HOF | Flashback : Dallas

December 24, 2014

The World’s Largest Santa & The Christmas Tragedy — 1953

Santa considers a test-drive, 1953 (photo: Roy Addis)

by Paula Bosse

Back in 2010, Robert Wilonsky (now a reporter for The Dallas Morning News, but back then a reporter for The Dallas Observer) posted a 1950s-era photo of a giant Santa Claus sitting on the roof of a Dallas car dealership. Robert had found the photo on eBay and wondered what the story behind the promotional stunt might have been. The thing that sparked my interest (other than it being a giant Santa Claus — holding a full-size car in his lap!) was the fact that the dealership, Porter Chevrolet (which I’d never heard of), had been just around the corner from where I grew up — it was in the 5500 block of E. Mockingbird, right across from the old Dr Pepper plant, about where the Campisi’s parking lot is now. I, too, really wanted to know more about that huge Santa Claus that had once been hanging out so ostentatiously in my neighborhood.

At about the time when Robert’s post appeared in 2010, I had only recently discovered that the Dallas Morning News archives were available online. For free. All the way back to 1885! (All you need is a current library card from the Dallas Public Library, and you’re on your way to losing absolute days while reading about one fascinating thing after another.) I had just begun to dabble with searches in the archives, so this seemed like a great opportunity to test my research skills and see if there was more to the story. And there was! I sent Robert what I’d found, and he wrote a great follow-up, here (which has yet another photo of the giant Santa). And a year later he did another follow-up, this one including the color photo seen above, sent in by a reader.

This is just such a great and weird holiday-related bit of Dallas’ past, that I thought I’d revisit the story, especially since some of the links in the original Observer posts no longer work.

First, a quick re-cap (but, please, read Robert’s story, because you’ll enjoy it, and it’s much more colorful than my quick overview here). During the 1953 Christmas season, Porter Chevrolet (5526 Mockingbird) commissioned Jack Bridges (the man who had previously made Big Tex (who was himself originally a giant Santa Claus)) to construct an 85-foot-tall steel-and-papier-mâché Santa Claus (he’d be that tall if he were standing) to sit on the dealership building and hold an actual 1954 Chevy in his lap. It was definitely a promotion that would grab people’s attention. The day the giant Santa was put in place, using a crane, a man whose company had done the installing (as they had with Big Tex), thought it would be a great opportunity to get a Christmas card photo of himself dangling from the crane next to Santa. The man, Roy V. Davis, was recovering from heart-related health problems, and, as it turned out, he experienced a “myocardial rupture” while hoisted 35 feet above the concrete parking lot. He lost his grip and fell to his death. This tragic news made the front page of local papers and was picked up by the Associated Press, but, oddly, it was never spoken of again. Giant Santa apparently remained at his perch throughout the holidays, but as far as I can tell, there was no further mention of Mr. Davis’ death — until Robert Wilonsky stumbled across the photo and wrote about it 57 years later.

Below is the AP photo and blurb which ran nationally, showing Mrs. John Ashmore and her 4-year old daughter Ruth Ann looking up at the towering Santa Claus.

Photo: Collection of Paula Bosse

The caption (click for larger image):

UPDATE: Okay this is VERY EXCITING — and also kind of chilling: there is WBAP-Channel 5 television news footage of the Giant Santa as well as the on-the-scene tragic aftermath of Mr. Davis’ accident. The Dec. 10, 1953 footage is without sound (the script the anchor read on the air as the film played during the newscast can be found here). The video starts off with children marveling at the giant Santa Claus but suddenly turns dark with shots of the bloody Mr. Davis being loaded onto a stretcher (helped by Jack Bridges, the man who built the giant Santa, seen wearing a beret and white coveralls). The one-minute clip titled “Worker Dies at Santa’s Statue” can be viewed on the Portal to Texas History site here.

Below are a few screen captures:

Denison Press, Dec. 25, 1953

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dec. 11, 1953

Lubbock Avalanche, Dec. 11, 1953

***

Sources & Notes

Top color photo (which I’ve cropped) is by Roy Addis. It appeared in the Dallas Observer blog Unfair Park in Robert Wilonsky’s 2011 update to the previous year’s story — it was sent in by a reader who discovered it in his personal collection. To read that story, click here.

Wilonsky’s original Unfair Park post — which contained the photo he found on eBay — is here. And, again, his post containing “the rest of the story” is here. (Robert Wilonsky continues to write enthusiastically about Dallas — its past as well as its present — and his Dallas Morning News pieces are, quite frankly, where I get most of my news about what’s going on in the city. Thanks for the opportunity to be part of the unearthing of this story, Robert!)

The news photo of Mrs. Ashmore and her daughter is from the author’s personal collection.

The video is from the KXAS-NBC 5 News Collection, University of North Texas Libraries Special Collections, accessible on the Portal to Texas History site. The main page of the video is here (click picture to watch video in a new window).

Dallas Morning News articles on the giant Santa and the tragic accident:

“Santa Claus Turns Texan” (DMN, Sept. 23, 1953)
“Figure of Santa Claus Will Overshadow Tex” by Frank X. Tolbert, with photo of Jack Bridges (DMN, Nov. 18, 1953)
“Santa Claus Too Large For Trucks” (DMN, Nov. 29, 1953)
“Christmas Card Picture With Tragic Ending” (DMN, Dec. 11, 1953)
“Man Falls to Death Off Cable,” with photo of Roy V. Davis (DMN, Dec. 11, 1953)

UPDATE: Robert Wilonsky has written on the giant Santa in a new Dallas Morning News article, with some interesting new tidbits about Porter Chevrolet’s proposal to the City Council requesting permission to put this huge structure on top of the building. Read his 2017 update here. Robert keeps telling me we should write a book about this — or make a documentary. Which, of course, we should! After all these years now of visions of the giant Santa and sober thoughts of Roy Davis — more “real” now, having seen film footage of him bloody on that stretcher — I really do feel this is all part of some personal family Christmas lore, recounted every year around the table.

Pictures and clippings are larger when clicked.

