Local's stone wall could endure for eons

Dr. Fay Smith was toying with a thin piece of history when he began work on a dry stone wall fronting his hillside home on Highway 25.

For the five years since his retirement, he has toiled relentlessly, fetching stones of all sizes, piling them one atop the other in a classic New England manner, and building a wall that will likely endure into the next millennium.

Now it stands as a memorial of sorts to his industry more than 75 yards in length, about 3 feet high and about 2 feet wide a project that continues to feed his being.

It hasn't been easy for him, especially when Alzheimer's disease became an insidious companion, threatening his building efforts. But he never allowed the illness to impact or impede his labor.

Dr. Smith, 77, who traveled in the field of education, and was the chief figure in a business enterprise called Educators Consultants, copes today with the incurable illness that is a common cause of dementia. Even though the course of the disease cannot be arrested, he apparently is able to meet it head on with the support of his family. He vowed to build the wall by the shear dint of all the energy he could summon.

His family, of course, is his chief ally dealing with Alzheimer's disease, which is a progressive condition in which nerve cells degenerate in the brain causing forgetfulness.

This state gradually shades into severe memory loss, particularly of recent events, and in the third stage patients become severely disoriented and confused and suffer from symptoms of psychosis such as hallucinations and delusions.

"I never thought of stopping to build the wall because of Alzheimer's," he said the other day sitting on the porch of his home within sight of his stone masterpiece. Only a slight speech impairment and an inability to recall facts easily reveal effects of the illness.

Pressing on in his recitation, he said, "I didn't get any advice about building the wall. It was fascinating work. It wasn't hard. I still work on it today, " he said, leaving the impression that he considers it a virtual living edifice.

Listening nearby, daughter Karen Throneberry offered another, vastly different viewpoint.

"He would go into the field, lift and put stones into a wheelbarrow, pull or push it to the site at the bottom of a hillside and put them together in a way only he knew," she said, a tone of wonder tingeing her words. "It was amazing. I still don't understand how he did it."

Peoples' fascination with stone, its permanence and singularity, and its beauty and mystery has endured through the ages. Man's creativity and labor of love with stone produced the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids in Egypt, temples, castles and edifices around the world and untold miles of stone walls all laid by hand with nary a speck of mortar.

One writer of the past wrote that if "a stone wall a fraction as long as the stone walls in Vermont alone had been built by a king or potentate, it would be one of the wonders of the world."

Biographer David McCullough writes that President John Adams described his physical activities in retirement as beginning at five or six in the morning with work on his stone walls. "I call for my leavers and iron bars, for my chisels, drills and wedges to split rocks and for wagons to cart them," he wrote.

Dr. Smith may not have dreamed in colossal ways, but he became a member of the fraternity of stone builders craftsmen who toiled with the breath of craft and ingenuity that was inspiring and humbling.

For the industrious individual who gave the corner of Blaney Hill Road and Highway 25 significance, this effort may simply have been a fervent wish to reconnect with his natural surroundings. His daughter seems to believe that.

Mrs. Smith saw it all from a more pragmatic stance. As the story is told, her husband bowed to her wish to rid the landscape of a " horrid concrete block wall" fronting the Smith home.

"She never did like that thing, " Dr. Smith explained, "She didn't want to look at it, and I took it down."

So a wall constructed solely of stones would replace it, a wall sans any foreign ingredient to hold it together. It had to be difficult going but Dr. Smith, tall and lithe, persevered. Even the onset of disease could not deter his work.

Today, passersby may see the wall and view it with silent acclaim but others, like Phil Stratton, a neighbor, sees the wall as something resembling an archaeological ruin. "When the sun shines on it, it gives off a brilliant sheen," he says.

Dr, Smith is not without intimacy with stones. He recalls his early days as a native resident of Gravesville, a hoot and a holler from Damascus, when he had to move several stones of mighty dimension on the family's homestead.

Education was his standard early on. He was schooled at Southside. And fresh from high school, he taught for a year in a one-room school near his home. He received his degrees from Arkansas State Teachers College, now the University of Central Arkansas. Dr. Smith served as an assistant principal of Conway High School before beginning his career as a consultant writing grants for educational entities.

Now given to ruminating, Dr. Smith returned to his wall, talking fondly about it and explaining how he progressed in its construction; (how gravity plays a vital part with each stone sitting on the ones below it to provide needed stability) and saying there was no point in hurrying to complete a wall that will likely endure for eons.

"It has to be done right, or you just have a pile of rocks," he said.

Karen Throneberry believes that the wall represents life for her father so imbued he has been with meeting the challenges that developed during its construction. "The wall represents a relationship," she said. "He loves to work on it, repairing it where it's needed, clearing debris from it and continuing to be involved with it and talking about it. It really is his whole life."