FilioScotia

It's pretty comprehensive. I think I've referenced it a couple of times. I'm curious to know when that book mentioned on the Web site is coming out.

It's probably out, but it may have been published locally, or self published in limited printings for sale at local gift shops and history museums.

Why don't you ask Mr. Aulbach? His email address is lfa@hal-pc.org

OK. I found the Chronicle article. Dunlavy Park, like the street, was named for Herbert Dunlavy, who was killed in WWI.

Ervan Chew was a prominent member of Houston's Chinese-American community and volunteer. He died in 1999.

Now, I'm not saying Chew doesn't deserve to have something named in his honor, but why did city leaders have to rename something that was originally named after someone to begin with?

Beats me. I guess nobody from the Dunlavy family was around to make a fuss. Recall a few years ago that Lyons Avenue on the east side almost got renamed -- I forget the proposed name -- until members of the Lyons family made a big stink about it. It appears our fearless city council will do whatever they think they can get away with.

Numerous previous posts have referenced that web site and its stories. One post was about the drawbridge that I didn't know existed before that time. It inspired me to go and see it for myself. It's definitely worth the trip.

I'm something of a newbie, and I'm just now discovering what most HAIF junkies already know.

It's written by local historians, and it's on a website maintained by a group of Houston area computer users. It has probably been around a long time but I just discovered it. Lord I love the Internet. http://www.hal-pc.org/~lfa/Buffalo.html

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"....I'm thinking about joining one of the groups of descendants of English Loyalists."

"They have a group for that???

Oh yes indeed. There are dozens of groups for descendants of Loyalists all over North America. Do a Google search on "English Loyalists".

The Loyalists are the forgotten people of the American Revolution. They were the "Tories", who remained loyal to their King and refused to join the revolution. For that they were treated brutally and even killed by rebelling colonials, even though most did their best to keep their heads down and stay out of the fight. When the war ended in 1781, many changed their minds and their loyalties and stayed in this country, but many more, including my ancestors, left and moved to Canada or back to England.

And some -- including mine -- returned years later when anti-British sentiment cooled down. There are Loyalist groups in just about every area they went to after leaving this country. There are also several groups in this country for descendants of Loyalists who came back.

yep. i can see them fine

I'm guessing that Joel Osteen has discovered that being on TV all over the world is a lot more fun than owning a TV station. His ministry buys time on hundreds of TV stations all over the country, gets him on cable systems and satellite systems all over the globe, and he's seen by millions of people every week, with none of the headaches that go with owning a TV station.

I'm willing to bet that somewhere along the line, Osteen, or one of his top people, took a look at things and asked "why did we buy that TV station anyway? It's a white elephant. Who needs it?" Selling it gets him and his organization out from under the thumb of federal regulation and everything that implies.

And he could be selling for the most basic reason of all: maybe the station wasn't making as much money as he hoped it would. A locally owned unaffiliated TV station just isn't able to charge as much for advertising as a network affiliate and that's just a fact of life in TV. I think Osteen learned how you make a small fortune in TV? You start with a big fortune.

I've got to question your logic here.

That'd be like saying that the KKK (3,000 members in 2005 as per the Southern Poverty Law Center) accurately represents the views of white people.

You're right. I should not have generalized. I should have said that yes SOME OF THEM care. Not all of them. So far, the MEChA "movement" appears to be limited to some fairly radical students on the west coast, although they claim to have chapters all over the southwest. I was just trying to bring the existence of this group and its stated goals into our discussion, and I did not mean to say or imply that ALL Mexican-Americans share its views.

And to answer Gonzo's question, Dunlavy Park WAS renamed. I don't remember if there was a big debate over it, but it's now Ervan Chew Park.

There was a brief flap in 1989 over a proposal to rename the Loop 610 bridge over the Houston Ship Channel. Somebody famous had died -- I think it was Mickey Leland -- and County Commissioners voted to put Leland's name on the bridge, but somebody pointed out that the bridge already had a name. It's the Sydney Sherman Bridge, built in 1973.

Sherman was a hero of the Texas Revolution and a respected Houston businessman for many years. Nobody ever refers to the ship channel bridge as "the Sydney Sherman Bridge", so many people, including County Commissioners, just forgot it had a name. Maybe we should all start using that name again so people will remember.