25 Comments

December 21, 2014

“Every Gypsy in the Nation Knows About This” — 1951

The “Gypsy youth” at the center of “tribal” unrest & his father, Baylor Hospital, 1951

by Paula Bosse

In the first few days of March, 1951, Dallas witnessed the influx of hundreds and hundreds of Gypsies into the city, all of whom had been summoned — from near and far — by a call put out over an effective and somewhat mysterious communications network. The reason? A teenage boy (referred to repeatedly as a “Gypsy youth”) had been shot in South Texas by a boy from another “tribe” (or clan, or family) — one family insisted the shooting was intentional, the other insisted it was an accident. This incident ballooned into a huge internecine feud. If the boy died, the “Green” tribe promised that there was “going to be a lot of shooting going on in Dallas” (Dallas Morning News, March 1, 1951). [Note: the word “Gypsy” is sometimes seen as a pejorative. I use it in this post purely in a historical context; it is not meant to be derogatory.]

In December of 1950, 14-year-old “Lawrence Young” (the anglicized name his family gave to authorities) had been walking along railroad tracks with other boys in Port Isabel, near Brownsville, when he was shot with a .22 caliber rifle by a 12-year-old, a Gypsy boy from another clan. The 12-year-old said the borrowed rifle had been malfunctioning and that, while hunting, the gun discharged unexpectedly, and a bullet hit Lawrence, whom the other boys thought was playing when he fell to the ground. Until they saw the blood. The bullet struck Lawrence in the back, near his left shoulder blade, and it lodged in his spine at the base of his skull. Police in Port Isabel determined that the shooting had been an accident. Lawrence’s family, however, said that the other boy had been jealous of Lawrence’s new car and had shot him on purpose. The boy was rushed to the hospital; his condition was not good.

After stays in hospitals in Galveston and Temple, Lawrence’s mother decided to move him to Dallas where she thought the medical care would be better. He was admitted to Baylor Hospital at the end of February. Relations had been tense between the two clans since the shooting, but the Evans clan (of which the 12-year-old boy was a member) had grudgingly agreed to pay for half of Lawrence’s medical bills. The decision by Lawrence’s family to move him to Dallas — where hospital care would be much more expensive — only made things worse between the two groups; the Green clan had heard that the Evans clan would not pay their share of what they felt would be an exorbitant bill. Tempers had been building and boiling for weeks, and by the time things moved to Dallas, things were about to explode.

Word of the increasingly volatile feud had spread, and Gypsies from several surrounding states began pouring into Dallas in a show of tribal support. The first reports estimated there might have been as many as 500 Gypsies in Dallas County, representing at least six different clans, each clan with strong loyalties to one of the two families. If the boy died, the Greens and their supporters promised that retaliation would be swift and deadly. The Evanses — and the clans friendly to them — were ready for whatever came their way. The threat of deadly violence in the streets of Dallas was a very real possibility (if a city could be an innocent bystander, that’s what Dallas was in this unusual situation).

The Dallas police were, understandably, worried. In an attempt to get the warring factions to leave town, homicide detective Captain Will Fritz was reduced to arresting several of the men on charges of vagrancy (“We can’t make them get out of Dallas, but we can keep arresting them for vagrancy until they move on,” Fritz said). Unfortunately, this was a pretty ineffective strategy.

Fifty or so “expensive automobiles” were parked outside Baylor as the time for Lawrence’s surgery approached. Men and women sat inside their cars waiting for a signal from a man they had placed inside the building who was to alert them from a window whether or not the boy had survived. If he died, things would get real bad, real fast. When police learned about the man inside the hospital, they arrested him. The boy was in critical condition prior to the surgery, and tensions among the factions continued to rise.

Above, the boy’s grandmother, outside Baylor Hospital,
waiting for word on her grandson’s condition.

At some point, a man in Fort Worth who said he was a nephew of the King of the Gypsies in the United States intervened and worked as a sort of intermediary between the Gypsies and Fritz.

“I can’t promise there won’t be any shooting over there,” he told Fritz by telephone. “This thing has gone pretty far. But I will try to stop things where they are.”

“I don’t care how you settle this matter among yourselves,” Fritz replied, “Just do it out of Dallas County. We want no shooting here.” (DMN, March 2, 1951)

Fritz agreed to release two men he had been holding (on non-vagrancy charges), hoping they would take word of the Fort Worth man’s “tribal council” involvement back to their people and calm the situation.

The surgery was, thankfully, successful.

gypsy_mckinney-courier-gazette_030251 Caption: “Gypsy Youth in Dallas Hospital — Lawrence Young, 14-year-old Gypsy youth gets a drink of water from a nurse at Dallas’ Baylor Hospital. Young was allegedly shot by another youthful Gypsy some two months ago near Brownsville, Texas. He was operated on at Baylor Hospital to have the bullet removed. Two Gypsy clans are reportedly watching with much interest to see that the youth recovers.” (NEA photo and wire report, from the McKinney Courier-Gazette, March 2, 1951)

To the relief of Dallas police, doctors said that Lawrence would recover — a major crisis had been averted, and the hundreds of Gypsies who had been camped around Dallas began to leave town. But just a few days later, a camp was discovered outside Garland, and twenty people were immediately arrested for vagrancy — they were photographed, fingerprinted, fined, and released, with the clear understanding that they needed to move on. ASAP. The next day, Sheriff Bill Decker announced they had packed up and left.:

“I don’t know where the road goes,” said Decker, “but it leads out of Dallas County.” (DMN, March 7, 1951)

Gypsies were generally considered a menace by police departments around the country, as their arrival was usually accompanied by a rise in … questionable business practices. While these … business practices … were usually viewed negatively, it’s interesting to note that in 1950 and ’51 Gypsy “style” was everywhere. Ads for upscale department stores such as Neiman’s and A. Harris, for instance, were filled with Gypsy-inspired fashions — off-the-shoulder peasant blouses, scarves, gold bangles, dangly earrings, and exotic makeup. Cars and household items came in popular colors such as “Gypsy green,” “Gypsy red,” and even “Gypsy brown.” People might not have been excited by their … unorthodox business practices … but they sure loved the way they dressed and were attracted by the allure and romance of their rootless, “wandering” lifestyle.

gypsy_n-m_dmn_030551 Neiman-Marcus ad — 1951

gypsy_n-m_dmn_041051 Neiman-Marcus ad — 1951

gypsy_volk-ad_dmn_031051 Volk ad — 1951

gypsy-green_w-a-green-ad_dmn_011851 W. A. Green ad — 1951

***

For more on “Gypsy”/Romani/Romany/Roma culture and history, see the Wikipedia entry here; for issues concerning use of the word “Gypsy,” see here.

