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We always find our way back home.

We always find our way back home.

Welcome to Homegrown, where we showcase the people and stories shaping the character of life here in Arkansas.

I'm Don Scott.

This episode is all about legacies, lives, and accomplishments which will live on to be remembered for generations to come, including a nostalgic look at someone few associate with Arkansas.

The celebrated novelist Ernest Hemingway will visit the University of Central Arkansas as they honor their Hall of Fame alum, Scottie Pippen.

We'll hear from Mary Steenburgen.

Small town girl turned Hollywood star.

And we'll explore the special relationship between the uaap and the greatest Muhammad Ali, all before reliving one of the most inspirational and poignant legacies in Arkansas high school sports, the final season of the Carver Cobras rising from the small town of Hamburg, Arkansas, to earn six NBA titles and an induction into the Hall of Fame.

It's an unlikely path for Scottie Pippen.

He recently returned to the University of Central Arkansas to commemorate his basketball legacy.

We're back at the Bear Center at the University of Central Arkansas, and it should be a great one.

Tonight, there's another good crowd on hand to guide the fans come out to see.

And probably the most outstanding basketball player in the Arkansas intercollegiate conference is the Bears Center.

Scottie Pippen, 6856 players later get him to put him on the breakaway.

Just the story of Scottie Pippen is pretty remarkable.

Someone that came to school here to be a manager on a basketball team and then grows seven inches, you know, between his freshman year and his probably junior year and becomes an all-American basketball player with the ball getting right at also Scottie on the Dwight Beats mini Jazz one guided back to back corner Jordan Michael fire brimming out and it's off the dunk But It's a great story, you know, And it doesn't happen frequently, but it tells you that it can happen and it can happen anywhere.

Our men's basketball coaches asked me, can we name the court after Scottie Pippen?

They were like, Well, we're going to be fully ESPN compliant moving forward.

And we think it would be great for us as a university to highlight the fact that Scottie Pippen went to school here.

Every time we have a game and we want to have a Scottie Pippen camp, we just want to get him back in the fold.

We think this would be good for our program and recruiting.

And so it just worked out perfectly to have his signature and name on this court.

You know, we had 250 campers here on our court, and it's a monday morning.

You know, we all said a few words.

And when we introduced Scottie, you know, his head coach, Don Dyer, had passed away recently.

So we didn't realize he had all these pent up emotions inside.

And when he started discussing the fact that his alma mater had named their basketball court after him, he really delivered a great, heartfelt speech.

Thank you Scottie Pippen left Arkansas after being drafted fifth overall to the NBA in 1987.

And while Pippen's journey from Hamburg to Chicago seems unlikely, Ernest Hemingway's arrival in Pickett, Arkansas, seems equally improbable.

Let's check it out.

Well, there are lots of stories about about Ernest here locally.

One of my favorite stories is we noticed was riding in the morning and this would have been before they finished it as the studio and some kids from next door were peeking between the between the boards into the bone.

And Ernest was not letting on that he that he saw, you know, he was trying to focus on whatever and not letting on that he saw them.

But they were staring at some skates on the wall behind him.

And finally he said, well, you can just bar them if you want to, and then handed them to them.

A lot of the stories have to do with with children in the community because the school was located immediately next door to the property and they seemed to think of him as kind of a local, local grouch, I guess.

But yeah, also I think it was a character he was putting on to to have fun with them.

The town has would decide that they thought of him as something of a of a hobo because he would come from Key West and here he was on vacation.

And so he dressed like somebody would in Key West on vacation.

So shorts and you know, whatever that, you know, definitely no tie and jacket.

Right.

And that was not the standard in Piggott at the time.

And so that definitely made him stand out.

But that kind of backfired on him once because he was in a bad wreck in Wyoming.

And so he came back to Piggott to recuperate and he looked awful.

He was scruffy, he had a long beard, He had his arm in a sling and looked really bad.

And he was walking up from the town square back up the hill to the Fifers home.

And the school kids saw him and they thought he was one of the tramps that had gotten off the train.

And was coming up the hill looking for a handout.

So they started pelting him with snowballs.

It was all he could do to block himself and get into the house before they completely knocked him down with their snow.

He did go out hunting all the time with his brother in law, Carl and others in town.

And the locals tell the story that Hemingway refused to wear his glasses when they went hunting.

And so he had poor eyesight and was a poor shot a lot of times when they were hunting quail.

And but he was so competitive that he refused to go in until he met his limit so they would start shooting at the same time he was shooting to make him think that he was the one that was killing the bird.

And then they would do that until he got his limit.

So that's that's one story that locals like to tell.

Another story is one story about a Farewell to Arms is that it was made into a movie.

And the movie, the 1932 version, which starred Helen Hayes and Gary Cooper, premiered in New York and in Piggott and Ernest was the day of the premiere.

Ernest was downtown one of the local drugstores sitting at the counter, and he overheard these two women in town talking.

And they were complaining because the movie that had been showing, which was Tarzan, the eight man, had been taken off and wasn't running that night because they were running this new Hemingway farewell to arms and they were complaining about it.

And supposedly Hemingway got so mad that he came back and started drinking gin.

He didn't go to the premiere even though he was in town, because he also was in a fight with the studio over how they had wanted to end the movie.

So he fee really was what sometimes was sometimes loved by the town of Piggott and sometimes hated.

I like to remind guests that when the town remembers this story, they're remembering it from after the divorce and where the ghetto where Pauline's family stayed a part of this community for four decades.

Local lore is is colored a particular way.

Ernest Hemingway called many places home from Paris to Pamplona, and incredibly, even Arkansas.

