By Ken Salzmann

Rita Pruniski Wells' unquilified devotion to the three touchstones of family, faith and community will be at the forefront of the many lasing memories of her, those who knew the lifelong North Little Rock resident said this week.

Mrs. Wells, whose family roots extended deep into the historic leadership of this city, died Friday, Aug. 20, at age 76, two months after being diagnosed with lung cancer and emphysema.

On the day of her funeral, her eldest son noted that she had faced death with "equanimity," drawing upon the same deep religious faith that had shaped her life and guided her in many of her community activities, especially in her lifelong involvement in St. Patrick's Catholic Church and what could be regarded as her signature commitment to Catholic education.

"She felt that she had had a very full and rich life...and she died a very [peaceful] death," because of her religious convictions, said Topf Wells, the oldest of her three sons.

The daughter of the late Stephen A. and Ottilia Pruniski and the wife of the late Claude Topf Wells Sr. - the nephew of Henry O. Topf who succeeded his uncle as president of the former Twin City Bank, serving in that role from 1968 to 1972 - Mrs. Wells "spent every year of her 76 years at St. Patrick's," her son said.

"She just loved that parish. She was just a person for whom St. Patrick's and North Little Rock, they were her home," he remarked.

Topf Wells said that it was also through her strong ties to St. Patrick's that his mother's longstanding commitment to Catholic education first found expression.

"She was a fervent believer in Catholic education. She thought it was the perfect atmosphere for children to learn and to value their religious faith."

Over the years, Mrs. Wells served the church and school in varied capacities, as a member of the parish council, parish school board, Ladies Guild, and parish school endowment board, and she was a two-term member of the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock School Board, where she made her mark as "a very intelligent, frank, honest woman," according to Mike Rockers, diocesan schools superintendent.

"I think she was concerned with the Catholicity of the schools. She wanted our schools to be not just quality private schools, but quality Catholic schools," Rockers said.

He said that belief in Catholic schools was at the core of Mrs. Wells' personality, "not an addition to who she was, but central to who she was."

"[But] she led a very integrated life. She also had a lot of fun," Topf Wells recalled, noting that Mrs. Wells' interests extended to bridge - she was a life master at the game and a past president of the Little Rock Duplicate Bridge Club - the Razorbacks, which she supported avidly throughout her life, and the races at Oaklawn Park.

"She was a superb handicapper," her son said.

He said Mrs. Wells also drew praise as "a great cook" who would spend an entire day in the kitchen to prepare for tailgate parties at Razorback games, making, among other dishes, fried chicken that guests would "talk about for the next five years."

"And she was a great source of advice on everything from food to financial matters," Topf Wells added.

"But I'll remember her as an absolutely wonderful mother - she was always there for every one of her sons," he said.

In addition to Claude Topf Wells Jr. and his wife, Sally Probasco, of Madison, Wisc., Mrs. Wells is survived by sons David Andrew Wells of St. Louis; and Stephen H. Wells of North Little Rock; and three step-grandchildren, Christian, Matthew and Leigh Tallman.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Claude Topf Wells Sr., her sister, Jane Pruniski Adkins, and her brother, Stephen A. Pruniski.

A vigil service was held Sunday at North Little Rock Funeral Home Chapel and aMass of Christian Burial was conducted Monday at St. Patrick's with interment in Roselawn Memorial Park.

Pallbearers were Mark Pennebaker, Terry Kerr, Ricky Kerr, Greg Hendon, Jack Pruniski, James Blake and Steve Pruniski, and honorary pallbearers were Roman Borengasser, Homer Tanner, Pat Koch, Terry Renaud, Mike Mehaffey and the members of the St. Patrick's Men's Club.

The family requests that memorials be made to the St. Patrick's School endowment fund, c/o St. Patrick's Schook, 19th and Maple streets, North Little Rock, 72114.

The Times - August 26, 1999


MIDDIE TRUE MOORE SMITH

Mother, wife, philanthropist, dies at age 81

By Eunice J. Hart

Her trademark was her insightful empathy and the thoughtful ways she found to help people in pain, people she loved or causes she believed in, family members say.