Back to Mickey Leland for moment, his death triggered one of the most contentious and nastiest periods in Houston city council's history, all because people wanted to rename prominent public structures after him. Democratic National Committee Chair Ron Brown started it when he let it be known that he wanted Houston Intercontinental Airport renamed after Leland, and said it would reflect poorly on Houston's race relations if it didn't go along.

A lot of people in Houston took umbrage at Brown's blatant political strong-arming, and the debate on Houston City Council got so nasty that at one point, longtime councilman Jim Westmoreland joked to reporters at the press table that they may as well call it "N--ger" International and make everybody happy. That sorry effort at humor ended Westmoreland's political career, because he lost to an unknown newcomer in the next election. Brown didn't get his wish, but the city did name the new International Terminal for Leland, and Congress named the new federal building at 1919 Smith for him. And if the "naming" issue wasn't nasty enough, the race for Leland's seat in Congress was even worse.

i'm...

1/4 italian (grandfather born in calabria)

1/4 english (grandfather born in blackpool)

1/4 german/prussian

1/8 polish

1/8 northern irish

i have good drinking genes.

Per my HAIF name -- I'm pure Scot on my father's side. I'm so close to my paternal immigrant it's scary. My gg grand parents immigrated to America with their infant son -- my great-granddad -- in 1830.

On me mother's side I'm Scottish and English. One branch came to America in 1812. Other branches arrived from England in colonial times, and I am proud to be able to say that I have ancestors who fought on both sides of the American Revolution. I belong to the Sons of the American Revolution, the Sons of the Republic of Texas, and I'm thinking about joining one of the groups of descendants of English Loyalists. I take some pride in identifying myself with those who came before me because they set an example of courage and determination I struggle to emulate.

Well - the question is: Do Mexican-Americans really care about the fact Mexico lost Texas?

I have my doubts about that.

Allow me to erase your doubts. There is an active movement called Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, better known by its acronym, MEChA. The group was organized in 1969 by Mexican-American college students, for the most part, who preferred to call themselves Chicanos and Chicanas. MEChA proudly proclaims that its mission is to reclaim California and the rest of the Southwest

Never fear, if you need to see "Robert E. Lee" on the side of a highschool still, just make a quick trip to Baytown, just 20 minutes east of Houston down I-10.

Thanks to all. My question elicited some interesting comments, and I'm hoping to see more. Please though, no comments on mascot names. That's an entirely different debate that may be worth a separate thread of its own. I'm more interested in your thoughts on schools named for people who were famous in infamous causes, such as defending slavery in the Civil War -- excuse me: that War of Northern Aggression.

Someone mentioned John H. Reagan, and thanks for that. His name didn't occur to me when I started this thread. And speaking of Confederate war hero Dick Dowling, along with the school named for him, don't forget his statue at the entrance to Hermann Park over on Macgregor.

I had forgotten that Robert E's given names were taken off Lee High School a few years ago. Does anybody really believe that makes any difference? It's still Robert E. Lee, whether his given names are used or not. It's like taking the name Henry off the letterhead at Ford Motor Company and pretending the company's not named for Henry Ford.

I'm in full agreement with those who say it's wrong and silly to change names on buildings and other landmarks just because they're no longer politically correct with one group or another, in this case African-Americans. That sort of mindless revisionism can get out of control very easily, and it wouldn't be long before Mexican-Americans and other Hispanics would want names like Houston, Crockett, or Travis, or Bowie, or Austin taken off schools they attend in large numbers.

You know what? It may well be true that we don't have any controversy over those Confederate names because hardly anybody today knows who those people were, or what they were famous for. See? Nothing's ALL bad. Even historical illiteracy.

At the risk of opening a can of worms, I've wondered for some time how much longer three HISD schools will continue to bear the names they were given many decades ago. I'm speaking of Jefferson Davis High, Robert E. Lee High, and Albert Sydney Johnston Middle School. All over the country various groups and individuals are doing their best to erase all traces of the Confederacy -- i.e. the Confederate battle flag, and schools named for Confederate leaders.

