H.B. Adkisson

H.B. Adkisson of McKenzie was born in Trezevant in 1939 to Dink and Essie B. (Hampton) Adkisson.

He was the youngest of ten children, and his mother died when he was very young. He was raised by his father and sisters.

The family were sharecroppers, raising cotton, corn and hogs.

H.B. describes his father as “kind of a cultured guy,” and told The Banner about his “ginseng hunting” for extra money. “When I was a child, this would be in August, he would come home and he’d have these roots. We had an old pump, and I had to pump that old pump and wash those roots. He’d lay them on top of the house to dry, and he’d ship them. That was one of the ways he made money.”

H.B. first went to Clay School, a two-room school in Trezevant, about a mile and a half from his house on Highway 79.

He attended Webb School in McKenzie from ninth grade until his graduation in 1959. He spent two years on the old Webb campus, with multiple buildings for things like the dormitories, cafeteria and gymnasium. Then, the new building was constructed with everything under one roof.

While at Webb, H.B. played basketball and participated in agriculture activities such as livestock judging, in which he competed at the state level one year.

He also did some woodworking, which led him to devote some of his time in retirement to decorative woodwork.

After high school, H.B. did farm labor and worked at a service station until he joined the military.

He attended basic training at Ft. Smith in Arkansas and advanced training at Ft. Bliss in El Paso. He then went to Ft. Sill in Oklahoma for ballistic missile training.

H.B. said, “I only saw a live missile one time, but it wasn’t a live warhead. We went to White Sands, New Mexico, and fired it. We only did that one time. We left Ft. Sill in a convoy. We fired at a target 114 miles away and hit 14 feet from center of target. We were right there, in a bunker, no more than 140 yards from it, and you’re looking at it going up. A missile going up doesn’t look like what you see on television, it kind of lags, then goes up.”

He was deployed to Korea for 14 months with the 3rd Missile Battalion, 81st Artillery Regiment.

At the time, units were just beginning to integrate. His unit had about 350 men, and only seven were black.

H.B. described the experience, “You wind up on duty more than most people. And that’s just a fact. And your promotions aren’t going to come on like other people.”

He appreciated the chance to travel. On the journey across the Pacific Ocean, his ship made stops in Hawaii and Japan.

At the end of his deployment, H.B. returned to Ft. Sill and retired from military service.

He worked at Brown Shoe Company for less than a year before he was hired at the Milan arsenal, where he worked until his retirement in 1999.

He hired in on production for about ten months, then transferred to security, where his military specialization in safeguarding classified materials was a valuable asset.

When Vietnam ended, his unique skill set allowed him to stay on when the arsenal decreased its ranks from a wartime high of about 7,000 people down to about 2,000.

It was also during his time at the arsenal when H.B. picked up golf. Some coworkers challenged him to try it, and he practiced hard.

When he first played in the arsenal’s golf tournament, he finished in last place. Five years later, he won it.

Golf would become a big part of his life as he would travel to places like Memphis, Nashville and Little Rock to compete.

H.B. also became a member of the Carroll Lake Golf Club, possibly the first black member.

He won back-to-back senior club championships in 2003-4.

In addition to golfing, H.B. took up fishing, which he continued until around 2020. The highlight of his time on the water was catching a 50-plus pound catfish in Camden.

One hobby he has continued is woodworking. He has a small shop beside his home where he crafts duck calls, decorative crosses and clock bodies.

He enjoys attending Nights on Broadway and going to the movies.

H.B. said, “You know, I’m a different kind of person. I enjoy people, but I enjoy peace more than anything. I just like to be at peace with everybody. I don’t like confusion. I like to be successful with anything I do, but I still love to be at peace. And I like to treat everybody fairly. I don’t look at you as a white man. I look at you as a human being. And I guess that’s one of the reasons I got along so well at the arsenal, because I treated everybody with the same respect. I didn’t have any favorites, and I don’t think of myself as better than anybody. You know, I just do the best I can. That’s it.”

H.B. has one daughter, Kimberly Bell Webb, two sons, Rodney and Randall and four grandchildren.

He attends Mount Ararat Baptist Church in Trezevant.