Sam F. Rhoades, 89, of Mountain Home, Arkansas, died August 24, 2026.

Years ago, when asked what he had learned from his parents, Sam wrote simply, “Their example was a lesson learned.” His father taught him the value of work and a love of the outdoors. His mother taught him optimism, always looking on the bright side of things.

Sam spent the rest of his life learning those lessons, adding some of his own, and passing them along in much the same way: by example.

He believed in planning and working toward a good outcome, but also in accepting what could not be controlled and making the best of whatever circumstances came. He was ambitious, curious and endlessly interested in learning and improving, while possessing the rarer ability to know when what he had was enough. With age, he wrote that he had become more tolerant, more accepting of people as they were, and more certain that quality of life and family mattered more than another rung on the career ladder.

His granddaughter Sunny put it another way: He was not afraid. He knew how to care a lot about what mattered and care less for what didn’t.

Sam was born March 28, 1937, in Searcy, Arkansas, to Thomas E. and Jessie M. Kemp Rhoades. He earned a bachelor’s degree and served as an officer in the United States Air Force, including during the Cuban Missile Crisis. After years away, Sam and his family returned to Arkansas in 1975 and made Mountain Home home.

On August 23, 1957, Sam married Mary Smith in Clinton, Arkansas. More than six decades later, when asked to name the best day of his life, he chose that one, writing that he had “gained a wonderful life partner.” Close behind were the days their three sons, Tom, Jackson and Bruce, were born.

Sam and Mary built their life together through school, Air Force assignments, moves, careers, three boys and all that followed. When Mary developed Alzheimer’s disease late in life, Sam became her caregiver. He remained steadfastly beside her through her long decline and until her death in 2018, after 61 years of marriage.

Sam built a successful career as a financial planner, but his own description of the work was characteristically uncomplicated: he felt he was helping people. He liked people in their staggering variety, learned to accept them as they were, and spent more of his time with those whose company he enjoyed.

In 1997, Jackson joined him in the financial planning business. Sam taught him, mentored him, gave him room to find his own way and, when he believed his son was ready, retired. He did not linger at the edge of the business. His mentoring had been enough. His son was ready. He was ready. Other things were calling.

Sam took particular joy in watching his sons build lives beyond anything he needed to prescribe for them. Bruce once wrote to him that although Sam had given him “tons and tons of advice,” what mattered most was not his words but his actions: “Your actions are what I recall and lean on in my way through life.” Jackson describes much the same inheritance in his own career: empower people, clear the lane for them, and get out of the way. He learned it from the way his dad treated him.

Retirement was not an ending for Sam. It was more room for everything else.

He helped establish the Twin Lakes affiliate of the Arkansas Community Foundation and expanded his community and civic work. The messages received from Mountain Home, Little Rock and around Arkansas following his death testify to how many people and organizations felt his influence. But Sam never seemed particularly interested in being important. He was interested in being useful.

He traveled, played golf and cards, spent time outdoors, pursued new hobbies, learned constantly and shared what he learned. Recreation and education blended easily for him. He could repair or make his own golf clubs, learn how to solve a problem from YouTube, become fascinated by something about space and pass it along to Sunny, and somehow always know where he was. His family considered him a geographical savant, possessed of an internal compass that reliably knew which way was north. Lisa remembers his characteristic response whenever some small problem had been solved or things had simply worked out: “Well, hooray!”

He also knew how to enjoy life.

For years, Saturday mornings often found Sam working beside Jackson on some project, usually outdoors. Sam wanted Jackson to decide what they were doing. He would pick up an egg biscuit or something similar, arrive in the morning, and the two would work until around noon. They talked about everything and nothing. Deep conversation was comfortable. So was silence.

Some of those Saturdays were spent building and maintaining David’s Trail and later the Ozarks Keystone Trail, where Sam was one of the early volunteers. During Mary’s illness, he arranged for someone to stay with her for four hours so those Saturday mornings could continue. After her death, sometimes work gave way to play, including pontoon rides on rare 60-degree winter Saturdays spent scouting places where a future trail might go.

Life still had another great gift waiting for Sam.

He and Estella already knew one another through their work with the community foundation. Both had lost spouses after long and difficult illnesses and years spent as caregivers. When a friend suggested that Sam bring someone to play couples bridge, he asked Estella. He knew she was an excellent card player, perhaps even slightly better than he was, a possibility that genuinely puzzled him.

