Like most towns in the pine woods of south Arkansas, Fordyce has struggled the past four decades. A place that had 5,175 residents in the 1980 census had dropped to 3,396 by 2020. It’s now estimated that there are fewer than 3,200 people living there.

Having grown up less than 50 miles from Fordyce, I’ve always considered it a place rich in history. Paul “Bear” Bryant, a 20th-century sports icon, played high school football there. Larry Lacewell, defensive coordinator for some of the greatest University of Oklahoma football teams and later the head coach at Arkansas State University, was from there. In fact, Lacewell’s father and Bryant played on the same Redbug teams.

Jimmy “Red” Parker, once the head football coach at Clemson University, first made his coaching reputation by leading Fordyce High School on a 38-game winning streak. Parker, who returned to Arkansas in his later years to coach small college and high school football, also owned the Chevrolet dealership at Fordyce.

Houston Nutt Sr., father of a future University of Arkansas head football coach, hailed from Fordyce. Devout University of Alabama football fans still make summer pilgrimages there to see the football stadium named for Bryant.

Klappenbach Bakery, which operated from 1975 until 2011, was lauded in publications such as Southern Living as one of the best bakeries in the South. And Fordyce was where Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones were arrested in July 1975. The Stones had played a July 4 concert in Memphis. Richards and Wood decided to see the countryside and left Memphis the next day in a rented yellow Chevrolet Impala.

The group stopped for lunch at the 4-Dice Restaurant in Fordyce. Ironically, Paul Holt, whose family owned the restaurant, had gone to Memphis, hoping to see members of the band.

Richards ordered a 16-ounce T-bone and tried brown gravy on his fries on the recommendation of waitress Wanda Parnell. Wood ate from the lunch buffet, going back for more fried chicken. They left $1.65 for a tip and signed autographs.

Richards was driving the Impala with Tennessee license plates when he was pulled over for reckless driving. Joe Taylor and Eddie Childers of the Fordyce Police Department thought they smelled marijuana and impounded the car.

“After getting a search warrant, police didn’t find marijuana but discovered less than two grams of cocaine in a briefcase said to belong to passenger Fred Sessler,” writes Arkansas music historian Stephen Koch. “Though he passed a sobriety test, Richards was cited for carrying an illegal weapon—a hunting knife. Hundreds of people gathered outside Fordyce’s city hall as word spread. British Embassy officials were called.

“Inside, the group drank soda, and Wood rode a confiscated bicycle around the halls. No one spent time behind bars. Before midnight, with the help of their attorney, Arkansas native Bill Carter, the group was released. Richards posted $162.50 bond. He was scheduled to appear in court Aug. 1 but forfeited bond. The Stones also covered Sessler. All left on a plane waiting at the local airport.”

In November 2006, Gov. Mike Huckabee issued a pardon to Richards for the reckless driving conviction. Richards opened his 2010 memoir “Life” with recollections about that day in Fordyce.

Fordyce is the home of the Fordyce on the Cotton Belt Festival. Among those who performed at the festival was Johnny Cash, born in nearby Cleveland County.

I played what I called “the Fordyce card” in 1981. I was sports editor of the Daily Siftings Herald in Arkadelphia and wanted to see Bryant break Amos Alonzo Stagg’s record as winningest major college football coach. Bryant’s Crimson Tide needed to defeat Auburn University in the Iron Bowl. The game was played at Legion Field in Birmingham in those days. Alabama and Auburn alternated as home team.

It was Auburn’s home game. That meant that I would have to obtain press credentials from Auburn’s sports information director David Housel, who went on to become athletic director at Auburn and a Southeastern Conference legend. I wrote a letter to Housel explaining how I was at one of the closest daily newspapers to Fordyce and how beloved Bryant was in south Arkansas.

Housel wrote back. In essence, he said that he had reporters coming from all over the world. But because my request was unique—a small-town editor wanting to write a story the folks in Fordyce would save—he would have me a seat in the main press box.

I broadcast Arkadelphia High School football games on the radio in those days and had to do a playoff game the night before the Iron Bowl. I broadcast the game, wrote a story about it for the newspaper, then drove all night to Alabama for the afternoon game.

It was worth the trip. Alabama came from behind in the fourth quarter as the Tide beat the Tigers 28-17. Bryant won his 315th game as a head coach. I still have the program, my press credentials and handwritten notes from that Nov. 28, 1981, Iron Bowl.

In 2011, Agnes Wynne Phillips of Fordyce invited me to spend the night at the historic Wynne Phillips House and meet the next day with Ken Gaddy, director of the Paul W. Bryant Museum in Tuscaloosa. Gaddy was headed to Fordyce to present a bronze bust of Bryant at the Redbug Reunion Rally, a gathering of former students that’s part of the Fordyce on the Cotton Belt Festival.

The Wynne Phillips House, constructed in 1905 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was the home of attorney and former mayor Thomas Duncan Wynne. He and his wife had seven children. Agnes was the youngest of the seven and outlived all of her siblings.

In 1985, while living in Little Rock, Agnes and her husband, Col. James Phillips, began renovating the Fordyce home. In 1988, they started operating it as a bed-and-breakfast inn. They stopped taking overnight guests in 2010, but I was lucky enough to receive a special invitation to spend the night.

Agnes’ five older brothers all served in the armed forces during World War II. An older sister was married to a serviceman. Photos of them in uniform lined an antique table outside my upstairs bedroom.

Colonel Phillips made the short trip down the street to Klappenbach for pastries, which we ate on the front porch that spring morning. Afterward, we headed to the Dallas County Museum.

In 1995, Frank Hickingbotham sold his banks in Little Rock, El Dorado, Arkadelphia, Fordyce and Springhill, La., to what was then First Commercial Corp. of Little Rock. He later donated the 13,000-square-foot downtown building that housed his Fordyce bank to the museum.

Agnes Phillips put her organizational skills to work and her husband put his engineering skills to work to make the museum a reality. The colonel, who played football for the Razorbacks, spent 30 years in the U.S. Army as a commissioned officer. He was deputy commander of the Lower Mississippi River Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Vicksburg, Miss., which supervised Corps districts in St. Louis, Memphis, Vicksburg and New Orleans.

The couple later decided to add what was known as the Bill Mays Annex to celebrate the area’s sports history. Bryant’s bust was placed in the annex. Agnes Phillips wrote a weekly column called “Notes from the Museum” for 25 years for the Fordyce News-Advocate.

I refuse to think of Fordyce only as a place where a gunman killed four people at the Mad Butcher last month.

This is how I will think of Fordyce: as a cradle of college football coaches; as the place where the Rolling Stones were pulled over; as the onetime home of Klappenbach Bakery; as a logging town rich in history with beautiful homes such as the Wynne-Phillips House; as a city filled with friendly people who even welcome those Crimson Tide fans on their summer visits. Go Redbugs.