FilioScotia

You are correct and I am wrong. I had forgotten about the annual Shrine Ball.

You may be thinking of the Arabia Shrine Circus, which was held annually in the Coliseum for many years. My own kids grew up going to see it every year. And by the way, the Shrine Circus is still going strong. It will be in April at the Fort Bend County Fairgrounds in Rosenberg. Tickets are priced for families, and proceeds benefit Shriners' Childrens' Hospitals and other Shriner causes.

include seeing Johnny Cash perform with the Carter Family, the Statler Brothers, Carl Perkins and the Tennesee Three. I remember that June Carter Cash wasn't on that tour because she was back home having their baby, who they named John Carter Cash. Mother Maybelle Carter was there though, and seeing that grand lady performing old classic Carter Family songs was one of the musical high points of my life. It was a helluva show. My wife and I also enjoyed pro wrestling, and one memorable night we saw Andre the Giant. He was HUGE, but not as big as his promoter claimed. We also loved pro hockey, and the Houston Apollos hockey team on their home ice in the Coliseum.

The 75 year old Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo was held in the Coliseum in the 40s, 50s and 60s, before it moved to the Astrodome in the late 60s. Over those years, when it was called "The Fat Stock Show", many movie stars and celebrities were part of the show in the Coliseum. It's where I saw Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Gene Autry, James Arness, and a bunch of others.

Oh my god I had forgotten all about that incident. Norman Granz was an early hero in the civil rights struggle. Here's the story of that incident in the Music Hall from the WikiPedia. "Norman Granz is generally remembered also for his notable anti-racist position and for the battles he consequently fought for his artists (many of whom were black, perhaps the majority), in times and places where skin color was the cause of open discrimination. In 1955, in Houston, Texas, he personally removed the labels "White" and "Negro" that would have separated the audience in the auditorium where two concerts were to be performed by (among others) Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie; between the two shows they were found playing cards in the dressing room and arrested by local police, but after some nervous negotiations allowed to perform the second show, and only formally released after that. Oscar Peterson recounted how Granz once continued to insist that white cabdrivers take his black artists as customers even while a policeman was pointing a loaded pistol at his stomach from close range (Granz won). Granz also was among the first to pay white and black artists the same salary and to give them equal treatment even in minor details, like dressing rooms. Beloved by his artists (in part because he paid more than average), he had three main goals, as he repeatedly and frankly declared: to fight against racism, to give listeners a good product, and to earn money from good music."

It's a popular misconception that the Sam Houston Coliseum was built in 1928 for the Democratic National Convention. Actually, the Coliseum we all knew and loved for so many years was not the same structure that was built in 1928. Houston banker-developer-political mover/shaker Jesse Jones lured the convention to Houston by promising to build a new convention hall. He had a large hall built on that site in the record time of six months. Unfortunately, it was made completely of wood, which is why he was able to build it so fast. Sam Houston Hall wasn't much more than a very big cavernous barn, but it did what it was intended to do and the convention came and went. Sam Houston Hall, made entirely of wood, was a giant fire-trap, so in 1936, it was razed, and the permanent brick-mortar-steel Sam Houston Coliseum and Music Hall took its place. They were built at the same time, and both were demolished in 1998. The Hobby Center and parking garage now occupy that site. As for who performed in the old Music Hall, my goodness just about everybody who was anybody, and hordes of nobodies. It was the home of the Houston Symphony, Houston Grand Opera, Houston Ballet, Theater Under the Stars and other local arts organizations. National touring companies brought Broadway plays and musicals, and just about every singer, singing group, musician, band and musical aggregation you can name or imagine did shows there. I even saw a troupe of Russian folk dancers one night. It would be impossible to produce a complete list.

Dean Corll's home FYI: That house is in Pasadena, and it was where Corll was living when Henley and David Brooks killed him. Can't remember which street, but it's off South Shaver just a block or two from Shaver Elementary School.

It was a common practice for titled nobility to put their family names on their homes and estates. The word "arms" refers to the family's official symbol, the "coat of arms", the family crest or seal. From Dictionary dot Com: Arms: Heraldry. the escutcheon, with its divisions, charges, and tinctures, and the other components forming an achievement that symbolizes and is reserved for a person, family, or corporate body; armorial bearings; coat of arms.

If you're talking about more than two screens that could be true. I have clear memories of going to the Gulfgate multi-cinema in the late 60s, when two screens were still a novelty.

What a wonderful and heartwarming article about two of the finest people this city has ever known. A million thanks to you for finding it and sharing it. Is it a recent article? I guess I'm asking if Jeanna is still living. It would be nice to know which retirement home she lives in, so we could send a card thanking her for being such an important part of our lives.

That's the place. Thanks. I wuz going nuts trying to remember that name. It was out on Telephone Rd in that area behind and around the old airport terminal.

