From Little Rock JC to Little Rock TV and Beyond: Education Prepared Grad for Career

When Sande Hayes walked across the stage at Robinson Auditorium in 1954, the 18-year-old Little Rock Junior College graduate already had a job waiting for her in an industry that was just beginning to transform: television.

Hayes had started at LRJC two years earlier at just 16 after graduating from Little Rock Central High School. Staying close to home seemed like the right choice for someone so young.

“I think I started maturing and started growing while I was there,” Hayes said. “I just have a good feeling thinking about that school. It did everything that I needed.”

Hayes studied business, including shorthand and typing, practical skills her family believed would help her find work. She had once considered becoming an attorney, but her grandmother discouraged the idea.

“My grandmother kept saying, ‘Well, honey, you can’t be an attorney. Women are not attorneys,’” Hayes recalled. “It was a different era, different time.”

College also gave Hayes an opportunity to come out of her shell. She sang in the a cappella choir and became a member of the Battle Criers, a women’s social organization. Between classes, Hayes and her friends often piled into the Packard she drove to campus and played cards.

“Back in those days, we really didn’t have many places to go between classes, so we’d sit in our cars and play hearts,” she said.

By graduation, Hayes was ready for what came next. She remembers wearing a cap and gown and crossing the stage at Robinson Auditorium.

“It was wonderful,” Hayes said. “I was proud to graduate from there.”

During her final year at LRJC, Hayes received a call from family friend Betty Fowler asking if she could help at KRTV, an early Little Rock television station in need of a receptionist. Hayes agreed, and the shorthand and typing she had learned at LRJC quickly helped her move into another role.

“I ended up being the manager’s secretary,” Hayes said. “And there’s the shorthand and typing.”

It was the beginning of a career that placed Hayes in the middle of Little Rock’s emerging television industry.

The station operated from a former movie theater in the Hillcrest area of Little Rock. Offices were upstairs. A ramp led past the engineers and into the studio below.

As the only single woman working at the station, Hayes soon found that her duties extended far beyond the office.

“I ended up doing all the modeling,” she said.

Sometimes that meant appearing in front of the camera. Other times, only her hands were needed for grocery store advertisements. She once danced behind a screen during Fowler’s show while “Me and My Shadow” by Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. played. Over the years, she modeled everything from hats and mink coats to wedding dresses.

Hayes also appeared in car commercials with an Arkansas woman who became Miss America and worked alongside a Little Rock television weatherman as a spokesperson for the local power company, appearing in television and radio advertisements.

“We got paid practically nothing,” Hayes said with a laugh. “But it was fun. I was young.”

Being a young woman in broadcasting during the 1950s also brought challenges.

When advertising representatives came to Little Rock from New York, Hayes said she was often expected to attend dinner with them because she was the station’s only young, single woman. During election coverage at the former Marion Hotel in downtown Little Rock, she was tasked with manually updating vote totals while viewers watched, and the hotel phones would ring with men trying to ask her on dates.

“It was a tough time for females,” Hayes said. “I grew up in a time that was different.”

Still, Hayes continued building her career.

After about seven years in television, Oscar Alagood, who worked in broadcasting before entering the Arkansas Senate, asked Hayes to help run KMMK, a new FM radio station in Little Rock. Hayes accepted.

Once again, she said, the education she received at LRJC had prepared her for the opportunity.

“It helped me throughout my entire life,” Hayes said. “Even though it was only two years, it didn’t seem to matter.”

That proved true long after Hayes left Little Rock.

Her husband’s career as an Air Force officer took the family around the country, but Hayes said her business background allowed her to find work wherever they moved. Her career eventually included work as a technical editor at the University of Tennessee Space Institute and as vice president of administration for an insurance company.

Hayes also built a long record of community service in Tennessee, including 14 years leading a local United Way organization and service with numerous community groups.

Now 90, Hayes can look back on more than seven decades since she left LRJC. The small junior college she remembers has grown into the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, which is celebrating its Centennial during the 2026-27 academic year.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Hayes said of the university’s growth.

The world students enter after graduation has changed dramatically since Hayes crossed the stage in 1954, but her belief in education has not, and her advice to today’s students is simple.

“Get an education,” Hayes said. “I don’t think it matters what it’s in. That degree is going to take you a long way.”