Obituaries: Harvey Crowley Couch, 1941, Winn Parish, LA. Submitted by Greggory E. Davies, 120 Ted Price Lane, Winnfield, LA 71483 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** From: August 1, 1941 Winnfield News-American Harvey Crowley Couch Funeral Services Held Yesterday Afternoon In Arkansas Funeral services for Harvey Crowley Couch, Arkansas and Louisiana industrialist, who died at his summer home, Couchwood, near Hot Springs, Ark., at 7:45 Wednesday morning, were held Thursday morning at 10:30, Pine Bluff, Ark., and he was buried Thursday afternoon at Magnolia, Ark. Bishop H. A. Boaz, of the Methodist Church, of which Couch was a prominent lay worker, officiated at the simple services at Couchwood that were attended by relatives and neighbors. Couch had been in virtual retirement since July 1040 following an attack of influenza and development of a heart ailment. Couch built and headed a far-flung southwest and utility empire in which Winnfield was included in the earlier days. He with his family came to Winnfield about 1906 and for the next five years he operated the creosote plant here and the telephone company, selling them both about 1913, when he left here to make his home in Pine Bluff, Ark. He is survived by his widow, the former Miss Jessie Johnson of Athens, La.; four sons, Johnson O., Kansas City; Harvey, Jr., Little Rock; Kirke, Shreveport; and William Thomas, a student at Princeton; a daughter, Mrs. Pratt Remmel, Little Rock; three brothers, C. P. Couch of Shreveport, George B. and Pierce W. Couch, Pine Bluff; and two sisters, Mrs. George B. Monroe, Magnolia, and Mrs. C. D. Thorpe, Shreveport. Chroniclers of the life of Harvey Couch love to tell how he started as a soda jerker and wound up as executive director and guiding genius of approximately $ 100,000,000 worth of electric power and railroad transportation organizations. But, those who have heard him, himself, tell of his boyhood days and dreams know that his first interests as a boy of only eight or nine years were in both rail and power, long before he became a soda jerker. It was a small child that he dreamed the dreams of every boy, of building, owning and operating a railroad. Railroads then were just spreading through the country and young Couch's dreams came true. Harvey Couch was born on August 21, 1877, in the little community of Calhoun, near Magnolia, Columbia County, Arkansas. His father, Thomas G. Couch, was a Methodist minister who farmed during the week and preached on Sunday. His boyhood was spent on a farm in Southeast Arkansas. He attended the public schools at Magnolia, and Magnolia Academy, where his instructor was Pat M. Neff, later governor of Texas and now president of Baylor University. His first employment off the farm was as fireman in a cotton gin; later he worked in a drug store. Then he became a mail clerk on the railroad. While working as railway mail clerk, he conceived and built the first rural telephone line in Southeast Arkansas and North Louisiana. Later he extended the system into Texas and Oklahoma. Disposing of his greatly developed phone system to the Bell interests, Mr. Couch entered the electric power field in Arkansas in 1913, organizing the Arkansas Light & Power Company, and building the state's first transmission line between Malvern and Arkadelphia. He and his associates build the first major hydro-electric plant in the state on the Ouachita River. The Couch company now serves about 350 cities and towns in Ark. and is interconnected with the Louisiana Power and Light and the Mississippi Power and Light Companies, both of which Mr. Couch and associates organized and operated for ten years. In 1928, Mr. Couch and associates acquired control of the Louisiana & Arkansas Railway and the Louisiana Railway and Navigation Company, merging the two railroads into the Louisiana & Arkansas Lines, providing a system that extends from Hope, Arkansas, Dallas, Texas, to Vidalia and New Orleans, La. Until 1932, Mr. Couch served as president of the lines, but resigned that year when he was appointed a director of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation . He remained as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Louisiana & Arkansas, however, until 1936. In 1937, Mr. Couch became interested in the Kansas City Southern Railroad, and in June of that year was elected chairman of the board of that road. Despite his busy business life, he always found time to aid in civic, religious, and educational programs and activities. He served as State fuel director during the World War; was on the Arkansas Flood Commission and the American Red Cross board during 1927; served as chairman of the Arkansas Drought Relief Commission in 1930. In addition to serving as a director of the RFC under two presidents, he was a director of the Eighth District Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis. He has served as national councilor for the Pine Bluff Chamber of Commerce, as well as president of the Pine Bluff Chamber. In 1925 Mr. Couch awarded a silver loving cup as the citizen of Pine Bluff who had rendered the greatest services to the city during the year. After resigning from the RFC board in 1934, Mr. Couch returned to Arkansas and pioneered the development of a new type low-cost construction rural electric line that has made possible extension of electric service to hundreds of rural areas of the state, and which has been copied by many other states. Mr. Couch was a thirty-third degree Mason and a Shriner, being past potentate of Sahara Temple, Pine Bluff. He is an honorary member of the Pine Bluff Rotary Club, the Tau Beta Pi fraternity of the University of Arkansas, and holds honorary degrees from Hendrix College, Baylor University, and Subiaco Catholic College, Subiaco, Arkansas. In June 1939, Mr. Couch accepted appointment to Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins; Business Advisory Council, and was elected vice-chairman of its Executive Committee in 1940.