John Clinton Futrall, a respected teacher at the University of Arkansas during his tenure as Professor of Classical Languages (1894-19 12), made his lasting mark in higher education during his presidency (1913-1939). He organized the University into colleges, built up its library, created the Extension Division, oversaw its greatest building campaigns, and strengthened the College of Agriculture. An avid athlete, he organized, coached, and managed the University's first football team as a volunteer - while Professor of Greek - and later helped to create the Southwest Conference.

John Clinton Futrall was born near Jackson, Tennessee on 9 March 1873. His father, Thomas A. Futrall, who had fought under Robert E. Lee, became a teacher after the Civil War. His mother was Emma Headen Futrall, who also bore four daughters. When John was eleven years old, the family moved to Marianna, Arkansas, where the senior Futrall became Superintendent of Schools in Lee County (the high school in Marianna was named after him). He was also a seven year member of the Board of Trustees of Arkansas Industrial University, appointed in 1894 - the same year that his son John was hired to teach Classical Languages there.

John C. Futrall first came to Fayetteville at fifteen to enroll in the Classical Course at Arkansas Industrial University. His letters home give some sense of what a late-nineteenth century southern classical education encompassed. On 9 July 1888, he wrote, "I have changed my underclothing two or three times every week. I take a bath about three times a week." Three weeks later he bragged about his proficiency in Latin: "We have one boy in our Latin class who has read Virgil, Cicero and Caesar, but I keep up with him." On 30 September of the same year he noted that he spent 1 to 2 hours per day on Greek and 1 hour per day on Latin, and a month later he concluded: "I think I am about the head of the class in Latin and Greek now." He worked hard, but even an ambitious boy of sixteen gets tired, as he must have been on 6 March 1889 when he complained that he had to memorize thirty-seven lines of Virgil every day.

After two years in Fayetteville, young Futrall transferred to the University of Virginia. Robert Leflar's history of the University recounts that Futrall left "after some disciplinary problems"; a recent biographer of the former president speculates that he was expelled because he was caught playing poker by his sometime Latin teacher George Wesley Droke. This might explain how he acquired the nickname "Poker Jack."

While at Virginia (1891-94), Futrall studied with Colonel William Peters, of whom he wrote in a letter to his family: "Colonel Peters says that he thinks it better to study a great deal of Latin and Greek first and English afterward as English is the hardest of languages." In Charlottesville, Futrall was also on the editorial board of the monthly student magazine College Topics. During his editorship, several unsigned essays appeared with such titles as "A Plea for the Classics" and "A Long Way After Horace." It is tempting to see the hand of the future professor of Latin and Greek penning these pieces.

After completing his work at Virginia, where he earned both the A.B. and M.A. degrees in Classics, Futrall was offered a chair of Greek at the University of Texas. He turned down this possibility, ostensibly to apply for the position in Mathematics at Arkansas. But, in the end, Futrall was appointed to the chair of Latin, and the catalogue of 1894 lists his courses as: 1. Sallust, Cicero and Virgil, including Latin prose composition and Roman History (required of Freshmen); 2. Livy, Cicero and Horace; 3. Junior Course (translating English into Latin and vice versa); 4. Senior Course (unspecified); 5. Graduate Course (on the life and works of Plautus, with critical study of archaic Latin).

After his appointment at Arkansas, Futrall did further graduate course work at Johns Hopkins University in 1895 where he studied with Basil Gildersleeve, at the University of Chicago in 1896 and at the Universities of Bonn and Halle in Germany (1899-1900). He wrote home from Bonn in 1899: "The place where Caesar built his bridge across the Rhine is right here. It is impossible to see how he could have done it." In Germany, he studied with some of the leading classicists of his day: Buecheler, Usener, Blass, Wissowa, and Eduard Meyer. He also traveled to Greece and Italy during this sabbatical leave.

While a student at Virginia, Futrall had developed an interest in football (he had always loved sports, and had been the pitcher on Marianna's first baseball team), and in 1894, when he assumed his teaching position in Arkansas, he undertook to recruit and coach the school's first football team. He coached for three seasons and thereafter had a long tenure on the University Athletic Committee. Later, he helped to form the Southwest Conference and write its rules. Futrall remained an avid athlete and horseback rider throughout his life, keeping himself in good physical condition for occasional game-hunting forays into the western United States. Many of his trophies from these hunts - mounted and stuffed - are still housed in the University of Arkansas Museum.

On 15 June 1898, Professor Futrall married an Arkansas classmate from his early undergraduate days, Annie Gaines Duke, the daughter of a well-to-do Fayetteville jeweler. They lived together for the next forty-one years at the Duke home on College Avenue near Dickson Street and had three children: son Clinton D., who died at an early age, and daughters Helen (Mrs. D. B. Stough) and Emily (Mrs. J. K. Donaldson), both of whom married physicians.

As a result of his marriage, Futrall apparently became involved with the Duke jewelry enterprise. Indeed, in 1904 University Trustee C. C. Hamby told Professor Futrall that he had incurred the displeasure of some legislators on account of his giving too much time to his private business at the expense of the institution. On the other hand, this activity must have helped Futrall cement local alliances, for the businessmen of Fayetteville and the surrounding area were among his strongest supporters through his many ordeals as University President; certainly, they helped to sustain his credibility with the state legislature. This association was life-long. During Futrall's funeral, the mayor of Fayetteville requested that the town's businesses close their doors; compliance was universal.

