Smith, Speer, Berry Complete Terms on South Shore Foundation Board
February 2006

Served South Shore Foundation Board Completing terms on the South Shore Foundation Board of Directors at the end of 2005 were (from left) Phyllis Speer, Fred Berry, and Betty Barker Smith. Speer and Smith, charter members serving since 1997, and Berry, who served a three-year term, received engraved clocks in appreciation for their service. The South Shore Foundation is the charitable arm of Northern Arkansas Telephone Company at Flippin.

Three members of the South Shore Foundation Board of Directors completed terms at the end of 2005 and commented about the foundation’s activities while they served.

Betty Barker Smith, Baxter Bulletin president/publisher, praised the $75,000 endowment from South Shore Foundation to Arkansas State University Foundation, from which scholarships are awarded to students at the Mountain Home campus studying math, science, technology or education to teach those subjects. Smith is also proud of the annual South Shore Outstanding Teacher Awards, which honor public school teachers who are “very deserving.”

A project of the Marion County Literacy Council gained Smith’s praise as well. South Shore Foundation granted funds several times to help provide free books to preschool children monthly from birth to five years of age. The literacy council’s efforts are in conjunction with the Dollywood (Dolly Parton) Foundation’s Imagination Library project.

Phyllis Speer, the regional education coordinator with Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said she was most interested in the environmental and community projects of the South Shore Foundation, naming three: the Fred Berry Crooked Creek Conservation Education Center; providing Audubon Society environmental materials to grade schools; and the Arkansas State University endowment.

Berry is semi-retired, teaching night classes at North Arkansas College and working at the new Crooked Creek Conservation and Education Center outside of Yellville, for which he donated land along Crooked Creek. Notable projects of the South Shore Foundation, he said, included several grants made to the Flippin Elementary School for science projects and the “very generous support provided for the Conservation/Education Center.”

Berry said he thinks the South Shore Foundation is going in an excellent direction to enhance the education and economic development of the area, and Speer added that she hopes the foundation continues to support projects to improve the education and environment in the South Shore area.

South Shore Foundation Board Chairman Jodie Elizabeth Jeffrey said the board would “definitely miss these three.” She noted that Smith and Speer had been instrumental in creating and achieving the foundation’s goals from the very beginning, and Berry had added to the board “by sharing his knowledge of environmental preservation and his talents and skills as an educator."