Individual Details

Dyer man turns 100
by MELINDA W. BIGELOW
Press Argus-Courier Staff
Last year, Social Security sent Henry Cecil Furr a letter, asking him to come to the Fort Smith office to verify he was alive. Shocked by the request, his daughter, Velma Weese, called the office to inquire why. The answer was simple to the government officials. At age 99, Furr never used Medicare benefits. Social Security sent a representative to his Dyer home. He doesn’t go to the doctor unless it is absolutely necessary. “The best way to get along is to forget the doctor,” said Furr, who will celebrate his 100th birthday Sunday. He has relied on a motorized scooter for the past four years. He plans to spend his birthday doing “what my gal wants to do,” Furr said, referring to Weese. Furr has a remarkable sense of humor, his intellect is intact and his memory unblurred. Age, however, has bent his body and made hearing difficult. His uncanny knack for mechanics provided his family with advantages unknown to others although his formal education ended in the seventh grade when his father died. Furr went to work at age 14 in a glass factory to support his mother and two brothers. He also worked at Rim and Bow, making wagon parts and later at Garrison Furniture Factory. In 1927, he began farming on land in the bottoms that belonged to his wife. “I picked cotton all day, making $1 a day. If you picked 1,500 pounds of cotton, you only got 500 pounds of cotton after it was cleaned. We had 140 acres. We grew soybeans after cotton went out,” he said. One of Furr’s creations, a lawnmower, resulted in a high school teacher calling one of his daughters a liar. She bragged on her father’s invention, only to be humiliated in front of her peers. Three years later, the school purchased Furr’s lawnmower. Living on a mountain at Rudy, the Furrs were the only family nearby to have electricity. Furr purchased a generator and put a gasoline motor on it in the 1930s. “Electric light bulbs came along and ran me out of a job so I decided to make electricity work for me,” he said with a grin covering his face. Furr also provided running water for his family from a hillside spring. One modern convenience Furr disliked was an airplane. “Once a barnstormer came by, offering rides for $5 each. I paid the money, then realized they were using a pair of pliers and baling wire for repairs. That plane had no cab on it. When we looped-the-loop, I saw the ground. That was my last airplane ride,” he said in a stern voice. A charter member of the Dyer Assembly of God Church, the original church building was constructed with lumber raised on Furr’s property. Furr never smoked and never purchased a package of cigarettes. He was intoxicated only once which was one time too many for him. “I got drunk one time. I didn’t know any better. I was riding around in a car with one of my friends. It was cold, really cold. I went back to the glass factory and went to sleep on a piece of metal. I swore off of it and that was the last of it,” he said. Furr’s only regrets are never having a vacation and not being able to play the saxophone. “I wanted to learn to play the saxophone but there was no money. I wanted a job that would pay something. Back in those days, you didn’t get to pick your job. You took what you could get,” he said. One modern convenience he enjoys is the computer. A champion checkers player, the computer rarely beats him. The father of five daughters and one stepson, he has 18 grandchildren, 33 great-grandchildren and 10 great-great-grandchildren. Surrounded by family and friends, his birthday will include greetings from President and Mrs. George W. Bush, Gov. Mike Huckabee, Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller, U.S. Congressman John Boozman, U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln, District 21 Circuit Judge Gary Cottrell and proclamations from Dyer Mayor Richard Leakey and Crawford County Judge Jerry Williams.
Press Argus-Courier, June 11, 2003

Birth	8 Jun 1903	Fort Smith, Sebastian County, AR
Occupation	1920	glass factory glass maker - Fort Smith, Sebastian County, AR
Marriage	26 Apr 1930	Sebastian County, AR - Vernon Elizabeth "Sis" BURKHART
Occupation	1940 - 1950	farmer - Crawford County, AR
Death	15 Jun 2004	Dyer, Crawford County, AR
Burial		Dyer Cemetery, Dyer, Crawford County, AR
Soc Sec No		430-66-3432

Spouse	Vernon Elizabeth "Sis" BURKHART (1906 - 1986)
Child	Robbie Lou FURR (1931 - 2017)
Child	Hilda Ray FURR (1932 - 2015)
Child	Living
Child	Wilma Lee FURR (1937 - 1994)
Child	Living

Father	John Wilburn FURR (1876 - 1915)
Mother	Hattie Belle NIX (1883 - 1968)
Sibling	Velma FURR (1906 - 1907)
Sibling	Edward Garland FURR (1908 - 1990)
Sibling	Carl Leanard FURR (1913 - 2001)
Sibling	Living

Notes