A Partnership Built on Family,
Friends & Faith
Bill and Lola Mae Shackelford both grew up in northeast Oklahoma in rural communities. And they’ve seen tremendous changes in the Northwest Arkansas region since they moved to Fayetteville in the late 1960s. Then, the region’s biggest four towns were separated by copious farmland and green space, rather than bleeding into one another.
In addition to the presence of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville had several manufacturing facilities, such as Levi Strauss & Co., Baldwin Piano Company, Fulbright Industries, Campbell Soup Company, and Standard Register Co. Most of the shopping was done on the downtown square.
“It was more of a smalltown feel, and now, you know, we’re a big city,” Lola Mae said.
They settled into their new community and made it their own. They eventually started their own business, operating an insurance agency in Fayetteville for 37 years. Along the way, they stayed active in their children’s activities and involved in church and local organizations.
They’re exceedingly proud of their three children. Their son Larry is president and CEO of Washington Regional Medical Center and currently serves as chairman of the board for the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce. Larry also is a member of the Fayetteville Public Education Foundation’s Hall of Honor. Their son Loren is in a new role as senior commercial relationship manager for Chambers Bank, and after serving three terms on the Fayetteville Planning Commission, he now serves as chair of the Washington County Planning Commission.
They lost their daughter, Sonia Guillory, at age 40 after her courageous battle against breast cancer. Sonia was a high school counselor at Bentonville Public Schools before becoming a stay-at-home mom when her first son was born.
With a longtime connection to Butterfield Trail Village, the Shackelfords are among the newest residents, having arrived in February 2022.
ROOTED IN OKLAHOMA
Bill was born in Tulsa, six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. His parents owned a trucking and road construction company, but they couldn’t keep it going during the war and rationing. So, they sold it and bought a 250-acre farm near the Illinois River west of Siloam Springs to start a dairy. Bill and his brother helped with chores on the farm, feeding the animals when they were young, and later baling and hauling hay, cutting firewood and building fences.
For first through seventh grades, Bill attended a one-room schoolhouse near Flint Creek. He then transferred to Kansas, Oklahoma, where he graduated high school and walked two miles each way to catch the bus. He was involved in Future Farmers of America, attended church, and spent time fishing and swimming at the river. “Just a country boy,” he said.
The former Lola Mae Chamberlain grew up on a farm in the Chamberlain community and, through fourth grade, attended a one-room schoolhouse on land donated by her dad’s uncle. With three much older siblings, Lola Mae grew up like an only child. She helped at the dairy, worked in the family’s big garden, and she learned to clean house, do laundry and cook from her mom.
She transferred to Colcord, Oklahoma, in fifth grade, and graduated from high school there. In school, Lola Mae was more social, participating in choir, drill team and plays, and she was an honors student.
Lola Mae’s brother worked with Bill, and the couple met the summer before her senior year in high school. For their first date, they saw Gone With the Wind at the Siloam Springs movie theater. They married in September 1963, after dating for two and a half years.
They were the perfect fit from the start. She thought he was handsome, outgoing and dependable with good moral values. Their shared faith is deeply important to them. And they say the keys to their success as a couple include active communication, thinking about what would make the other person happy, and approaching their marriage as a partnership.
MAKING A NEW HOME IN FAYETTEVILLE
When they moved to Fayetteville in 1967, the city’s population was less than 30,000. They bought a new brick home on Berry Street for $13,000. Though Lola Mae had attended nursing school for one year, she had to drop out when she and Bill married. The nursing school wouldn’t allow married students in the program.
Once they had their daughter and two sons, Lola Mae focused on being a homemaker, wife and mom for many years. Their children volunteered her for everything between school and sports – including homeroom mom, Brownies and Cub Scouts, PTA activities and fundraisers. She also starched and ironed Bill’s shirts for work, cooked three meals a day, and washed laundry and hung it on the clothesline.
They brought up their children in the church, and aimed to instill in them Christian values, honesty, integrity and the importance of education. Bill and Lola Mae also were active in church – first at Immanuel Baptist Church in Fayetteville, when their children were young, and then later at First Baptist Church in Fayetteville.
Bill had gone to Northeastern State in Tahlequah for a year before transferring to the U of A in Fayetteville to study accounting. He had already been working for Bear Brand Hosiery in Siloam Springs, which manufactured women’s nylon hosiery and packaged it for retailers such as Sears and JC Penney. He worked nights in the plant, then got an office position thanks to his typing skills acquired in high school. He was promoted to office manager in Siloam Springs and then transferred to Fayetteville as office manager, handling payroll and inventory.