For some reason, this hasn't come up in Houston, and I find that surprising. Lee High School has a large minority enrollment, especially African-American, and you would think they would be the ones complaining loudest about the name of their school. On the north side, the enrollment at Jeff Davis High is almost a hundred percent minority -- Hispanic and African-American -- and there too you would expect to hear complaints about the school's name. This is also true for Johnston Middle School, which is named for a confederate general who was killed early on in the Civil War.

Three schools -- all with large minority enrollments -- named for men who put their lives on the line to defend the institution of slavery. Any thoughts on why this doesn't seem to be an issue in Houston? I sincerely hope the mere discussion of it won't cause it to become an issue.

Is the same true of Lake Charles and Biloxi?

Pretty much. The casinos do provide jobs, but nowhere enough jobs to live up to the hype the casino owners were spreading around.

Doesnt make sense that we have to pay extra propery taxes. Its not a school, but a retail center where the leased vendor pays the rent.

It only sounds confusing. Your tax RATE may not go up, but you will still pay more taxes because the nearby commercial development will pull your appraised value up. A rising tide floats all boats, as they say.

That's not necessarily a bad thing for people who itemize on their tax returns. Higher property tax bills give you a bigger income tax deduction. The money you pay in county and school taxes comes back to you from Uncle Sam. It's not quite a wash but I can live with it.

The Baptists oppose the gambling, but their opposition is funded by competing casinos, such as Indian casinos and Lake Charles and Bossier City. Politics can make for strange bedfellows.

Why does everybody always assume that it's the Baptists who're against all those things people want to do to have fun? It's not just Baptists. I think anybody with a lick of common sense knows that gambling casinos cause more problems than they solve.

Back when Donald Trump and others were working to get New Jersey to legalize casino gambling in Atlantic City, I remember all the promises they made about all the jobs and prosperity it would bring in. Go back today and ask the Atlantic City Council how they're doing. Casinos and luxury hotels line the beach fronts, but behind those fronts Atlantic City IS A SLUM. A corrupt crime-ridden poverty stricken slum.

Casinos have done nothing for that city or New Jersey but line the pockets of a few rich fatcats. New Orleans, LaFayette, Lake Charles, Gulfport and Biloxi have all had similar experiences with legalized casino gambling, and there's no reason to think it would be any different if it happened in Texas.

I don't want casinos in this state, and I'm not even a Baptist.

WOW!! Does this mean that the property value of our home in Cypress Rosehill will skyrocket? Im not sure how that works with malls.

If the rumors are true, and a shopping mall is built on Cypress-Rosehill, yes your property values will go up. That also means your property taxes will go up.

I'm hopping on the small East End/old home bandwagon. It is possible to find one for $110K or less that needs very little work but you'll have to be patient.

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I'll jump on that bandwagon too. Are you "married" to living on the west side? If not, you might check out the Eastwood neighborhood on the east side -- just minutes from downtown and the University of Houston. It was developed in the first several decades of the 20th century, and at one time, it was the equal of the Heights and the Montrose areas. It went into a long decline starting in the post-WWII years, but it's on its way back up now because people looking to live close-in are rediscovering it. There are some simply magnificent homes there that need fixing and painting, and you can find some major bargains. I have no idea what the prices are now, but they are going up because it's becoming such a desirable area again. I think it's definitely worth checking out.

San Antonio is different from Houston. It's like two kids, or two cats, or two people. They are different cities....thank God!

It upsets me to know that some of my friends are upset because Katrina victims are now living in Houston. Well, let me tell you this. SA inherited 15,000 victims and the majority stayed because they were welcomed! No hatred there!

We love ya, we love you all. God Bless! Peace!

God bless you, and peace to you and yours too, but you clearly don't understand why many Houstonians are upset with some of the Katrina victims, and there's no way you could understand it from your vantage point in San Antonio. We're not upset with all the evacuees -- just a small handful of them.

Huge numbers of former New Orleanians have taken up residence here, and in San Antonio, and they're as welcome as anybody else because they've found jobs and are out there supporting themselves and being productive. God bless them. On the other hand, there are about five thousand people still living off the public dole from FEMA and the City of Houston, and who have shown no willingness to look for work or make their own living arrangements.

