Tracy Roark: Little Rock Hero

Following is the text of the article about Tracy Roark from Sunday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Statistics can be a cold way to start a story. But here are a few eye-popping numbers that bring into focus the life-saving achievements of Tracy Roark, Little Rock's Employee of the Year. In 2003, the year before Roark became manager of the city's Animal Services Division, its pound-like facility euthanized 3,147 dogs and cats. It sent a mere 386 to new homes. The ratio of death to survival was a ghastly 8-to-1.

Last year, the renamed Animal Village found new families in Arkansas and elsewhere for 2,263 dogs and cats, while returning 343 more to their current owners. The euthanasia total was 1,618. This year's incomplete figures are in the same range, meaning that survival is now far more likely than death.

The remarkable turnaround is even more impressive for a municipal agency mandated by law to capture and dispose of the city's numerous and sometimes vicious strays. They include the hardest of hard cases, which account for a good portion of those that still can't be saved.

"When I started here, I was scared," says Roark, who served at first as interim manager. "The job seemed overwhelming. And when I walked through the first time, I saw a lot of scared animals. I could see that they weren't getting what we should be providing for them -- loving care."

That need "really dawned on me the first time an angry dog came in that just wanted to tear everything up. After a couple of days of being decently treated, he was coming to me and enjoying me and I was enjoying him.

"That made me realize I had something to give to animals. They have a heart. They think. And they realize when they're being treated well."

There also has been a big change in the animal population at the home that 50-year-old Roark and wife Cheryl share near Wye, west of Little Rock.

Parents of a daughter and son, they moved to the scenic hill setting a decade ago with two pets: Montana, "an independent-minded huskie," and cat Mabelle, "the queen and my wife's true love."

Now five dogs and four cats are part of the family. The seven additions all came from Animal Village.

Dogs Dan and Gus are Cardigan Welsh corgis, while Amber is a mixed breed "that smiles when she does something wrong." Otter is a rottweiler-hound mix "that came into the village so scared he broke my heart and ended up with us. He is the most grateful dog you have ever met."

Among the three added cats, Purple Stick "is a foster we just fell in love with." Myrtle "is a kitten that my wife bottle-fed from less than a week old." Phoebe "is my wife's sister's cat, whom we're caring for."

City Manager Bruce Moore, who presented the Employee of the Year award in May, says Roark's "ability to love and care for every dog and cat that comes into our Animal Village is unmatched. He is one of the most caring individuals I have ever worked with."

Moore remembers that Roark went to the Animal Village reluctantly from his previous city position as housing code enforcement supervisor.

"A few months later," says the city manager, "he told me it was the right decision because now he could make a difference in the life of an animal every day."

The initial reluctance, says Roark, came because "I had heard about the problems with staff, rumors of poor animal care, illness and nothing to gain but a bad reputation. I would have taken failure personally."

The facility, then called Little Rock Animal Shelter, was located in a 50-year-old structure at Interstate Park.

"It was run like a pound," Roark says. "Dogs came in and dogs went out, and it was not really a caring or loving place. There was an adoption program, but it was nowhere near as aggressive as we have become."

Caring for animals is part of his boyhood memories as a native Texan whose family moved to North Little Rock when he was 2, and to Lonoke eight years later.

One of seven brothers, he had a black-and-white cat called Thomas "that I think of as my first real pet." Parents John and Jerry Roark, who are still living, had a number of chow dogs. The first was named Ling.

"He bit me on the arm while we played," Roark remembers. "I startled him and he took a bite. I still have the tooth marks on my arm. But I know it was my fault."

After graduating from Lonoke High in 1983, he worked for seven years as an estimator for a construction company. His father and brothers, three of them now dead, started a building business while Tracy went his separate way.

Roark's construction experience proved valuable during the planning and erecting of the $2.2 million Animal Village that opened in 2007 at 4500 Kramer St., a bit south of the University and Asher avenue intersection. About half that sum came from a voter-approved bond issue, the rest via private fundraising.

"With my background, I knew how to read blueprints," he says. "Working with the designer from Boston, we wanted architectural features that would stand out. We wanted the facade to be inviting. We wanted the color neutral on the outside, but very warm and inviting inside."