And for no other reason than to see how Gypsies were often stereotypically portrayed on pre-PC television, an episode of The Andy Griffith Show called “The Gypsies” can be watched on YouTube, here.

My favorite tidbit gleaned from this brief look into Gypsy culture was discovering that families and individuals with No Fixed Abode often communicated via the classifieds of, of all things, Billboard magazine.

17 Comments

December 9, 2014

Urban Crisis: “The Walls Are Rising” — 1967

walls_lake_1967
Oak Cliff Pier? Just one part of Dallas’ urban future as envisioned in 1967…

by Paula Bosse

In 1967, the Dallas chapter of the American Institute of Architects unveiled a project it had been working on under the sponsorship of the Greater Dallas Planning Council for over a year — a 40-minute color slide presentation with recorded narration called “The Walls are Rising,” directed by writer-photographer Ron Perryman of Austin. Enslie “Bud” Oglesby — one of Dallas’ top architects and the chairman of the committee behind the project — said of the film:

I saw here an opportunity to demonstrate the problems which poor planning bring and the results that can come from a sound, unified planning program…. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 18, 1967)

The rather more urgent tone of the brochure that accompanied the film was a bit more dire:

We cannot afford to lose any more time in developing a coordinated plan to make Dallas a more beautiful and effective city, for all around us the walls are rising, the city is being built… We are designing by default instead of summoning our vitality, wealth resources, talents and human vision to create a design plan that will give Dallas quality and character all its own.

The goal of the project was to create awareness among city officials, planners, and designers (as well as among the public) of the immediate need to address the conscious physical design of the city in order to improve its future “livability.” The argument was that the city of Dallas was, in 1967, an unplanned and uncoordinated chaotic urban environment dominated by (and practically strangled by) the automobile; it was overwhelmed by traffic, noise, and visual clutter, and it lacked much-needed green spaces and personal “refuges.”

It was stressed that the film was not a plan, per se, but was, instead, an outline of suggestions that the AIA and the Greater Dallas Planning Council were proffering for discussion (and, one assumes, hoping would be implemented). Among their suggestions were the following (some of which have been adopted, but many of which have been “on the table” for decades now and which Dallas leaders continue to debate):

A 6-mile hike-and-bike trail from Turtle Creek to Reverchon Park
A rapid transit system (the report stressed that it would be urgently needed by 1980)
The creation of downtown parks
The development of downtown apartment housing
A centralized transportation hub (bus, rail, air)
The reduction in noise, visual clutter, and traffic
More “sensitive” freeway planning, which should be designed (or re-designed) for the driver and not for the automobile
More awareness of the pedestrian in designing downtown and neighborhood streets, especially in regard to safety and accessibility
Development of, yes, the Trinity River and its levees, including a downtown lake and sailboat-dotted marina, with apartments and a variety of entertainment and shopping venues lining the “shore”
And, most unexpectedly, a “scenic link” which would connect Fair Park to the Dallas Zoo, incorporating a sort of shuttle service between the two locations (and across the Trinity) via an elevated gondola ride (!)

As fun and fanciful as fresh ideas on getting to Oak Cliff are, the film seems to have been more of a warning of what the city’s future might be if it continued down its then-current path of … having basically no plan at all. The film started off by assaulting the viewer’s senses with several minutes of “blaring, cacophonous music” and a rush of chaotic images — and opened with the ominous words, “We are living in an accident.” The League of Women Voters issued a report in 1968 called “Crisis: The Condition of the American City” in which they described “The Walls Are Rising” as “a horror film.”

What sounds a bit like a sophisticated A/V presentation was screened for dozens and dozens and dozens of groups in the Dallas area between 1967 and about 1972: it was shown to various Chambers of Commerce, Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions clubs, women’s groups, church groups, business groups, arts organizations, and on and on and on. The film would usually be introduced by an architect who would also lead a discussion and answer questions afterward. If you were a member of a civic or professional group in the late ’60s, chances are pretty good you saw “The Walls Are Rising.”

Which is why it’s so surprising that all traces of the film seem to have vanished in the intervening years. I contacted the Dallas Municipal Archives, the Texas/Dallas History & Archives Division of the Dallas Public Library, AIA Dallas, and Dallas Center for Architecture. Everyone was very helpful, but … nothing. Designs for Dallas and the later Goals for Dallas are better known projects, but it seems that there would be something connected with this film lying around somewhere. I’d love to see it. It sounds like it would be entertaining and informative … and depressing. We’ve come so far. …We haven’t come far at all.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 18, 1967 (click for larger image)

***

Sources & Notes

“The Walls Are Rising” was introduced to the Dallas public in Dorothie Erwin’s article, “A Design for Dallas Proposed,” which ran in the Feb. 12, 1967 edition of The Dallas Morning News. Additional descriptions of the film can be found in the article “A Courageous Look at Today’s City” by Larry Howell (DMN, May 3, 1968).

UPDATE: Jan. 9, 2015 — Great news! AIA Dallas has found the film and has scheduled a screening!

To read my follow-up post “‘The Walls Are Rising’ — FOUND!” click here.
To read Robert Wilonsky’s Dallas Morning News article on the newly-found film, click here.
For info on the AIA Dallas screening, click here.

UPDATE: Jan. 20, 2015 — The public screening and panel discussion at the Sixth Floor Museum was great! Read about it here.

UPDATE: May, 22, 2015 — AIA Dallas has digitized and uploaded the film to Vimeo. Watch the complete film here.

3 Comments

December 7, 2014

Little Peruna: He Died With His Mustang Bridle On — 1934

Peruna, waiting for the Mustangs to score (photo: SMU)

by Paula Bosse

On October 30, 1934, shortly before midnight, Peruna, the 28-inch-tall little black Shetland pony mascot of the Southern Methodist University Mustangs, somehow liberated himself from his stable and wandered across campus and out into the intersection of Mockingbird and Airline where he was, sadly, struck by a hit-and-run driver and died soon after. As the newspaper account noted the next day, when the tragic accident occurred, “He was wearing a bridle of Red and Blue, the Mustang colors.”

Peruna had been the football team’s mascot for only two years, but he was an immensely popular attraction, and he was treated as something of a celebrity wherever he appeared, both at home and when traveling with the football team and the Mustang band. He did things most horses didn’t do, like ride in taxi cabs and sashay though hotel lobbies. Crowds at football games loved watching the little horse race across the field — even the ardent supporters of the opposing teams were charmed by him. And he was, of course, much loved at SMU; his death was a hard blow to the student body.

