Ernie's Story

In the spring of 1925, Ernestine Gulledge walked up and down the six miles of Ozark country road near her family's homestead in the White Rock Valley selling seeds from a catalog. It was a determined girl with a dream who wore down her shoes, intent on earning the guitar her family could not afford to buy her. Her brothers played guitar, her father was a fiddler and Ernestine was not about to be left out. In two weeks she walked her way to a Silvertone guitar, leaving a trail of gardens behind her.

Sixy years later, Ernestine is carrying on the family tradition she promised her dying father. Every Friday night at the Bluebird House Cafe on Mt. Gaylor in Winslow after she serves a hundred people her homemade chicken, biscuits and gravy, she takes off her apron, steps up to the microphone and sings gospel.

Ernestine (Ernie) Shepard today is an Arkansas treasure. Her story is both extraordinary and quintessentially human; she's an unsung folk hero of the Ozarks, a child who had a burning desire and the determination to keep the flame lit, leaving a light to follow through the dark.