25 Aug 2016 A man who never stops learning is a man with a story to share

by Jan Spann

Larry Jernigan is plagued by curiosity, and that has shaped his world and changed the lives of those around him.

As a cotton sharecropper’s son in the rural community of Bells, Tenn., Larry learned the value of having a goal and working hard to achieve it.

When the 13-year-old picked cotton to buy his first gun, his Pa said that if he was old enough to pick enough cotton for it, he was old enough to own it. That lesson earned him a pellet rifle, which started his involvement with hunting game for food and stoked his curiosity, matching wits with wild animals.

The family moved to Dollarway (Jefferson County) when Larry was young, and he found exploring the urban landscape a treat after cotton farming.

Larry earned a biology degree from Arkansas College (now Lyon College) in Batesville in 1965 and headed to graduate school at the University of Oklahoma. 

After graduation, he taught science and remedial math at Cave City (Independence/Sharp counties), until the U.S. Army drafted him at the end of his first year. After basic training, the soldier was assigned to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he served as a biological science research assistant. Larry also assisted researchers with visual recognition of wound infections — how to look at a wound and see what was happening. “My job was operating-room photography; I’d go in and photograph the injuries,” said Larry. He was also stationed in Tokyo during his military service and assisted with soldiers wounded in the Vietnam War.

Upon discharge, he returned to Dollarway and taught the same subjects for two years. When a friend asked him to take photos of her daughter, Larry decided to open a photography studio, which he operated for 10 years before realizing the one-man operation was too much for one man.

At that juncture, his curiosity and scientific skills led him to Life Chiropractic College in Atlanta. Once again, Larry returned to Pine Bluff and opened his chiropractic clinic. Now in his 40s, Larry relished the diversity of his clients and liked being back home. One day he met a woman at church. Jean and Larry have been married now for 27 years.

One day in Pine Bluff, Larry recognized a woman with whom he had double-dated in high school. They enjoyed catching up on the good old days, but then he just didn’t see Bernice anymore. On a camping trip to JFK Campground, Larry and Jean stopped at Chuck’s Steakhouse on the Little Red River in Cleburne County, down the road from where they now live. He hadn’t seen his high school friend around Pine Bluff because Bernice was now Chuck’s wife.

The two couples struck up a friendship, and Larry and Jean enjoyed trips to visit these friends and soon purchased property and began clearing their lot and finding a builder. When their home was completed in 2000, the two divided their time between Pine Bluff and the Wildflower community.

Larry took Master Gardener training and became a Cleburne County MG in 2002. In 2005, Larry retired his practice and the couple moved to Cleburne County.

Perhaps “retired” is not the right word to use where Larry is concerned. The “retiree” jumped into working at the Cleburne County Extension Office, where his job was to help with the 16 or so 4-H clubs, and here many of his previous jobs came into play. Along with regular 4-H clubs, Larry started one with an entomology focus and another for photography. His job also included coordinating activities for all clubs, and for this man that meant developing creative — and unusual — activities to spur the kids’ attention. Who wouldn’t want to know more about a Road Kill Roast?

For that, Larry cut skinny ribeye roasts into one-inch “snake” strips with red bell pepper for tongues and had a bowl of petite boiled onions inside olives to resemble eyes.

After 12 years as a MG and seven years with 4-H, Larry retired from both to spend time with family, although he still gives presentations on nature and photography in classrooms and occasionally speaks at 4-H and MG conferences and meetings.

These days, Larry spends his days communing with nature that surrounds his home. Each morning, he feeds corn to a doe and her fawn, and a red fox shows up for his dinner around 8 p.m. Chipmunks have chubby cheeks from the birdfeeder spillover, and he still hopes to gain the trust of the doe’s 2-year-old twin 8-point bucks.

The soil is poor at their home, so Larry uses four raised beds for his crops of onions, tomatoes, green beans and Texas Longhorn okra that looks more like a tree at 10 feet tall and produces tasty 9- to 12-inch pods that are not tough. He saves the seeds for the next year’s crop. Each bed has marigolds planted at each end because the pyrethrin in the flower deters pests. Jean has 18 rose bushes around the home and has lots of container plants for her other favorites, which overwinter in the garage.

For the past six years, the couple has traveled to High Island, Texas, 30 miles east of Galveston, the highest spot between Mobile and Mexico and so named because of a salt dome, a geologically and historically important feature. Neither high nor an island, the 450-population town of High Island welcomes thousands of birders each year from March to May when millions of birds that wintered in Central and South America head north.

“It’s one of the top 10 locations in the US for birding, and we spend two weeks each April enjoying the seafood and talking with other travelers as much as we like the birding,” said Larry.

Two years ago, the couple headed farther west to Sierra Vista, Ariz., another mecca for birds migrating from South America and Mexico. “We generally see only one species of hummingbird in Arkansas,” said Larry. “In this location, we saw 13 different species. It was spectacular.”

Barred owls and red-shouldered hawks do the hunting for him, and Larry says his hunting is contained to trying to find things at Walmart. But what he can’t seem to contain is his natural interest in learning and being curious about the world around him.

Did Walt Disney know Larry Jernigan? Sounds like he might have when Disney said, “We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” If learning keeps you young, Larry Jernigan will never grow old.

A Conway resident, Jan Spann has been gardening for 20-plus years and has been involved with the Faulkner County Master Gardeners for 11 years. She and her husband, Randy, have five children and eight grandchildren.