When he was buried at Ownby Stadium, the band played the usually rousing fight song as a mournful dirge, and the flags on campus flew at half mast.

I’m an animal lover, and stories about the demise of animals are not things I normally find entertaining, especially when phrases like “the midget pony,” “the wee mascot,” “the stout-hearted little mascot,” and “the midget wonder horse” are constantly (and effectively) used by journalists to tug at the readers’ heart-strings. But the Peruna obituary/funeral coverage that was printed in The Dallas Morning News is so wonderfully and ridiculously over-the-top that that one yearns to know who wrote the uncredited story. I have created a little scenario in my head in which the writer had been (and I apologize…) “saddled” with writing a story about a horse’s funeral, but instead of handing it in the pedestrian short-and-vaguely-moving report that was expected, he decided — to hell with it — that he would just go full-throttle and produce the most outrageously grief-stricken story ever written about the untimely death of a college mascot. After what one assumes was the downing of much whiskey and much chuckling to himself (I suspect this was written by a sportswriter), a 500-word obit ran on Nov. 1, 1934:

CO-EDS AND GRID STARS SOB AS PERUNA IS BURIED
(The Dallas Morning News, Nov. 1, 1934)

In sight of the very gridiron on which he pranced to lasting fame, Peruna, stout-hearted little mascot of the Southern Methodist University Mustangs, was laid to rest Wednesday afternoon.

As co-eds sobbed openly and hardened football heroes found difficulty in brushing back the tears, the body of the diminutive pony was lowered into its grave in the shadow of Ownby Oval. His coffin was draped in red and blue, the school colors, and a huge M, the Mustang emblem, graced the top of the casket.

Across the way, on the campus of the big university itself, the flag fluttered at half mast. The school band, looking noticeably bare without Peruna prancing about, playing “Peruna,” the varsity song, in the tempo of a dirge. Hundreds of heads were bowed when the strains of the alma mater, “Varsity,” offered a final tribute to the wee mascot.

Peruna’s career was as colorful as that of the team he represented. Given to the school in November, 1932, by T. R. Jones, loyal Mustang supporter, the midget horse immediately became the constant companion of the team on its journeys from one side of the continent to the other.

Only last week Peruna was feted in New York, parading through the lobbies of the city’s swankiest hotels, whose clerks sniff haughtily at the thought of a dog or a cat entering the sacred portals of their hostelries….

In was in Shreveport where he slipped and cut his leg as he started to Centenary Stadium in a taxicab. His wound was stitched, and the faithful little animal pranced proudly with the band during the between-halves parade.

But Peruna prances no more. And if the music of Bob Goodrich and his Mustang band at Austin Saturday fails by a scant margin of being at its peppiest, it will be because the band has dedicated every tune on that day to the memory of its best friend.

That must have been fun to write.

The year following Peruna’s demise, the Rotunda — SMU’s yearbook — featured a two-page illustrated spread “Dedicated to the famous Mascot of the Mustangs … ‘Peruna.'”

See Peruna’s very, very sweet memorial statue on the SMU campus here.

The loss of Peruna left the Mustangs without a mascot. Peruna’s son was proffered as a replacement, but even though “Little Peruna had been dressed in its father’s blanket and was prepared to give its all for SMU,” the school declined to bring Peruna fils on board. A successor — Peruna II — was eventually appointed, the first of many over the past eighty years. We’re now up to, I believe, Peruna IX, and the little stallion is still as popular as ever. May the “stout-hearted little mascot” continue to prance proudly for the SMU Mustangs.

peruna_smu-rotunda_1939 1939 Peruna (SMU Rotunda)

peruna_varsity-shop_cully-culwell_culwell-ranch_1960-SMU-rotunda 1960 Peruna (SMU Rotunda)

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo from the 1933 SMU yearbook, The Rotunda. The two-page spread is from the 1935 Rotunda.

For an idea of what the area looked like at the time of Peruna’s terrible midnight accident — large open fields to the north and east of the campus, and, to the south, a probably dimly-lit Mockingbird Lane — here is a detail from a 1930 aerial map from the Edwin J. Foscue Map Library at Southern Methodist University (the full map can be seen here):

(click for larger image)

Check out these articles in the Dallas Morning News archives:

“Car Kills Peruna Back From Victory Over New Yorkers; SMU Mascot Known To Over Half Nation, Dies With Bridle On” (DMN, Oct. 31, 1934)
“Co-Eds and Grid Stars Sob As Peruna Is Buried” (DMN, Nov. 1, 1934)
“Grieving Mustangs Won’t Take Son of Peruna for Mascot” (DMN, Nov. 11, 1934)

Peruna on Wikipedia, here.

If you really want to know about Peruna, though, you need to go to the horse’s mouth — his page on the SMU website, here.

Read about the Peruna monument by Dallas artist Michael G. Owen, Jr. which was dedicated on the SMU campus in 1937, here.

5 Comments

November 30, 2014

David Wade: Overcoming Childhood Trauma

17-year-old David Wade, Waco High School, 1941

by Paula Bosse

For many Texans, the name David Wade brings to mind a gentle and convivial, deep-voiced TV cooking show host who, for decades, shared his love of food with a legion of faithful fans. Dallas was Wade’s home base — it was where he lived, where he established his business empire, and, for the most part, where he recorded his television programs. He seemed like the kind of guy who had it all. But many of his fans would be shocked to learn that David Wade’s most searing childhood memory was the impossible-to-forget day his father killed his mother.

In 1929 Eugene and Ora Lee Wade lived in Cameron, Texas, about 50 miles south of Waco. They had four daughters, ranging in age from twelve to twenty-one, and one son, five-year old David. Eugene worked as an engineer at the local cotton gin, and Ora Lee raised the children and was a popular and active member of her church.