Animal Village contains 105 kennels for dogs and 40 for cats. The canine and feline population ranges from 180 to 220. Every so often, there's a horse, goat, pig, snake or some other species.

MOSTLY AT CAPACITY

"We're pretty much full every day," Roark says. "We work hard to encourage adoptions -- to do everything possible before we have to make any of the hard decisions."

By hard decisions, he means euthanizing, "which we do as the last resort. It's the most difficult part of my responsibilities. But I'm proud to make those decisions myself. I want to make them, not to leave the job to my staff."

The criteria, he explains, "is based first of all on the animal's temperament. Then we look at health, then unfortunately we have to look at breeds that might be hard to place. Seldom do we get to the point where we have to consider putting the really adoptable animals to sleep."

A growing part of placement is sending dogs for adoption to other parts of the United States, mainly through the Rescue Waggin' program operated by PetSmart Charities.

"We're really proud of our relationship with PetSmart Charities," Roark says. "We have sent almost 2,000 dogs to other states. PetSmart drivers pick up our animals twice a month. And the drivers have named us their favorite shelter out of the 50 or more that they service."

Playing a major local role to promote adoptions is Friends of the Animal Village, organized several years ago by lawyer Cindy Dawson. It supports the facility with fundraising events and activities, which brought an anonymous $100,000 donation last year. That money is going to build a new quarantine area.

Stacy Sells, a Friends of the Animal Village board member, says it's always a pleasure to work with Roark.

She adds that he "has taken what was once a typical city shelter, nothing to be proud of, and turned it into a national model for breaking the status quo. He has shown the city there's a different way -- and that is to focus on saving lives, giving these pets a second chance."

Dogs and cats available for adoption are pictured and described on the group's website, friendsoftheanimalvillage.org. Animal Village also has a Facebook page.

An adoption costs $90, which includes medical services from the village's full-time veterinarian, Dr. Brian Vandegrift. On occasion, discounted or free adoptions can be arranged.

"Our goal is making it easy to adopt," Roark says. "We want people to come to us, because if a dog or cat leaves here, it is going to be sterilized. You can get an unsterilized animal free from an ad somewhere, but it will continue to breed in a vicious cycle. There are already way too many animals without homes."

VOLUNTEER EFFORTS

About 30 regular volunteers play a needed role at the village, with duties that range from walking dogs and playing with cats to bathing animals. A workshop for new volunteers takes place the second Saturday of each month.

"Our volunteers really do a lot in making this a welcoming place for our animals and for everyone who comes to adopt," Roark says.

He has abundant praise as well for his dozen employees, especially so for field supervisor Bernard Bracely.

"Bernard was on the staff when I came here," he says. "I'll never forget the Thanksgiving Day after I had just taken the job. I got a call at home from him saying he had dropped by and the shelter was poorly cleaned. I met him there and we spent our holiday afternoon taking care of the animals.

"From that day on, I knew that Bernard was the best man I could ever ask for to help turn the shelter around. He is a hero for the animals of this city."

"Hero" is a word diminished these days by overuse. But it could comfortably fit Roark as well, considering the thousands of dogs and cats who've literally been given new life thanks to his Loving care.

Damnation

There are things one has read dozens of times that suddenly pierce like lightning on a late evening reading. From the ending of “Heart of Darkness,” Marlow lies to Kurtz’s lover about the details of Kurtz's death:

"I was on the point of crying at her, 'Don't you hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. 'The horror! The horror!'

"'His last word—to live with,' she murmured. 'Don't you understand I loved him—I loved him—I loved him!'

"I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.

"'The last word he pronounced was—your name.'

"I heard a light sigh, and then my heart stood still, stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. 'I knew it—I was sure!' . . . She knew. She was sure. I heard her weeping; she had hidden her face in her hands. It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn't he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn't. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark—too dark altogether. . . "

 It dawned on me to compare that passage to the immortal one from Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” in which Huck makes the (soul-damning) decision not to send a letter turning the slave Jim in, as he is legally and, by the code of the times, morally, bound to do.

“I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll go to hell"—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.”

 So, one wonders, how would Conrad and Twain feel about tormenting young immigrant children? Would it free our soul from damnation or, would we find comfort in believing that, “The heavens do not fall for such a trifle?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also: www.wattensawpress.com   www.cwblogsite.com

Change

Early morning thoughts with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.9 in E flat Major performed by Mitsuko Uchida. (Yes I know, I don’t stray far—see below).

