Don and Ellen Edmondson

The Special Relationship

Before they were client and architect, friend and confidant, benefactor and beneficiary, the connection between Don Edmondson and Fay Jones began as student and teacher.

In 1954, while Don was an undergraduate at the University of Arkansas studying business, he took a class called Art Appreciation that he thought would be “an easy A”. This would be his first encounter with faculty member Fay Jones, whose designs would ignite his imagination and ultimately change the course of his life. Edmondson would later say about Jones, "He inspired me to do well in life so that I could own a Fay Jones’s home.”

In 1980, Don’s dream finally came true when he and Ellen took possession of their exceptional Fay Jones’s home.

“Don Edmondson gladly admits to his ‘30-year love affair’ with Jones’s work as he started toward what he now terms a ‘dream come true.’ Emondson recalls that he asked Jones to ‘Do everything you want to do.’ Ellen Edmondson adds, ‘He visits with you for a year before you ever see a line on paper.’ Don continues, ‘and he didn’t bring anything to us that we said no to.”

—Progressive Architecture Magazine - 12/87

As well as creating a house for the ages, Don and Fay’s 50 year friendship would fundamentally transform the University of Arkansas’s architecture program. Generous endowments by Don and Ellen Edmondson helped the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design achieve the Edmondson’s and Jones’s shared vision of a school of national and international reputation and reach, for generations to come.

A generous gift from the Edmondsons to the University of Arkansas in 1999 created an endowment to establish the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture, a position currently held by Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, Distinguished Professor of Architecture, and 2020 AIA Gold Medalist. The Edmondson’s 2008 gift of $10 million stipulated the school of architecture to be named for Fay Jones.

"Fay never really got the recognition from the university that we thought he should have. It's a twofold thing: To honor him and to help attract some of the finest students in the nation. I think this will give international recognition to the university's school of architecture. I think it will have a tremendous pull on students to come to the university."

—Don Edmondson on the endowment to name the UofA school of architecture after Fay Jones

A Case for Redemption

Although Don was passionate about both architecture and business, he knew his talents were better suited to the latter. After graduating from the University of Arkansas in 1958, he returned to Forrest City and joined his father Carl Edmondson in the motel business, first helping to manage the family’s Carl’s Court motor lodges. In 1966 he built a 181-room Holiday Inn in Forrest City, and later that year would invest in his first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.

With business partner Wallace Fowler, he would go on to build a fast-food empire across multiple states and amass 93 KFC franchises (making him the largest independent KFC franchisee in the United States) before selling the majority of franchises in 1985. He later joined another partner, Dick Cahill, in owning nearly a dozen Taco Bell franchises before leaving fast food and moving on to the banking business. Again in partnership with Wallace Fowler.

Much to Don’s dismay, the architecture of the businesses he made so profitable: hotels, motels, fast food chains, and later banks, was at turns uninspired or downright ugly. He needed to make amends.

“Don Edmondson figures he has spawned enough bad architecture - scores of cookie-cutter Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. Humdrum hotel buildings, too. His $10 million donation to the University of Arkansas School of Architecture could be construed as an attempt at redemption.”

"There was no way to make them good-looking," he [Edmondson] says of the fast-food joints he acquired over his 30-plus years in the industry. “So I think it's a payback to architecture."

— Cyd King, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

The Queen of Palestine

About two years after separating from his first wife, Don met Ellen Garrett, a hairdresser and mother of two girls. He first saw her in the Summer of 1969 when she brought the girls to swim at his Holiday Inn in Forrest City, and was immediately struck by her beauty, sense of humor, and down-to-earth personality. Because of her elegant style, and because she was a native of nearby Palestine, he always introduced her as "The Queen of Palestine."

After a five year courtship, they married in 1974. A quarter page announcement placed in the local newspaper by the couple read "To Whom it May Concern: Don Edmondson and Ellen Garrett were married May 19, 1974. Clip and Save."

Through her partnership with Don, Ellen would go on to become a hostess to Presidents and politicians, a community leader, a philanthropist, and a master gardener. All while remaining true to her character.

“Ellen was always Ellen and made no pretense otherwise. She was honest, straightforward and spoke her truth plainly and with conviction. She was utterly devoted to Don and her family through all. She could dress to the nines (and usually did) but would probably rather have been in the flower beds in her yard, where she was gardener extraordinaire. Ellen was a warm and welcoming hostess, a splendid cook, and an unflinching friend. She was thankful for her many blessings and bore her disappointments with grace. She recognized the worth of all people, and readily gave to help others.”

— Ellen Edmonson’s Obituary, Forrest City Times Herald

The Closest of Friends

The Edmondson House we see today wasn’t the first design. Years earlier, while still married to his first wife, Don commissioned Fay to design a residence on a wooded lot he recently acquired on Crowley’s Ridge in Forrest City. When his first marriage ended in divorce, the project was shelved.

About a year after Don and Ellen married in 1974, Don contacted Fay to resume the project, but with a new brief. Unlike Jones's many stone and wood structures, the couple requested a tile roof, clay tile floors, and stucco walls, based on Ellen’s love of Southwestern art and architecture, and to create a more “tailored look”. Otherwise, there would be no budget constraints, no deadlines, and no creative limitations. Fay’s notes from this call with Don, written in his own hand, contain among other notations the words “new wife”, circled on the page.

As the project resumed, the Edmondsons and Joneses soon became the best of friends. By all accounts, the couples had many shared interests and enjoyed each other’s company enormously.

"I just can't imagine our lives without their being in it. With some people, you just connect very soon. Don is brimming over with life. His thoughts and feelings - somehow you catch all that from him along the way. Don was probably the best client Fay ever had.”
— Mary Elizabeth “Gus” Jones on Don and Ellen Edmondson
Reported by Bill Bowden, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

“And as much as they treasured the house, they came to delight in spending time with Gus and Fay. Each couple claimed the other among their closest friends. Don Edmondson says the Joneses "changed the way we lived."

— Cyd King, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

"We tried to sort of - and I don't want use the word 'model' or 'imitate' - but to have that same type relationship that Gus and Fay had," [Edmondson] says, tearing up. “To see them, the way they complemented each other and to see how [Gus] was so devoted to Fay. They were just the type of couple you'd want to be like."

— Cyd King, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

"He [Don] has an amazing sense of loyalty to his friends. He's one of those people for whom friendships are permanent and lasting, and that was exemplified by his and Ellen's relationship with Fay and Gus."

— Jeff Shannon, Dean, University of Arkansas School of Architecture 2000-2013