On the afternoon of Sept. 30, 1929, Eugene came home drunk. Very drunk. He began to argue with Ora Lee, and, as things escalated, she ran to the nearby house of her brother. An angry Eugene lurched after her. A gun was drawn, and Eugene drunkenly threatened his wife with it. In an ensuing physical altercation, the gun went off. Mrs. Wade had been shot in the thigh. She attempted to run away but collapsed after only a few steps. She died soon after being rushed to the hospital — her femoral artery had been severed, and she bled to death. Before the police arrived, Eugene Wade had slashed his throat with a razor, and though not initially expected to live, he survived and was charged with the murder of his wife. The horrible, violent, bloody scene had been witnessed by at least one daughter (and, in all likelihood, probably by five-year old David as well).

wade_bryan-eagle_100129 The Bryan Eagle, Oct. 1, 1929

The Cameron Herald, Oct. 3, 1929 (click for slightly larger image)

A distraught Eugene Wade pleaded guilty, was sentenced to life in prison, and by the end of the year, he was on his way to Huntsville. Before he left Cameron, he gave a lengthy, sincere, and heartbreaking interview to The Cameron Herald. In it, he expressed his sorrow, his regret, and his love for his wife and children.

“Whiskey was the cause of it all. I am to blame for what has happened to my family and to myself. I can lay it all to drink. I loved my wife as well as any man ever loved his wife and I love my children. My home is destroyed and my wife is dead. My children will suffer the humiliation of this terrible thing. Time may heal their wounds but mine will bleed for all time. I can never escape the horror of it though I should live a thousand years. Nothing but sorrow is left for me, still I might come out of the trouble some day, maybe an old man and broken but maybe I can still do some good in the world.” (Cameron Herald, Dec. 19, 1929)

Five-year old David had been left, basically, an orphan. He spent some time at the Juliette Fowler home for orphans in Dallas and was later moved around between family members and foster families. He went to Waco High School where he was a popular student (the yearbook photo above was accompanied by the motto supplied by the Senior Band, of which he was a member: “And he is oft the wisest man”), and he received arts degrees from Baylor and the University of Texas (he studied music and had a short career as a singer). He seems to have done well in school, despite the terrible incident in his past.

But after college he spent time in California as a “test pilot,” a nerve-wracking job that apparently stressed him out so much that he sought medical treatment (an amateur psychologist might assume that his anxiety was triggered by post-traumatic stress). According to later newspaper profiles, instead of sedatives, the doctors suggested he focus on an enjoyable hobby to settle his nerves. A hobby like cooking. …And the rest is history.

As far as I’ve been able to determine, he rarely — if ever — talked about the tragedy he experienced in his youth. When one knows the details of his past, some of his quotes from interviews carry more weight:

“Any time you have a problem and you overcome it, you have a muscle. You never build a personality unless you have a lot of troubles.” (David Wade in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, April 25, 1976)

When I was growing up and would frequently come across one of David Wade’s shows on TV, I usually clicked on past it unless there was absolutely nothing else to watch. He and the show felt a little corny and were a little too laid back for my taste. Now, though, having learned about his past — and having always felt that Mr. Wade seemed to be a genuinely nice person — I definitely have a more positive and respectful opinion of the man. Ascot, crest-emblazoned blazer, and all.

david-wade_FWST_042576-photo Bon Appétit!

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo of a 17-year-old David Lloyd Wade from the 1941 Waco High School yearbook.

The coverage of Ora Lee Wade’s funeral in the Cameron Herald (Oct. 3, 1929) — which includes quite a bit of genealogical information — can be found here (click for larger image).

The full “jailhouse interview” with Eugene Wade in the Cameron Herald (Dec. 19, 1929) is available in a PDF, here.

Incidentally, Eugene Wade’s “life sentence” lasted four years. He was the recipient of one of Governor Ma Ferguson’s notorious “conditional pardons.” He appears to have lived around the Cameron area until his death in 1967. I don’t know whether he ever re-established relationships with his children.

A nice overview of David Wade’s very successful career can be found in an article from the April 25, 1976 issue of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, in a PDF, here.

My previous post, “David Wade, Gourmet: Have Ascot, Will Travel” — about his happier days as a successful TV personality — can be read here.

7 Comments

November 16, 2014

Babe Didrikson, Oak Cliff Typist

Babe Didrikson at a desk she was probably pretty unfamiliar with, 1932

by Paula Bosse

Mildred “Babe” Didrikson has been called the greatest athlete of the 20th century — male or female. She was an All-American basketball player, she set a number of world records in a wide variety of track and field events (she was so good at all of the individual sports that she was entered at least once as an entire TEAM — a team of one!), she won two gold medals and one silver (which should have been three gold medals…) at the 1932 Olympics, and she was, perhaps most famously, a champion golfer who was a founder of the LPGA. She was also highly proficient in softball, bowling, diving, swimming, roller skating, and tennis, and she dabbled in hockey, skeet-shooting, billiards, and even football. There was no sport she didn’t try — and even if she had never tried it before, she was probably pretty good at it. And she spent an important period of her life in Dallas.

1931

Babe Didrikson was born in Port Arthur, Texas in 1911 and grew up in nearby Beaumont. She excelled in sports in school, especially basketball. In the late-’20s, a man named Col. M. J. McCombs, who was the head of the women’s athletic program for an insurance company, saw Babe in action and recruited her to play for his company’s basketball team in Dallas. She was offered a job to do vague secretarial work for the Employers’ Casualty Company (which had offices in the old Interurban Building downtown), with the understanding that she was really being taken on in order to play on the company team. With the blessing of her Norwegian immigrant parents, she interrupted her high school education in Beaumont to accept the $75-a-month job and was moved into a Haines Avenue rooming house in Oak Cliff.

Babe soon became the star of the Golden Cyclones, her company’s championship-winning team which participated in an “industrial” league governed by the national Amateur Athletic Union (the AAU). In the off-season she was introduced to track and field events by McCombs, and she quickly mastered them all.

babe_emp-cas-co Flying the company colors

She soon began breaking world records. Watch her compete at an AAU meet at SMU in July 1930, where one of the records she broke was for the javelin throw, here.

didrikson-babe_070730_track-meet_SMU_javelin_critical-past_screenshot-crop July 1930, Dallas

Before she knew it, it was the summer of 1932, and the Olympics were being held in Los Angeles — the 21-year old won three medals, emerged as the star of the games (she was frequently referred to as “the wonder girl from Dallas”) and began her climb up the ladder of celebrity.

After the Olympics, the city of Dallas gave her a victory homecoming, with a parade, a luncheon, and various presentations, all covered widely in the local press. The Dallas Morning News described it as “a demonstration the magnitude of which has never before been accorded a son or daughter of this city” (DMN, Aug. 12, 1932), bigger even, they said, than the reception that had greeted Charles Lindbergh on his Dallas visit.

