Arkansas is Ideal for Veterans
Meet a veteran who chose to plant roots in Arkansas after serving 20 years as an aircraft mechanic.
While finishing his first enlistment at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas, in 2009, Tech. Sgt. Parker Morris got a call from his dad in Arkansas. He invited him and his wife, Jodie, to go on a fly-fishing trip on Bull Shoals Lake, which is located in the northern part of the state.
Throughout his teens, Morris ignored his dad’s offers to go fishing, but this time, he didn’t. He drove back to his home state and even practiced casting at the campground the night before they planned to go out on the water.
The next morning, they launched into the lake, which flows into the White River. Soon, their guide stopped paddling, looked at Morris, and said, “Hey, 11 o’clock!”
“…I’ll never forget it,” Morris says. “We were fishing hopper patterns, and I somehow managed to cast right where he said. Next thing I know, I’m landing a 19-inch brown trout. And I was just like, ‘OK, I get it now!’”
This wasn’t the first time Morris’ dad turned out to be right. After all, Morris laughed at his dad’s suggestion to join the military after high school, but enlisting in 2002 as an aircraft mechanic helped him move his life forward. The fly-fishing trip in 2009 left two lasting impacts on Morris: An absolute love of fly fishing and the realization that he loved his home state and hoped to end up there someday. And, 14 years later, he did.
Like Morris, many veterans have chosen to plant roots in The Natural State – and for good reason. Arkansas is ideal for veterans. It offers a range of career and education opportunities for those who have served – not to mention welcoming, supportive communities.
In Arkansas, 8.1% of adults are military veterans, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, so effective services are needed. The state offers 19 VA clinics and three medical centers with hospitals. Plus, the state offers service members, veterans and their families property tax exemptions, state employment preferences, education and tuition assistance, vehicle tags, and hunting and fishing license privileges.
‘You Have to Find That Drive in You’
For Morris, the journey from Arkansas to the Air Force and back was uncertain and indirect. He enlisted in 2002 out of patriotism after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and soon went to basic training.
“In basic training, I learned how your time in the military is kind of a metaphor for life,” he says. “The only constant is change, so you’d better be able to adapt.”
While in tech school, a mutual friend introduced him to Jodie, who grew up in southern Missouri, just north of his hometown of Springdale.
“One weekend, I snuck home and met her, and it was basically love at first sight,” he says.
After tech school, he was stationed at Pope Air Force Base just north of Fayetteville, North Carolina, working on Lockheed C-130 Hercules airplanes. Next, he went to McConnell in Wichita and maintained Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers. Ready for a new challenge, he put in for orders and received an offer to move to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
“It was April 1, and I was like, ‘This has got to be an April Fools’ joke. Nobody gets to just pick to go to Florida,’” he says.
But he did. He finished out his military career on the panhandle at Eglin, then at nearby Hurlburt Field. There, he worked on C-130s for Air Force Special Operations Command. Total, Morris served two decades with seven deployments, including to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan.
“I was aircraft maintenance, and that is a thankless job,” he says. “The pilots that come out, they fly the plane, they break it, they go home, and then we have to fix it. You’re not going to get an ‘attaboy’ every day. Working in 130 degrees in the desert in Afghanistan or wherever, you have to find that drive in you.”
‘It’s All Part of the Journey’
April 1, 2023, Morris retired from the Air Force. He struggled to find his next step in Florida, and after his wife had a tough day at work as a speech therapist, they had a serious talk walking around their neighborhood.
While the novelty of the beach had worn off, he still enjoyed the area. He had learned to fly fish in salt water, and he and his wife didn’t plan to leave until their daughter graduated from high school. But that afternoon, when his wife said she wished they could move, he replied, “We can.” Just two months later, he drove a moving van to Arkansas.
“I can’t believe that happened as fast as it did,” he says. “We’re currently living in a camper in my parents’ driveway east of Springdale and building a house. And that’s taking longer than I anticipated, but it’s all part of the journey.”
Soon after moving, Morris used his GI benefits and enrolled in a welding program at Northwest Technical Institute (NWTI) in Springdale. According to the VA’s GI Bill Comparison Tool, Arkansas has hundreds of approved colleges and universities, on-the-job training programs and Veterans Technology Education Courses (VET TEC) providers.
While there are numerous veterans’ groups in Arkansas, Morris has been too busy with school and building a house to investigate where he’d fit. Still, he connects with veterans who attend NWTI, and he keeps in touch with others via social media. A friend from Louisiana who was stationed at Pope Air Force Base with him always made jokes about Arkansas. But Morris had the last laugh when his friend retired to the Little Rock area.
Morris also corresponds with social media influencer Rebecca Baker, who served as a diesel mechanic in the Texas Army National Guard before moving to Arkansas. Better known online as Lady Angler Lentz, Baker shares photos and videos focused on fishing, outdoor recreation and firearms. Her posts showing forests and freshwater streams once made him homesick.
Now, he gets to experience these settings with his 11-year-old daughter. When they lived in Florida, she had little interest in the outdoors – just like Morris when he was her age.
“I was in her shoes whenever my dad was trying to get me into it,” he says. “But after we moved, she wants to try fly fishing. She wants to learn how to shoot guns. And she wants to do archery. She wants to do all these things outside, and it’s kind of perfect.”
This article was sponsored by Arkansas Tourism.