Nell Cotnam News Today

If ever I am assigned to cover the rare flowering of a fine elderly citizens Queen of the Night, somebody please stand beside me during the watch party and every so often lean in to whisper, "Be careful."

Before we dig into todays fun topic — how colleagues of Arkansas Gazette cops-beat reporter Joe Wirges mocked his candidacy for Big Rock constable in 1922 — we must scratch up an un-fun bit of necessary background.

Poking around the newspaper archives last week, I came across a dusty box of exclamation points!

With a sweet face and arms full of ribbons and flowers, she smiles across a century from the pages of the Arkansas Gazette. She isn't looking at us. She was the first woman married in (now historic) First Presbyterian Church at Eighth and Scott streets in downtown Little Rock, and the first to march the sanctuary aisle accompanied by the city's oldest congregation's then-new organ.