As we await the manufacture of 1000 new headstones for the Dallas City Cemetery, I found it interesting to reflect on the digits involved in this quest. So, with some help of AI, I created the following list of particulars related to the Who, What, When, Why & Where of the 2097 permanent residents of this Paupers Cemetery.

I do not yet have an estimated date of delivery, but it is clear that they won’t arrive this summer or until at least the late fall. I must admit that I’m a little more than relieved that they won’t be arriving in August, for the weather is so inhospitable.

Logistics

I’ve spent nearly a decade considering the logistics of this mammoth task, and the implementation methodology that will create the least amount of mayhem. Imagine receiving 1000 flagstones that are dropped at the curb of your home. They only fit together in a particular order, like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. But each piece weighs 17 pounds, meaning you just received 8.5-tons of an almost 18-ton jigsaw puzzle. The stones must be transported between 1-3 American football fields to their final destination. You’ve requested that they be stacked in the numerical order but have no assurance that will happen.

By the way, the yard hasn’t been leveled. Dirt, ant hills, debris and weeds obscure existing objects that are needed to properly geolocate them to their final destination.

If each piece of flagstone isn’t laid on the pallet correctly, you will end up searching through all 18-tons of stone for the one you need. There is no guarantee that the other 1097 pieces will ever arrive, so you just have to be agile and know that all the planning in the world won’t make the process go smoothly.

Like Antoni Gaudi’s masterpiece, Sagrada Familia, past events mean that you are working with a subset of the data. The original architect is dead, and his models have been destroyed. You have modern technology on your side, which is the only reason you’ve gotten as far as you have. Yet, you can only hope that all of your calculations will inevitably bring the spires of the dome together in the right place.

Gaudi’s Basilica was 44 years into construction at the time of his death 100 years ago. Less than 6 years later our cemetery received its first burial. His work remains incomplete, just as ours does. His is currently scheduled for final completion in 2041.

So, the race is on! Antoni Gaudi, I challenge you to a race to see which of our projects can be completed first. lol

I have both of these items on my bucket list to see completed before I die. Fingers crossed that I live to check them off!

By the Numbers

There currently 2097 confirmed burials, 1000 markers on order and 21 already replaced by the family.

There are an additional 35 potential burials with unknown locations. They are not counted in the total at this time. They may have been reinterred somewhere else or might lay within the cemetery in an unmarked grave.

By the Decades

1930s - 1481 Burials (72.1%)
1940s - 282 Burials (13.7%)
1950s - 72 Burials (3.5%)
1960s - 39 Burials (1.8%)
1970s - 110 Burials (5.3%)
Unk - 70 Burials (3.4%)

Most Common Places of Death

1002 - Parkland Hospital/Woodlawn (includes 278 stillborn)
177 - Bradford Memorial Hospital
116 - Hutchins Convalescent Home
75 - St Paul
43 - Baylor Hospital
21 - Hope Cottage

Unnatural Deaths

• Unnatural causes (external causes): 171 records. (includes homicide, suicide, drowning, burns, poisoning, train/railroad incidents, falls/struck injuries with context, exposure, and explicitly “accidental” cases)

  • Homicide: 24

  • Suicide: 18

  • Drowning: 8

  • Burns: 29

  • Poisoning (incl. morphine/rat poison): 16

  • Train/Railroad incidents: 19

  • “Accidental” (explicitly stated): 9

  • Stab/Knife: 9

  • Hanging/Strangulation: 7

  • Exposure: 5

  • Gun (subset, for reference): 31
    

In Barcelona, the Sagrada Família shows how devotion can stretch across centuries, each generation adding its own stone to an unfinished prayer. In Rome, the Forum endures as a broken but undeniable record of what a people once valued. Fragments that are still allowed to speak because they were allowed to remain.

Dallas tells a different story, one written in what has been lost as much as what stands. “Veni, vidi, vici” becomes a challenge here: to see clearly, to understand what time has already taken, and to claim a quieter kind of victory by choosing, at last, what must endure and is too precious to just become dust in the wind.

This week, that find was a 1997 copy of Doak Walker: More Than a Hero.

