GALVESTON ISLAND: ITS TIME HAS COME . . . AGAIN

Chapter Six

The residents say the beach is honky-tonk and the tourists are lower class. The tourists say the honky-tonks are too expensive and the beach is dirty. The upper crust says the offshore element is composed of criminals. The offshore element says it’s only trying to make an honest buck. The natives say Galveston isn’t what it was in the old days. The politicians and the entrepreneurs and the promoters say the time has come again. I suppose that there may be truth on all sides, but all I know for certain is that it’s an evening sky again, that intermingled pink and blue, no, lavender, but yet there’s all that gold . . . and if I could find a name for that color my own name would shine.

—Kate Cambridge, InBetween, August 1982

In 1960 the city population was 67,200; in 1970 it was 61,800; and in 1980 it was 61,900. The numbers declined and then stabilized. Galveston was not dying, but it was not growing either. Houston, meanwhile, jumped from 938,200 to 1,594,100 in the same twenty years. Galveston County moved from 140,400 to 195,900, and Texas City, Galveston’s nearest neighbor, grew from 32,100 to 41,400 during the same period. The population of the Texas coastal area increased, but the island did not share the development. It was limited by its exposure to storms, lack of industrial water, and nearness to Houston. The city had a reputation of being “an old lady by the sea,” or as one observer said, “an old lady frowning at a bikini.”1

There were losses. The central business district deteriorated, despite the building of an open mall along two blocks of Postoffice Avenue in 1970. The E. S. Levy and Company store, for example, could no longer make a profit there and closed in 1979 after four generations of business. The Coca-Cola bottling plant stopped in 1981 after seventy-six years. The downtown movie theaters shut down, and the Broadway movie house went through a transition from showing popular films to Spanish-language films to pornography. There was a joke toward the last that if you wanted your shoes shined, you could go to a downtown theater and the rats would do the job as they ran across your feet. Three Roman Catholic schools consolidated because of fewer students, and the U.S. Public Health Service terminated the Marine Hospital in 1982 after a long political effort in the 1970’s to keep it open. The Santa Fe Railroad moved its offices from Galveston in 1965, and the last passenger train left the island for Houston in 1967. Major airline service to Scholes Field ceased in the 1970’s, and the commuter airline filed to abandon service in 1982. The airport thus declined to a place for private planes, helicopters, and sports cars.2

Boosters of Galveston, nonetheless, dreamed of glory. In 1937 there was talk of building a bridge for vehicular traffic between Galveston and Bolivar, but shippers objected. The War Department and the Public Works Administration turned down the plan, so, city officials began talking about a tunnel. Discussion of this project continued from 1939 to 1957, but various investigators found it to be unnecessary and too expensive. In 1946 Galveston lost a bid to Houston for a Veterans Hospital. The grandest illusion of all was “Magic Harbor.” This was an idea for a $20 million theme park like Disneyland to be built near Sydnor’s Bayou on the bay side of the island. After several years of negotiations, the company promoting the project went bankrupt and the sheriff sold the land. Almost as exciting, in 1966 representatives of several Gulf ports including Galveston began to talk to oil companies about construction of a superport for large oil tankers. Galveston planned to build offshore terminals fifty miles out in the Gulf. With the rise in the cost of oil, however, the petroleum companies lost interest. It was economical for them to continue lightering, and to revert to smaller tankers.³ The idea flickered out like the other dreams.

Not all of the schemes, however, were unsuccessful. Galveston won part of the time, and the gains and losses balanced each other. After a twenty-year effort the county built a toll bridge across San Luis Pass on the western end of the island. It opened in 1966. In the same decade two new shopping malls were planned and constructed. Sears moved into the Galvez Plaza Shopping Center near the island side of the causeway along with a variety of other stores and a new movie theater. R. E. “Bob” Smith, meanwhile, built a yacht basin and a shopping mall near the medical center. Down the island, Sea Isle and Jamaica Beach, beginning in 1957, led the way for construction of vacation communities located on marinas. Others followed, including Tiki Island on the mainland side of the causeway, which bragged, “You can get a boat into salt water faster from Houston at Tiki Island than any other place in the Gulf Coast area.” Condominiums also appeared, such as Islander East, a major project built in 1975 on the beach in front of the seawall. This was not a good location for safety, but the $3 million ten-story building, with concrete piles sunk 120 feet into the sand, was designed for 250-mile-per-hour winds. Its first floor is 24 feet above sea level, and it has endured the storms which have come its way.4

A project which began as a loss and turned into a success was the Pleasure Pier. The idea went back to 1912, when civic promoters thought Galveston should have a large amusement pier like the one in Atlantic City. The thought lived, and plans were drawn in 1931 for a seven-hundred-foot pier with an auditorium. Construction actually began shortly before World War II with a $1,100,000 loan from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The city added another $350,000. The war delayed completion until 1944, but even then the pier was not fully open until 1948. The four-block long pier had a ballroom, an outdoor theater, a snack bar, and a T-head fishing area at the end. It was never profitable, and the city defaulted on the payments to the RFC. It became Galveston’s “white elephant.”

In 1963 negotiations opened with Houston financier James E. Lyon. As it worked out, he paid the U.S. government $179,000 for the defaulted bonds, which with accumulated interest had a value of $2,300,000. Galveston then gave Lyon $2,000,000 in new bonds in exchange for the RFC bonds and issued an additional $1,800,000 in bonds which Lyon bought. After all this swapping Lyon was ahead by $21,000 plus possession of $1,800,000 in bonds. He used this to build the Flagship Hotel, 240 luxury rooms on the pier, which opened in 1965. Lyon agreed to pay the city $185,000 annual rent for forty years, an amount sufficient to pay off the bonds. It was tricky, but when the bonds were paid, Galveston would own the hotel.⁵

Another story with a happy ending involves Sea-Arama. The idea of an oceanarium had been around for a time. Nothing happened, however, until an Austin venetian-blind builder, Jack Dismukes, led a group of fellow businessmen from the state capital to construct the $2 million facility. The huge marine aquarium with its thousand seat stadium and porpoise show modeled after Marineland of Florida opened in 1965. The organization brought in personnel from around the country, including a trainer named Ken Beggs. While working in California, Beggs had made friends with a shark-scarred female dolphin named Zza-Zza. She had been stubborn in training, and was in a tank with four or five killer whales. “One day she just turned and looked at me,” Beggs related. “I blew the whistle and sent her a fish. She made the connection so quickly.” Thereafter, she tried to outperform the whales and became a spectacular performer.

Beggs, however, took the job in Galveston. Zza-Zza, left behind, refused to eat. The veterinarians shook their heads, transferred her to a tank on the back lot, and left her to die. After being gone six months, Beggs happened to be in town and stopped by to see his old friend. No one knew where she was, but the trainer wandered into the back lot and up to a tank. There she was, almost dead. The weak dolphin moved slowly over to his side in recognition. Beggs persuaded Sea-Arama to buy her, and he nursed her back to health. In a year she was a star again. “We’re very close, Zza-Zza and me,” Beggs said. “She’s my pet and I’m hers, you know. We’ve come through a lot together.”6

Another triumph for the city which helped offset its losses elsewhere involved higher education. The University of Texas Medical Branch, as it was called after 1919, weathered the 1900 hurricane, beat off threats to change the location, and became the state’s chief medical college. By 1982 it ranked eleventh in the nation in terms of enrollment. Counting admissions in the schools of nursing, biomedicine, and allied health, UTMB had 2,000 students working in fifty buildings on an eighty-acre site. In the years following World War II it became the most important industry on the island, and by 1955 provided 20 percent of the island’s income. In 1983 UTMB supported 7,314 people, more than five times as many as ANICO or the Galveston Independent School District, which were the second and third largest employers.⁷

