Like many semi-retired couples, David and Barbara Pryor like to travel and visit friends.
Except their friends are astronauts, artists and ex-presidents.
Yet throughout their adventures Pryor, the former U.S. congressman, Arkansas governor and U.S. senator, and Barbara, his wife of 55 years, have remained rooted in Arkansas. When he left the Senate in 1996 Pryor could have gone to work for a Washington D.C. firm – as so many former politicians do – but he knew that was not for him.
“I wanted to come home,” says Pryor, a Democrat who spent 18 years in the Senate. “I have been so happy with that decision.”
It seems like every trip the Pryors take is a reunion and every visitor they have, whether at their Little Rock home or their second place in Fayetteville, leads to reminiscing about old friends and adventures. The memories are especially poignant these days as the Pryors revisit one of the most trying periods in their lives and celebrate a shared triumph.
On Sept. 20 the Pryors will receive the Pat and Willard Walker Tribute Award at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute Gala for Life. The black tie event is the institute’s major fundraiser and one of the biggest events on the social calendar, but to many who will be present, including the Pryors, it is more personal than that.
In the mid-1990s a team of UAMS doctors performed an unconventional surgery on the Pryors’ son Mark, who holds David’s old senate seat and is gearing up for his reelection campaign, after Mark was diagnosed with cancer in his Achilles tendon.
“They’re not honoring us. They’re honoring parents of children with cancer,” Pryor says of the gala, sharing credit like the veteran, bipartisan dealmaker he is.
“We’re very, very grateful to UAMS,” says Barbara, “and to the doctors that put together this marvelous team.”
Close To Home
On a steamy summer morning David Pryor greets visitors while dressed in an open, white shirt with an Arkansas Razorback monogrammed on the cuff. Born in Camden, he attended Henderson State Teachers College before transferring to the University of Arkansas – where he met Barbara – and he is as passionate about his alma mater and the Razorbacks as he is any piece of legislation he backed in his political career.
Pryor, who turned 79 on Aug. 29, has served on a number of boards and is currently a member of the UA board of trustees. The work is a bit more demanding than he expected – he visited Cuba in spring as an official emissary asked by UA Chancellor David Gearhart to explore the possibility of an exchange program – but Pryor praises the board for its hard work and absence of “showboats.”
He is also on the national board for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which meets every other month in Washington. Typically, Pryor once convinced the board to leave the Capitol and meet in Little Rock at the Clinton Library.
The Pryors’ love of their home state is evident in the decorations, which among other things feature the work of local artists including Barbara, who paints in a zesty, Latin American style.
Barbara joins the group in the middle of David’s guided tour, and he eventually leaves her in charge and retires to the kitchen to make his visitors coffee.
“She’s been a trouper all these years,” Pryor says of the former Barbara Jean Lunsford, who he married in 1957. The couple has three sons.
When asked what title he uses in retirement, Pryor says some refer to him as “Senator” but “Most people now, it’s David. In a couple of years I will be out of the Senate as long as I was in the Senate.”
Pryor’s father William, the one-time Ouachita County sheriff who built up a local car dealership business, used to take Pryor to hear politicians speak on the Camden courthouse steps, and David studied law with an eye toward entering politics himself. He was already active in student politics and had been a congressional page when William took him to hear President Dwight Eisenhower speak to a huge crowd in Little Rock’s MacArthur Park in 1952.
A week later David was back in school and William, diagnosed with leukemia, was dead after a brief hospitalization in Texas. The Eisenhower appearance was the last time Pryor saw his father, but it wasn’t the last time cancer would threaten his family.
Risky Procedure
Pryor was a class president in college, a newspaper publisher in Camden, a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives at 26, a U.S. congressman and governor – the 44th man to hold the job – from 1975-1979 before he landed his ultimate office in the Senate.
He was well into his last term when Gov. Bill Clinton became the first Arkansan elected President of the United States, and Pryor, former governor and senator Dale Bumpers (an old friend) and Clinton have been referred to as the “Big Three” of modern state politics for their progressive stances in the face of the growing Southern conservatism.
But politics became an afterthought in 1995 when Mark Pryor, then 33 and already into his own career after a stint in the state House of Representatives, came home from a pickup basketball game with an injured ankle that revealed a knot on his left Achilles tendon.
Pryor family friend and orthopedic surgeon Lowry Barnes did a biopsy that revealed the knot was cancerous and the options boiled down to two: remove the leg or undergo a fairly experimental process that involved ligament replacement and rebuilding of the leg below the knee.
After much deliberation and prayer, the Pryors opted for the ligament replacement, which was preformed by a team of surgeons at UAMS in a 15-hour procedure using a ligament shipped from New Jersey.
“They did experimental surgery on Mark,” says Barbara, who lost a brother to leukemia at age 33. “They rebuilt his leg and have given him a great life.”
A post-procedure examination at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston left surgeons praising the UAMS team of doctors that included Kent Westbrook, James Suen, Richard Nicholas and James Yuen.
“They said we couldn’t have done any better in Houston than we did at UAMS,” says David Pryor, who himself has had two heart surgeries, both performed in Arkansas.
At Home
These days the Pryors enjoy driving trips – like a recent jaunt to New Mexico – in which they chat, reminisce, listen to books on tape (he has a newfound fondness for Hemingway) and sometimes drop in on the friends they have made in a life of politics.
“We just enjoy seeing the country,” Pryor says.
The couple can count Bumpers and former Republican president George H.W. Bush as friends as well as former senators from both sides of the aisle. The list includes hero astronaut John Glenn, a Democrat from Ohio, and Wyoming Republican Alan Simpson, who Pryor calls “one of our best friends.”
Pryor is a link to a more civil political age, and his departure from the Senate at the dawn of Clinton’s second term was part of an exodus of moderates from both parties.
Pryor recalls his father campaigning for sheriff of Ouachita County against incumbent Arthur Ellis. William “never said a disparaging word” about his opponent, Pryor says, and clearly he and his wife carry that civility as part of their Arkansas pride.
When he speaks of the upcoming gala Pryor puts it in statewide terms.
“There’s not a family in Arkansas that one way or the other has not been touched by cancer and we’re one of the families,” he says.
For the Pryors, such celebrations seem to go better with an Arkansas flavor.
“We’ll be there expressing our gratitude,” Pryor says.
Soon the home is filled with the noise and flutter of departing guests, and someone stops to comment on one of Barbara’s decorations.
“This is a nice vase,” he says and catches himself. “Or is it pronounced vahz?”
“It’s a vase,” Barbara says, drawling out a long A that would look at home on the midfield turf at Razorback Stadium.
David stops at the foyer to pass out campaign stickers on behalf of Mark, who is using his dad’s old logo. Indications are it is going to be a tough reelection fight, but the Pryors have already seen their son get through worse.
It is nice, after the travels, to come back to Arkansas, to connect with those who shared the same fears and challenges. It is nice to be back among friends and family.
It is nice to be home, entertaining visitors and swapping stories.
“Come back and see us,” Pryor says, sending his guests off with a smile and a wave.
UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Gala for Life
When: 6:30 p.m., Friday, Sept. 20 | Where: Statehouse Convention Center | Attire: Black Tie
Entertainment: The Temptations Review featuring Dennis Edwards | Tickets + Info: Cancer.UAMS.edu/Gala