An Arkansas museum telling the tragic story of the steamboat Sultana will be housed in an old school gym. Its decades-old wooden bleachers are finding a new use

Wood from high school bleachers adorn lobby area; banners will be featured in exhibits (Sultana Disaster Museum)

John Fogleman grew up in Marion, Ark., three blocks from the high school gymnasium-auditorium his grandfather helped dedicate in 1939 near the end of the Great Depression.

Fogleman -- president of the Sultana Historical Preservation Society, which is building a new museum about a Civil War maritime disaster that occurred near the town -- routinely walked to the gym to watch basketball games and attend plays and pep rallies. He played guard for the junior high and high school hoops teams.

“My memory is that the gym was always packed with people (probably not in reality),” he said. “It was much like a scene from ‘Hoosiers.’”

Fogleman’s and other alumni’s memories will live on as the Sultana Disaster Museum continues to take shape in the old multiuse building. Recent construction has used part of the 500-seat bleachers to decorate walls in the lobby area outside what will be the main exhibit area. (Below, Fogleman during a 1969 game at Marion High School)

“Generations of high school students … were in that gym. (Some) of our board members played on the basketball team,” museum director executive director Jeff Kollath told the Daily Memphian podcast last month.

The relocated museum, which spotlights the burning and sinking of the side-wheel steamboat Sultana, will feature a space dedicated to the story of the gym and the old high school. Visitors will see photos of basketball teams, letter jackets and cheerleader uniforms, Kollath told the Picket in an email.

The current Marion high school is in another part of the bedroom community, which is across the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tenn. The gym is the only part of the old high school to survive.

Crews are building a more dynamic Sultana Disaster Museum than the current small location a few blocks away. Marion, close to where the Sultana caught fire in the Mississippi, will honor soldiers who died in the disaster and residents who helped save others who were plunged into the river in late April 1865.

About 1,200 passengers and crew perished. Hundreds of Federal soldiers, many recently freed from Confederate prisons, including Andersonville and Cahaba, were on their way home.

Museum officials say the exhibits will build off the full story of the Sultana, with information about the importance of the river, Confederate POW camps, the bribery and corruption that led to the overcrowding of the boat, the explosion and fire, and the creation of the Sultana Survivors Association. The vessel’s boilers are considered to be the main cause of the catastrophe.

Recalling the smell of popcorn and sweat 

Harper's Weekly illustration of the conflagration (Library of Congress)

The state of Arkansas and the federal Public Works Administration built the gymnasium-auditorium in 1938-1939. School board President J.F. Fogleman presided over its dedication.

“Musical selections were performed by the Marion and Earle Glee Clubs. Following the program, three intrasquad games were played,” according to a brief history of the venue.

An article on the Living New Deal website describes the building:

“The structure is a handsome example of brick Moderne architecture, with two faux stone entrances. It is single-story with large window and minimal decoration, except for the bas-relief columns and arch around the entrances and two sculptural scrolls along the central roof line. The interior of the gymnasium appears largely unchanged from its original form.”

The gym got off to a notable start after it opened, hosting a February 1940 game between the Southwestern College Lynx of Memphis and the Louisiana State University Tigers.

The University of Arkansas Razorbacks, on their way to what is now called the Final Four, beat Southwestern at the Marion gym in December 1940. (At left, a May 1939 article on the dedication of the gym, click to enlarge)

This, of course, was before segregation, which came to Crittenden County in 1970-1971. Until then, Black athletes played at Phelix School in nearby Sunset.

I asked Fogleman what happened to that gym. “It was sold and it is more or less tearing itself down -- nature. It’s sad to see,” he said.

Fogleman, 69 and a retired circuit court judge, said he gave his first speech in the auditorium when he was in sixth grade.

“I remember basketball practice as exhausting (line drills, and bleachers). When I go into the main part of the gym, I am reminded of the smell of popcorn,” the 6-footer wrote in an email.

“Prior to (demolition) work, when I entered the area that will now house the administrative offices and the classroom I could still smell a combination of sweat and liniment (Atomic Balm).”

Gym before 2022 construction began and a concert in the 1960s-70s (Sultana Disaster Museum)

The last high school game in the building was 1974-75. A youth sports league played games in the building until 2020.

The elementary school across the street also used the building until 2020. 

Fewer artifacts, more storytelling 

While the bleachers have been repurposed for a decorative element, the wooden floor remains in the gym. Most of it will be covered by a large-scale version of the Sultana and other exhibits, says Fogleman (right, below).

Kollath, who formerly led the Stax Museum of American Soul Museum in Memphis, told the Daily Memphian the remains of the Sultana lie about 20 feet below a soybean field east of Marion, which has about 13,000 residents.

The permanent gallery about the Sultana disaster will open in April 2026. The society and museum are still raising money to finish the project. Unlike Stax, the Sultana Disaster Museum has few original items to display.

“It is not going to be as artifact heavy as a lot of museums would be. But we have great storytelling,” said Kollath.

Gene Salecker, Sultana author, collector and museum supporter, has amassed a large cache of items, many associated with disaster survivor associations and their reunions.

The museum will use modern technology and a scale replica of the 270-foot boat to tell the story under the 35-foot ceiling of the old gym on Old Military Road.

The Sultana had left Memphis and caught fire in the middle of the night, with its flaming wreckage drifting to the Arkansas side.

The story of the Sultana runs deep in the blood of Judge Fogleman and his cousin Frank, who was Marion's mayor for many years.

Their great-great-grandfather, John Fogleman -- after lashing two or three logs together -- poled his way through the current of the Mississippi River and toward survivors.

The Fogleman and Barton families, descendants of local men who were part of that rescue effort, donated $100,000 for the project.

The new museum met another milestone recently, with its name added to the gym’s exterior. (Photo Sultana Disaster Museum)

 “We are the only museum in the world that will have the word disaster in it,” quipped Kollath.

May 2025 photo of the gym interior, future site of permanent gallery (Sultana Disaster Museum)