Flashback : Dallas

by Paula Bosse

Today is the anniversary of Texas Independence. Below, you will find the most heart-swellingly patriotic bank ad ever penned. Before you plunge in, you might want to get a hanky. (Transcription below.)

Dallas Morning News, March 1, 1921

Four score and five years ago tomorrow a little band of fervent patriots, defying the tyranny of a foreign yoke, gave enduring form and substance to the underlying principles of a free and independent people.

Unfurling the Lone Star Flag to the Southern breeze, they gave its composite symbolism a lasting signification among the nations of the world. Courage, fidelity and truth — devotion to a single aim — wrought out of the wilderness a new empire, dedicated to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Immortalized in song and story, the signers of the Declaration of Texas Independence stand shoulder to shoulder in Texan annals with the martyrs of Goliad and the Alamo and the victors of San Jacinto.

We, therefore, shall honor them tomorrow, pausing in the excited quest for business triumphs to worship for a moment before the shrine of liberty and thus to renew the exalted sentiments in our own hearts that inspired the lives and melded the destinies of our heroic dead. Hence the Clearing House banks of Dallas, over and above a perfunctory obedience to ancient custom and the provisions of our own by-laws, shall close our doors in reverential memory of the sacrifices of men who placed duty before gold, freedom before prosperity and righteousness before luxurious living — actuated by the hope that in this simple tribute to their illustrious names, to their glorious deeds, we may imbibe more of the patriotic spirit that animated them and thus become, through an advancing excellence of citizenship, more worthy of the heritage which they have left us.

American Exchange National Bank
City National Bank
National Bank of Commerce
Dallas Trust and Savings Bank
Security National Bank
Central State Bank
Dallas National Bank

Composing the Dallas Clearing House Association

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Remember the Alamo! And remember the men who placed “righteousness before luxurious living”! (Even though that last part’s not exactly a sentiment that Dallas is typically known for….)

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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.