I’ll admit that I didn’t know much about Doak Walker beyond recognizing the name. It’s one of those names that seems permanently woven into the fabric of Dallas. A glance at the cover had me assuming he had been a Dallas Cowboy, but I later learned he actually starred for the Detroit Lions, whose uniforms happened to bear a resemblance to those early Cowboys uniforms.

So, I bought the book.

Only after getting home did I discover the real surprise.

Inside, boldly written on the front endpaper, was an inscription to “Bill” signed by both Doak Walker and Dan Jenkins. My jaw dropped. The estate seller had apparently never opened the book.

Published in 1997 as part of the Texas College Football Legends series, the volume was written by veteran Fort Worth sportswriter Whit Canning and edited by legendary Texas journalist Dan Jenkins. I spent some time searching for comparable examples and was unable to find another copy signed by both men.

Dan Jenkins was certainly a Texas legend in his own right. But only one of the two has a nine-foot bronze statue at SMU. Jenkins was apparently wise enough to “let” Doak sign first.

The Texas Kid

Born on January 1, 1927, Doak Walker arrived in the world as a true Baby New Year. His full name was Ewell Doak Walker II, making it easy to understand why he preferred simply “Doak.”

At the time of his birth, the Walker family lived at 4114 Haskell Place, now Haskell Avenue, in today’s Cityplace near the corner where Lemmon merges into Haskell. By 1928, they had moved to 5901 Goodwin Avenue in the Lower Greenville area, a home that also no longer survives.

The 1928 Dallas City Directory identifies Doak’s father as Athletic Supervisor at North Dallas High School, the landmark campus at 3120 North Haskell Avenue that still stands today. When the school opened in 1922, it was considered so far north of Dallas that many residents thought of it as being “out in the woods.”

It is no coincidence that young Doak spent time around North Dallas athletics before eventually transferring to Highland Park High School, where his football talent began attracting widespread attention.

By the time he registered for the draft on his eighteenth birthday, the family was living at 3520 Stanford Avenue, a handsome 1931 Tudor that fortunately still stands today. It is the earliest surviving Walker residence that I have been able to identify.

After high school, Walker joined the U.S. Merchant Marine and served through the closing months of World War II. Returning home, he enrolled at Southern Methodist University and soon became one of the most celebrated athletes America had ever seen.

The Man Who Built the Cotton Bowl

Few athletes have ever occupied the place Doak Walker holds in Dallas history.

At SMU, Walker became a football phenomenon. He won the Maxwell Award in 1947 and the Heisman Trophy in 1948, becoming one of the most decorated players ever to wear a Mustang uniform.

Crowds flocked to see him play. Interest grew so intense that SMU shifted its games from Ownby Stadium to the expanded Cotton Bowl. The venue would later become known as “The House That Doak Built,” a tribute to the drawing power of a young athlete who packed the stadium and brought national attention to both SMU and Dallas.

Walker wasn’t simply a running back. He ran, passed, kicked, returned punts and kickoffs, and scored 288 points in just 35 collegiate games. His versatility made him one of the most complete football players of any era.

His professional career proved equally remarkable. During six seasons with the Detroit Lions, Walker became Rookie of the Year, a five-time Pro Bowler, a five-time All-NFL selection, a two-time scoring champion, and helped lead Detroit to NFL championships in 1952 and 1953.

His accomplishments eventually earned him induction into both the College Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Since 1990, college football’s top running back has received the Doak Walker Award, ensuring that his name remains part of the game he helped define.

Why This Book Is Special

What else makes this particular book especially interesting is its timing.

Doak Walker: More Than a Hero was published in conjunction with Walker’s 70th birthday on January 1, 1997.

Just thirteen months later, on January 30, 1998, an active healthy Walker suffered the skiing accident that would ultimately lead to his death on September 27, 1998.

That accident created a remarkably narrow window during which copies could be signed by both Doak Walker and Dan Jenkins. Unlike books published long after a subject’s career has ended, this volume appeared while Walker was still attending events, meeting admirers, and signing autographs.

