eFortSmith.com | HotStuff

OK, everybody. We’ve received the word and the word is good, but it’s not final.

Fort Smith is now one of only two cities in the nation being considered for the site of a new U.S. Marshals Service museum. Previously, there were four cities vying for the museum.

In June, a super-delegation formed by the local steering committee created more than two years ago to help bring the museum to Fort Smith appeared before the museum site selection committee in Arlington, Va.

Armed with about a million carefully researched facts and figures, verbal and written reports and a special DVD presentation, the delegation was determined to beat out the other three cities and prove it is simply the best place for the museum.

When the Fort Smith group ended its nearly three-hour, multi-media presentation with a dramatic DVD segment, the site selection committee members sat silent at first. Then, they announced there would be no questions since a list of about 30 anticipated post-presentation questions had all been answered.

“We all felt very strongly that our team did a great job in Arlington,” commented Western District of Arkansas U.S. Marshal Dick O’Connell after
hearing from Marshals Service assistant director Michael Pearson that Fort
Smith is a finalist.

“I think the site selection committee heard loud and clear our message to ‘Bring It Home.’”

“Bring It Home” is the slogan for an ongoing campaign to show communitywide support. O’Connell said the site selection committee
now must answer some of the Fort Smith delegation’s questions, such
as what is the Marshals Service mission and vision for its new museum, how will its governing board be structured, what kind of physical structure does is plan.

A date also will be set for the eight-member committee to visit Fort Smith.

Claude Legris, co-chairman of the steering committee to bring the museum here, is looking forward to the next steps toward securing the project.
Since its formation in early 2004, the steering committee has produced an
award-winning DVD about the Marshals Service titled “200 Years of Grit”
and three other DVD segments that were shown to the site selection committee in June. The local committee also held the first-ever Descendants Day, which drew from five area states about 500 descendants of marshals, deputy marshals, federal court workers and outlaws from the 1800s.

“We’ll start getting our people back together and find out what all will be expected of Fort Smith from the museum site selection committee and go way beyond those expectations, just as we’ve done so far,” Legris said. “And with the continued support of the community, our congressional delegation, and everybody else who has helped us before, we will knock the committee’s socks off again!”

The “Bring It Home” campaign prompted an outpouring of letters from scores of area residents in support of the museum. Many letter writers included photographs of their families, friends, neighbors or co-workers proudly holding “Bring it Home” signs.

The letters and the DVD were included in the Fort Smith delegation’s
pitch to the site selection committee. Video of Old Fort Days Rodeo fans of
all ages displaying “Bring It Home!” signs at the rodeo parade, and a stadium full of rodeo fans chanting the slogan is included on the DVD.

“Some of the rodeo officials worried that it would take too long for the Bring
it Home film team to get what they wanted, but it didn’t seem like they had
to use but about two or three of the five minutes we gave them,” rodeo committee chairman Bob Ed Pevehouse recently recalled with a chuckle.

“The crowd really got into it and it was really neat to hear all those rodeo
fans chanting ‘Bring it Home,’” Pevehouse said. “I sure hope we get to have
the marshals museum built here. There’s not a better place in the country for it to be.”

Claude Legris uses an aerial photograph to pinpoint possible museum sites to the selection committee.

Museum a step closer to calling Fort Smith home