Babe’s post-Olympics parade through downtown Dallas — Aug. 11, 1932

After the celebrations had settled down, Babe Didrikson, sports superstar, was back at “work” — at least long enough to have photographs of her taken at the most uncluttered desk imaginable. (Though to be fair, Babe did claim to have been a typing champion in high school. Even if that were true — and she was known to be something of an exaggerator — it’s still almost impossible to imagine this world champion athlete typing up an afternoon’s dictation on insurance matters.)

babe_insurance Employers’ Casualty Co.’s casual employee — Oct. 21, 1932

Babe eventually turned pro, left Dallas, married wrestler George Zaharias, and became an incredibly successful golfer. She died from cancer in 1956 at the early age of 45, but her legacy lives on as one of the greatest and most versatile athletes of all time (…who, for a few short years, also happened to do a bit of light secretarial work for an insurance company in Dallas).

Below are a few of my favorite random Babe-related tidbits.

babe_hat_dmn_071232 1932

Babe was often ridiculed by male sportswriters for her bearing and physique, which they thought were not feminine enough for their tastes. This criticism — ridiculous though it was — must have stung, because she occasionally made efforts to placate them, some of which seemed very awkward, such as this. The caption of the above photo: “Mildred (Babe) Didrikson (left) and her chaperon, Mrs. Henry Wood, are pictured above as they appeared Monday afternoon just before boarding a train for Chicago, Ill. for the national AAU track and field championships in which Babe […] hopes to carry off high honors and win a berth on the American Olympic team. This is the first picture ever taken of Babe with a hat on. She has never worn one before.”

Aug. 11, 1932

Aug. 11, 1932 — ad inset

Above, an ad taken out by the Dallas company Babe worked for, welcoming her back home from her Olympic triumph. Drawing by Jack Patton. (Even though Babe had buckled to pressure with the whole hat thing, I can’t quite picture her wearing gloves.)

babe-and-babe_081247

Babe and the other Babe, August 12, 1947. I love this photo.

babe_vanity-fair_1933

Fantastic photo of Babe in her prime by Lusha Nelson, from the January, 1933 issue of Vanity Fair.

***

Sources & Notes

The two photos of Babe Didrikson at her desk, the photo of the parade in Dallas, and the photo with Babe Ruth are from the huge selection of photographs of Babe at CorbisImages. See a lot of photos of her throughout her career, here. The photos of her training and in action are exhilarating, but it’s nice seeing her looking so happy and relaxed in her later golfing days. She definitely smiled a lot more after she started making more than the measly $75 a month she was making in Dallas.

An interesting article from 1975 about Babe in which former co-workers and teammates from Employers Casualty remembered their time with her can be found in the Dallas News archives: “Friends Recall Babe’s Prowess” by Temple Pouncey (DMN, Oct. 26, 1975).

For more on Babe’s time in Dallas and Oak Cliff, she writes about it in her autobiography, This Life I’ve Led (1955), here. (The entire book can be read for free at the link.) Also, check out this article by Gayla Brooks that appeared in the Oak Cliff Advocate.

A really well done, comprehensive overview of Babe Didrikson Zaharias’ career (with lots of great photos), can be found at Pop History Dig, here.

One of my favorite weird Babe things is the record she made with her “golf protege” Betty Dodd. Betty sings (not very well) and is accompanied by Babe on harmonica, an instrument she loved all of her life and which she taught herself to play as a child. The song — and a bit of backstory on Babe and Betty’s relationship — is here (click the arrow at the left of the strip beneath the record label to hear the song “I Felt a Little Teardrop”). Babe’s solo starts at about the 1:06 mark.

And, lastly, newsreel footage of Babe over the years, from the early track meets and the Olympics, to her later career as a golf superstar can be watched here and here.

15 Comments

November 11, 2014

Armistice! — 1918

Downtown parade for returning troops — June, 1919 (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Dallas found out that the Great War had finally ended at around 3:00 in the morning of November 11, 1918 when the siren atop the Adolphus Hotel sounded with “maniacal shrieks.” People poured into the streets to celebrate.

The crackle of revolver reports began to sound. Sleep was murdered, even had one been so disposed, and many residents from all parts of the city foregathered in the downtown district to jubilate and exult in various ways until daylight came. (Dallas Morning News, Nov. 12, 1918)

Giddy celebrations and impromptu parades were the order of the day, and the joyous spirit that erupted throughout the city is reflected in this Dallas Morning News report of “the first day of world peace since August, 1914” (click to see larger image):

DMN, Nov. 12, 1918

Local businesses got in on the action by placing heart-felt patriotic advertisements (some of which also quietly reminded readers that Christmas was just around the corner).

When World War I officially ended on November 11, 1918, the military and civilian deaths and casualties totaled more than 37 million. All everyone wanted was for their loved ones to return home safely and for life to return to normal as quickly as possible. There was a lot to be thankful for that Thanksgiving.

***

Sources & Notes

Photo of the 111th Engineers from the Tarrant County College Northeast, Heritage Room, via the Portal to Texas History, here. It shows the 1500 block of Main Street, looking west toward Akard. See the same view today here (the short white building at 1520 Main is currently occupied by the Iron Cactus; in the 1919 photo, that address is occupied by Thompson’s in what looks like the same building). (See another parade photo of the same block here. The detail is much, much better!)

Ads from the Dallas Morning News, Nov. 12 and 13, 1918.

The Wikipedia entry for World War One casualties is here.

Click pictures for larger images.

2 Comments

October 31, 2014

When Halloween In Dallas Was Mostly “Trick” and Very Little “Treat”

halloween-trick-or-treat

by Paula Bosse

Dallas used to have some pretty bad Halloweens. Way more “trick” than “treat.” The word “riot” was used frequently to describe the typical Halloween night goings-on, when thousands of people clustered downtown and did unsavory things (such as drinking, fighting, pick-pocketing, mugging, and being generally obnoxious), while out in the “suburbs” (meaning far-flung locales such as East Dallas and Oak Lawn), marauding bands of young “pranksters” were keeping themselves busy breaking things and setting things on fire. Like kids do. Each Halloween, every policeman was called in for duty — only those in their sickbeds were exempt.

The worst of these Halloweens seemed to happen in the 1930s. Elm, Main, and Commerce, between Lamar and Harwood, were cordoned off from traffic. This is where upwards of 25,000 revelers would slowly cruise up and down the streets, causing mayhem and inflicting occasional bodily injury (much like the notorious Texas-OU weekends of later years). Even though the area was off-limits to automobile traffic, the streetcars still ran, and the poor drivers must have dreaded that night each year and steeled themselves for the worst, as if heading into battle.