The development would not have been possible without the benevolence of the Sealy family. John Sealy’s estate provided the money for the first hospital, which enabled the school to begin operation. In the years which followed, the Sealy and Smith Foundation provided timely and well-placed funds. It donated the money for a new wing on the hospital in 1913, an out-patient clinic in 1930, the R. Waverly Smith Memorial Pavilion in 1954, a new John Sealy Hospital in 1954, the Jennie Sealy Hospital in 1968, and another John Sealy Hospital in 1978. The foundation gave money for expansion and paid the annual deficits of the budget from 1927 to 1942. Altogether the foundation provided about $150 million for the medical complex. Others also granted funds—the Houston Endowment, the Moody Foundation, the Borden Company, the Kempner Fund, the University of Texas, the M. D. Anderson Foundation, and the Shriners, who built a children’s burn institute.8

As a result of the facilities and the work which went on there, UTMB won a reputation—“If you can’t be cured at the medical branch, you’re already dead.” The faculty in research worked on such diverse subjects as muscle transplants for knee surgery, electroshock therapy, open-air treatment for burns, measurement of fat in the blood, measles vaccine, and a cure for salmonellosis. Surgeons separated Siamese twins, and once transferred a left foot to the right leg of a woman who had been dragged and mangled by a train. She at least had one good leg.⁹ Seth Mabry Morris, a member of the first faculty, became the leading rediologist in Texas. He read about X-rays, ordered a Crookes tube from Boston, hooked it up to an induction coil, and exposed his hand to a photographic plate for ten minutes. He must have fried his hand, but he obtained a picture. Known as “Old Test Tube” among the students, he would write equations on the blackboard with his right hand and, to the frustration of his class, erase simultaneously with his left.¹⁰

Early students were treated the same as soldiers by Galveston society—as temporary visitors to tolerate, but not to befriend. Black parents told their children to be home at night lest the medical students capture them for experiments. Adolescent street kids tormented them as they trudged home from classes carrying skulls and pieces of skeleton to study. “Yeah, bone jugglers, bone jugglers!” they yelled and hoped to be chased. If successful, the kids scattered with wild whoops and yelps. At school, first-year students became part of the small scholastic community through an initiation of eating with dissecting instruments a meal designated as autopsy meat and boils in pus (actually beef and creamed onions). During the interwar period students became more acceptable in Galveston society. After World War II, however, the wives of married students filled the teacher ranks of Galveston public schools, and town physicians were denied part-time teaching positions at UTMB.¹¹ This created a town-versus-gown split that has never been healed.

A terrific internal fight between the faculty and an autocratic dean in 1940–1942 resulted in a threat to move the school to Austin, probation by the American Medical Association, several investigations, the dismissal of all department chairmen, and the appointment of Chauncey D. Leake as the new head of the school. The warm, hospitable Leake moved easily among the warring factions and brought about the necessary reforms to restore harmony. He objected, however, to the vice-ridden larger community. “Except for the Sealy Family and the Sealy and Smith Foundation, the people of Galveston have done little for the medical branch. The least they can do is to assure a wholesome community situation, so as to obtain the backing of the people of the state for the work of the medical branch.”12

Even so, the medical school complex served its purpose of protecting the health of the island and providing a refuge in time of trouble. Historically, with the coming of hurricanes, people rushed to John Sealy Hospital even though it was not a designated shelter. During Hurricane Carla in 1961 a refugee exclaimed, “They are trying to make me move out of my corner. Why, this is where I was in the 1915 hurricane and every big storm since then. This is my corner—and I’m going to stay right here.” And he did.¹³

The quality of the facility and its staff had also been demonstrated during another kind of disaster in 1947. The shock wave of an enormous explosion rumbled across the city a little after 9:00 A.M. on April 16 of that year. Windows rattled and shattered, buildings vibrated, surgical instruments at the hospital skittered on the table, and people rushed into the streets to see what had occurred. The chairman of the medical and nursing committee of the Galveston Red Cross happened to be standing at a window looking across the bay. Before he felt the shock wave he saw a large bloom of orange smoke rising ten miles away over Texas City. He picked up the phone and alerted John Sealy Hospital, and the staff, which included veterans from World War II, acted instinctively. Within minutes two teams of surgeons and nurses were en route to establish emergency field stations. The hospital converted the outpatient clinic into a large emergency ward, local merchants sent supplies without being asked, volunteer doctors and nurses appeared, level-headed citizens blocked traffic on Broadway to provide a one-way conduit to the hospital, and the victims in great numbers and frightful condition began to arrive.¹⁴

Texas City, “the Port of Opportunity,” with a population of eighteen thousand, had developed as Galveston’s industrial arm. It contained oil refineries, chemical companies, a tin smelter, various small businesses, residential areas, rail connections, and a fine port. On this fateful day longshoremen were loading a French cargo vessel with one-hundred-pound sacks of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. This brown crystalline powder will burn, fume, and smolder if ignited. So long as there is plenty of open space to carry off heat, such as in a warehouse fire, there is no further difficulty. If confined, however, the heat builds up like boiling water in a covered pot. When it exceeds 292 degrees, it explodes. The method of fighting an ammonium nitrate fire, therefore, is with plenty of water and air circulation.¹⁵

When the crew opened up the number four hatch of the S.S. Grandcamp to load more fertilizer, they noticed smoke in the cargo. After removing a tier of bags, a stevedore found fire—probably from a misplaced cigarette—and tried to extinguish it with two buckets of water and a fire extinguisher. This did not work and a hose was ordered. The first mate canceled the hose, however, in fear of damaging the cargo with water. He ordered the hatch closed and turned hot steam into the hold. It was a fatal error, and the fire heat blew the hatch cover off. The mate then turned in a fire alarm and ordered the crew to abandon ship.

The Texas City Volunteer Fire Department responded with its entire force of twenty-five men and four trucks, while Monsanto Chemical Company and Republic Oil Company sent Foamite to combat the blaze. Reddish-orange smoke boiled from the hatch, and the deck was so hot the water from the hoses vaporized into steam. Burning paper bags floated in the heated air toward nearby ships, where the crews hastily wet the decks and closed the hatches. Spectators wandered onto the dock, but were warned away in fear that a small quantity of small-arms ammunition on board might blow up.

Then came an enormous blast followed seconds later by another as the Grandcamp disintegrated in a double explosion. An orange ball mixed with black smoke rolled upward and blotted out the sun. Two light aircraft circling overhead fell like shot ducks, and a fifteen-foot wave surging across the harbor dropped a 150-foot barge 200 feet onto dry land. Debris scattered for as much as 13,000 feet; a twenty-ton piece of decking fell 2,000 feet away; red-hot missiles pierced the natural gas tanks of nearby refineries and caused secondary explosions and fires; every house within a one-mile radius collapsed; every window in a two-mile radius broke. From the sky over the city drifted down strands of burning sisal twine and cotton, part of the cargo of the disintegrated vessel. Fires were everywhere, but the town no longer had a fire department. The men and equipment had been destroyed on the dock in the explosion.

Rescue workers of all sorts poured into the beleaguered city from the surrounding area to fight the fires, remove the dead, and aid the wounded. Men in asbestos suits searched the burning wreckage of the Monsanto plant for victims while tugboats tried to free the flaming S.S. High Flyer from an ensnared anchor chain. It carried the same cargo as the Grandcamp. At 1:12 A.M. on April 17, the High Flyer also blew apart in a double explosion. From a far distance the detonation produced an appearance of a gently rising rainbow disappearing into dark, smoky skies. The four-ton turbine of the ship landed 4,000 feet away.