I remember back in the 60s and 70s there was a wonderful barbecue restaurant on Telephone Road, alongside the old part of Hobby Airport. It served up some of the best BBQ I've ever had in this town. They had a BBQ po'boy unlike any I've ever seen. It was an unsliced half loaf of bread, hollowed-out and stuffed with chipped or sliced BBQ. My mouth is watering just remembering it. I wish I could remember the name of that place.

That's a remarkable old photo. You can see Meyerland Plaza clearly there at the very bottom, alongside Post Oak as it goes south all the way across South Main. There's Hiram Clarke going south from Main up in the top left corner. Looking West from Meyerland there's South Rice, and what will be Chimney Rock. There were no houses west of Chimney Rock and North of the bayou, which is why Captain Herod took his plane in at that spot. The crash site couldn't have been much more than a mile from Meyerland Plaza. I love this picture. In the top right hand corner where Chimney Rock gets close to South Main you can make out faint traces of the old Sam Houston Airport. And at the corner of Chimney Rock and Belfort you can see the beginnings of what would be Westbury Square. Freakiest of all -- in the very top left hand corner I can actually see the house my first wife and I lived in about ten years after this photo was taken. It's on Simsbrook, four blocks east of Hiram Clarke. Clearly visible. Like I said, a remarkable old photgraph.

(August 21, 1988) In a story about local schools named for heroes, the Chronicle wrote: "At 10:22 p.m. on March 15, 1961, Capt. Gary L. Herod pushed forward the throttle on his T-33 single-engine jet trainer and left the runway at Ellington Air Force Base to begin a routine flight home to San Antonio's Kelly Air Force Base. Ten minutes into the flight, over the densely populated Meyerland and Westbury neighborhoods, Herod's plane suffered an engine "flame out." Herod, 31, decided to stay with the disabled plane, guiding the falling jet away from the neighborhoods, rather than parachute to safety. Two minutes later, the plane lay burning in a five-foot crater it created in the ground where it crashed at the end of Atwell Street near Braes Bayou. Its pilot lay dead nearby. (Atwell is two streets west of Chimney Rock) He left behind his pregnant wife and a 3-year-old daughter. Four years later, just a few miles from the crash site, the newly opened Herod Elementary School at 5627 Jason was dedicated in his name. Ivy Spain remembered when the plane went down, a mile from her home, on Willowbend. She remembers watching television when she "heard sirens, rushed outside and the sky was lit up. They broke in on the show and said a plane had crashed." In the days after, Spain collected money from neighbors to establish a fund in Herod's name. "I had been through a war myself," said Spain, who was living in her native England during World War II. "It's so easy to be a hero in wartime because everyone is around you. But to be a hero by yourself when you are all alone ... It was a very brave thing he did. He thought of the people on the ground even though he had a family of his own to live for." (And two years before, in February of 1986, there was another Chronicle story about the memorial plaque that once stood at Meyerland Plaza) "After Herod's death, people in the neighborhood collected about $3,000 for the Herod children's education. The Houston Independent School District named a school in his memory. Merchants at Meyerland shopping center planted a tree, dubbed the "Hero Tree," in his honor and in 1963, placed a marble and bronze plaque in front of the tree. The Air Force awarded Herod a posthumous Distinguished Flying Cross. Today, the plaque is nowhere to be found."

Yes the school opened in 1965, and yes it happened at night. Obviously my memory isnt perfect, but I do remember the part about the plane staying in the air past a school yard because that's all anybody could talk about for several weeks. The crash and the school yard were equal parts of the story, and people marveled at how heroic Herod was by keeping his plane from crashing in the school yard. Or, maybe I just think that's what I remember, and I'm just getting senile here in my middle age.

I was a senior at Pasadena High School when this crash happened and it was a very big story for several weeks. I remember reading that the pilot stayed with the plane to keep it from going down in a school yard where children were playing. It went over the school and crashed in an open field not very far away. The pilot was killed because the plane was too low for him to eject safely. HISD renamed that school for Capt Herod, and the school children planted the memorial tree in Herod's memory at Meyerland Plaza, which is a considerable distance from the school.

