Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families hosts its Friends of Children Annual Luncheon to celebrate the power of advocacy in improving the lives of children and families across our state. Visit our event page for more information and to buy tickets.

This year we are privileged to honor Jay Barth and Christie Erwin, along with a special posthumous tribute to Senator Bill Lewellen, for their important work on behalf of our state’s children.

Jay Barth, Ph.D.

Jay Barth served as Chief Education Officer for the City of Little Rock from the start of 2020 until March 2022. He coordinated the city’s work to support education from birth through higher education. He is also M.E. and Ima Graves Peace Emeritus Professor of Politics at Hendrix College where he taught for 26 years. Barth’s academic work includes research on the politics of the South, state government and politics, LGBTQ+ politics, and the achievement gap in Arkansas. He is the co-author (with the late Diane D. Blair) of the second edition of Arkansas Politics and Government: Do the People Rule?

Barth has received many awards and honors. In 2000-01, Barth received the Steiger Congressional Fellowship from the American Political Science Association and served on the staff of the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone (MN), working on education and civil rights policy. In 2007, he was named Arkansas Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). In 2014 he was named winner of the Southern Political Science Association’s Diane Blair Award for Outstanding Achievement in Politics and Government. In 2018 he received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Arkansas Political Science Association, and he gained the 2019 Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of State Boards of Education.

From 2012 to 2019, Barth was a member of the Arkansas State Board of Education, chairing that body for two years. He presently serves as Chair of the Board of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, Vice-Chair of the Board of Central Arkansas Water, and Vice-Chair of the Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corporation. Barth lives in Little Rock’s Quapaw Quarter with his husband Chuck Cliett, an attorney, and their 10-year-old Paws in Prison dog, Nash, and 16-year-old grey tabby, Sabine. They are fortunate to be the godfathers of their goddaughter Maggie, a fourth grader at Fulbright Elementary.

Christie Erwin

Christie Erwin’s deep love for children led her and husband, Jeff, to become foster parents in 1993, for a private, nonprofit adoption agency. It was there that the foundation for Erwin’s passion and driving concern for children in foster care was laid. After fostering for 11 years with the private agency, the Erwins became foster parents for the Arkansas Department of Children and Family Services in 2004. They fostered more than 50 children during their 20 years of fostering. 

Erwin’s book, The Middle Mom – How to Grow Your Heart by Giving it Away (Grayson Publications, 2009), is her story. The book is the culmination of years of seeing the heartbreak of children in need and is a call for foster and adoptive families who will love, nurture and provide for them.

Erwin is a 2009 Congressional Coalition on Adoption “Angel in Adoption” award winner. She represented Arkansas as the American Mother of the Year in 2016, and she is a 2019 United States Department of Health and Human Services Adoption Excellence Award recipient. She was the Chairman of the Pulaski County Adoption Coalition for four years as well as co-coordinator of the Pulaski County Heart Gallery and a founding member of The CALL (Children of Arkansas Loved for a Lifetime). Erwin is the founder (2011) and Executive Director of Project Zero (www.theprojectzero.org). 

The Erwins have six children ranging in age from 14-36; (including two who joined the family through adoption), two daughters-in-law, one son-in-law, and six precious grandchildren.

Senator Roy C. “Bill” Lewellen (1951-2023)

Senator Bill Lewellen of Marianna represented eastern Arkansas for 10 years in the State Senate, from 1991 through 2000. He was the second Black person to serve in the Arkansas Senate in the 20th century.

Sen. Lewellen received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas – Pine Bluff and his Juris Doctor from the University of Arkansas – Little Rock, William H. Bowen School of Law. One of two Black lawyers in Lee County, Lewellen was a strong advocate for equal representation and treatment in his community, serving as a city councilman before his election to the State Senate in 1990.

During his tenure with the Arkansas Senate, he sponsored historic legislation to create the Arkansas Minority Health Commission. The Commission was formed to study issues relating to the delivery of and access to health services for minorities in Arkansas, identify any gaps in the health service system that particularly affected minorities, and recommend improvements for the delivery of and access to health services for minorities.

He was the lead sponsor in the State Senate of the Arkansas Civil Rights Act of 1993.

He was one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the landmark school funding case filed in 1992 by the Lake View School District, a rural district in Phillips County. After years of litigation, the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of Lake View, citing the state’s constitutional duty to provide all Arkansas children with an adequate and equitable education, regardless of the prosperity or poverty of the region in which they lived. The case was the catalyst for substantial improvements in public schools across Arkansas. The legacy of Lake View prevails today in the Arkansas legislature, which conducts an adequacy study of the needs of public education before every regular session.

Sen. Lewellen was elected to the Senate on his second attempt. In the late 1980s, before and during his first unsuccessful campaign, Lewellen confronted the prevailing White power structure in Lee County. He was prosecuted for allegedly bribing witnesses, but Lewellen believed the charges were filed because he had run against a long-standing incumbent senator. He responded by filing suit in federal court.

In an extremely rare decision in which the federal courts intervened in local police matters, U.S. District Judge George Howard, Jr. ordered a stop to the prosecution of Lewellen. Judge Howard said charges against Lewellen were in bad faith and had been filed by prosecutors with no expectation of a valid conviction. Howard said that the criminal charges were filed against Lewellen in retaliation for exercising his constitutional rights.

After leaving the Arkansas Senate, Lewellen continued to advocate for small, rural school districts facing consolidation and inequitable treatment. He fought to represent his clients and to help remedy injustices wherever he could. His support of dignity for all people led him to receive numerous local, state and national recognitions throughout his lifetime.

Lewellen was preceded in death by his wife of 43 years, Doris Ann Brantley Lewellen. While he was committed to improving the lives of all Arkansans, he was also a devoted father to his children and a loving grandfather.