When the company started a data processing unit, he gathered data from four Arkansas plants and delivered it to the Chicago corporate office. He often traveled from Drake Field and changed planes multiple times to reach Chicago. In 1975, the company wanted him to transfer to Chicago, but he and Lola Mae opted to stay in Fayetteville.
BUILDING AN INSURANCE AGENCY
When they decided to stay in Fayetteville, Bill gave up a company car and a steady salary after 14 years at the hosiery company for a leap of faith. The couple took over an MFA Mutual insurance agency, which later became Shelter Insurance, and they ran it themselves for nearly four decades. When their youngest was in kindergarten, Lola Mae worked half-days in the insurance office with Bill, before eventually becoming full-time.
Essentially, insurance is sales and service, and Bill spent a lot of time beyond office hours building the business. His commitment paid off, and they eventually served three generations of families as clients, many of those Fayetteville residents. Countless clients also became good friends over the years.
In 1975, there were no computers. They figured rates using rate books. They filled out claims on paper and mailed those to the claims office in Springdale. Lola Mae kept the office filing up to date. They had a routine, were organized, and tried to finish things up at the end of each day. Bill was good at returning calls, even if he didn’t have the answer yet.
“When you work for commission, you have to keep everybody happy if you can,” Bill said.
In 1988, they moved from their original office along Sixth Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard) to a new office they built on the same street and closer to the then-new Fayetteville bypass. That proximity to the highway expanded their predominantly Fayetteville clientele base to also include clients from West Fork, Lincoln, Winslow, Prairie Grove and Farmington.
The work also brought travel, as they attended the company’s Conference of Champions in Switzerland, London, Paris, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, and Munich, in addition to conferences across the United States including Hawaii.
In 2012, when Bill was 70, they both decided to retire. They had goals of traveling for pleasure, which owning a business hadn’t given them the freedom to do. They have gone on several cruises in locales such as Alaska, Canada and New England, the Panama Canal, the Caribbean, and one that circled the Hawaiian islands. They’ve taken road trips to the Grand Canyon and to Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, and gone on motorcoach tours to Niagara Falls; Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.; the Great Smoky Mountains; and Yellowstone National Park.
A LONG CONNECTION WITH BTV
The couple’s connection with Butterfield Trail Village started more than 30 years ago, when Bill served as his church’s representative on the BTV board. First Baptist Church was among the five founding churches for Butterfield. And Bill was in Lions Club with two other original board members. He served on the corporate board for 20 years and on the operations board for seven years, four of those as secretary.
With many longtime personal friends and former clients residing at BTV, the Shackelfords said they’d planned the move for years and were in the Carriage Club for six years prior. They said they wanted to relieve some strain and stress on their sons and daughters-in-law in their later years, and Butterfield’s health care program and many amenities greatly appealed to them.
Before they retired, Bill ran several 10K races. Afterward, they both joined the Center for Exercise. Lola Mae takes Zumba classes three times a week there, and Bill worked out with a trainer for a while. Now he goes to the BTV fitness center several mornings a week to walk on the treadmill and use the weight machines. Lola Mae also gets down on the floor of their living room to do stretching exercises every morning, which helps her back.
“I’m a firm believer, when you get older, you’ve got to keep moving,” she said.
They both started reading more during the pandemic. Lola Mae enjoys novels and mysteries, while Bill gravitates toward nonfiction, history, and war stories. She has long enjoyed growing flowers, and their balconies hold begonias, geraniums, petunias, mums, and a huge fern.
As they reflect back on their lives together, one thing they are so glad they did is a special practice they had with their grandchildren, starting when the oldest was about three years old. Every Friday night, one grandchild stayed the night with them.
They’d go out to eat and play games, make cookies, or go to the park, the movies or Chuck E. Cheese. On Saturday mornings, Lola Mae would prepare their breakfast of choice. She kept track of their stays on a calendar, and they both enjoyed the extra one-on-one time with each grandchild. They now enjoy spending time with their two young great-granddaughters.
“We’ve been blessed to have ours close by,” Lola Mae said. “Not everybody has that.”
Words by Michelle Parks | Photos by Stephen Ironside