They initially talked about traveling together, something neither had been free to do during their years of caregiving. Instead, they quickly and deeply fell in love.

They married quickly enough to raise a few eyebrows. Estella’s cheerful explanation became family shorthand: “When you know, you know.”

Sam knew.

Their marriage brought love, travel, companionship and another family into his life. Estella became deeply loved by Sam’s family, just as her people became part of his. And beneath the adventures was the ordinary tenderness of marriage. Lori, a close friend of Estella’s, remembers that Sam took care of her “in small ways and big ways.” Every morning, he made her coffee.

Sam’s only granddaughter, Sunny, knew him by a name no one else could have invented. When she was very small, Sam read her a favorite book about a frog. He would hop around saying “croak” to make her laugh. Sunny decided Croak was therefore his name. Mary was not particularly amused. Sam did not care at all. To Sunny, he remained Croak.

Tom remembers his father as his role model and hero, genuine, supportive and curious. He also remembers two facts that belong together: Sam never bought himself a new car, and Sam always picked up the check.

Others mattered.

His niece Meredith remembers the security of knowing she could count on his experience, wisdom and calmness in any situation. During frightening times, his counsel could be reduced to something very Sam: “Manage the situation. Don’t panic.” She remembers that he loved quietly, held high standards, and inspired people to meet them through loyalty and respect rather than fear.

His nephew Bert simply called him “one of the significant ones in all the best ways.”

Sam was a man of faith and a longtime member of First United Methodist Church in Mountain Home. Late in life, he recorded some of the principles he had gathered along the way: be tolerant of others; be a lifelong learner; learn to listen; know yourself. And this: “A good purpose in life is to make things a little better for all.”

He did.

As Sam’s own life became more difficult, he could see the strength of the relationships that had grown around him. He was contented by the lives his sons were living and by the families that had grown around them. Cousins remained close. Friends became family. Estella’s family became his, and his became hers. New people were welcomed because they mattered to someone he loved.

That was how Jenni experienced him when she entered Bruce’s life. It was how Steph experienced him the first time she walked into a Thanksgiving gathering knowing almost no one there. Sam understood immediately that she was important to Jackson, and therefore she was important to him.

During the final phase of Sam’s illness, he and Estella found comfort in Steph’s strength and in having Jackson, Steph and Estella standing together beside him. A man who had spent a lifetime showing up for other people was surrounded by people who wanted to show up for him.

In the emergency room, fighting terribly for every breath, Sam found a rare quiet moment, looked at Jackson and Steph, and said the last words they would hear from him:

“Thank you two for being here.”

Years earlier, Sam had written of his own parents, “Their example was a lesson learned.”

His was, too.

Sam is survived by his wife, Estella Rhoades of Mountain Home; his sons, Tom (Lisa) Rhoades, Jackson (Stephanie) Rhoades of Mountain Home, and Bruce Rhoades and his fiancée, Jenni Cook; his granddaughter, Sunny; his niece, Meredith Taylor and her husband, Todd, and his nephew, Bert Ehrmann; and an extended circle of family and friends whose boundaries Sam never seemed particularly interested in drawing too tightly.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Thomas E. and Jessie M. Kemp Rhoades, and his wife of 61 years, Mary Rhoades.

Visitation will be held Thursday, September 3, 2026, from 4:30 until 7:30 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 605 West 6th Street, Mountain Home, Arkansas. Funeral services will be held there Friday, September 4, at 10:00 a.m., officiated by Reverend John Fleming. Burial will follow at Kirby’s Tucker Memorial Cemetery with military honors provided by Alley-White American Legion Post #52 and the United States Air Force Honor Guard. Memorial contributions may be made to the Rhoades Family Endowment at the Twin Lakes Community Foundation by following this link or mailing a check to the Rhoades Family Endowment, then mailed to Twin Lakes Community Foundation, 1216 Highway 62 East, Mountain Home, AR 72653. Arrangements are entrusted to Kirby & Family Funeral and Cremation Services, 600 Hospital Drive, Mountain Home, AR 72653. Please visit the online obituary and guestbook at www.kirbyandfamily.com.