As I sit at our farm before the Sun has even thought of rising, I sense a slight rough spot in the greased grooves of the Universe. Two of the Queen B’s dogs have altered their morning resting routines. Why?

Betty Lou, the 50-pound tomboy who was supposed to have been a fox-terrier mix, is asleep on the couch instead of the green recliner. Suzi, the Evangelist, has chosen another chair. She normally faces me in the morning with a supplicating look on her face as if my salvation were the only important thing in our postage-stamp galaxy. She was rescued by the Queen and her mother, the Lady Hazel, from underneath an abandoned church where she had lived for some time with her collection of toys: a tin can, one long stick, several rags, and a hand-fan from a long defunct funeral home. She seems to have turned her back on me today.

So what’s up? Is there perhaps a small hole in the Curtain of Reality? Do I care to sneak a peek? One remembers, of course, the ending of William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury.” Luster, one of the Compton family’s “boys,” offers to take Benjy, the idiot man-child, on his daily carriage ride and opts to circle the town square counter-clockwise, instead of clockwise as per the daily routine. Benji goes berserk until Luster turns their horse Queenie around and then:

“I could hear Queenie's feet and the bright shapes went smooth and steady on both sides, the shadows of them flowing across Queenie's back. They went on like the bright tops of wheels. Then those on one side stopped at the tall white post where the soldier was. But on the other side they went on smooth and steady, but a little slower.”

In short, things were as they should be.

Life in our country, as in this modest living room in the midst of nowhere, certainly seems about to change, and maybe the dogs presage it. It may not seem a major event to the few remaining of the generation that lived through the three-fold catastrophe of WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII, but it unsettles a thinking person in present times. Is it comforting to realize that, far from a modern feeling, it was expressed years ago, this sense of impending change? Matthew Arnold alluded to it in the Victorian era and even hearkened back to ancient times in his epic “Dover Beach,” to wit”

“Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.”

So I guess I had best prepare for … oh wait … Betty Lou just moved to her normal chair and Suzi has turned to stare at me.

Never mind.

 

Worth reading anyway

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also: www.wattensawpress.com  www.cwblogsite.com

 

Torture

Before shipping out for overseas duty in 1968 (gosh it sounds so much more pleasant when you say it that way), I was sent to Survival Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training. Part of it involved a mock POW camp where trained “captors” had the authority to beat the hell out of you if you crossed them. I didn’t, but still got slapped around, thrown naked into a pile of dead tree limbs, had paper from the floor of a latrine stuffed in my mouth and was kicked in the ribs after being knocked down. I was pretty lucky. They were mean to some of those guys.

I didn’t protest when they locked me into a “potato-bin” looking thing just large enough to hold me while on my knees with my body folded over as far as it would go. I knew if I showed any fear or concern they would leave me in longer. So I waited them out and listened to some of the other guys yelling to be let out. Kinda scary. I decided then and there I didn't want really to be captured.

We all made it through except two. One was a known malingerer, maybe a plant. The other was this tough-talking warrant officer who babbled constantly about eating rattlesnake and how he looked forward to killing “natzies,” oops, so sorry … “gooks.” He fell apart when they started telling him what his wife was doing while he was gone. Must have hit a nerve. Anyway, they led him away and we never saw him again. They let the malingerer stick around and help guard us.

So when someone says we should torture prisoners, I’d sorta like to see them go through SERE training first. It still wouldn’t give them the right but it might sober them up a bit. It's funny how the only conservative senator against torture is the only one who has ever been tortured, isn't it?

 

Reckon whether he would
"soldier up" or squeal like a pig?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also: www.wattensawpress.com

 

 

 

Talent

Early in the morning thoughts with Franz Schubert Symphony No. 2 in B flat major:

“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings.  At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.  Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.” - Ernest Hemingway on F. Scott Fitzgerald from “A Movable Feast,” always one of my favorite passages from the book. (I once asked a young book store clerk if the store had it and she directed me to the cook book section).

The quote has been described as cruelly critical. I see it as praising with faint damnation.

F. Scott and Zelda - a troubled marriage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also www.wattensawpress.com