This copy captures a brief moment when one of Texas’ greatest athletes and one of Texas’ greatest sportswriters could leave their signatures on the same page.

A Dallas Story

When I bought this book, I only knew the name.

Now I understand why SMU erected a nine-foot bronze statue in his honor. I understand why the Doak Walker Award bears his name. I understand why Dallas still remembers him nearly three decades after his death.

There’s clearly enough material here for, let’s say…a 160-page book.

Finding this signed copy of More Than a Hero at a local estate sale feels especially appropriate. Walker’s story is intertwined with Dallas itself. Long before the Cowboys became America’s Team, before DFW Airport, before Dallas expanded into the modern metropolis we know today, there was a young man whose life unfolded largely within a few square miles of the city and whose talent made the entire country pay attention.

For a brief period between 1997 and September 1998, fans could buy this newly published book, meet Doak Walker in person, and ask him to sign it and maybe just catch Dan Jenkins too!

This copy is a surviving reminder of that moment.

Sometimes history isn’t hidden in archives or museums.

Sometimes it’s sitting on a table at an estate sale, waiting to be Rediscovered.

Shop:

View the signed Doak Walker & Dan Jenkins first edition in the shop

Sources:

City Directory Source: John F. Worley Directory Co. Dallas City Directory, 1928, book, 1928; 905 Main St., Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth806918/: accessed July 16, 2026), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Public Library.

Ancestry.com for Birth Certificate, Draft Registration Card, and background Census Records.

eBay images of Life Magazine & Cotton Bowl Postcard.

Unattributed/Undated image of Doak Walker Statue on the campus of Southern Methodist University.

I’ve been working to recover the Dallas City Cemetery from ruin for 9 years, and up until now, the most important words I’ve ever spoken were, “So, today I ordered 1,000 headstones.” To which the answer almost always comes back, “You did what?”

I even laugh when I say it, because it is just such an off-the-wall statement that no one expects to hear it. I certainly didn’t expect to hear it coming out of my own lips. Yet, I have had the distinct privilege to deliver that news.

I hope to say that once more in my life, for my first statement is insufficient. This will not complete the task. It is merely a down payment. For there are at least 1,097 more souls that need to be recovered from the darkness. We know their names and the locations of their burials but lack the funding at this moment to place an order for their resurrection.

At the time I uttered that sentence for the first time, I believed those were the most important words I had ever spoken.

But today, I have realized there is a greater statement. The words that supersede them are:

“Today, I approved the final order to have 1,000 names of lost souls cast into stone so they can be welcomed back into our world.”

I believe those are the most important words I have ever spoken. Then again, I suspect they will be surpassed in about six months.

Because the day these stones arrive, and the day we stand among them and read those names aloud once more, I expect the most important words I will ever speak will be:

“Welcome back.”

Those individuals will no longer suffer in the silence of an unmarked grave in a long-forgotten cemetery for those who were all too often forgotten at the time of their deaths. Their names have been transmitted to the manufacturer who will literally cast them into stone.

Georgia Grey Granite, to be precise. Granite is extremely hard, low-porosity, and highly resistant to both physical and chemical weathering compared with marble or limestone. Its interlocking crystal structure and high quartz content make erosion rates very slow, especially on polished or sawn faces like a monument front. It is among the most stable monument stones available, which is why granite has become the standard material for headstones over the last century.

In our climate, these stones should remain readily readable for at least 700 years!

After that, someone else is going to have to take over, because I’m going to be tired by then. I’m taking applications if you are interested in helping at that time.

Dallas was founded 185 years ago, so that is almost four times the entire length of our city’s history.

What took 9 years to understand and 3 months to enter into a database was transmitted in the blink of an eye to a facility that will become the first place in nearly a century to speak many of these names aloud. One by one, they will be sandblasted into stone as enduring witnesses that these people lived, loved, and mattered.

The lead time is roughly six months, but the exact estimated date of delivery to Dallas City Cemetery is still unknown.

Regardless of how long it takes, one thing is certain. The dead will still be there. The need will still be great, and there is far more work to do. They’ve been waiting for almost 100 years in some cases, and they are the most patient of people.