"I tell you what she did: I was going through her pocketbook the day she died, and she had the checks made out for memorials at the church for people who had died," said her husband of 28 years last week as he fought back tears.

Over the years the couple made numerous trips across the country around Christmas to make donations to one or another charity or hospital on behalf of their fraternal organizations. But Middie True Moore Smith insisted on an even more personal level of donation.

So because she had worked enough to draw several retirement checks, she quietly but methodically divided up one of those checks every month and gave it away in individual gifts to people, to her church and to several native American schools and colleges.

Mrs. Smith, an outgoing and unassuming woman renowned for her work with the Eastern Star and White Shrine of Jerusalem organizations, died Wednesday, Aug. 20, of complications following bypass surgery. She was 81.

The middle of three children of a Scottish farmer who married a 3/4 Choctaw Indian and raised cattle on farms in Little Rock and Beebe, Mrs. Smith worked in Employment Services for the state of Arkansas for 38 years.

Fresh out of Little Rock Junior College, she joined the department as a secretary and was quickly moved into the role of interviewer, where her gentle people skills proved to be her professional genius as she helped the unemployed find jobs for which they were suited and in which they would succeed, her husband said.

"She could understand their problems and she would work to get them hired. Years later people she had helped would call her and say 'You told me what to do, and now I own the buisness,'" he said.

Her first marriage ended in divorce. But in her early 50s, working on various projects as the top officer of the Pulaski Heights chapter of the Eastern Star, she would begin dating the Army Colonel who was the top officer of the local Shriners, divorced for five years himself.

The two were married in 1970. "We did everything together," he said. "And she was so giving. She would deny herself to please me. She wouldn't even eat unless I would eat something."

So when he lay unconscious in the hospital for three months earlier this year, she refused to sign papers to turn off his life support and stayed by his side 12 hours a day, seven days a week, providing the constant support through his own bypass recovery that helped save his life, he believes.

Her work in service organizations was simply an extension of that spirit, he said.

"I think she was proudest of being the state chaplain in 1989 for the Order of the Eastern Star," he said. "That same year she was the queen of the shrine (Past Worthy High Priestess of the Order of the White Shrine of Jerusalem)."

What she and he both found in the work with the Shriners and Eastern Star, he said, was a Christian fellowship that was like family as well as a sense of a part to fulfill.

But Middie Smith was attentive to all the groups she joined, from her bridge club to the Women's City Club to the Literary Guild, the Modern Arts and the Chorals, where she served as vice president and chairman.

"In the past 10 years I don't think she missed on meeting," her husband said.

She was the outgoing one, active in her church and Sunday School class. He was the quieter of the two, but "as overbearing as a military guy can be," he laughed. "She knew how to handle me, made me think everything was my idea. The thing is, she understood people. When she visited someone in the hospital, she would put her arms around them, kiss their cheek, hold their hand, make them feel she cared. That was Middie...She did everything that she could to help somebody else."

In addition to her husband, she was survived by her son Kenneth F. Poteete of Little Rock; sister Margaret M. Shelton of Little Rock; two step daughters, Debbie Stormant and her husband Lester Stormant of Conway, and Diana Crouse and her husband Billy Ray Crouse of Sheridan; five grandchildren, Shannon and her husband Robert Miller of Fort Morgan, Colo.; Cliff and Melissa Crouse of Sheridan; and Wesley and Tamber Storment of Conway; and three great-grandchildren, Tara Kanon and Bobbie Miller of Fort Morgan, Colo.

Funeral services were held Saturday, Aug. 23, at Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church. Burial was at Primrose Cemetery in Little Rock.

The Times - August 28, 1997


MARGARET GULUTZO

Longtime resident succumbs to cancer at 65

By Matthew Hodges

She was a grandmother who handcrafted original Raggedy Anne dolls for all her grandchildren, and her sudden passing has left a gaping hole in their hearts, family members say.