Futrall was a founding member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity at the U. of A. (1890) and a supporter of fraternities and sororities throughout his tenure. When, in 1901, Greek letter organizations were barred from campus, Futrall opposed the move, believing that such groups saved tax money on housing - funds that could be used for the academic and physical needs of the institution. When he died during "Rush Week" of 1939, the "Greeks" interrupted their activities to attend his funeral en masse.

The Classics were always relevant to Futrall, both as teacher and as president. From 1894 to 1912 he taught a full range of courses in Latin and Greek as well as Mythology. He was an imposing and impressive teacher who commanded the respect of his students. He also traveled in the state teaching an extension course called "The Influence of Rome on Modern Civilization."

A large part of his opening address as acting president of the University in 1913 related the ancient to the modern as he stressed the lessons to be drawn from the military, rhetorical, and literary genius of Julius Caesar. In his official inaugural address a year later, he urged his listeners not to despair about the impending disappearance of classical languages from the schools. The Classics, he said, are like Christianity: both sometimes appear to lose their hold, only to make strong comebacks soon afterwards.

Futrall's major contributions to education were his teaching and his tireless administrative activities. Some of his presidential addresses survive, but the National Union Catalogue lists only one work by him, a four page essay entitled "What is the Matter with the Public Schools of Arkansas?" published in 1915 in the University of Arkansas Bulletin; he did not contribute to Classical scholarship. Nevertheless, Futrall was a member of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, and served it as state vice-president from 1905-08 and 1910-13. He was also a member of the Archaeological Association of America. In 1933, he donated his private collection of classical texts to the University's library, including the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, Imagines Inscriptionum Graecarum Antiquissimarum and other valuable reference works which still aid students today.

Futrall was nationally recognized for his contributions to education. He was elected president of the National Association of Land Grant Colleges and Universities (1922-23) and the National Association of State Universities (1925-26). He was also granted honorary LL.D. degrees from Tulane University (1920) and the University of New Mexico (1926).

Futrall fought many political battles during his tenure as President. He beat back constant attempts, especially by the Profitable Farming Bureau, to move the University to other sites; he turned aside numerous demands for his resignation by students resentful of the institution's restrictive attendance and conduct policies; and he held off legislators calling for the replacement of a University administration which allowed "foreigners of the rankest kind and extreme Northerners" to turn students into atheists. At one point the legislature struck back by passing a law forbidding the teaching of evolution, but this proved less disruptive to higher education than the Depression, which brought severe financial strains. In 1931 the legislature increased the cigarette tax to raise money for a million-dollar bond issue for new buildings, but nobody bought the bonds and one result was that Futrall's annual salary was lowered from $I0,000 to $7,500 (his successor J. W. Fulbright earned $6,000). There were other problems: a student editor of the Arkansas Traveler accused the president of encouraging public drunkenness at student dances (the student was removed from his post for "irresponsible exaggeration"); and Futrall was subjected to consistent accusations by students, faculty and legislators of being reserved, severe, cold, domineering and inaccessible.

In spite of these problems, President Futrall led the University of Arkansas from obscurity to prominence. Enrollment almost quadrupled during his presidency, from 600 to 2,350. Many of the major buildings still in use at the institution were constructed during his presidency. The Colleges of Law and Business were born, and the University was granted accreditation from the North Central Association. Library holdings were increased from 15,000 to 200,000 volumes, the first business manager, grounds superintendent, dean of men and registrar were employed and a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa was established in 1932 (Futrall was its first president and fellow classicist H. H. Strauss was first vice-president). Futrall also helped found the first ROTC unit and the first summer school as well as establish the University News Bureau, with Walter J. Lemke as its director.

Futrall's presidency ended suddenly and tragically when he was killed in a traffic accident on 12 September 1939, near West Fork, Arkansas. Returning from a meeting in Little Rock, he lost control of his car on a curve while traveling at high speed and struck a truck head-on. The truck had pulled half-way off the road in its own lane, leading to speculation that Futrall had suffered a heart attack while driving.

Futrall's death was a shock to Arkansas. Newspaper headlines announcing it dwarfed the continuing news of Hitler's invasion of Poland. Eulogies poured in from around the state. Governor Carl E. Bailey, a personal friend, cancelled all of his appointments for ten days and arranged a State Police escort for the funeral procession. Six days after Futrall's death, the University's Board of Trustees named J. William Fulbright U. of A. President. On 14 September 1939 an editorial in the Arkansas Gazette attempted to put the career of President John C. Futrall into perspective:

"He was destined to become, more than any other single man, the builder of the institution which caps and completes the structure of educational facilities provided by this state for its sons and daughters. Paraphrasing the tribute paid to an ancient Roman, he found at Fayetteville a little country college and has left behind him there a full-grown member of the sisterhood of American universities. With its splendid new buildings, its numerous student body, and still more with its prospects of ever-increasing strength and usefulness, the University of Arkansas stands as a lasting memorial to a long life devoted unremittingly to a single cause."

- Daniel B. Levine, Classical Studies

Acknowledgments

The most balanced treatment of Futrall's life is James Anderson's "Latin, Greek, and Arkansas: The Life and Times of John Clinton Futrall", a typescript in the Special Collections room of Mullins Library, whose picture collection also provided the photograph of J. C. Futrall.