It's been a whole year now, and for about the third or fourth time, FEMA and the City have given them a deadline. Their public benefits will end on the 31st of this month, and they'll be expected to start paying their own rent and bills. This deadline has been set and extended several times now, because our sob-sister TV stations insist on framing that story as "heartless bureaucrats throwing poor storm tossed hurricane victims out on the streets." That always brings the professional race-mongers out to bully FEMA into continuing the benefits and extending the deadline, and I fully expect that's what will happen this time.

This is what has many people in Houston -- including me -- ticked off at SOME of the Katrina victims -- those who think they're entitled to live off public largesse forever. Many, if not most of them, lived in public housing in New Orleans, and they're well on the way to turning their FEMA supported apartments in Houston into permanent public housing. Houston's patience with them is wearing thin, but we won't be surprised if they're still there five years from now. Does San Antonio still have thousands of evacuees still living on FEMA benefits?

TBird could be right. It's possible there was an accomplice. I just don't remember it. My memory isn't as sharp as it once was, but I've found a source that has everything there is to know about the Stickney case, including the manuscript of an unpublished book about it. It's in the Houston Metropolitan Research Center at the Houston Public Library, in the archives of Stickney's lawyer, Kenyon Houchins.

Here's a link to the archives, but it's only a detailed list -- not the actual archive. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/houpub/0006...62.html#series2

It says there are no restrictions on access to the files or their use, so I, or one of us, should go downtown one of these days and ask to see the Kenyon Houchins files, and check out that manuscript for the complete story of Howard Stickney.

The only explanation for that: STUPIDITY

PRINT IT (Yeah, I'm ripping off of 'Coog! )

It's a fact that more than 98 percent of all airplane crashes and accidents are the result of pilot error or mistakes by someone on the ground or in the control center. It's simply incredible that the pilot, the copilot, and the flight controller never noticed that this plane was on the wrong runway, until it was too late. You can probably criticize the airline for having them fly so many routes that they get tired and sloppy with flight procedures, but getting the plane on the right runway for takeoff is Flight Training 101.

I feel sorry for the copilot. He's going to wish he hadn't survived because if -- and when -- he recovers, federal investigators,and lawyers for the people who were killed are going to make his life a living hell.

My source in the Rogers case was a girl who sat in front of me in English class. She was in DE (Distributive Education) and went to class half a day, and had a job in the afternoon. She worked in the dispatch office of HPD and knew a lot about the case. She even claimed to have seen the crime photos.

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I HAVE seen the Rogers crime scene photos. I was a reporter assigned to the police beat in the late sixties and early seventies, and I hung around the police station a lot, especially in the homicide division. Sometimes, on slow days, I would go browsing through the file cabinet where they kept all the crime scene photos from years past, and I will never EVER forget the photos taken in the Rogers kitchen and at the morgue.

This may be a case of "Too Much Information", but when corpses are completely dismembered, medical examiners have to put the pieces together again like a jigsaw puzzle so they can fully examine them and analyze what happened. To this day those are the most grisly and horrifying photographs I have ever seen, and I am absolutely able to live the rest of my life without EVER seeing anything like them again.

Personally I don't know how homicide detectives and medical examiners are able to do that kind of work without it just burning a hole in their souls.

Has anyone here ever seen the famous Painted Churches over in the Schulenburg and LaGrange area?

For those who've never seen them, or didn't know about them, they're Catholic churches built in the 19th and early 20th centuries by German and Czech immigrants who settled in that part of the state. They hired professional painters and sculptors to decorate them in the style of the churches they left behind in Eastern Europe.

Most were built in small out-of-the-way farming communities, which had fairly large populations a century ago, but sadly, most of them are nearly ghost towns today.

The churches are still there though, very well maintained and breath-takingly beautiful in their old world splendor. Here's a link to a website with a photo tour of some of them.

http://www.staustin.org/PaintedChurches/

They're just an hour and a half west of Houston along I-10, and well worth a day trip to see them.

57Tbird said:

Filio, I think you got it! I sure remember that name. I still think there was a young girl accomplice that was involved. I think she got off with just some jail time at Gatesville.

Percy was a real piece of work. I guess "Racehorse" Haynes became his successor... as to whom you wanted for your attorney, if you could afford him.