Mrs. Gulutzo, 65, a North Little Rock resident for almost 40 years, succumbed to complications of lung cancer on Friday, May 26.

Born in Dardnelle and growing up in the tiny town of Yancopin in eastern Arkansas, Mrs. Gulutzo lived a simple life. She was one of eight children born in the midst of the Great Depression to farmers Sam and Elbia Miller.

Later she moved to Star City and worked for a clothing manufacturer. There she met and married Bill Valentine, but tragically their union ended when he was killed in a logging accident.

In timne another man came into her life. After a brief courtship, she married Sam Gulutzo, a manufacturing worker for the Ameron Paint Co. By the early 1960s, they moved to the North Little Rock area and had four children; two sons and two daughters. Over the years she lived in North Little Rock, Mrs. Gulutzo had several jobs including the assembly line at the Timex Watch Co., in food service for the North Little Rock School District and in housekeeping at the Holiday Inn, which once named her Employee of the Year.

At home she could cook with the best of them, her sister emphasized.

"If you're going to print one [thing] in the paper about her, you have to print this - she was the best spaghetti cook you ever saw."

But being a grandmother bought her the greatest joy, her family said.

"I'm the only grandma you have," she would tease the youngest of her flock.

And her plea for favoritism was only one facet of her deadpan sense of humor.

Scott Cordon, Mrs. Culutzo's grandnephew, recalled the his great aunt would "joke that we were related to Bozo the Clown. And at that time, I really thought I was kin to 'Somebody"!"

She had the uncanny ability to detect when one of her own would try to leave the house without giving her a cursory kiss good-bye on the cheek.

Ten years ago when Mrs. Gulutzo was diagnosed with lung cancer, she met that adversity with characteristic spunk. Though the setback prompted her retirement, she was able to persevere; and the cancer eventually went into remission.

Good health ended, however, when a cyst was found on her lungs last November and the doctors told her she would likely live no more than six months.

Edith Corder, Mrs. Gulutzo's sister, was especially close at hand in those final, waning days.

"She knew she was dying, and we knew," Corder said. "So starting two months ago, we [the extended family] came to stay with her whenever we could."

Toward the end, daughter Sarah Seavers and her husband, Kenneth, moved in with Mrs. Gulutzo. "She would say how sorry she was that I had to take care of her," she said. "I just replied 'Mother, why do you think God put me here?'"

Her daughter's companionship, like the company of all her extended family, was a constant source of strength for Mrs. Gulutzo, even as she became frailer physically. One of their favorite past-times had been to go shopping together.

"She said it was 'therapy for the soul,'" Seavers recalled.

In the winter of her life, Mrs. Gulutzo also found solace in listening to old-time country tunes such as "Last Date" by Floyd Kramer, watching religious television programs and singing her favorite hymn, "I'm Going Home Some Day."

Mrs. Gulutzo faced her worsening health with equanimity, her daughter recounted.

"As I put her to bed, she would say to me, 'Ill see you tomorrow, and if I don't see you again on earth, I'll see you in heaven.'"

Besides her husband, Sam, and daughter, Sarah, of North Little Rock, Mrs. Gulutzo is survived by sons John Gulutzo of Mayflower and Steve Gulutzo of Bigelow; a brother, William Miller of Tamo; six sisters, Carthidia Lackey and Audrey Edwards, both of Dumas, Virginia Earnest of Sheridan, Annie Mena of Brickeys, Edith Ann Corder and Shelly Sue Byerly, both of Star City; 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A Mass of Christian Burial was held on Tuesday, May 30, at St. Patrick's Catholic Church with the Rev. Warren Harvey officiating.

The Times - June 1, 2000


WILLIAM CARL FORTSON

Local entertainer, father dies at 78

By Stephen Ursery

Friends and family members say band leader and saxaphonist William Carl "Bil" Fortson was a talented and popular musician, but they also knew him as a gentle man with a propensity to use his talent to help others.