Apparently Dallas revelers had a signature tradition, and it was to carry large wooden paddles — sometimes as large as canoe oars — and to swat people in the crowd on their backsides, usually women. At some point women also began to carry paddles, and they did their fair share of swatting, too. It was a paddling free-for-all.

1935 was a particularly noteworthy year, as it was the first Halloween after the state of Texas had voted to repeal Prohibition. Yes, people were drinking. And paddling. Sounds like a bad combination.

Below is a list of just a few of the reported instances of vandalism and “high-spiritedness” which routinely plagued the city every Halloween:

Broken streetlights
Broken windshields
Broken everything
Flooded streets from opened fire hydrants
The throwing of rocks
The throwing of eggs and rotting fruit
The throwing of stink-bombs
The throwing of WASHTUBS (!)
The setting of fires, both large and small
The malicious uprooting of shrubbery
The driving of cars on sidewalks
The reporting of false alarms to fire stations
Random gunfire
Occasional mysterious explosions
Extremely loud noise
Smoke
The overturning of outhouses
The soaping of windows
The breaking of windows
The breaking of soaped windows
The soaping of streetcar tracks
And the unsuccessful attempt one year by a small band of aspiring shake-down artists to “extort” money (rather than candy) from their eye-rolling neighbors by foregoing the chant of “Trick or Treat!” and demanding “Dime or Damage!”

In 1939, an intoxicated man who was “playfully threatening people with a knife” was playfully arrested.

In 1935, there was a huge mud-fight in Oak Lawn at Newton and Throckmorton which involved over 100 boys. Like greased pigs, an adrenaline-fueled, mud-encased 10-year old running from beleaguered and hopelessly out-numbered policemen — who, quite frankly, had bigger fish to fry that night — were almost impossible to catch. Spectators and passersby did not escape unscathed. Except for the dry cleaners the next day, Oak Lawn was not amused.

And in 1936, during the Texas Centennial, a policeman was suspended and demoted after an incident of “horseplay” at Parry and Exposition in which he had been shocking passing pedestrians by poking them with the end of a walking stick that had been hooked up to the battery of a police motorcycle. He got into trouble because one of his victims was a young woman who had been standing on wet pavement when the electrified stick touched her, resulting in a more-powerful-than-expected shock. She lost consciousness, fell to the ground, and hit her head on the sidewalk. Luckily, she recovered quickly and even requested that the officer not be punished, but the police chief was not so forgiving. He was understandably livid, especially when he discovered that a number of motorcycle cops had been doing the same thing. One imagines there were several new orifices opened up amongst the force in the days that followed.

But the pièce de résistance was in 1920 when several boys “anchored a block and tackle around a two-story house in Cockrell Hill and hoisted a wagon and a team of terrified mules up in the air” (DMN, Oct. 27, 1963). That right there required impressive organizational planning and a certain amount of entry-level engineering skill.

Eventually things settled down. By 1949 officials had finally put an end to the swarming, surging masses downtown. People began to celebrate Halloween with candy and costumes and haunted houses and parties. In 1966, a policeman was asked if things had improved from those earlier dark days:

There’s been an extensive change for the better in recent years. Police almost never get a call to let a cow out of a school house anymore. (DMN, Oct. 27, 1966)

And Halloween became more “treat” than “trick.” Good news for the City of Dallas. And for its mules. Bad news for the makers of Ivory soap and thick wooden paddles.

***

Sources & Notes

Selected tidbits gleaned from the frenzied coverage in The Dallas Morning News archives:

1935: “Much Damage Done By Hoodlums During Halloween Rioting” (DMN, Nov. 1, 1935)
1936: “Young Woman Victim of Police Prank Asks Jones Pardon Men” (DMN, Nov. 3, 1936)
1939: “Witches Stage Costly Carnival For Halloween; Roughness Breaks Out In Downtown Crowd; Police, Firemen Busy” (DMN, Nov. 1, 1939)

Other Flashback Dallas posts on Halloween can be found here and here.

Happy Halloween!

5 Comments

October 30, 2014

Waiting For a Streetcar on a Sunny Winter Day in Oak Cliff — 1946

Addison St. & Jefferson Blvd. in Oak Cliff — Feb., 1946 (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I love streetcars, photos from the 1940s, fashions of the ’40s, and views of the Dallas skyline. And here are all of these things, in one great, GREAT photograph. We see people waiting for the streetcar on a sunny Saturday in February, 1946 — in Oak Cliff, at E. Jefferson Blvd. and Addison St. The people at the left (outside Helen’s Sandwich Shop) are about to catch the car that has just crossed the Trinity River and head into Oak Cliff; the people on the right are waiting to go to Dallas. The Oak Farms Dairy is just out of frame at the top left, and Burnett Field is just out of frame at the bottom right. The Dallas skyline looms across the Trinity.

Below, I’ve zoomed-in a bit and cropped this fantastic photograph into two images to show, a bit more intimately, details of an ordinary moment in an ordinary day of ordinary people. What once was such a commonplace scene — people waiting for a streetcar or interurban — now seems completely out of the ordinary and quaintly nostalgic. (Nostalgic on its surface, anyway — not shown is the interior of the car which had specific black-only and white-only seating areas for passengers.) (As always, click for larger images.)

***

Photo by Robert W. Richardson, taken on February 2, 1946. From the Western History/Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library, viewable here. More on rail enthusiast, writer, photographer, and preservationist Bob Richardson, here.

The same stop can be seen in this undated photo (source and photographer unknown):

Streetcars ran back and forth across the Trinity River on a special trestle just south of the Oak Cliff Viaduct/Houston Street Viaduct. It had been in use since 1887 (through various renovations) and was demolished in the early 1970s to build the present-day Jefferson Street Viaduct.

To see a photo by the same photographer showing a streetcar actually on the trestle over the Trinity, see the post “Crossing the Trinity River Viaduct — 1946,” here.

Streetcar enthusiasts are incredibly, well, enthusiastic, and they keep precise track of where cars operated over their life spans. The car from the photo — Dallas Railway & Terminal Co. car #605 — was a PCC streetcar, built by the Pullman-Standard company in 1945; it was sold to the MTA in 1958 and was in operation in Boston for many years. See cool photos of the very same streetcar in operation over the years in both Dallas and Boston, here (scroll down to “605”). To see what the retired car looked like in 2002 — a bit worse for wear — click here.

