Celebs | Flashback : Dallas

MLK in DFW — 1959

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in DFW (photo © Calvin Littlejohn Estate)

by Paula Bosse

A couple of photos of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on a quick trip to Dallas and Fort Worth in late October, 1959, taken by the wonderful Fort Worth photographer Calvin Littlejohn. The above photo is from Oct. 22, 1959 and was, I believe, taken after his speech at the Majestic Theatre in Fort Worth. Below, a photo of Dr. King taken at Love Field.

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Sources & Notes

Top photo by Calvin Littlejohn, from the Littlejohn Photographic Archive, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. Mr. Littlejohn took several photos of Dr. King that visit, the locations of which are listed here — giving a good indication of the itinerary of the visit. I saw no mention or coverage of this visit in either The Dallas Morning News or The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Second photo from the TCU Press Facebook page.

A nice overview of Calvin Littlejohn’s career and a few of his photographs can be found here.

1 Comment

January 8, 2015

Elvis at the Big D Jamboree — 1955

elvis_big-d-jamboree_program_090355-photo

by Paula Bosse

Today is Elvis Presley’s birthday — a perfect time to present a nostalgic look back at the early days of his fame, before he broke nationally and when it was still pretty easy to get a ticket to see him. Here are a few tidbits from his appearance on Sept. 3, 1955 at the legendary Big D Jamboree (held at the equally legendary Sportatorium). Happy Birthday, E!

Big D Jamboree program, Sept. 3, 1955

That night’s schedule — E’s all over it

Typos like this wouldn’t be a problem soon

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Sources & Notes

Photo of Elvis and the two clippings from the Big D Jamboree program to that night’s show, Sept. 3, 1955 (which the ad is promoting).

9 Comments

December 17, 2014

Old Red Goes Hollywood (sort of…) — 1964

Old Red’s star turn in The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

An interesting (if a bit fuzzy) screenshot of the Old Red Courthouse from one of Larry Buchanan’s Dallas-made films, “The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald” (1964), about what might have happened had LHO lived to face trial. As with most of Buchanan’s extremely low-budget films, it drags and has clunky acting (…I have to admit that I didn’t watch the whole thing), but it’s interesting to fast-forward through to see the bits shot out on the streets of downtown. I really like this view of the courthouse. It seems familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

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Yes, you can watch the whole film on YouTube — free! Mosey on over here. The movie’s tagline: “Not a Newsreel … A Full-Length Motion Picture Filmed Secretly in Dallas.” Uh-huh. And as far as the movie having been “suppressed” (as is mentioned at the beginning of the film) … well, let’s just say Larry worked in advertising for many years and knew a thing or two about marketing.

For other posts I’ve written about Larry Buchanan (I kind of feel I know him now — he would have been a lot of fun to shoot a movie with!), click here.

1 Comment

December 8, 2014

The Peruna Monument — 1937

Michael Owen’s Peruna monument today, SMU campus (photo by David Steele)

by Paula Bosse

When Peruna — SMU’s beloved Shetland pony that served as the Mustangs’ first live mascot — died in 1934, there was an immediate call to erect a memorial monument over the little horse’s grave, but it wasn’t until 1937 that a serious push for the erection began. Money was raised by the student council, which asked every student to contribute at least ten cents to the fund, and the search was on for the right sculptor.

The commission went to young Michael G. Owen, Jr., who, at only 21, was the same age as many of the students who were hiring him. (It has been erroneously reported that Owen attended SMU, but he did not.) Michael Owen was well-known within the Dallas art community and had made a mark for himself as something of an artistic prodigy — as a teenager, he had been on the periphery of the movement that spawned the Dallas Nine group of Regionalist artists, and he had been mentored by many of the older artists, most notably Jerry Bywaters.

SMU Semi-Weekly Campus, May 5, 1937 (click for larger image)

Owen worked quickly and completed the memorial — which was six feet long and four feet high and carved from 2,800 pounds of hard limestone — in time for the unveiling just outside Ownby Stadium on May 19, 1937.

The result was a quietly emotional — and even a very sweet — monument depicting the small slumbering horse atop a stone slab, with an inscription reading “Peruna I.” Jerry Bywaters wrote a glowing review of the piece, even though he seems a bit taken aback to find what he called “a memorial to a midget horse” on a college campus to be “one of the best pieces of memorial sculpture in the State.”

“Accustomed to seeing rather bad sculptured monuments erected to Confederate soldiers, Texas Rangers, political dignitaries or such abstract ideas as justice, plenty, or beauty, it is slightly confusing to find a very good piece of sculpture set up as a memorial to a midget horse. […] Whatever the paradox of the situation, this monument is surely one of the best pieces of memorial sculpture in the State.” (Jerry Bywaters in The Dallas Morning News, May 23, 1937)

1937 (SMU Archives)

When Ownby Stadium was demolished and the new Ford Stadium built, the Peruna I monument was moved to the new stadium where it has become a memorial to all the Perunas.

With Peruna III, during WWII (Wikipedia)

1950 (DeGolyer Library, SMU)

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Sources & Notes

Top photo by David Steele, from Flickr, here.

Article from SMU’s The Semi-Weekly Campus (May 5, 1937, p. 3), here.

Photo of Peruna III with sailors from the Peruna page on Wikipedia, here.

Bottom photo (cropped) of the Peruna monument from the DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University, here.

Previous Flashback Dallas posts on Mike Owen:

“Give a 15-Year Old 8,400 Pounds of Soap and He’ll Carve You a Radio Transmitter — 1930” is here.
“Michael G. Owen, Jr. — Dallas Sculptor of Lead Belly” — is here.

UPDATE: Read about a recently discovered large painting by Owen up for auction in Dallas in 2019 here.

The previous post on the untimely demise of Peruna is here.

6 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)

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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!

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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 24, 2014

David Wade, Gourmet: Have Ascot, Will Travel

david-wade_dining-with_cover

by Paula Bosse

A few years ago, when I was a bookseller, I posted the following on a personal blog — it turned out to be the most commented-on and most clicked-on post I’d ever written. I wrote it a bit snarky, but I was amazed by the response it elicited: people (both in Texas and beyond) apparently have a strong affection for — and a seemingly deeply personal attachment to — local TV gourmand David Wade. Here’s what I wrote.

I just received an order for a David Wade cookbook I’ve had listed for four years:

DAVID WADE’S KITCHEN CLASSICS (Dallas: David Wade Industries, 1969). 300pp. Photographs, index. The ascot-clad TV gourmet presents recipes as well as photos of himself with celebrities such as Mickey Mantle (page 99, opposite the recipe for Crabmeat Tetrazzini). A couple of small splotches to fore-edge; one rubbed spot on cover. No dust jacket. Inscribed by Wade. $12.50

I don’t know if people outside of Texas (and maybe outside of Dallas) would be familiar with David Wade, described, tellingly, not as a “chef” but as a “food demonstrator.” He had a local TV show that must have started in the ’50s or ’60s, but I saw him in the ’70s and into the ’80s. And, yes, he DID wear an ascot, and a blazer, as seen above, from the front cover of another cookbook from the David Wade oeuvre.

He had a catchy theme song (which compared him to Rembrandt and Edison) and he had his very own coat of arms, which I have vivid, rather frightening memories of from my childhood (I always imagined that poor pig being whacked over the head with the rolling pin and then hacked apart by the cleaver — Bon Appetit, little piggie!):

david-wade-show_logo

I was just a kid, but I remember cringing a bit at his deep-voiced cheesiness. I don’t actually remember much about the food or the actual program, but I can still hear that unnaturally calm, deep voice oozing around inside my head. But what did I know? He was an incredibly popular local TV personality. Yeah, he might have used an over-abundance of big words (…words like “over-abundance”), but, to be fair, he also had a folksy charm and was pleasantly inoffensive.

I’m not sure the same can be said for his food, however. Here are a few of the recipes which some lucky lady in South Carolina who bought the cookbook might be whipping up in a few days:

Squash Loaf
Citrus Surprise Steak
Liver Yucatan (featuring grated American cheese (can you actually grate American cheese?), macaroni, canned mushrooms, and sugar)
Baked Stuffed Fish with Pecan Grape Sauce
Deep Sea Loaf (made with canned tuna, gelatin, sweet pickle juice, avocado, and three tablespoons of sugar … among other equally distressing ingredients)
Salmon & Green Olive Casserole (with cream and “salmon liquid” straight from the can)
Apple & Banana Soup (these are the ingredients: chicken stock, apple, banana, potato, onion, cream, curry powder, chives)
Kidney Bean Tuna Salad
Meat Loaf Pizza
Pineapple Mint Cake
Quick Clove Jelly Cake
Sahib Eight Boy Chicken Curry (…I have no idea…)
Yam Peanut Puffs

Bon Appetit!

After I wrote that post, I was inundated by people looking for information on where to find all sorts of much-loved David Wade recipes (especially his famed “Turkey in a Sack”) and where they could find his apparently quite popular Worcestershire Powder. There were also many, many comments from people who just wanted to share personal memories of David Wade, invariably describing him as a warm and gracious, down-to-earth, gentle man. “Classy, but not pretentious.”

Wade began his TV career in Dallas at WFAA in 1949, hosting a 15-minute show about dogs (?!) called “Canine Comments” — it became so popular that it was syndicated around the country. He won awards for that show. It was VERY popular. In 1952, Wade was also appearing on WFAA radio as “The Hymn Singer,” singing religious songs and talking about each song’s history and composer. Along the line he made the switch to food.

He was “demonstrating” food preparation at personal appearances and on local television by 1957, and in the early 1960s he became a nationally known figure when he commuted to New York from Dallas to tape regular spots for a show called “Flair” in which he frequently appeared with celebrities, guiding them through the preparation of a dish.

With Gregory Peck, 1960s

Eventually, his Dallas-based TV shows were syndicated all over the U.S., and he was so popular locally that he decided to run for mayor in 1971 (he lost to Wes Wise). He continued in his role as a cooking instructor and media figure until his retirement.

David Wade, a much-beloved man who lived and worked in Dallas for the bulk of his career — died in Tyler in March of 2001 at the age of 77. He had been a fixture on Texas television and had published numerous cookbooks. And in between rhapsodizing on good food and wine, he even taught untold thousands how to cook fish in the dishwasher and how to roast a turkey in a paper sack.

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Sources & Notes

David Wade’s obituary is here.

A warm and fuzzy nostalgic look back at Wade can be read at CraveDFW, here; a super-snarky (and kind of amusing) LA Weekly post critiquing Wade’s recipes can be read here.

Regarding Wade’s run for Mayor of Dallas, check out the Dallas Morning News interview with him conducted by Carolyn Barta, in which he expounds on his vision for the future of Dallas, in the article “Wade Feels Need to Communicate” (March 21, 1971).

Next: The little-known devastating and traumatic childhood event that resulted in David Wade becoming an orphan at the age of 5. Read “David Wade: Overcoming Childhood Trauma” here.

11 Comments

November 22, 2014

JFK’s “Last Hour In Dallas” — 1963

JFK_poster

by Paula Bosse

How is a city supposed to respond when it is suddenly plunged into the international spotlight? Does it grieve and try to forget, or does it grieve and capitalize? Dallas has had over 50 years to deal with/come to terms with the assassination of President Kennedy, but sometimes it seems as if the City of Dallas is still shell-shocked and isn’t quite sure how to acknowledge it on an official level. Let’s face it, Dallas is known to the rest of the world for one thing: the Kennedy assassination (and perhaps the TV show, and maybe the Cowboys). Yes, we have the justly-renowned Sixth Floor Museum, but it took 26 years to open it!

The cottage industry that sprang up in the wake of the Kennedy assassination has been big business for decades, some of it generated by people who live in Dallas, but most of it by people who have probably never even been to Texas. Since 1963, the “assassination literature” (…and, yes, it’s called that) has mushroomed, with local contributions coming from Dallasites whose brush with the President before, during, or after the events of November 22, 1963 have probably been pored over by numerous people either trying to understand why what happened happened or by people searching for hidden conspiracy clues to explain what really happened.

One local resident who added to the assassination literature was John E. Miller who took photos of the arrival of President and Mrs. Kennedy at Love Field and then apparently hot-footed it over to Parkland when the news of the shooting broke. These photos were issued as postcards in 1964 in a packet of 12. (Click pictures for larger images.)