They don’t complain about being anonymous. But for their descendants and loved ones who still traffic this earth, who are rarely able to visit the grave of their dearly departed, it is an endeavor. They must first schedule an appointment with me to help them locate the precise location, for it is a needle in a haystack.

The cemetery is roughly two Football fields (not Futbol, but Football!) stacked end to end. The entire cemetery is about 3 acres in size, and most are shocked to learn just how many graves are there. That is because virtually none of the markers are visible. The grid system that would help has been lost to time. This is why each and every new headstone will bear an exact positioning location that will help visitors understand how the cemetery is laid out. As each is laid in place, it will bear a silent witness of the graves that surround it. As each is laid in place, the grid will once again be exposed for the first time in decades. I did this intentionally, so that a displaced marker will always be able to be restored to its proper location should it become disconnected from its intended location.

This is no typical cemetery. No one planned to end up here. It was the place of last resort for the lonely and downtrodden. Those who had no family unit to support their burial, or who simply were not able to be identified after their deaths, some of which were gruesome.

Yet a new day is dawning at Dallas City Cemetery. These names will be read into existence once again. They will once again walk the earth in a way because they are no longer anonymous.

For some, they were never forgotten. Their descendants have remembered them for generations. The tragedy is that they could not easily find them. These stones will give their names a place in the landscape once again.

They say a person dies twice. Once when they leave this earth, and again when their name is spoken for the last time.

That second death isn’t happening on my watch! Once again, if you would like to take over my responsibilities in approximately 700 years, please send me a message. There is an ample training program, and excellent benefits in the next life.

So, without further ado, let me introduce you to 1,000 of my closest friends:

Rose (aka Unknown White Baby #10), John Abina, James Edward Absher, Rosalie “Rosa” Adair, Charles Adams, Eless Adams, Ester Lee Adams, Neola Adams, Dau of Ruth Adams, Ed Wellborn Adcock, Izora Mabel Adkins, Merced Aguilar, Lois G Aiken, Jesusa Amador Alaniz, Cornelia Alardin, Hugh “Huey” Miller Albert, Eduvijes Alcántar, Son of Mary Edith Alexander, Zuniga Cleofas Almanza, Mary Oselle Almon, James W Alston, Son of Lucio Alvarado, Rogelio Alvarado, Steven “Estebon” Salas Alvarez, Pedro Ando, R P Andrews, Sam L Andrews, Margaret Angelo, Henry Angerman, Sam Anington, W B Appelby, Tony Argana, Robert Morgan Arnold, Julia Arrendondo, Webster Key Ashurst, Son of Opie R Ausbrook, Victoria Avalos, Oscar Avery, John Thomas Babb, Baby Boy X, Baby X, William Steve Bacon, Son of B B Badgett, Will T Bailey, Bernard Baker, Sunday Balentine, Edward Lester Ballew, John Henry Ballew, Theodocia Ballew, Frank C Banks, Petra F Baragas, Robert Eugene Barber, Manuela Gonzalez Barejas, Martin Luther Barner, James T Barnes, Ora Barr, Juan Barrientos, Manuel Barrientos, John Barron, Rufus Barron, Zeb Henry Barrow, Harry Bartlett, Richard Bass, Marion “Pink” Batey, Ethel Baugas, Robert Fredrick Bayless, Son of Catherine Beasley, John D Bedell, James Beeman, Warren Beene, Sarah Elizabeth Bell, Lucio Bellegas, Jose Benavides, Dau of Tressie Bennett, Jim H Benson, Eddie Berry, Nathaniel M Bigelow, Domitila Billegas, Warren Birch, Jim Birdsong, Carol June Bishop, Janice Bishop, Daniel Franklin Bizzell, Jim Black, Albert Blackburn, Phyllis Fay Blackshire, Son of Oscar Blair, Felix Blanco, John William Bledsoe, Roy Blue, Thomas W Bond, Maggie Boring, Robert Lee Bowen, Willie Lee Bowens, William Branham, Josie Brazeal, Charles D Breazele, Walter F Briggs, Ed Brisco, Mary Lee Briscoe, Bennie Hallmon Brooks, John F Broutherton, Alma D Brown, Emma Brown, Frank A Brown, Frank Graham Brown Jr, Jessie Mae Brown, Joe Brown, John Chiles Brown, Mary Brown, Son of Mary Brown, Oscar Brown, R C Brown (aka Unknown Man #3), L V Browning, Mae Brumley, Frank Edward Brundadge, C “Curly” B Bryant, Rosie Buchanan, E C Buerger, John Burgas, Robert Burkett, Bobbie Joe Burks, Son of J D Burleson, Della Burleson, Robert Lee Burnett, Homer Milton Burns, Ernest Willis Burton Sr, Mack Burton, Mae Kirklin Butler, Ruby Orlena Byers, May Byrn, Myrtle Cagle, Ella Cain, Robert Cain, Son of A W Calk, Twin Dau of Andrea Garcia Camarillo, Twin Dau of Andrea Garcia Camarillo, Andrea Garcia Camarillo, Estelle Campbell, Larry Canta, Josephine Capetillo, Miguel Cardova, Henrietta Carrillo, James Carroll, Mollie Carroll, Ruby Carroll, William E Carter, Melchora Castillo, Mary Helen Castro, Lee Cazeras, Emilio Cervantes, Pranedez Chabarria, Marie Chabez, John Chanone, Curtis Chartier, Castulo Chaves, Joseph Mack Cheatham, J R Cheek, Son of Grace Childress, Vivian Chisolm, Chris Chissom, Julian Ciprano, Petra Cipriano, Andrew Clark, Geneva L Clark, Dorothy Clendennen, Joseph S Clesson, Charlie Cline, Eliabeth J Clopp, Eugene Clower, Eugene Coates, James Floyd Cole, Jessie Coleman, Son of Fola Collins, Helen Lamb Collins, Joseph Cullen Collins, Murlel Collins, Pomposa Conde, Mary Conley, Angeline Cono, Joe Cook, Nemo Cook, Jack Coonrid, Ellie Copeland, Robert Warren Copeland, John Corley, Pablo Corrillo, Martin Costello, Walter R Costner, Jessie Violet Cox, Mike Creegan, Will Henry Crenshaw, Tom Cross, S F Crowder, Claudie Cruise, Marsalis Cruz, Geneva Mae Cummings, Jose Dabila, John Dahl, Dau of Robert Dalton, Glen Daniels, Letticia Darst, William Daniel Davenport, Burt Davis, Dovey Davis, Frances Marie Davis, Hugh Anderson Davis, Jim Davis, Lynn Davis, Rene Davis, Tom Davis, Will Dawkins, James Samuel Dawson, Charles Day, John De LaCruz, Quirina Lopez De Sabera, William Dean, Thomas J Dearmon, Hattie Deason, Sentry Debase, Lonnie Decker, Dau of Lupe Delira, Vera Dennis, Son of Catherine Dial, Celestino Diaz, Dau of Raymond Diaz, Son of Marjorie DiMaio, Dick Dixon, Molly Bell Dixon, Walter Dixon, Ophelia Donaldson, W E Dotson, Eugene A Dowd, Nola Driver, Gumecindo Duarte, Jesus Duarte, Alvin Dunbar, William Thomas Duncan, George L Duquette, Lupe Duran, Albert Durham, Bessie Dyer, Johnston Edward Dysart, Tom Eaton, Joe Eckenfels, Lloyd Earl Eddy, Baby Alice Eidson, Trinidad Elisardo, Fred Ellard, Edith Anne Elliott, Son of James Jackson Ellis, Joe L Ellis, Lewis Ellis, Mary Ellis, Robert Ellis, Zadie Lace Elmer, Dau of Ernest English, Christine Espinosa, Lupe Espinosa, Ursulo Espinosa, Damacio “Diaz” Esquivel, Jimmie Ray Ethridge, George Evans, Willie Ray Evans, Joseph Troy Ewton, Lee Faulkenberg, Walter Fears, Johnnie Felloney, Bennie Ferguson, Edward E Ferry, Jack Fields, Son of Apolonio Firaga, John Fisher Jr, Frank Lee Fleming, Dau of Demetrio Flores, Son of Demetrio Flores, Son of James L Flores, Pedro Flores, Will Floyd, Charles D Foard, Clarence C Forrester, Hilda L Foster, James Louthridge Foster, John B Foster, John Foster, Sylvia Fox, Ruth Frankenstein, Charles Franklin, Rubin Franklin, William Eugene Franklin, Myrtle Freelander, Frank Freeman, Everett Frei, Nellie Friend, Lewis Fulkner, Inf of Blanche Gabriel, Emile Gagnon (aka Unidentified White Male #13), Creic Gallego, Marie Gregoria Galvan, Henry Gamblin, James David Gamboa Jr (aka Avila Galvan Abraham, aka R. Telles), Lewis Gantt, Antionio Garcia, Callentano Garcia, Emilio Olivo Garcia, Esperanza Garcia, Frank Garcia, Juan F Garcia, Mary Garcia, Pauline Garcia, Quirino Garcia, Rebecca T Garcia, Daisy E Gardner, Lonzo Houston Garland, Elvira Garrett, Frank Garrett, Laura Garrett, George Augustus Garriott, Son of M N Gary, Adolfo Garza, Cipriana Eureste Garza, Jose Caballero Garza, Trinidad Garza, Dau of Charles Gerera, Jesse Gill, Eligea Gilmer, Carmichal Richard William Glover, John Horace “Big John” Goforth, Angelina Gomez, Annie Gomez, Eloisa Gomez, Estelidado Gomez, Philip Gomez, Antonio Gonzales, Emelia Gonzales, Irene Gonzales, Jose Gonzales, Julia Gonzales, Paz Gonzales, Selestina Gonzales, Lula Goodman, Sam Goodson, Rosa Lee Goodwin, Adele Gordon, Rob Gordon, Beulah Goss, Alsie Fanny Bell Gowens, Harry H Graham, Daniel Grandstaff, Frank Granger, Bobbie Gray, Evelyn Gray, John Gray, Robert Gray, Hiram R Grayum, Rosa “Rosie” Foster Green, Willie Green, Ed Greenwood (aka Unknown White Man), Betty Greer, Roy Edward Griffin, Virgil Griffin, Wilbert Griffin, Johnnie Grissett, Edward Griswold, Son of John Guerra, Dau of Herman Charlie Guerrez, William Franklin Gunter, Al Gustafson, Dau of Saul S Gutierrez, Haskell Guyton, Stuart C Hale, Allie M Haley, Bonnie Fay Haley, James Haley, Dau of Randolph I Haley, Alvis R Hall, Eula Hall, James Hall, Jim Hamby, Lewis C Hamilton, Lee Hanson Hammack, William H Hammond, Isaac Jefferson Hampton, John W Haney, Ruth Hankins, Mary Hardin, Son of James H Harding, William Dock Harlock, Alline Harper, Will Harper, Lewis Harrington, Edgar D Harris, John J Harris, William E Harris, G W Harrison, William Benjamin Harrison, Charlie Harryman, Zack Hewlet Hartman, Ross Hawkins, Nina Jerome Hearn, Bell Heffington, Alice Helm, John Helm, Collie Henderson, Johnnie Henderson, Frank Hendrix, Reagan