To replace recently resigned Hope City Director and former mayor Steve Montgomery on the Hope City Board, Mayor Don Still found a nearly lifelong Hope resident with a lot of experience working to benefit the city and its people in Gary Johnson.  Johnson was sworn in and took the Ward 6 seat at the board’s first meeting of the New Year, January 6th.

Asked last week what his priorities will be as he serves, Johnson, who was born in Texarkana but has lived all but his four college years at Ouachita Baptist University in Hope, said they would be the continued revitalization of downtown and restoring the cleanliness of the city.  For the first priority he said renovation of the Visitor Center would be an important key.  For the second, he would want an effort to clean up the entranceways into Hope.

Concerning work on the downtown, Johnson said he wants a greater emphasis on having those in charge of the Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site, the Hope Visitor Center and Museum and the Downtown Network “talk to one another,” as plans go forward. 

“Our Visitor Center needs a whole new vision. The train station has to have a purpose in what the Downtown Network is doing. How does the train station fit? It started with the train station, but yet nobody talks about the train station anymore. What's its part in the comeback of downtown Hope? Does the train station need to be a visitor center? Does it need to be a museum?” Johnson asked.

Johnson can look back on heavy involvement in converting the train depot to what is today, having been appointed by then-Hope Parks and Recreation Superintendent Paul Henley in 1993 to take charge of its conversion to what is now the Hope Visitor Center and Museum. “And then when it opened in 96 I was there until 2008,” he said.

Concerning what visitors see when they come to Hope, Johnson said, “I think our town needs to be cleaned up, at least on the major entrance ways as I go around, and I know we have regular cleanup days, but they're not getting the job done. They're there, maybe hitting the highlights.  yI don't know that you can just clean up for the Watermelon Festival and say your job's done. There are people coming in here every day at the Clinton birthplace, and … I would hate for them to see some of the places that I know that are there.”

Johnson’s roots in Hope started early and go deep.  He was born in Texarkana in 1966, but he and his family lived on Avenue B during his childhood, the street on which Calvary Baptist Church, of which he is pastor, has been located.  Apart from the four years at Ouachita, from which he graduated in 1990, he has always lived here.  Starting in 1993, he became a member of Calvary, the church his wife brought him to.  Eventually, he became youth minister there, which led to his becoming the church’s pastor. 

Part of his duties at the church have consisted of the custodial arts. In fact, before our interview he had been wielding a broom to clean up after the installation of new doors.  He also helps keep the grounds tidy.  “Cleanliness is usually the way of life of people,” he said. “You have to value a yard without trash in it. I constantly am picking up the trash in front of the church out here because it bothers me. But that's the impression [visitors get]. And I'm not saying we're doing a bad job, but I think we can do better.”

He remembers how downtown Hope used to be prior to the urban renewal campaign that constructed Centennial Plaza and converted much of West Second to a one-way street that then curved into South Main.  

“What a nice downtown we once had, before urban renewal. The urban renewal was pretty, but it was not functional. I remember when all of those empty lots down there had buildings and there were stores. Now they may have been--I didn't know it at the time. I was just a kid--on their last leg, and some of them, all of them closed during my childhood. But I remember old Hope, and of course, you can't go back to that … but you have to do something. You just can't let it just fall in. You have to try,” Johnson said.

For Johnson this would involve getting at least one more restaurant in the downtown area to replace Southern Craft Kitchen, which closed this past fall.  

It is exactly this trying that Johnson wants to take part in as he serves on the Hope City Board.