The youngest son of drummer, magician and ventriloquist William Petty Fortson, he was a mainstay of the local swing band community during the 1940's, 50's and 60's who became renowned for his extraordinary arrangements and for writing the official song of the City of North Little rock.

Mr. Forston died at the VA hospital Saturday, March 1, of complications from Parkinson's Disease. he was 78.

He had made his stage debut at age 4 performing as a one-man band of four instruments during one of his father's shows.

As a teenager, he won celebrity status as the man behind the marionettes in "The Three Fortsons" show with his father and sister Florine.

But music was his calling, and the saxophone and clarinet were his instruments, and in 1930's he played with the local Bert Parker Band, the Blue Steele Band, and the Ike Ragan Band.

When World War II broke out, he joined the Navy Band under the direction of Clyde McCoy, where he made his mark by arranging a version of "Sugar Blues" that McCoy had released years earlier.

Mr. Fortson's wife LaVerne Fortson says it was the first indication of her husband's great gift for rewriting the various parts of a composition to fit a particular band, its size and its instrument mix.

"Bill was the best arranger in Arkansas," she said

Immediately after the war Mr. Fortson co-founded the 14-piece Parker-Fortson Band, which local musician Doug Stiles says was "definitely one of the better bands around," headlining at such popular Little Rock night clubs as The Hilltop and Rainbow Gardens.

The group broke up after a couple of years, and Mr. Fortson then formed the Bill Fortson Orchestra for which he did the arranging and played the saxophone. It was during a 1948 gig at The Hilltop with that group that Mr. Fortson met his future wife.

"I was dincing with my date. He spun me around, and I lost my balance and fell into one of the music stands," LaVerne Fortson recalled. "Bill helped me up and was very kind and gracious. Guring the intermission, he came over and talked."

A year later, the two were married, and Mr. Fortson began devoting more time to his home life, his children and his community of North Little Rock.

In the early 1960's he was a member of the Burns Elementary (now Belwood) School Dad's Club, an organization that sponsored an annual music/comedy show known as the "Father's Follies" to raise money for playground equipment and other upgrades to the school

"Bill would organize the music and dance outines," said pharmacist Bob Lyon of Lyon's Pharmacy, who also belong to the group. "He was very talented and a great serviceman to the school."

Mr. Fortson saw music not only as a way to help the young, but also as a means to offer comfort and support to the sick and the elderly.

In 1951, he accepted a position as music director at the VA Hospital and began a tireless effort to bring musicians in, often playing there himself, with his band. He would stay in jobs at that hospital for the next 33 years, advancing to chief of recreation, where he organized patient trips to places like Oaklawn, the Buffalo River, Lake Catherine State Park, and the state fair rodeo.

"Bill was a real people person, and, consequently, the morale on his staff was excellent," said T.O. Miller, who was the creative arts therapist during Mr. Fortson's tenure.

North Little Rock Housing Director Bill Clements said Mr. Fortson's various musical groups were also frequent guests at the community center on Willow Street and at the Heritage House senior citizen highrise.

As the years went by and the demand for big-band sound diminished in the 1970s, however, Mr. Fortson was forced to cut his orchestra to five members he called the Bill Fortson Band. Still his love for the music of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Count Basie, and Glen Miller never subsided, and his band continued to perform until about five years ago.

His most lasting contributions to the local musical scene, however, was a song his band recorded at Sun Studio in Memphis in the early 1960's called "North Little Rock," which was written by Julia DeJanis.

According to Coleen Kipping, who had sung with Mr. Fortson's bands in the 1960s and sang the lead vocal on this recording, the song was declared the official song of North Little Rock about 10 years ago.

"He was always giving of himself and his time. He was just a wonderful musician and a wonderful boss, fair to everyone," said Knipping. "I can only say the best things about him."

"And he was a real gentleman, real softspoken," said her daughter, Lee Ann Fortson. "He was as sweet a Dad as could be."

Besides his wife Laverne and daughter Lee Ann, Mr. Fortson is survived by two sons, Bill Forston Jr. of Little Rock and Kent Fortson of Memphis; another daughter, Donna Fortson of Memphis; three grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

A celebration of his life will be observed with a special music service at 2 p.m. Saturday in Griffin, Leggett, Healey, & Roth Chapel, 5800 West 12th, Little Rock, with Father Rodney Hudgen officiating.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be made to Calvary Cemetery, P.O. Box 7565, Little Rock, 72212 or to the Pulaski County umane Society.

A memorial service will be held at the next monthly meeting of the Jazz Club of Arkansas, set for Sunday, April 6, from 2-5 p.m. at the American Legion Post #1, 315 East Capitol Ave. in Little Rock.

The Times - March 6, 1997


ALFRED TOLAND "DUTCH" SCHULTZ

He loved this city and knew its history well

By Melissa Phillips

Most days in the last years of his life, Alfred Toland "Dutch" Schultz could be found in the black easy chair in his living room in Levy relaxing and watching his favorite television show or reading a good book.

Schultz a short and stocky man with expressive eyes, enjoyed the small things in life like his two adoring cats, Moses and Kit Kat. As for his own nickname "Dutch," some friends and family members said he had garnered it simply because of his distinctly Dutch surname while others swear he took it from the 1930s Chicago gangster Dutch Schultz and still others said it emerged because he could be such a hard-headed Dutchman about some things, including his long battle with cancer.

Mr. Schultz finally succumbed to that cancer, which had come back a little more than a year ago, on Thursday, May 18 at age 83.

A calm and quiet man, proud of his deep roots in North Little Rock, he had retired after 30 years service with the Air National Guard where he had risen to the rank of master sergeant and met his wife in the line of duty. He had also lived in North Little Rock virtually all of his post war life except for a few months when he had been sent on assignment to Virginia.

An only child of a man who worked for the old Vestal's Nurser in Baring Cross and a stay-at-home mom with similarly strong family roots in that neighborhood, he had joined the Baring Cross Baptist Church in 1917, when he was 10.

He graduated from North Little Rock High Schook, then joined the Army and ended up serving first in France and Germany with the 264th Ordinance Company during World War II and later in the Korean War for the Air National Guard, which became his career.

In his psare time over the years, he concentrated much of his reading time to his favorite subject, history, especially American History and that of in his home state and city.

In the mid 1970s and early 1980s, he was appointed to the North Little Rock History Commission, where his colleagues say his family ties to this city proved valuable to his research into the story of its earliest days.

"He was a very knowledgeable man in the early days of North Little Rock, " Said Clifton Hull, who served on the commission with Mr. Schultz, "He knew a lot of the early people and the businesses that went on in town."

And when in 1976 the connission put together the famous book on North Little Rock under the direction of Walter Adams, who also served on the commission back then, Schultz was an essential researcher.

"We split up into groups to do the work on the book," Adams said, "Dutch took steamships, but he loved history, period. He was also a very obliging fellow" about looking into just about anything that needed to be researched.

He would neet his wife of nearly 51 years, Mary Jo Morgan Schultz, when she was a radio operator and he was an air technician for the Air National Guard in the late 1940s, and he would be an attentive father to the two sons they raised in Mr. Schultz's beloved home town.

"He always attended all of our school functions," said his son Ross. "He supported us in whatever we did. He was just a really great dad."

It was a good life with this "ornery but outgoing man" named "Dutch," his wife said, and together they just took on the months and years as they unfolded.

"We were just ordinary people," she said.

Besides her wife and two sons, Ross Schultz Sr. and Gordon Schultz, Mr. Schultz is survived by two grandsons, Ross Schultz Jr. and Chris Schultz: one great-granddaughter, Cheyanne Schultz, all of North Little Rock.

Funeral services were held Saturday, May 20, at Roller-Owens Funeral Home with the Rev. Marty Watson of Baring Cross Baptsit Church officiating. Burial was in Rest Hills Memorial Park.

The family requests that memorials be made to the Baring Cross Baptist Church or Arkansas Hospice, 220 Ft. Roots Drive, North Little Rock, Ark 72114

The Times - May 25, 2000