TEXARKANA MAGAZINE
Sarah Huckabee Sanders with members of the Miller County Republican Women on Monday, May 16, 2022, at Crossties Event Venue in Texarkana, Arkansas.
S arah and her family moved to Texarkana in 1986, just after she turned four. Her father, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (we will come back to that in a minute), was the pastor of Beech Street Baptist Church. Sarah fondly recalls her early years attending preschool and kindergarten. “We rode to school together each morning, and I’d play in his office until it was time to go to class. I had my own ‘office’ under the credenza of my dad’s desk where I kept my arts and crafts supplies and made many great masterpieces and memories!” Depending on who you ask, wearing the label “pastor’s kid” can have its ups and downs, but Sarah only has good things to say about being a “PK.” Sarah and her older brothers, David and John Mark, enjoyed the perks of having a dad/ pastor. She recalls how they used the Sunday school classrooms to play hide-and-seek and admits to taking the occasional swim in the baptistry. Sarah’s memories of life in Texarkana are simple and innocent and include riding bikes with friends, building forts in the woods behind their house and creating a neighborhood newspaper. She stated,
for herself and should just stay in Texarkana with her friends. However, much to her dismay, her parents did not feel that their job was done, and soon the entire family was packing up to head to the state capital. If growing up as a pastor’s kid is noteworthy, then spending your teenage years in the governor’s mansion is absolutely extraordinary. Again, Sarah recalls some of the best memories from those times in her life as well as some of the most traumatic. In her book, Speaking for Myself: Faith, Freedom, and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House , she recounts the overwhelming grandeur of the mansion, the strange feeling of living in a home that was also a public space, being greeted by
I am eternally grateful for all the people who have helped me become the daughter, wife, mom, friend,
co-worker and Christian I am. ”
—Sarah Huckabee Sanders
“life in Texarkana wasn’t grand, but it was good.” Sarah will always cherish her time in Texarkana and all the wonderful, lifelong friends she made here. When Sarah was thirteen years old, something happened that would prove to have a profound impact on the trajectory of her life. Her father became governor of Arkansas. She tried to convince her parents she was old enough to care
complete strangers at the bottom of the stairs while still wearing her pajamas and the close familial type relationships she developed with the staff and state troopers who worked at the mansion. It was not all fun and glamour, though. Being the daughter of a governor brings with it an awareness of things that most children will never know. In her memoir, Sarah details the difficulties her family faced
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BUSINESS & POLITICS
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