By BILL SUTLEY | Special to arkadelphian.com
An airplane may dominate the new mural greeting visitors to Arkadelphia’s airport, but a closer look offers insight into the namesake of its Dexter B. Florence Memorial Field on U.S. 67, one mile south of the city.
“This artwork symbolizes a native son we should honor every day,” said Larry Cain, a former city director who successfully pushed for the airport to bear the name of the 1970 Henderson State University graduate killed in Vietnam. “I define a hero as a guy who would risk his life for his fellow man, and Dexter was definitely a hero.”
Cain, now Clark County’s 911 coordinator, then told the crowd of 30 about two heroic situations when Army First Lt. Florence, flying a single-engine, light “scout” helicopter known as an OH-6A Loach through “heavy fire,” rescued fellow pilots after their aircraft had been gunned down, earning him the Distinguished Flying Cross.
The mural dedicated Friday showed a close-up of the medal in one corner and a sketch of Florence’s OH-6A chopper in another.
Florence, 24, a music major who earned his lieutenant’s barsthrough HSU’s ROTC program, was the commander of a Rotary Wing Aviation Unit in Vietnam on Oct. 26, 1972 when he washovering at tree-top level during a scout mission. A Viet Cong mine in a tree was detonated, instantly killing an observer staff sergeant in his helicopter and seriously injuring Florence as the aircraft crashed. He died three days later in Japan.
Florence’s surviving siblings, Joan Francois of Hot Springs and Bill Florence of Malvern, were 13 and 11 respectively when they got word of their big brother’s death. They were guests of honor at Friday’s dedication and expressed gratitude for the visual reminder of their brother that the mural offered.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Francois said. “The artist did an outstanding job.”
Searcy artist Jason White, owner of White’s Artworks, said he was pleased with the way his mural turned out.
“I’m not some type of hippie-type artist where art has to speak to me,” White told the crowd, “But this, it does speak to me. To be able to come into a community and paint something that means something is just an honor.”
White, who painted a stylized Badger mural in downtown Arkadelphia during the city’s Festival of the Arts in 2022, said he was paid about $9,000 for the airport mural on the west side of a new hangar next to the airport terminal dedicated last year. A federal grant helped pay for painting the new hangar. The four-passenger airplane dominating the new mural, resembling so many flying in and out of Arkadelphia daily, bears the tail number NO1BDGR.
The city’s airport, which now boasts 40,000 takeoffs and landings annually, was named in Florence’s honor in 1997. He graduated just two years after Henderson State began offering aviation courses at the airport in 1968, when advanced ROTC students like himself began learning to fly planes.
“I define a hero as a guy who would risk his life for his fellow man, and Dexter [Florence] was definitely a hero.” — Larry Cain
Cain, a Vietnam veteran who at one point served as Clark County’s veteran services officer, closed his brief talk about Florence with a quote from the late Gen. George S. Patton: “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.”
City Manager Gary Brinkley credited Cain with being the “main person who’s kept the name of Dexter Florence alive around here – and we’ll be forever grateful for that.”
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