The death toll reached 512—399 identified and 113 missing. Counted among the missing were 63 unidentified bodies which were buried in a mass grave. Of the injured, 852 went to hospitals and 932 to doctors’ offices for treatment. Those who went to St. Mary’s Infirmary and John Sealy Hospital in Galveston suffered mainly lacerations, broken bones, and ruptured eardrums. There was a curious lack of burns among the survivors. Thirty percent of the bodies, however, were charred. At the hospitals, where employees mixed gallons of dry plasma and tetanus antitoxin, the emergency lasted forty-eight hours. The hospital staff placed mattresses and cots in the hallways, and priests moved about giving last rites. In the final count, with a loss of 539 structures, the Texas City disaster cost $200,000,000 in property damage, and $15,500,000 in personal injury and death claims.16 In general, Galveston with its medical resources responded generously and efficiently to the need of its neighbor.

In less dramatic fashion other Galveston educational institutions also contributed to the quality of life on the island. In 1958 people in Texas City began to promote the idea of establishing a junior college, but county voters disapproved. In 1965, however, after much promotion by the Galveston Daily News voters approved and elected a seven-member board of trustees. They agreed with a consultant from Austin who suggested two campuses, one on the island and one on the mainland. The electorate, however, defeated an $11,500,000 bond issue, and there was rivalry between the Galveston Independent School District and the Union Junior College District. The end result was that in 1967 the Union District founded the College of the Mainland at a site near Hitchcock and Texas City, and the Galveston School District established Galveston College at the location of the old St. Mary’s Orphanage.¹⁷

The Moody Foundation aided in the purchsae of facilities for Galveston College and also for the Texas Maritime Academy founded by Texas A&M University. Galveston was a logical place to study the sea, and the idea of a maritime school to train people for careers on marine transport began in 1958 after a meeting between the head of the U.S. Maritime Commission, Walter C. Ford, and Robert K. Hutchings of Galveston. A local committee thereupon promoted it, Texas A&M provided the academic structure and personnel, the Moody Foundation donated buildings, and George Mitchell along with the city gave the land on Pelican Island for its current site.¹⁸

According to one account, Mitchell had to be persuaded to give the space. “I can’t do that,” he said at first. “That’s my best land. That’s a million dollars’ worth of land.” But he was a graduate of Texas A&M, with the strong loyalties typical of Aggies, and in addition his deal over possession of Pelican Island might have fallen through without the donation.19 This small isle, which forms the north shore of the Galveston channel, had long inspired a dream of industrial development. The Texas legislature gave it to the city in 1856, and the Confederacy built a small fort there in 1861. Through the years there was located on Pelican Island, at least for awhile, a fish and oyster business, an immigrant station, a boat club, a life-saving station, and the Todd Shipyards. It was a good place to hunt, but to the frustration of city boosters, Pelican Island had never blossomed as an industrial area.²⁰ In 1952 the city officials made plans to develop the island with a syndicate of New York financiers. As part of the scheme the citizens created a navigation district and voted $6 million in bonds to build a bridge. The viaduct opened in 1958, and in the meantime, the city established a park on the island in 1955–1956. The bold plans for industry, residential areas, and an amusement park—“Galveston’s New Frontier”—never became reality. George Mitchell terminated an imbroglio with the Pelican Island Development Company and the city in 1965, when he bought 2,750 acres for $1,868,000. He donated the site for the marine college and promised long-range use for homes and business.²¹

George P. Mitchell, one of the new elite of Galveston, was one of four children born to Savva and Katina Pareskivopoulis. His father came to the United States as a poor Greek immigrant and changed his name to Mike Mitchell because the Irish timekeeper of the Arkansas railroad where he worked thought the Greek name too difficult. He moved to Galveston in 1911 to open a shoeshine parlor and dry-cleaning shop. The family was poor, but the children went to college. In the process Mike Mitchell wrote some bad checks, but the judge said, “We will let this man go and someday perhaps his children will do something for Galveston.”²²

Of the four children, Maria married and moved to San Antonio; Christie with his Panama hat and cigar remained on the island to write a newspaper column, “The Beachcomber”; while George and his brother Johnny moved to Houston and plunged into oil exploration. R. E. “Bob” Smith became a role model when he employed George Mitchell as a petroleum geologist, and after World War II Johnny Mitchell borrowed capital from Sam Maceo. The boss of Galveston gambling visited the wildcat wells to cook spaghetti for the men, and Mitchell claimed, “He was the nicest partner I ever had.” The Mitchell brothers organized drilling ventures and struck oil and gas repeatedly. They became wealthy—among the richest in the nation—and branched into real estate. George Mitchell, with the aid of $50 million in federal grants, developed The Woodlands, a “new town” for 150,000 people, north of Houston.23

The brothers also took an interest in their old hometown. In the mid-1960’s they helped reopen the Balinese Room and began drilling for oil and gas on Galveston Island. Their offshore rigs, clearly visible one and one-half miles from the beach, worried environmentalists, but no harm occurred to the sea or the beach. The Sierra Club, however, blocked George Mitchell’s effort to dredge a marina through the salt marsh off Eckert’s Bayou for the Pirate’s Cove subdivision down the island. The club said the excavation would ruin the ecosystem, and complained that Mitchell did not consider the surroundings as he had done at The Woodlands. The club spokesman, Peter Bowman, consequently, referred to the developer as a “second-rate environmentalist,” who considered the ecology only when it did not interfere with profits. For his part, Mitchell found the environmentalists equally hard to work with.²⁴

In 1972 George Mitchell bought twenty-two acres of old Fort Crockett, where he began construction ten years later of a $36 million hotel, “The San Luis on Galveston Isle.” He chose the name “to help perpetuate a grain of island history,” and said, “I have a lot of confidence in Galveston.”²⁵ Indeed, Mitchell became one of the major forces in the preservation of Galveston history. He and his wife, Cynthia, bought six buildings in the Strand National Historic Landmark District to restore former glory and thus help rehabilitate the downtown. They started a gourmet restaurant, The Wentletrap, and began work to convert the Blum Building into a 120-room luxury hotel. It was Mitchell’s thought that Galveston needed to extend the tourist season, and that these projects would help. “Now Galveston is not Savannah,” he explained, “but Galveston is the most historic city in the Southwest. There is a lot of beauty in Galveston that Dallas doesn’t have, San Antonio doesn’t have and Houston doesn’t have.”²⁶

Interest in historic structures began to surface as the “Free State of Galveston” crumbled. History was something to attract tourists after gambling, prostitution, and illegal drinking were gone. But there was more to it than that. Curiosity about the past is innate with human beings. People want to know where they come from, and how they got where they are at the moment. Like old persons reflecting upon their lives in order to understand them, Galvestonians began to consider and value history. There was something to be learned, and outsiders—foundations, wealthy people from Houston, federal agencies—sensed the unique quality of Galveston’s past. History, consequently, became the driving force in modern Galveston, and the past became prologue.

Anne A. Brindley rallied the Galveston Historical Foundation in 1957 in order to save the Williams-Tucker House at 3601 Avenue P. This home, constructed by Samuel May Williams in 1839 from precut timber framed in Maine, was one of the earliest extant structures on the island. It might have been lost except that the foundation took it over, restored it, and opened it for tourists in 1959.27 In the early 1960’s, Texas State Historical Survey medallions began to be affixed to the sides of various historic structures, and in 1966 James C. Massey of the National Park Service, at a luncheon with the Galveston Historical Foundation, Chamber of Commerce, and City Council, pointed out that people traveled thousands of miles just to see historic buildings. Historic preservation was good business for a city, and he urged a careful survey of old structures. An additional boost came in the same year with the publication of Howard Barnstone’s The Galveston That Was, a book filled with fine photographs and commentary about the nineteenth-century architectural treasures on the island.²⁸

A resulting two-year study pointed to the importance of the Strand, Ashton Villa, Old Red at the medical school, and the George Sealy House. With the aid of the Moody Foundation and the Kempner Fund, the Historical Foundation took over six Strand buildings with the thought of selling them to people who would agree to restore the “Wall Street of the South.” Membership of the foundation jumped from two hundred to eight hundred, and Peter H. Brink, who came from a Washington, D.C., law firm to head the group, accepted the immediate challenge to save Ashton Villa.²⁹

The James M. Brown House, or Ashton Villa, built in 1858–1859, was one of the first brick mansions in Texas. Fashioned in the style of an Italian villa, the house retained through time its plaster work, frescoes, French panel mirrors, and cast-iron grillwork. It was even reputed to have a ghost—Miss Rebecca Brown, the daughter of the builder, who long after death still played the piano in the gold room. She was known to have had a chronic bronchial cough loud enough to startle the streetcar mules on the street. Amused contemporaries had gathered to witness the plodding animals awaken with a surprised “hee haw!” and bolt for the turntable two blocks away.³⁰ In 1968 El Mina Shrine Temple, which owned the villa, offered it for sale for $200,000. The Shriners had outgrown the house and wanted to sell or destroy the structure within ninety days.