Just as incredible was Muhammad Ali's unlikely visit to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and the special connection it fostered.

Even when he was persuaded to not be that way.

He felt a strong conviction to always speak truth to power, and he inspired in views that let them know that that you could stand up for what you believed.

So homecomings like that can be monumental events for the people involved, but for many Arkansans, the decision to leave can be just as powerful.

Mary Steenburgen grew up in North Little Rock, and for her, leaving Arkansas was a hard decision.

Here's how she tells it.

I was born in Newport, Arkansas, but we actually moved to North Fork when I was 18 months old.

I think I was just a typical kid who lived mostly out of doors in the summers and catching lightning bugs in the evenings.

I wasn't one of these people that left where I came from because I thought there was something wrong with where I came from.

I left it simply because the thing I wanted to do more than anything pulled me to New York, and that was the best place for me.

So in New York, it was both terrifying and thrilling.

I began to do comedy improv with a group of people who were also graduates from the Neighborhood Playhouse.

And so I went to the casting director and we had a meeting and I said, Are you casting anything in particular?

And she said, I am.

I was going to tell you.

I said, It's a movie.

Going south with Jack Nicholson had various meetings, and then on the last day I did a screen test.

Then I heard nothing for a couple more days and I had so run out of money.

So I went to Paramount and I went to their offices and I said, Could you give me the one night's hotel bill that you owe me in cash?

And Jack sitting there smoking a big cigar.

And he goes, Don't worry about that kid, because you're on the payroll now.

And that was it.

My second film was much more loved, and it was a film called Time After Time.

And then my third film was Melvin and Howard, which I won an Oscar for, directed by the great Jonathan Demme.

By the time I won my Oscar, I had had my first child, Lily and so my life became a balancing act of making sure that I took care of my loves and my life.

And then also, you know, keep a toe in the business.

I met Tad several times over the years, and then in 1993, we did a movie together.

It changed my life forever.

And 25 years later, I would sign up for a million more lifetimes.

I really would.

I think about my young self and how in Arkansas, as a kid who didn't come from a family with a lot of money or experience a lot of things that that gives you.

I've never forgotten that I'm a woman from Arkansas.

And so it means a lot.

Arkansans like Mary Steenburgen and Scottie Pippen have inspired the world with their performances.

But the final run of the Carver Cobras is a testament that grander is not the measure of a legacy.

Carver meant everything, just absolutely everything.

I'm Larry Banks and I was a carver Cooper for the school year, 69 and 70.

And then for Stephens High School was 71.

We had a lot of discussions around town about the schools were going to integrate.

This was the forced integration year 71.

Most people in the black community lived on or around the hill that was on the other side of the of the highway.

And most of the white community lived closer to the railroad tracks that were that were on the other side.

So literally the two high schools were probably no more than six or eight blocks apart.

Literally, I played for Carver in 1967, the sophomore time as salary.

The last year we played over there.

What was special about that team was the fact that there was a bond that developed with that group over the summer leading into the school year.

We knew the schools were going to integrate the next year.

We wanted a special year.

The blazing speed that they had was just is remarkable.

I mean, you couldn't get from one into the court to the other end of the court to attempt a shot.

About half the time.

They'd already stole it from me in school at a point.

And now they still is for me again.

I've seen them steal at six or eight times before anybody can make it past the half court.

It's pure excitement.

We were going down the floor.

You were not in shape.

You can play with us.

We were in top shape.

I had a couple of parents, went to the superintendent, make a run in advance that road.

That's where it all happened.

Coach Cross was special.

Coach Cross was the type of coach that allowed the team to beat the team.

He knew we had good players and he basically allowed us to play.

It seemed that everyone in Stevens was there, white and black.

It was.

It was rocking.

People wanted to see this team Carver.

The style of play, the character, the play, the sportsmanship that we had.

We got Greenbrier and of because they had the great big boy and went to Oklahoma State or something.

We have a toss up somewhere.

And I say, y'all notice how tired he get.

We got to keep him moving.

I pull Blair out of the wing, and so that brought him away from the go.

Now we take a jump shot.

I got a chance to get a rebound and then he got tired.

And when he got tired, we had to get back ahead again when we got back here.

I said, Let's run that full corner.

And he put that ball out there and you come out there to get it and you had to find.

You make free throws.

Well, one thing I remember, we were a good free throw shooting when they fired.

I was laughing and rap and laughing, too, because we made a free throw.

They won the.

They came out of those bleachers and we were talking about a lot of people there.

It was it was just great.

And then when we finally got settled down and got headed back, the fire department, sheriff department met us there, Washoe County Line, and they brought us Oni.

I never forget like it was yesterday, it was cars and people down the highway just waiting on us.

And, you know, we came through.

Anyone could feel the pride that people from Stephens had, white and black having won a state title.

Everybody was excited about what it was about the accomplishment.

What happened in 78 carried over into 71 when the schools came together.

They were on a high as far as sports history now.

Basketball was really the heart and soul of Stephens during that time.

So without a doubt, going into the school year 71, everybody was anticipating a great year in basketball.

This is not a Stephens story.

It's not just a basketball story.

This is a story that all of Arkansas can relate to when it comes to integration, how it happened, what happened, how it came about, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Thank you for celebrating these stories with us.

What will your legacy be?

That's all for this episode.

Thanks for watching.

And please take a moment to appreciate the people whose hard work has gone into making this show.

I'm Don Scott and we'll see you next time.

Forget where we came from.

This change is the same the same journey that got.

He used to teach sunglasses, Red Bull and minivans and people who had your back when the world seemed we were all forget where we came from.

The city that changes to the same drop.

Now we know from where we came from, the city changed just.