion. He was also the head of the Board of Trustees when Arkansas went from the Southwest Conference—
Dixon: Well, he was actually, those were one of the—that happened in one of the two years he was chair. So here is an excerpt from that UA Board of Trustees meeting in 1990.
“Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas accepts the invitation to become a member of the Southeastern Conference and looks forward to new rivalries and friendships.”
“I want to just briefly make a few comments. I have said in many of our sessions that we think academics is much more important than, uh, than athletics, and I still believe that. I do think this has academic consequences to us. I think we are joining what are, Mr. Kramer, our natural peer institutions. They are basically the members of the Southeast Conference are schools like us. Most of them land grant, most of them the major research institution of the state, most of them Ph.D.-granting institutions that have—that compete for the same faculty that we try to hire here. And we hope that we will be competing for their students, and they will be competing for ours, and that we will have a great cross-cultural exchange throughout the South. And I believe we will.”
Dixon: So let’s don’t forget the Clintons, definitely known as a big friend of Bill, a friend of Hillary. So this would have been the early ’70s. Bill, Hillary, Jim, and his wife Diane were all professors here at the university.
Kellams: That’s a lot of brainpower right there.
Dixon: The four became friends early on and remained that way.
“I got acquainted with Bill Clinton at the 1972 convention, Democratic Convention in Miami. Bill Clinton wound up as a multi-state coordinator, and I don’t know whether it included other states, but it included Texas and Arkansas. And he would periodically come through here on that campaign, became a friend of Diane’s. They used to tell her about this wonderful woman that he was trying to get to come to Arkansas. When the campaign was over, he took a job teaching law at the University of Arkansas School of Law and was trying to get her to come. And when she finally did come, when Hillary took a job at the University of Arkansas, I became friends with Hillary. And the four of us used to run around some together.”
Kellams: But Jim Blair never really, he didn’t ever work for Bill Clinton directly, did he?
Dixon: No. But he was always there as an advisor, and I think he liked it that way. Um, you know, he even served as vice president of the Bill Clinton for President campaign in ’92.
Kellams: Oh.
Dixon: So as an example, here’s a remarkable story he told us in 2008, just as an example of how candid he could be with Clinton. And this story is after Clinton is president and they’re in the White House together.
“I’ll be sitting up there with Clinton, and, you know, he’d be doing a New York Times crossword puzzle, and he’d be talking to the attorney general of the United States on the telephone, and he’d be watching a movie on television and carrying on a conversation with me at the same time. And just watching him multitask like that was just kind of an awesome thing. But, uh, one time that I thought was somewhat unique. I’m sitting up there in the solarium with him, and we’re doing all of those things, and he says, ‘You want to?’ And Hillary had started her race for the Senate in New York. He said, ‘Do you want to go down and listen to the debate prep?’ And I said, ‘Well, sure.’ So he said, ‘Well, it’s down in the movie theater.’
“So we go down to the movie theater and there, uh, uh, doing debate rehearsal. And so Clinton and I just take seats like we’re watching a movie, and there’s a popcorn machine there, and we get some popcorn. And, you know, we’re sitting there watching debate, and Clinton saying, ‘She ought to say this. She ought to say that,’ and finally turns to me and says, ‘You want to go to Buffalo with me tomorrow night and listen to the debate?’ And I said, ‘You can’t be serious.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, we got a room on the plane. Why don’t you go up there with me?’ I said, ‘Bill, you can’t go to Buffalo.’ I said—he said, ‘What do you mean I can’t go to Buffalo?’
“I said, “When you walk in the room, you suck all the air out of it. I said, it’s her show. You go up there, you’re an immense distraction. You just absolutely can’t go.’ Well, he’d never thought of it that way. He’d never looked at it that way. Now, everybody on her staff knew that nobody wanted him to go. She didn’t want him to go. Harold Ickes didn’t want him to go. But everybody was afraid to tell him he couldn’t go. And, you know, one of the advantages I had of not working for him and not owing him anything is I could tell him anything I wanted to. And they all came by afterwards and saying, ‘Thank God you told him that.’ And he didn’t go. And he sulked a while, and then he invited me to watch the debate with him in the solarium and watch it on television. And we sat there and watched it, and he was saying, ‘She ought to say this. She ought to say that.’
Dixon: You know, and if you noticed, they were talking about being in the movie theater. Just a little bit of trivia. There’s no movie theater anymore. It was in the East Wing.
Kellams: Ah.
Dixon: So anyway. Yeah, that. We’ll talk about that some other time, too, I suppose. Anyway, he, he turned 90 on October 27th, and there was a gathering of family and close friends that was held, of course–
Kellams: At the Blair Library.
Dixon: The Blair Library. And I mentioned that film by Larry Foley. It premiered there. And, um, let’s hear from Nancy one more time. And she explains that he was really just holding out for this final event after he had had a stroke.
“We knew it was severe and it limited him a lot. And, he had initially said that he was going into hospice and then he could not go to rehab unless he could eat or have a feeding tube. And he said he wanted a feeding tube. And I said, ‘Jim, are you sure this isn’t what you have, you know, that you have stated as your wishes?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And so I asked him, I said, ‘What changed your mind?’ And he wrote down two projects. And I said, ‘What?’ And he said, he wrote down he wanted to see the movie that Larry had produced, and he wanted to attend his 90th birthday.
“And I said, ‘Okay.’ I said, ‘We’ll do whatever we have to to get you there.’ And he spent 13 days in the hospital. And then he spent another 61 days in rehab getting ready for that birthday party. And I asked him, I said, ‘Jim,’ I said, ‘What are you going to do at your birthday party?’ Because he was in a wheelchair and his speech was limited. And he stuck his hand out to me, and I shook it, and he was able to say, ‘Thank you for coming.’ And for me, that was him telling me he wanted to tell his friends goodbye on his terms.”
Kellams: And that took place in October, his 90th birthday.
Dixon: Right.
Kellams: A few weeks ago.
Dixon: Just weeks ago. He, you know, he, there were maybe 300 friends, family in attendance. And he greeted everyone, uh, that he had worked on. And, uh, then he went into hospice and died within five weeks.
Kellams: Uh, and there is a memorial service.
Dixon: Yes. Wednesday, uh, day after tomorrow, um, at the library at 2 o’clock. It’ll be a celebration of his life.
Kellams: All right. Randy Dixon, this is our last conversation of 2025.
Dixon: Ah, yeah,
Kellams: But we’re going to get back together in mid-January?
Dixon: Let’s do that. Okay. You know what I’d kind of like to do?
Kellams: Tell me and we’ll do it.
Dixon: A history of AETN.
Kellams: Okay. I think we’d all love that.
Dixon: Okay.
Kellams: All right, so that’ll be, uh—
Dixon: It does have an interesting past that is actually closely tied with KATV, if you can believe it.
Kellams: I can believe that. All right, so we’ll have that on. How about Monday, Jan. 12?
Dixon: Okay. Hold me to it.
Kellams: Okay, I will. Thank you, Randy.
Dixon: All right. Have a good holiday.
Kellams: You too. And you can find—that long interview that was done with Jim Blair—on the front page of the Pryor Center website.
Dixon: Yes. Thank you, Randy. Happy holidays and see you next year.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