I'm almost certain that Stickney didn't have an accomplice, and I think you may be thinking about another sensational murder case that happened in the early sixties. That was the case of a local real estate guy named Fred Tones who hired a homosexual male prostitute -- Leslie Douglas Ashley -- and a female prostitute who worked with him -- Carolyn Lima -- to come to his office for "a party". At some point in the activities, Tones got rough and violent and Ashley shot him -- in self defense, as he later testified. Ashley and Lima dumped his body in a nearby vacant lot and burned it.

Taking his car, the two drove to New York, where they were picked up on a minor charge. NYC police learned they were wanted on murder charges in Texas and sent them back. Ashley pleaded insanity, but he was convicted and sent to death row. Lima struck a deal and got a light sentence in return for testifying against Ashley.

In the course of Ashley's appeal, it became clear that the prosecution had withheld evidence regarding his mental condition, and after a new sanity hearing, he was sent to the state hospital for the criminally insane in Rusk. He was eventually pardoned sometime in the early 70s.

I actually met Leslie Ashley on primary election day of 1972 outside an elementary school on the south side, where he and his mother -- Sylvia Ayres -- were handing out campaign cards for several candidates. I was also there "pushing cards" for a candidate, and I was surprised and amazed to find myself talking with the infamous "torch killer". (that's how the local newspapers referred to him during and after his trial) I remember him as a strange but somehow interesting "guy".

Ashley still lives in Houston, but not with that name. He had sex change surgery sometime in the 80s or 90s, and SHE'S now known as Leslie Perez. He took the last name of the lover he had in prison.

Leslie Perez is active in local politics and gay rights issues, and even runs for office now and then. She came very close to being elected Democratic Party County Chairman a few years ago.

I knew I could rely on you, Filio and the rest of you. Bill Young was a nice guy, very laid back and funny. He came to the doctor's office to work on the program concept and get us set up and in gear. Glad he is still doing well. It was he who asked me to be on the Auction as well. Of course, I remember Dickie Rosenfeld too.

Fantastic picture of Paul and yes, that is Justin, we used to roll in the aisles laughing at his Cajunness. No offense to any Coona--es out there! C'mon, he was funny. I fear Paul stayed too long at the fair. He was of our era and hip at the time, but boy did the times change.

"Stayed too long at the fair." A good way to say it, and yes it's true. I dun tol' you dat for dam sho, as they say over in Cajun country.

Wasn't Paul Berlin also on KQUE? That was the 30s and 40s oldies station in the 70s through the 90s.

Yes he was. KQUE-FM and KNUZ-AM were owned by the same company and were in the same building at Caroline and Blodgett. When Berlin got "too old" for the "young" audience KNUZ was chasing, he just walked down the hall and played records on KQ, the easy listening FM station.

Filio,

Oh, guru of all things radio, who was Programming Manager at KILT in 1970? I can "see" him, but cannot come up with name. I was Secretary to a prominent Psychiatrist at the time and we did a radio show, actually 5 minute spots called "Ask The Doctor." We did all our recording via telephone once we'd set it up. I would be the shill who asked the question, as if someone wrote in (although, we made them all up) and my boss would then give a capsule answer/advice. This was long, long before "Frasier," guess we were ground breaking.

This was the same time frame when I did the KUHT/PBS Fine Arts Auction we talked about. My boss was pretty famous locally and his father and brothers had a big spread in LIFE magazine. He had a lot of connections.

More trivia. What station was Paul Berlin on? We listened avidly in the 1955 era, after all he was cute too. And on Saturdays, we'd hang out at his record shop on Holcombe in case he showed up, which he did from time to time. It was the coolest thing to hang out around DJ's, did you have groupies?

Oh you old flatterer you. Bill Young was Program Director at KILT in the 70s. He now owns Bill Young Productions, which produces radio and TV spots for stations and ad agencies all over the country. He also partnered recently with Mary Lou Retton to co-produce a children's TV show for Channel 8 and PBS stations all over the country. It's called -- what else? -- Mary Lou's Flip Flop Shop.

And yes Paul Berlin was at KNUZ for about 700 years. It felt like it was that long. He finally retired from KNUZ several years ago, and spent a few years playing records at another easy listening station, KBME. He left that one two years ago when it switched to an all sports format. I don't know what Berlin is doing now.