A distinctly less-wonderful view from roughly the same location, seen today, is here.

Google

Click pictures for larger images.

7 Comments

October 29, 2014

Simulcasting the World Series In Dallas In the Days Before Radio, Via Telegraph

The later version, for radio listeners, 1922…

by Paula Bosse

It’s 1912. You’re a huge baseball fan, and the World Series is about to begin — New York vs. Boston! But you live in Dallas, a million miles away from the action. You can’t wait for the results in the paper the next day because you’re an impatient S.O.B., and radio won’t be introduced for another ten years. Do you panic? No! Because you live in a big city with a taste for new technology, and the Dallas Opera House is going to present a sort of early simulcast of the games on a “mammoth automatic score board.” Your sports prayers have been answered!

DMN, Oct. 6, 1912

You lean back in your comfy theater seat and smoke your smokes in plush and civilized surroundings as each play is sent by telegraph to Dallas from the ballpark back East where the game is being played RIGHT NOW, hundreds of miles away. The telegraph operator in Dallas will relay the play-by-play information to personnel in the theater who will somehow do something to some sort of “automatic electric board.” And, according to promoters of these “reproductions” of baseball games, you’ll feel like you’re right there in the thick of the action. You’ll “see” the game played before your eyes!

I’ve read several articles about these boards and these reproductions, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how it worked. I assume there was a large traditional scoreboard on stage that lit up, keeping track of the score, runs, outs, etc. But apparently there’s more, and I just can’t picture it. Here’s a somewhat confusing description of what happened during these productions:

WORLD SERIES WILL BE SHOWN AT THE OLD MILL

Manager Buddy Stewart of the Old Mill Theater announced that he secured the New Wonder Marvel Baseball Player Board to reproduce the World Series baseball games. This board is declared the greatest board ever invented for reproducing baseball games. It is not a mechanical board and no mechanical devices are used, and very little electrical appliances are necessary. The games are reproduced by a crew of six experienced baseball players who are carefully rehearsed and each has a part or position to play. No other board is so complete as this. The board does not require sign cards to denote players as in other boards. You see the ball going and do not have to look in any other direction to see what it means.

Spectators will see each play reproduced in less than two minutes after it is made on the playing fields of the World Series as the board is connected with a direct wire to the baseball field, and as fast as the telegraph operator receives the play it is reproduced with as much realism as on the field. The players are seen to run bases, the ball is seen bouncing or soaring to the infield or outfield, and anyone who is familiar with baseball will know just exactly what is happening on the field by the plays made on the board with very little left for imagination.

Every hit, run, error, strike or ball, the number of strikeouts, or balls made by pitchers, or the number of hits, runs or errors made by the players is always prominently shown on the board which makes it [un]necessary for individual scoring during the progress of the game. (DMN, Oct. 3, 1920)

Doesn’t really help much. It sounds as if people are on the stage acting out each play. That would be weird. These “reproductions” of World Series games were quite popular in Texas (and probably elsewhere) for at least 15 years. If anyone reading this has a photo or diagram of one of these vaunted Marvel scoreboards, I’d love to see it!

An earlier description of the 1912 Opera House reproduction sounds more like an audience watching a baseball game on a giant Lite-Brite “score board.”

DMN, Oct. 8, 1912

The trick to keeping the telegraph operators calm and on-their-toes during a lengthy baseball game? Make sure they have no interest in the game.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oct. 14, 1915

Fort Worth was also getting in on the action. And they had celebrities — people like Clarence (Big Boy) Kraft and Ziggy Sears (who I’m going to assume have something to do with baseball). I’m not sure what these celebrities were doing exactly, but whatever it was, they were there doing it.

FWST, Oct. 2, 1921

These theater programs weren’t for everyone, though. If you couldn’t take the time out of a busy work day to swan over to a theater to leisurely witness one of the early “reproductions” (or if the admission price was too steep for your budget), you could always ring up the operator to have her tell you the current score:

automatic_dmn_101112-world-series
DMN, Oct. 11, 1912

These things seemed to be a popular annual event, but in 1922, something more technologically advanced than the Marvel board appeared on the scene: radio! WFAA and WBAP began broadcasting in 1922, and, suddenly, following sports became a whole lot easier. In something of a transitional technology, there was the outdoor board as described below. The games were not only broadcast live on WFAA, but The Dallas Morning News (WFAA’s parent company) also erected one of those old-fangled “electric boards” out on the street so that passersby could keep up with the scores. (Portable transistor radios were decades and decades away.)

DMN, Oct. 10, 1923

It was surprising to see that the “Marvel score boards” were still being used as late as 1926 (Yankees vs. Cardinals, at the Capitol Theater). Every baseball fan worth his salt should have had his own radio by then so he could listen to the World Series in the comfort of his own home and curse and cheer as loudly as the vicissitudes of the game demanded. Eat my dust, Marvel board! Radio changed everything, and radio was here to stay.

UPDATE: Thanks to Kevin’s link in the comments below, I can share this GREAT article from Uni-Watch.com about another of these boards called the Play-o-Graph: “Photography of Playography“ by Paul Lukas — it answers all my questions, and it even has photos (and links to photos) of crowds watching the boards. He also links to a 1912 article, “The Automatic Baseball Playograph” by J. Hunt, in the Yale Scientific Monthly which describes how the board works and has this photo:

The “Play-o-Graph,” 1912 (click for larger image)

And, for completists, here’s an ad for the Play-O-Graph, from 1913:

Billboard, Mar. 22, 1913

Makes a bit more sense now! Thanks, Kevin!

***

Sources & Notes

The top image is the “G.E. Radio Baseball Player Board” — a sort of home version of the big scoreboards used in theaters, printed for WFAA listeners in The Dallas Morning News on Oct. 4, 1922. The instructions are in a PDF, here. And feel free to print one out and use it while you watch the Series this year. Still works in the 21st century!

For an article on listener response to the successful first broadcast of the World Series by WFAA radio (listeners picked up the signal in England!), see the DMN article from Oct. 6, 1922 in a PDF, here.

And because they have such great names, you might want to know who Clarence “Big Boy” Kraft and Ziggy Sears were. If you’ve read this far, you owe it to yourself. “Big Boy,” here; Ziggy, here.

5 Comments

Category: HOF

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this: