The story of an unlikely Arkansan who transformed a state and found himself along the way.
Screening at the 35th Annual Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival on Wednesday, October 14, at 1:30 p.m. as part of the Shorts Program: Personal Portraits.
About the Film
Born into America’s wealthiest family, Winthrop Rockefeller shocked the nation in 1953 when he traded New York for rural Petit Jean Mountain, looking for purpose. While his siblings stayed in the city limelight, Winthrop threw himself into the Arkansas dirt, building a world-class cattle farm, bringing jobs to an impoverished mountain community, and igniting hope for a better way of life. Galvanizing those around him, he harnessed the power of people from all walks of life working together to create significant progress for Arkansas. His collaborative approach took him from cattle farmer to governor and made him one of Arkansas’s most celebrated figures.
Justin Crum – Director, Editor, Producer
Will Scott – Camera Operator
Emily Summers – Head Archivist, UA Little Center for Arkansas History and Culture
Robert Wykes – Music Selection
Lee Brannon – Petit Jean Mountain Resident
Mabel Brown – Petit Jean Mountain Resident
David B. Davies – Petit Jean Mountain Resident
Don Higgins – Historian of Petit Jean Mountain
Janet Harris – Executive Director/CEO, Winthrop Rockefeller Institute
Pearl Jones – Petit Jean Mountain Resident
John Kirk – Author of “Winthrop Rockefeller: From New Yorker to Arkansawyer”
Hazel LaCook – Secretary at Winrock Farms
Rex Nelson – Editor, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Paul Rehm – Construction Worker at Winrock Farms
Jessica Crum
Dr. Andrew Morgan
Dr. Jess Porter
Scott Whiteaker
Winthrop Rockefeller Institute Staff & Board
University of Arkansas at Little Rock Center for Arkansas History & Culture
A History of Convening
In 1953, Winthrop Rockefeller drove up Petit Jean Mountain in Morrilton, Arkansas, to visit a friend and decided to stay. He was the grandson of John D. Rockefeller, and by his family’s standards, he had already gone off script. He left school early, worked the Texas oil fields as a roughneck, and enlisted as a private, coming home a decorated officer. His brothers ran the World Bank and Chase Manhattan. Winthrop ran cattle.
Arkansas did not know what to make of him, and most assumed a rich man had bought a view. Instead, he built Winrock Farms, a working operation that pumped water from the Arkansas River to the top of Petit Jean, employed roughly 200 of his neighbors, and proved that world-class work could happen in Arkansas.
Then he started convening. As the first chairman of the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission, he brought business leaders, civic leaders, and subject matter experts to the mountain to work on the state’s hardest problems. Over 20 years, he hosted more than 200 summits on agriculture, economic development, education, and civil rights. In 1967, he was sworn in as the first Republican governor since Reconstruction, and largely kept working from this same mountaintop.
Meet Me on the Mountain traces that arc through archival film, historians, and the people who knew and worked for him. It is a short documentary about a decades-long idea: that a place can be built to bring people together, and that the work done there can change a state.
Brief Clip From the Film
The Work Continues
Located on the original Winrock Farms property, the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute is a nonprofit conference and retreat center, and we do what he did here: bring people together to work on problems no one can solve alone. Groups come to the mountain, as they did in Winthrop’s day, for distance from the noise, time to think, and a room built for honest conversation.