The Galveston Historical Foundation rose to the cause and offered $100,000. That was not enough, and the Shrine began taking bids for demolition. After urging by the GHF, the city council passed an ordinance prohibiting the defacing or destruction of historic structures over one hundred years old. The Shrine objected, but the city denied a demolition permit. Finally, in 1971 the city bought Ashton Villa for $125,000—the Department of Housing and Urban Development gave $50,000, the Moody Foundation donated $60,000, and the GHF raised $15,000. The GHF assumed management of the property, and the Sid Richardson Foundation of Fort Worth gave $25,000 for renovation.31 It was a happy ending, except, perhaps, for the Shriners. About this event the Institute for Environmental Action, a national organization dedicated to the improvement of urban life, commented:

In addition to protecting an outstanding piece of Texas history, the Ashton Villa episode offered some important lessons. It demonstrated how Galveston could effectively employ the expertise and judgment of outside specialists to help win support locally. It also demonstrated how new and effective coalitions could be formed to unite traditional island families, newcomers and city government. And it underscored that private and federal funding sources could reinforce one another, provided there was enough vision and determination. All these lessons would be valuable for Galveston in its subsequent preservation struggles.³²

The historic preservation movement also resulted in the creation of the East End Historical District and the Silk Stocking Historic Precinct; the restoration of the Grand Opera House and the 1861 Customs House; the purchase of the Santa Fe Building by the Moody Foundation for a railroad museum; a sit-in to preserve the Ufford Building, which was later destroyed by fire; the establishment of a county museum in the old City National Bank Building; a restoration of the Garten Verein Pavilion, which had been damaged by fire; and the designation of the Strand as a National Historic Landmark District. Individuals such as Marjorie Trentham, who restored the Sonnentheil House at 19th and Sealy, became part of the movement, as well as organizations such as the Galveston County Cultural Arts Council.³³

The Cultural Arts Council, responding to the national bicentennial and through the leadership of Emily Whiteside, organized among other things an enormous festival of the arts on the Strand, a performing arts series, and renovation of the Grand Opera House. Whiteside drove herself ten to twelve hours per day to keep some forty-seven projects going, because she saw Galveston as a place that “cheers the eye, satisfies the senses, and replenishes the soul.” She eventually burned herself out, but she left a legacy of community consciousness. Evangeline Whorton, GHF vice-president for programs, perpetuated this in 1974 with the first annual “Dickens Evening on the Strand,” a city-wide celebration in nineteenth-century costume featuring oysters, beer, hot cider, banana bread, and street entertainment. The event has attracted as many as eighty thousand people and has become a focal point of community spirit.34

The most expensive historical project, and one that probably would not have been started if anyone had known how much it would eventually cost, was the Elissa. A suggestion to the GHF that a replica of a sailing vessel might provide a link between the harbor and the Strand turned into a search for a real ship to restore. In 1961 Peter Throckmorton, a marine archeologist, spotted an old sailing vessel being used to smuggle cigarettes between Italy and Yugoslavia. It had been much altered, but Throckmorton went on board and found a plaque which identified the vessel as the Elissa, an iron-hulled, square-sailed barque built in 1877 by Alexander Hall and Son of Aberdeen, Scotland. The masts had been shifted, the bow configuration changed, an engine added, its rails cut off, and a false bulwark plate welded on. It was genuine, nonetheless, and the oldest ship registered with Lloyds of London. Better yet, according to the log, it had visited Galveston in 1883 and 1886. The Elissa, therefore, had the potential to be a “Tall Ship for Texas.”

The GHF bought the ship for $40,000 in 1975 and sent a team to Piraeus, Greece, to bring it home. It had been nine years at anchor and was in poor condition. Greek welders had to replace 25 percent of the hull and remove tons of rust, rotten planks, and junk. The Elissa was impossible to sail, as originally planned, so it was towed to Galveston. Little remained intact on the ship. There were no blueprints, very few people in the world remembered what went into such a vessel, and much had to be handcrafted. It was decided, nonetheless, to make the Elissa operational and to recruit volunteers to make it sail. Walter Rybka, one of the principals, explained, “The only way you can keep a ship from deteriorating is by the constant attention of hands. But if the boat never sails, you will not attract the caliber of people you need, the kind of people who will care about the ship.”³⁵

The GHF divided the labor into categories of steel, rigging, carpentry, and miscellaneous, and located experts in Europe, Africa, and the United States. Volunteers gathered from around Texas to varnish the woodwork and coat the rigging with tar. They were sent aloft to wipe the galvanized parts and in the process gave themselves a coating as well. In the old days sailors were called “Jack Tars” because of this occupation, and in the 1980’s at Pier 22 in Galveston, the Jack Tars lived once more. The two-hundred-foot ship required an investment of $3,600,000 to restore, but in 1982 its time had come . . . again. A fresh wind filled the new sails, and the proud Elissa coursed through the Gulf waters as it had one hundred years ago.36 Texas had won its “Tall Ship.”

In an interesting way the port of Galveston felt the impact of this rising interest in history. The port like the city had not changed much in recent years, although it did try to remain competitive. It still exported cotton, sulphur, and grains, and imported some crude petroleum, sugar, and fruit. Galveston ranked seventh in total tonnage among Texas ports in 1979, and the old deficiencies remained—location, storms, closeness to the port of Houston. Thinking to promote manufacturing, the city officials built facilities on the wharves and leased them to the Lipton Tea Company in 1951. The tea came to Texas, however, in small lots. It was shipped into Houston and trucked back to Galveston, and the port did not even have the chance to collect wharfage fees. Cotton exports, the old standby, shifted via rail to the California coast for shipment to the Orient, and the port was unable to establish an adequate traffic in petroleum.³⁷

The most successful harbor enterprise was Todd Shipyards, which contained the foremost dry dock on the Gulf Coast. Todd, the fourth-largest employer in Galveston, also had facilities in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, New Orleans, and Brooklyn. The Galveston branch gained a certain fame in the 1960’s as the fueling station for the Nuclear Ship Savannah, an unsuccessful attempt to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear transports. In 1972 the federal government took the N.S. Savannah out of service and towed it to its namesake city for storage.³⁸

Demonstrative of the port’s sliding prestige and power in the city was the struggle over the “mosquito fleet”—the small shrimp boats which hoisted their green and white nets to dry in the air after a day’s work. For a hundred years the fleet had docked at Pier 19, but in 1974 there were only forty-six boats at the slips, a decline of 75 percent since the early years of the century. The colorful shrimp boats were nonetheless significant to the town. Growing out of the Splash Day celebration, the first Blessing of the Fleet occurred in 1962. Three clergymen—Episcopal, Greek Orthodox, and Roman Catholic—gave a benediction at the channel as the decorated boats cruised past them. Although the surrounding celebrations changed, the annual blessings continued, indicating the deeper meaning of the event. It was not simply another tourist attraction; it was important to the sailors and to the community. The seamen felt it was important for the luck of the season, and townsfolk saw it as symbolic of their seafaring heritage.39

Contrary to plans announced ten years before, in 1974 Galveston Wharves wanted Pier 19 for other uses and proposed to move the fleet across the channel to new docks on Pelican Island. The wharves, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), the Galveston Daily News, and the Chamber of Commerce thought it a good idea, but ten thousand people signed a petition objecting to the move. The shrimpers did not care to change, and neither did Charles R. Hill, who owned a restaurant at Pier 19. The wharves board, nonetheless, sent out eviction notices to the mosquito fleet, while the Galveston County Historical Commission at the head of the protesting groups obtained an injunction to block the transfer.