Believe it or not, I found a website that says he was singing at a little honky tonk on I-45 up north of Conroe as recently as April of 2003. Check it out. http://www.thebulletin.com/archives/2003/april/royhead.htm And Johnny Lee is still out there singing and recording. These days he can be found in Branson Missouri most of the time. He doesn't have his own theater. I'm sure he sings at Mickey Gilley's Theater and other venues. Here's a link to his fan club. http://www.johnnyleefanclub.com/news.htm

Does anybody else here remember that restaurant/club Sonny Look had on Market Square in the early 70s? My dates and I frequented that place a lot because he booked in some pretty big name entertainers. I remember seeing the Four Freshmen, and anybody who ever saw those guys can testify to how great a show they put on. Ray Rogers and the Bojangles also performed there just before, or at about the same time that he was opening his own club Bojangles over on Franklin. Of all the local entertainers I've seen over the years, I still regard Ray and his group as the most talented and most entertaining. They just put on one helluva show. Ray gave Lisa Hartman her first singing opportunities. Speaking of, I know that Ray's now married to Jonni Hartman, and is Lisa's step-father, and Clint Black's step-father in law, but does he still perform anywhere? And as long as we're talking about Ray and the Bojangles, does anybody know whatever happened to Rex Kramer, the Bojangles' original front man? After his "thing" with Liza Minnelli, he seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth. Sometime around 1970, Liza Minnelli did some shows in Houston, and while she was in town she went to The Bojangles show one night. She and Kramer immediately went into heat for each other. She liked Kramer so much she took them all on the road with her as her backup group, but that was mainly to stay "close" to Kramer. He wasn't totally useless -- he arranged a lot of her recordings -- and was with her in Germany during the filming of Cabaret. Here are a couple of paragraphs from a Time Magazine article about Liza. written in 1972. "Unlike most of her romances, the affair with Rex ended with some unpleasantness. Rex's ex-wife is suing Liza for $500,000, charging alienation of affection. Rex, who now plays in joints in Houston, apparently saw a more unstable side of her nature than did most other people. "The pace she sets for herself is simply terrific," he says, "but she just can't slow down. She would worry about not sleeping and would start taking downers to help herself." He describes terrible tantrums, after which she would "literally rave, then collapse." Liza angrily rebuts him point by point and now claims that she knew all along that Rex was using her. Finally, to get rid of him in Germany, where he was such a nuisance that he was barred from the set of Cabaret, she says that she and her secretary, Deanna Wenble, arranged an elaborate, melodramatic scheme to make him think she had fallen in love with a cameraman. "He said he'd leave me only if I fell in love with somebody else," she explains." Kramer was banned from the sets because he was a monumental pain-in-the-ass who was always trying to insert himself into the production process. The producer and director had to put up with him because he was schtupping their star, but Liza also got tired of him and dropped the group. Kramer dropped out of sight, but Ray took over the group and kept it going as Ray Rogers and the Bojangles and the rest is history. But where is Rex Kramer now?

I agree. This Mr. Harriman was closer to that story than most of us, and something tells he already knows everything he wants to know about it. I'd let it go and leave him alone.

Well let's see. Dateline 1973. I'm betting it would be the same boat shed where Houston police found a number of the bodies of teenagers murdered by mass murderer Dean Corll. It was also where one of his accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley, borrowed TV reporter Jack Cato's car phone to call his mother and make that tearful confession "momma -- I killed Dean". How'm I doing?

That "mountain" in north Pasadena is actually a huge above ground chemical waste sludge pit contained by an earthen dam built around it. It's been there since WWII. I grew up in Pasadena in the 50s and I climbed to the top of that thing at least several times. I can also tell you it's a lot bigger now than it was when I was a kid. At least twice as big and a lot higher.

I'm talking about downtown Houston -- not the Galleria area. For years the downtown buildings would use their interior office lights to create gigantic designs visible for miles. Are you saying they just don't do it anymore because of political correctness?

Maybe I missed a memo or something, but what has happened to the tradition of lighting up the downtown skyscrapers during the holidays? I miss seeing the tall buildings use their interior lights to create giant holiday visual designs that can be seen for miles outside the downtown area. Are they really gone? Or, am I just not coming in to town at the right time of the night to see them?

Maybe I missed a memo or something, but what has happened to the tradition of lighting up the downtown skyscrapers during the holidays? I miss seeing the tall buildings use their interior lights to create giant holiday visual designs that can be seen for miles outside the downtown area. Are they really gone? Or, am I just not coming in to town at the right time of the night to see them?

There were just two JD's. The old original on Elder, which has found new life as a loft apartment building. Then there was the bigger JD Hospital on Allen Parkway, on the property now occupied by the new Federal Reserve Building. A'propos of nothing in particular, that hospital on Allen Parkway was the county's only charity hospital for decades before Ben Taub was built in the Medical Center in the 1960s. It was where you went for care if you couldn't afford a private hospital or doctor. Even after Ben Taub opened, JD stayed open to take the spill over from Ben Taub. Over its lifetime, countless medical students at Baylor COM and UT Galveston did internships and residencies at JD. As recently as the 70s, my sister in law, who graduated from BCOM in 1976, was pulling med student residency shifts in the ER and OB ward at JD. It was finally closed sometime in the 80s and just sat there decaying until the county sold the property to developers a few years ago. Even in its state of decay, the old JD starred in at least one movie. Robocop II was filmed in Houston, and it was, arguably, one of the worst movies ever made. A number of its scenes were shot inside the old JD.