Boone County officials mourn loss of beloved justice of the peace

Government officials in Boone County are mourning the loss of one of their own. Justice of the Peace (District 5) Fred Woehl died at the age of 70 after suffering a head injury while cleaning up debris after severe weather hit Arkansas over Memorial Day weekend.

By: Parker Padgett
OzarksFirst.com

Government officials in Boone County are mourning the loss of one of their own.

“He had such a personality that, you know, [everyone] loved him and he loved everybody,” said County Judge Robert Hathaway.

Justice of the Peace (District 5) Fred Woehl died Monday at the age of 70 after suffering a head injury while cleaning up debris after severe weather hit Arkansas over Memorial Day weekend.

“I couldn’t believe it at first. Fred and I talk to each other many times,” Hathaway said. “It was just hard to believe, Fred could do anything and did everything.”

Hathaway said he’s known Woehl for at least a decade, serving in the Boone County Quorum Court.

But if you ask those who knew him, Woehl was so much more than a politician, but rather a true public servant.

“He was just a giving person. Everything Fred did was to help somebody else,” Hathaway said. “Fred never knew a stranger. I worked with him on Special Olympics every year, and he would be the one that would get out there in the middle of things, you know and help the kids and encourage them. He would even get out and run with them. I know the governor knew him well. He worked with Camp Jack, you know, a lot, and so the veterans thought a lot of him.”

Another Justice of the Peace, Glenn Redding, says there’s a hole in Boone County.

“We’re going to miss him. He was a good friend, a good father, good grandfather, and just a good person,” Redding said. “There’s an emptiness that’s going to be there and it won’t be filled.”

Redding met Woehl when Woehl was for the USDA, and Redding walked into the USDA 40 years ago needing a loan and gaining a lifelong friend.

“Fred was so busy when he wasn’t there at the USDA. He was in Iraq helping the Iraqis learn about growing food and vegetables and even took horses over there and was teaching them how to take care of horses and how to train them, how to raise horses. He got tied up with the Bureau of Land Management and got involved in rescuing mustangs,” Redding said. “He would take the horse by there and visit with the elderly people that could come out and talk to them and look at the horse and and Fred would do some educating. He’d go ahead and tell stories, cowboy poems. He wrote poems, and he was quite good at it.”

Hathaway said they’re working on memorializing Weohl at the new Boone County Courthouse in time.

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