The injunction inadvertently impaired the ability of the wharves to issue revenue bonds, and this, in turn, obstructed other plans and threatened the proposed installation of a grain elevator on Pelican Island. Seeking peace, the wharves agreed to a public referendum on the issue. The various historical groups thought this was fair and withdrew their suits. After almost three years of controversy the electorate settled the fight in 1977 by voting 6,189 to 3,342 in favor of keeping the mosquito fleet at Pier 19. “We were soundly defeated, and it’s tough,” admitted C. S. “Chuck” Devoy, the manager of the port.⁴⁰ The people supporting historic preservation had won a symbolic and substantive victory. In this case, as elsewhere in contemporary Galveston, the “dead hand of history” proved to be alive, well, and powerful.

The need for preservation of a different sort arose as pollution of the air, water, and land became a threat. Galveston was lucky most of the time, since its constant offshore breeze carried pollutants away and gave it clean air from the sea. Nearby oil refineries and chemical plants in Texas City, however, caused enough trouble. When a sulphuric odor settled over the east end of the island in 1965, for example, oil-based paint on houses discolored. The speculation was that the pollutant came from Texas City, but no one knew for certain.⁴¹

The air at Texas City and La Marque hovered almost all the time near the maximum safety limits for pollution, and in a five-year study physicians at UTMB discovered that particulates from Texas City air caused almost half the mice injected to develop cancer. Air difficulties continued at Texas City through the 1970’s, and in 1980 an unusual number of deaths by brain cancer among workers turned up. Physicians suspected vinyl chloride fumes as the cause, and a former plant official at Union Carbide commented that workers had been routinely exposed in the 1940’s and 1950’s. “We used to get drunk on vinyl chloride fumes just walking around,” he said. The plant, and others, however, had later taken steps to protect workers, and when brain cancer showed up in 1980, investigations proved inconclusive.42

Galveston itself contributed to dirty air by burning trash at the city dump. In 1942 the city bought an incinerator, but it never worked well. The dampers clogged with molten glass, and it was expensive to operate. The city shut it down in 1953 and proceeded to get rid of garbage through a combination of open burning and burying. This created a black “airmark” over the dump which greeted tourists as they traveled the causeway. In 1968 the Texas Air Control Board ordered burning to cease, and three years later it closed the dump as a public nuisance. Galveston, thereafter, trucked its garbage to the mainland for burial.⁴³

Another problem of urban metabolism was water pollution. Sporadically since the 1930’s, mysterious fish kills fouled the shores of Offatt’s Bayou, Texas City, and Galveston Bay. A county survey in 1950 revealed that most of the coastal cities dumped raw sewage into the sea, and Offatt’s Bayou became so bad in 1963 that the city health director posted a ban on swimming. A few cases of infectious hepatitis turned up, and sometimes people complained of “Galveston Crud,” a looseness of the bowels, but nothing definite could be traced to the water even though it contained coliform bacteria.⁴⁴

The major polluter of Galveston Bay in the 1960’s was Houston, a source of 68 percent of the contaminants. The only large supply of fresh water came from the Trinity River, and this declined with the construction of Livingston Reservoir in the 1960’s to provide water for Houston. The ship channel to the Bayou City was one of the top ten polluted water courses in the world at the time, and when it rained a large plug of industrial pollution flushed into Galveston Bay. In September 1968 such an event killed thirty thousand fish. Under pressure from the Texas Water Quality Control Board Harris and Galveston counties began discussions in 1967 to correct the condition.⁴⁵

Early in 1970 Governor Preston Smith invited a federal panel dealing with water pollution to meet in Houston in order to witness the fine accomplishments of Texas. The plan backfired because the panel discovered that Galveston dumped raw sewage into the bay and provided no sanitary facilities for ships. In dry weather the city normally passed seven million gallons of sewage per day, and in wet weather, twenty-five million gallons per day. Only 40 percent of this waste was processed adequately in the treatment plants. The executive director of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, Gordon E. Kerr, commented in a letter to the Secretary of the Interior, “Our visit to Galveston demonstrated an amazing situation—an island city polluting itself into extinction by threatening its tourist industry and its own beaches. And, while federal funds gave this city a plan for its needed water pollution control, action has not followed study.”46

After threatening the city with a daily fine, the Texas Water Quality Board approved a plan to chlorinate the effluent and build separate storm sewers to prevent rainwater from overburdening the system. The program took time to complete, and Gus Herzik of the board said the city “notoriously failed to fulfill its obligations in the realm of water pollution for years.”⁴⁷ In 1974 Galveston received a fine of $30,450 for dumping raw sewage in Offatt’s Bayou, and meanwhile, due to the pollutants and the dredging of shell reefs, the oysters, once among the best in the world, died in the bayou. Conflict between oystermen and polluters as well as dredgers also occurred in the bay. Shell was used for the subsurface of highways, chicken feed, the production of lime, and the paving of streets and parking lots. Dredging was a $25 million a year business which ended only in recent years, after major reefs had been destroyed. Ironically, the state replaced eight hundred feet of reef in the bay to help the oysters recover.⁴⁸

Once in a while a special pollution incident happened. In 1979, for example, the freighter Mimosa, traveling at excessive speed through the anchorage area four and one-half miles off Galveston, rammed and gouged a hole into the side of the Burmah Agate. The Burmah Agate caught fire and sank in forty feet of water with the loss of thirty-two crew members. The officers and crew of the Mimosa, meanwhile, abandoned their ship and left it running at full throttle. Narrowly missing oil platforms and ships, it circled for hours until tugs ensnared its propeller with steel cables. The flaming Burmah Agate carried 400,000 barrels of oil, which slowly leaked into the sea. The ship burned for sixty-nine days and lost 250,000 barrels, part of which floated onto Galveston beaches. The oil left an odor and dark stain lines on the sand. Booms in the water were used to collect drifting oil, crews cleaned the shore, and the owner of the Burmah Agate accepted responsibility for the environmental damage. The incident, however, gave pause to those promoting a super-port for the island.⁴⁹

The city needed to protect its beaches. They provided the chief attraction for the tourist, and they deserved preservation as much as the old buildings of town. The issue of the beach, however, was multifaceted. Once in a while nature threw excessive seaweed or Portuguese men-of-war onto the shore, which then required cleanups. Periodic summertime red tides caused by an offshore algae bloom during periods of hot temperature, high salinity, and calm weather deposited dead fish which municipal crews had to remove.50 These were minor grievances. More important was a threat of losing the beach entirely.