Above, the front of the envelope containing the cards; on the back: “A Real Picture Treat For Years To Come.”

From the back of the card: “No. 1, Arrival of President’s Escort Plane at Love Field, Dallas, Texas.”

“No. 2, Presidential and Escort Planes at Dallas’ Love Field landed shortly after this picture was taken.”

“No. 3, President John F. Kennedy and party leaving airplane at Love Field. (Mrs. Kennedy — pink hat.)”

(UPDATE: The two little girls in the photos above and below are most likely Carolyn Jacquess, in blue, and Debby Massie, in red. Their little group arrived at the airport before the president’s plane arrived, walked through the terminal and out onto the tarmac, right to where the plane taxied up to the small crowd of about 100 people. Just like that. There was no special invitation, and, other than the chain-link fence, no real security.)

“No. 4, President John F. Kennedy and Party in foreground at Dallas’ Love Field.”

“No. 5, Vice-President Johnson, Governor Connally, Mrs. Kennedy (pink hat), other members of party at Dallas Love Field.”

“No. 6, Vice-President Johnson, Governor Connally, Presidential Party and Newspaper Men, Love Field, Dallas.”

“No. 7, Forming of Presidential Parade, Love Field, Dallas.”

“No. 8, After Assassination, TV Unit arrives at Parkland Hospital in Dallas.”

“No. 9, Blood Bank Unit at Parkland Hospital on fatal day. Dallas, Texas.”

“No. 10, Hearse carrying President John F. Kennedy’s body and Mrs. Kennedy from Parkland Hospital back to airplane at Love Field, Dallas.”

“No. 11, Presidential plane awaiting President Kennedy’s body, Vice-President Johnson and Mrs. Kennedy, for return to Washington, D.C. (Note Presidential seal.)”

“No. 12, Texas School Book Depository building from which authorities believe fatal shots were fired. (Note second window down on right corner of building.)”

***

Photos and captions © John E. Miller 1964, 3500 W. Davis, Dallas, Texas 75211. (Mr. Miller was a Dallas businessman who sold motor homes and trailers in Oak Cliff between 1945 and 1976. A photo of Mr. Miller is here).

Many thanks to “amyfromdallas” for scanning and contributing the images in this post. Thanks, Amy!

For other Flashback Dallas JFK-related posts, see here.

Click pictures for larger images.

2 Comments

November 20, 2014

El Presidente y Su Sombrero — 1975

by Paula Bosse

Politicians have to do a lot of silly things at public appearances, and some of them handle the baby-kissing and tedious chit-chat more gracefully than others. President Gerald R. Ford seems to have been pretty good-natured about this sort of thing, even in the wake of the Nixon impeachment and even while being incessantly lampooned by Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live every week.

For reasons I’ve never understood, politicians and foreign dignitaries always seem to be presented with hats when they make an official visit somewhere, and when they come to Texas, they almost always get a cowboy hat. But on President Ford’s 1975 visit to Dallas and the SMU campus, he was made an “honorary Mexican-American” and was presented with a (very large) sombrero by Andrea Cervantes of the Mexican-American Bicentennial Parade Committee. He looks ridiculous, but it’s a fun ridiculous. I think he liked it — Mrs. Cervantes even got a kiss for her gift.

ford-sombrero_FWST_091475 Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sept. 14, 1975

The sombrero re-appeared a few months later, autographed and on display at Pike Park. It never left Dallas. What a shame. I would have liked to imagine the President and First Lady relaxing at Camp David, Jerry wearing his sombrero, smoking a pipe, and watching college football on TV, while Betty sat at the other end of the couch, chuckling to herself, and shaking her head.

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Souces & Notes

Top photo from CorbisImages, here.

More on this in the Dallas Morning News article (with photo) “Ford Commends Group for ‘Feliz Cumpleanos'” (Dec. 15, 1975).

This sombrero-donning was just seven months before the now-legendary “Great Tamale Incident” in San Antonio. Read how NOT to eat a tamale here.

Ford took his gaffes in stride, even going so far as to appear on the show that made note of his every stumble, literal and figurative. Read a behind-the-scenes account of Ford’s 1976 Oval Office taping of one-liners for SNL — including his “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” show opener (although I’m pretty sure he did it without the exclamation mark) — here.

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.

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