Eddie Best tried to retire in the mid-1990s, but his talents as a journalist and public relations-advertising specialist were too valuable to lie fallow. Today, he seems as busy as ever.

He was 17 and a high school senior in North Little Rock when he began working as a sports writer for the Arkansas Gazette. His boss and mentor was Orville Henry--probably the best-known sports editor in Arkansas’ history.

Eddie covered all kinds of sports, including hunting and fishing, for 12 years. Among his memorable stories was Frank Broyles’ first big press conference after he became coach of the Razorbacks football team. “I tried to capture Coach Broyles’ Georgia accent in the story,” he said. Looking back, he’s not sure that mentioning the accent was a good idea.

One of his greatest feats during the Gazette years was winning the love of his wife, the former Pat McCullough. She was a Gazette PBX operator and, later, a secretary to an executive editor at the newspaper.

Eddie left the paper to begin a 30-year second career in advertising and public relations in 1965. After working for a Pine Bluff agency, he returned to Little Rock for more PR/advertising work. One of his favorite assignments was helping Winthrop Rockefeller to win the Arkansas governorship.

Both he and Pat thought that they were ready for him to retire in the ’90s after his more than 40 years in communications. They bought a cabin on the Little Red River where they could get away from their Little Rock home to fish and relax.

But after a few months, Eddie was coaxed out of retirement by Searcy’s Yarnell’s Ice Cream Company. He agreed to serve as a consultant for a year. It didn’t take him long to fall in love with Searcy, and he and Pat moved here in 1995. He continued to work for Yarnell’s until the end of 1999 to help the company meet a challenge from a Texas ice cream company that was expanding into Arkansas.

In the late ’90s, he started attending White County Historical Society (WCHS) meetings to learn more about his mother’s family. He was especially interested in his maternal grandmother, Alice Black Turner, who had been born in Searcy. He found that the society’s meetings at the courthouse were sparsely attended at that time. “There were eight people the first time I went,” he said.

He found himself involved in WCHS work when he agreed to edit the society’s annual 100-page White County Heritage. Then, early in 2000, he arranged for the WCHS to begin holding its monthly meetings in the Harding Place dining room. Attendance skyrocketed in the new location.

“It has really worked out well for both sides,” Arthur Churchill, director of the retirement center, said about the arrangement, which is in its ninth year.

Eddie has served as WCHS president for three annual terms. In addition to continuing as the Heritage editor, he produces the society’s monthly 10-page newsletter. With more than 5,000 White County photos scanned onto his computer, he illustrates articles in both publications with pictures of the county’s intriguing past.

A major WCHS project has been to record the names of people buried in all of the White County cemeteries. The cemetery rolls can then be consulted on its website (www.argenweb.net/white) by people doing genealogical work around the world. “We started with (former WCHS president) Cloie Presley’s lists,” Eddie said, “and (current member) LeRoy Blair has walked through 200 cemeteries and added to the lists. Most societies sell their lists--ours are free.”

The WCHS publications and website have helped to increase membership to more than 500. About 146 members live outside Arkansas. Many states, including Alaska and Hawaii, are represented. One member lives in Venezuela.

The large number of members living in or near White County makes it possible for WCHS to tackle other projects that it couldn’t have tried 10 years ago. Two current ones are the move and preservation of Pioneer Village and the restoration of the Smyrna Church building on Highway 36.

When Eddie agreed to edit the White County Heritage, he planned to do it for a short time, he said recently. He’s still going strong after 10 years. If he and Pat are not out of town visiting their sons (Tim, a neurologist living in St. Charles, Louisiana and Martin, a Continental Airlines pilot living in The Woodlands, Texas), he’s probably busy doing some work for the WCHS.