Shorelines are inherently unstable, and human beings who place structures along them and expect permanence are doomed to frustration. Affected by storms, currents, wind, dams which retard river sediment, subsidence due to groundwater removal, and even the melting of polar icecaps, the beach changes and moves. Generally, on the sand barrier islands of Texas, the shift is toward the mainland, and any attempt to block the migration, in the long run, is an exercise in futility. Stabilization attempts cost more than moving buildings. The National Park Service, for example, has spent $15 million trying to save the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, and Miami expended $64 million in the early 1980’s hauling sand to its eroding beaches.⁵¹

Seawalls are notorious for speeding up beach damage. In most cases the sea moves up to the wall—it almost seems, in order to challenge the obstruction. The waves crash against the wall, churn up the sand, and wash it out. In Galveston beyond 61st Street, Gulf waters lap at the riprap in front of the seawall. Where the barrier ends on the west, there used to be a ramp to the beach. Now, the ramp leads into the water. A study in 1977 indicated that the western portion was losing 200,000 cubic yards of sand per year due to overgrazing, development of subdivisions, and the influence of the jetties on the littoral currents. Sand accumulates on the east end of the island and is lost on the west.⁵²

Across the Gulf face of Galveston in the middle, from 12th to 61st Streets, however, there is a narrow beach maintained by the presence of groins. Civic leaders began to worry about the loss of the beach in the 1880’s, and an examination of maps by Henry M. Robert in 1897 revealed a loss of three hundred feet since 1838. An engineers’ convention in London in 1898 suggested the use of narrow, solid walls extended finger-like into the sea. These groins, standing at right angles to the shore, intercept the offshore currents and force them to drop their sand. The groins thus help build up the beach. Robert in 1909 recommended such structures, and the county built thirty-six short ones the following year. They failed, but in 1922 as an experiment the city workers drove a five-hundred-foot double row of piles knee-high into the surf. It seemed to work, and in the 1930’s the Army Engineers built thirteen more between 12th Street and the western end of Fort Crockett. In the late 1960’s the corps removed five of the wooden pile groins and covered the others with granite. They are only a partial success, but without them there would be no beach at all in front of the seawall.53

Removal of sand from the beach for fill purposes also has been a factor over the years. Before the storm of 1875 the sand dunes had been fairly well leveled, but afterward the city passed an ordinance against sand removal. Despite laws and conservation measures, however, people still took sand from the beach under the assumption that the sea would restore it. The county even allowed commercial operators to take it in the 1960’s, and the city council permitted a private company to take “surplus” accumulations in 1970. County Judge Ray Holbrook exploded over the city action, “Damn it, that’s where I run on the beach and they’re interfering with it.” He considered removal “illegal and immoral.” At the moment beach depredations have ceased.⁵⁴

Other rules had to be set up and enforced. In the late 1950’s and afterward, particularly with the growth of subdivisions, private individuals and companies tried to fence off parts of the beach for their own use and control. The argument was that the fencing was necessary in order to keep the beach clean, and also that the highway down the middle of the island made it unnecessary for cars to use the beach. It was in reality a move for exclusion. In 1959 the legislature passed a law to guarantee public access, and after suits, cases, and protests the private barricades came down. The shore from mean low tide to the vegetation line belonged to the public. Ironically, the city had to put up its own barriers in 1978–1980. Automotive traffic became so heavy on summer weekends that it became a hazard to people going into the water. The solution was to provide roads of access and small parking areas down the island, and to block through driving on the sand.⁵⁵

Restriction with greater intensity had already started at Stewart Beach, established by the city in 1941, at Galveston Island State Park, begun in 1970, and at the county’s Beach Pocket Park, built in 1979. The city zoned the beach in 1963 to prevent building, banned the use of glass containers in 1968, and set up regulations for surfers beginning in 1965. Although surfboard riding is anything but spectacular with such small tides, young people with short boards found the waves around the Flagship Hotel satisfactory. So did the people who fished at the end of the pier, and the two groups became entangled over the right to enjoy this portion of the sea. The municipality did its best to compromise and establish regulations about time and place. Even so, no one was happy, and it was difficult for a police officer in a squad car on the seawall to arrest a surfer on a board three hundred feet away on the waves of the Gulf.56

Safety has always been a concern at the beach. Drownings in the turgid waters of Galveston have long been a common phenomenon, and “floaters” turn up with shocking regularity. As examples, in 1886 down the island officials examined the body of a working man which had drifted ashore. He wore a brown frock coat, a red and blue checked vest, cotton shirt, brown jean pants, and lace gaiters. In his pockets were a towel from a Pullman Palace Car, a piece of soap wrapped in a handkerchief, a comb, a package of tobacco, and a number of cigar stumps. There was no identification, and his face had been eaten by crabs. The authorities held their inquest and buried him on the spot. In 1891 two surprised blacks fishing with a seine twenty yards offshore near Fort Point hauled in a body which was still limber. The person was well clothed, but the pockets were inside out and there was no identification.⁵⁷

The Chamber of Commerce and the federal government took an interest in lifeboat stations for the rescue of sailors in the 1870’s, but the beach had no regular protection by lifeguards until 1945. Even then, the local Red Cross chapter urged greater security and stated in 1964, “By advertising our beach we are attracting people to use it, and we are thereby morally obligated to provide safety services for their protection.” Particularly dangerous were the rip currents which swirled around the groins.

Although Franklin D. Roosevelt cited Charles Bertolino, Sr., a local fisherman, for saving over 500 people, LeRoy Colombo, one of the first official lifeguards, established a place in the Guinness Book of Records with 907 rescues. He lost his hearing through illness at age seven, learned to swim to recover from leg paralysis, and saved his first life at age twelve. At fifteen he joined a group of volunteer guards and developed a sixth sense about danger. He once rescued nineteen people in one day, and never received a reward. Colombo, reputedly, saved over a thousand lives, but ended his own in 1974 as a beach bum housed in a battered car, penniless and embittered.⁵⁸

In 1980 the city turned over the organization of lifeguards to the county, which enforced a higher degree of professionalism. In recent years there have been an average ten drownings per summer season with twenty near ones and a hundred assists. Throughout the year about twenty drownings occur, 80 percent of them drug- or alcohol-related.59 There are some beach problems, however, which the lifeguards cannot handle—those involving crime.

The Gulf shore area has developed into a deceptively dangerous place. The people who live on the island know that and are cautious. Outsiders, tourists with their families, blithely stroll the seawall and beach at night unaware of the lurking violence. Drunkenness is still the most common offense, but the city is high in burglaries, assaults, auto thefts, and armed robberies. It is above the state average in eight of ten FBI categories and the highest in violent crimes and aggravated assaults.⁶⁰ At times, crowds on the beach have erupted in riot.

In 1966, for example, police with tear gas and clubs had to clear the east beach of a cursing, drunken, bottle-throwing mob of three to four thousand people. In 1971, on Independence Day, an unruly crowd twice that size broke out in racial obscenities and random violence. A crowd of blacks attacked five white youths in a van near a beach tavern called the Down Beat. One boy escaped in the badly damaged van; an injured boy and girl broke loose on foot; four black men pulled another girl into a car and protected her; and a gang dragged the last girl, fourteen years old, under the tavern for multiple rape. When the police cleared the area they interrupted the last rapist, shouted for the man to come out, and shot him in the foot when he tried to run. Altogether the riot injured thirteen people.⁶¹

A week later the police recovered the bound and gagged body of a fourteen-year-old black girl floating in the harbor. She had been strangled, and the coincidence was very strong. The publisher of the Galveston Daily News wrote about the murder and riot together, but no one broached the suggestion of racial warfare, and there was widespread condemnation of both events. The city had to budget several million dollars each year for crowd control, and continued to have trouble. At Apffel Park on the east beach in 1982, for instance, eight young women took off their bikini tops and drew a crowd. When they stripped off the bottoms as well and began dancing, the spectators almost went berserk and the police were called to break up the crowd.⁶²

Part of the difficulty with Apffel Park was its use for illegal drug traffic. Mandrax, a popular “downer,” was sold there in 1982, and police recognized users by the “Mandrax shuffle.” The new vice was drug usage and sale. Gambling, illegal liquor, and prostitution were still around, but not in epidemic proportions. Illegal distribution through small dealers of marijuana, barbiturates, and amphetamines, in the 1960’s—followed by opiates in the 1970’s—became pervasive. The head of the vice and narcotic division of the Galveston police, Paul De La Rosa, Jr., commented that before 1967 drugs were a downtown problem and the police knew who was involved. After that summer the problem spread like an unchecked cancer throughout the city to all classes and groups.63

