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Dr. Ruth Hawkins Talks Johnny Cash Boyhood Home, Dyess Colony

Johnny Cash boyhood home
Arkansas State University

This is A-State Connections.  I am Johnathan Reaves.  This is the third part of my interview series with Dr. Ruth Hawkins. Hawkins is retiring from Arkansas State after more than 40 years.  She held numerous positions at Arkansas State, but two of the positions that you may know her best for are the formation of both the Arkansas Delta Byways and the Arkansas State University Heritage Sites.  These projects showcase preservation of Arkansas’ heritage and bring thousands of tourists to the Arkansas Delta.  One of the more popular Heritage Sites is the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home and the Dyess Colony in Dyess, Arkansas.  In this interview, I asked Hawkins to describe how the Johnny Cash project got started and how it progressed.  Click on the Listen button for the entire interview.  

That is Dr. Ruth Hawkins talking to KASU’s Johnathan Reaves.  You can get caught up by listening to the other interviews I conducted with her by finding them on our website, KASU.org.  Next week is the final interview in our series with Dr. Ruth Hawkins.  

Johnathan Reaves is the News Director for KASU Public Radio. As part of an Air Force Family, he moved to Arkansas from Minot, North Dakota in 1986. He was first bitten by the radio bug after he graduated from Gosnell High School in 1992. While working on his undergraduate degree, he worked at KOSE, a small 1,000 watt AM commercial station in Osceola, Arkansas. Upon graduation from Arkansas State University in 1996 with a degree in Radio-Television Broadcast News, he decided that he wanted to stay in radio news. He moved to Stuttgart, Arkansas and worked for East Arkansas Broadcasters as news director and was there for 16 years.