Not only Galveston, but the whole Texas coast became an entry point for the new smugglers. Cargo ships, sailboats, small aircraft, and fishing boats were used. The Coast Guard, for example, caught the Texas Star, a converted Galveston shrimp boat, off the coast of Yucatan with twenty thousand pounds of marijuana, a $7 million value. They caught another Galveston boat, Agnes Pauline, with twenty-two tons of marijuana on board at Port Arthur. The Coast Guard became suspicious of this fishing vessel when it left port with neither ice nor fishing gear, but loaded with sophisticated radio equipment. Since the crime carried a maximum sentence of five years and a $15,000 fine with a possibility of parole in two years, the possibilities for profit outweighed the risk involved. In 1978 and 1979 agents seized $250 million in marijuana along the Texas coastline, and it was estimated that this was only 10 percent of the traffic.⁶⁴

On the island marijuana could be home grown and was found on occasion by police. People also searched through the dunes down the island for a psilocybe mushroom which grew in cow manure. When ingested, the mushroom produced hallucinations. The problem was that it was easy to pick the wrong mushroom and become sick rather than high. UTMB treated about twenty cases of such poisoning per year in the mid-1970’s.⁶⁵

The old red-light district, now known as the “Bottoms,” stretched north of Broadway from 25th to 29th, and became the worst area for theft, assault, muggings, and prostitution. Neither victims nor residents cooperated with police, and human derelicts infested the section and nearby downtown blocks. They came to Galveston to escape the cold and programs for rehabilitation. The Supreme Court in the late 1970’s held that vagrancy laws were unconstitutional, so the police stopped trying to control the drifters and alcoholics. If arrested, they could not pay fines, and they created a health hazard in the jails. The county would not shelter them, the city could not afford them, the federal government withdrew social services, and the winos did not care. So, begging on the street, sleeping behind bushes, sitting in the sunshine, they were allowed to stay. “What’s the word? Thunderbird! What’s the price? A quarter twice!”⁶⁶

The city produced its share of bizarre crimes—a nude twenty-one-year-old woman from California found on the east beach with her throat slashed to the bone; an eight-year-old girl abducted, buried alive under the rocks on the Gulf shore, and later rescued; a twelve-year-old girl who disappeared while walking to her grandmother’s house and whose body was found in a field at Alta Loma two years later; thirty-nine homosexual men arrested in the steambath and rooms for indecent exposure at the Kon Tiki Club.67 One of the worst episodes was a rash of rapes in the early 1980’s. They increased from one every six days to one every other day. A man, for example, held a dance class at gunpoint while he raped a twelve-year-old. A former city councilman, Paul Quintero, heard his daughter scream from his front yard and rushed out. He thought, “My God, it’s either him or me, or he’ll rape my daughter.” He struggled with the assailant, received a gunshot in the leg, and drove off the attacker. In the trial of Henry S. Hegwood, the so-called towel rapist, a courageous senior medical student at UTMB told how he broke into her room, held a knife to her throat, hit her when she tried to escape, pulled her to the bed, and fell on top of her. She refused to cooperate and called, “Jesus, help me!” There was pain and she thought it would last forever. Finally, he finished, pulled her to her feet, and left. She felt the blood running down her leg as she called the emergency police number. Hegwood received sixty-five years in prison for this, but it was no wonder that there was an undercurrent of fear among women who lived and worked on the island.⁶⁸

Fear based upon racial differences has, by and large, declined through efforts of desegregation. In the twentieth century until after World War II, the community continued the separation of social, religious, and educational institutions which had been there from the beginning. Residential areas, however, despite an effort to drive blacks north of Broadway, remained integrated even after the separation of races in public housing in the postwar period. For residential areas discrimination was more a question of economics than race. Segregation, however, came on local public transportation by ordinance in 1906, and at the beach about the same time. White groups wanted blacks pushed beyond Fort Crockett. The Business League stated in 1907: “This objection is made through no prejudice nor ill-feeling toward our fellow colored citizens, but to do otherwise than above suggested would tend to jeopardize the good terms at present existing between the two races, and at the same time in a large degree diminish the revenues which would otherwise be derived from our surf bathing.”⁶⁹ The catch was that such a location was beyond easy reach by public transportation, and despite such feelings, a black bathhouse opened at 28th Street and Seawall Boulevard in the early 1920’s.⁷⁰

In another dispute, city officials got into trouble about the location of a park for black citizens. John H. Clouser, a black schoolteacher, in one of the first clear protests against segregation, stood before the city commission in 1928 and demanded that the signs in Menard Park which read “For White People Only” be removed. He argued that black taxpayers had the right to walk through the park and listen to city band concerts, and added, “You spent $26,622 last year for recreational purposes and not one cent for the negro children. . . . Unfortunately, our children live in alleys and there is no place for the children to play.”71

The signs came down, and the commissioners designated the block of P, Q, 42nd, and 43rd as a park for black people. Protests by nearby white landholders led by H. H. Treaccar flooded city hall and forced the first referendum vote in Galveston history. By a two-to-one ratio the action of the commission met a veto, and the site became Lasker Park for white children, while the former Lasker Park became Cuney Park for blacks.⁷² Although two white crosses bearing the brand of the Ku Klux Klan appeared at the controversial block during the protests, the Klan never gained a foothold on the island. Klansmen had appeared in 1922, solemnly interrupted a revival at the First Baptist Church in order to donate $100, held an initiation ceremony under a large cross decorated with red electric lights, and found themselves denied the right to march in the streets. There was too much local resistance from people like Rabbi Cohen and Father Kirwin for the Klan to find growing room.⁷³

For the most part, however, there was little challenge like Clouser’s to white authority and dominance. The black editor of the City Times said in 1904, “The talk of the Negro seeking social equality is all rot and politics. The Negro is well satisfied of the right to labor.” At a trial held in Galveston of a black man who shot and killed his wife and white lover, the all-white jury acquitted the man for killing his unfaithful wife and condemned him to hang for the murder of a white person. This was later changed to ninety-nine years in prison, but the City Times editor wrote, “So far all the verdicts in this case point in the direction that any colored man who kills a white man down this way is going to have a mighty hard road, it matters not whether in self defense or for other just causes of protection, etc.”⁷⁴

In 1921 the editor explained that blacks had a loving spirit for the whites: “. . . the colored people of Galveston are not trying to run the city in her commercial, financial, labor, or political progress, but instead are honestly doing their humble part to help keep things going right.” It was understandable, moreover, to the editor in 1931 that blacks were dismissed from service at the Owens gangster trial because there was no way to feed a black on jury duty at a white restaurant. In addition, during the Depression blacks could not be hired as case workers because it was socially impossible for a black to deal with white clients. The reverse, of course, was not true, and the black reporter who inquired about the situation agreed.75 This world of segregation, intimidation, and dominance, however, cracked apart in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

During World War II black men and women served the nation in responsible and patriotic ways. Their horizons expanded and there could be no return to subservience. In Galveston, furthermore, the black population increased from 22 percent of the total in 1920 to 29 percent in 1980. In 1943 the Negro City Teachers’ Association sued for equal pay with white teachers and won. In 1950 for the first time a county judge appointed a black person to the grand jury because, shortly before, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had overturned a death penalty because there were no blacks on the grand jury. In 1952 the Galveston Bar Association admitted its first black lawyer, but Sheriff Biaggne in 1955 refused to appoint a black deputy upon the appeal of thirty citizens. “Communists have entered the Southland by accusing sheriffs and constables of not appointing negro deputies,” he blurted. But after the county commissioners gave him the money to do it, the flexible sheriff said, “I feel that the appointment of this deputy would be beneficial to the county as a whole and furnish a peace officer for the protection of our colored citizens.”⁷⁶

In 1954 the Negro Chamber of Commerce and the Galveston Chamber of Commerce merged. In 1955 Mayor Clough appointed a black to a city board, and in 1957 three blacks were hired by the fire department. In 1958 the minority won the right to use the municipal golf course. Blacks had requested permission in 1951, 1954, and 1956, only to be given a run-around by city officials. Finally, a group simply went out, placed their balls on a tee, and began to play. After a while someone came along to collect green fees, and that was it. The course was open.⁷⁷

The major thrust for desegregation, however, came in the schools. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court destroyed the separate-but-equal doctrine in the famous case of Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka, and in August that year, 267 people signed a petition calling for an immediate end to segregation in the Galveston schools. There were delays, and the next year the school board received a petition from four hundred parents backed by the NAACP. In 1956 a biracial committee urged desegregation while the school board still hesitated. In 1957 the NAACP filed suit on behalf of black students, and in 1961, finally, Judge Ben Connally ordered integration to begin. Both the Catholic schools and the Galveston Independent School District integrated the first grades in the fall term of 1961. Total desegregation came for the public schools in 1964, and in 1967 the district received the praise of the U.S. Office of Education for its efforts. To achieve greater balance, the GISD tried busing in 1969 and magnet schools in 1981.78

Symbolic of racial equality was the publication for the first time in 1962 of the name of high-ranking black students in the Galveston Daily News, and the election of Teri Simmons, a black girl, as homecoming queen at Ball High School in 1977.⁷⁹ The students, moreover, picked up the tempo of equality from what was happening at home and across the land. They started a series of sit-ins to integrate Galveston stores in 1960. Chanting, “We’ll take a seat and sit for a week,” they struck at Woolworth’s, McCrory’s, Kress, and Walgreen’s in downtown Galveston.⁸⁰

The confused merchants closed the snack counters, and Walgreen’s even removed the seats. The police stood by, and there was no violence. Kelton Sams, who had grown up in the rough area of Palm Terrace, was the spokesman for the students. He felt inarticulate at first, and slipped away from the crowds to go to a nearby bookstore to scan for something appropriate to say. He soon began a self-improvement program and continued to pressure the merchants. The more liberal whites—Ruth and Harris Kempner and Griffith D. Lambdin, for example—worked behind the scenes to insure a peaceful transition. Lambdin, an attorney, met Sams over the phone. The young black said to him, “My name is Kelton Sams and I’m going to jail next Monday. Will you get me out?”⁸¹

At one of the meetings on the issue, Lambdin recalled that George Clampett, a partner with Grady Dickinson at the Star Drugstore, stood up and said to his fellow businessmen, “I was born in the South, my parents were born in the South . . . ” Lambdin thought, “Oh, my Lord,” but Clampett continued. “You know, Grady and I got together and discussed this business about losing business, causing trouble, and we finally got around to the ultimate question—what is right? What is right?” He and his partner concluded that trade should be total, not just toothpaste and Kleenex, but also food and Cokes. Their stand was persuasive, Sams restrained the students, the media kept it quiet, and the lunch counters reopened without fanfare to all people regardless of color. George Clampett lost one indignant white customer, but she came back a week later.⁸²

Under pressure from the student group led by Sams, outlying stores such as the Dairy Queen on Broadway and 26th desegregated, and the city opened up all parks, including Stewart Beach. Other barriers, at restaurants and theaters, fell in time. Virginia Stull became the first black graduate of UTMB in 1966; the state dropped the miscegenation law in 1967; and in 1971 the Supreme Court ordered all ILA local unions to merge.83 A major accomplishment for human dignity had been achieved in Galveston as in the nation.

In the midst of this social revolution the National Municipal League selected Galveston as one of eleven “All American Cities” in 1962. It was recognition for reform in city government, a change from the commission to the city-manager structure. This shift began as a study by the League of Women Voters under Frances K. Harris in 1954, and was part of the breakdown of the sin city. It was a way to end the control of government by the vice bloc, and to administer the city in a more professional manner. Under the proposal the elected city council would function as a policy-making body. The departments would be run, however, by a city manager, a nonpartisan professional, hired by the city.⁸⁴

In 1958 the league opened a campaign for the city-manager plan which involved fifty-five public forums; twenty-two thousand phone calls, distribution of flyers and pamphlets, and meetings with unions, churches, social groups, civic organizations, and school gatherings. Despite opposition from incumbent politicians, the electorate approved the plan in a special election in April 1960—one month after the sit-ins started. It may well be that the social upheaval was a factor in persuading people that change was needed in government. Some of the women leaders wanted the students rather than the mayor to accept the All American City Award in 1962.⁸⁵

In the election of the new council, six out of seven “charter” candidates won, including Ruth L. Kempner, the first woman elected to the city government, and T. D. Armstrong, a black civil-rights leader. The successful candidates selected Edward Schreiber, the chairman of the charter commission, as mayor, and appointed Robert E. Layton the first city manager. Quickly, the council moved to set up a new accounting system, eliminate racial discrimination from the ordinances, and formulate long-term goals.⁸⁶

By annexing a ten-foot strip down the island, the municipality extended its jurisdiction to three-quarters of the island and three miles offshore. Such annexations were commonplace in Texas at the time, and this action was considered necessary to protect the future of the city. Not so easy to solve, however, was the question of tax revenues. About half the urban land was tax exempt, so that property assessments provided only 37 percent of municipal funds in 1966. Elsewhere in the nation property yielded 70 percent on the average. Worse, in 1979 a group called the Association of Concerned Taxpayers (ACT), led by Walter Teachworth and Nat Pepper and inspired by Howard Jarvis of California, who visited Galveston at the time, forced a referendum which reduced the property tax rate from eighty-seven cents to seventy cents per $100 valuation and limited budget increases to 7 percent per year.

Inflation at the time was running at 12 percent. The city lost about $500,000 in revenue, and its credit rating in the bond market dropped. This meant increased interest payments of $500,000 to $1 million when borrowing money. The government responded by eliminating 5 percent of the municipal jobs, the health department, the lifeguards, summer bands, school crossing guards, and a fire station. It also reduced bus routes, turned off the gaslights on the Strand, and switched off the lights on the causeway for several months. After a fatal accident on the viaduct, Teachworth, the ACT president, blamed the city manager for making “visible” cuts, but what else could be expected under such stringent conditions?87

To an extent the county assumed the burden. It raised taxes three cents and took over, for example, the lifeguard duty on the beach. The Texas legislature, in addition, provided a hotel tax in 1981 for support of the beaches and maintenance of the convention center.⁸⁸ A decline in the inflation rate also helped, but the cramp in the budget has remained a major factor. The whole episode reflected a nationwide “taxpayers’ revolt” and distrust of government spending. It represented on a local level what the election of President Ronald Reagan represented on the national level.

Conservatism is often an attribute of old age. If you accept an organic theory of development, such as espoused by Arnold Toynbee, then Galveston is in its old age, and conservatism should not be a surprise. The economy and population are stationary, there is fear of crime, taxes are thought to be too high, and Galveston is looking backward to its past for identity and justification. These characteristics of old age are not necessarily bad, and may well be the fate of all cities at one time or another. Galveston history, furthermore, offers worthwhile lessons and experiences: there is the story of ambitious men and a city on the make in the nineteenth century; there is the monumental struggle of people against nature seen in the seawall, grade raising, and causeway; there is a demonstration of the dark side of human character in the era of the sin city; and there is the reflective nature of historic preservation which underscores the best achievements of the past. Finally, at the shoreline a pilgrim can still feel the heartbeat of nature. It is a primordial rhythm which all visitors have felt—Karankawa Indian, soldier, pirate, poet, sailor, settler, tourist—when they stood in the surf at Galveston, on the edge of time.