Augusta Henry Sr, Dau of Dave G Hernandez, Jean Vera Hernandez, Juana Hernandez, Juanita A Hernandez, Lussian Hernandez, Vincente Hernandez, Jack K Hickey, Reaves Willis Hicks, James Gasaway Higdon, Willie Mae High, Sebastian Napoleon Highsmith, Dau of Jack Wilson Hill, Searcy Hill, Melanthan G Hinchcliff, Dau of Annette Hoard, Edie Hoff, Conrad Hoffer, Rev John Lee Holder, Macy Holder, Marie David Holder, Benjamin Holman, Lena Mae Holman, Walter Clayton Honea, Son of Dorothy Trimble Hooker, Walter Hornbuckle, Paul Horta, Tom Houston, Sarah Howard, Adam M Hubbard, Lydia Hughey, Matthew Hull, Marie Hunter, Will Shaw Hunter, Andrew Hurtado, Norman Hyder, Son of Bobby Imes, Hartwell Ivy Sr, Horace Ivy, Annie Lee Jackson, Annie Marie Jackson, James B Jackson, Lucinda Jackson, Howard Woerner Jacobs, Joseph Jacques, Jimmie O Jenkins, Albert Jerry, Narciso Jimenez, Angelina Jiminez, Son of Guadalupe Jiminez, Imon Tony Johns, Albert C Johnson Jr, Albert Johnson Jr, Angelia Doris Johnson, Ann Johnson, Charles Johnson, Cheryl Lynn Johnson, Cornelius Johnson, Eugene H Johnson, Harriett Johnson, James Paul Johnson, Son of William Kenneth Joiner, Geraldine Jones, Lonnie Jones, Mabel Jones, Shuler Jones, Tom Jones, William Noble Jones, Hallie Jordan, Son of Frances Kadlubar, Walter Delton Keith, Lonnie Kelley, Walter C Kelly, George Keyser, Fay Killion, Son of Edith Evelyn Kimball, E F Kinnman, Bounds Kirkbride, Samuel Sidney Kirkpatrick, Christopher R Knecht, Sherri Knight, Donnie Harris Knighten, George Knowles, Joe Kokovick, Mitchell Enoch Lack, Adam Jackson Lambert, Joe Lambert, Otis Lane, Frank Lanier, Toney Lara, Bertha Lawson, Lorene Lawson, Aurelia Lemas, Luis Lemos, Ezell Lemurel, James Jasper Lenderman, Frank Leon, Isiah Leonard, Marion Leonard, John Lewis, Mary Ann Lewis, Will Lindley, Joe Lindsey, Will Lonas, Anastacia Lopez, Frank Lopez, Jose Lopez, Jose Lopez, Maria Lopez, Son of Ralph Lopez, Teodoro Lopez, Mike Loughlin, Ernest Love, Solan Lowe, Albino Lozano, Homer Lucas, Conrado Luera, Winfield Scott Lynch, Oscar Mabry, Dau of Emory Asbury Maddox, Son of Emory Asbury Maddox, Adolfo Magana, Floy Belle Main, Dan Maloney, Marie Maner, Kimberly Jean Manes, Minnie Rosa Mann, Louisa Gonzales Manriquez, Lupe Manriquez, Son of Verne Mapps, John March Jr, Arthur Marshall, Guy Holt Marshall, Maria Salcido Martel, Danchie Martin, Langdon Albert Martin, Robert Lee Martin, Dau of Arthur Martinez, Inf of Augustine Martinez, Carlos Martinez, Son of Carolina Martinez, Domingo Martinez, Dorothy Martinez, Eulogia Martinez, Son of F Martinez, Florentino Martinez, Genoveva Martinez, Irene Martinez, Isidro Martinez, Jesse Martinez, Johnie Martinez, Jose Martinez, Manuel Martinez, Maria Gonzalez Martinez, Mary Helen Martinez, Pauline Martinez, Pedro Martinez, Perciliana Ratimica Martinez, Florence Mata, Delbert Matlock, Sidney Francis Mattingly, Jessie W Maxwell, Leamon Earl May, Sam McAdams, John Landrum McBrayer, Jimmie McCord, Joe McCoy, Jesse McCray, C McDaniels, Doyle McDonald, Ella McDonald, William J McDonald, James M McGregor, Watt McGruder, Charlie H McIntosh, John McKay, Bert James McKenzie, James D McKinley, Thomas McMahan, Carrie McMillian, Doris McNamara, Son of James L McNatt, Charles Henry McOmber, Samuel McPherson, Dau of Samuel McPherson, Jose Medina, Argie P Medley, Florencia Mendoza, Son of Reyes Mercado, Walter E Meredith, Son of Freda Merk, Edgar Meyers, C L Miller, Dan Miller, Edward G Miller, Frank Miller, John W Miller, John Miller, Marshall Miller, Michael Allen Mills, Stewart Roger Mills, Sam Mims, William P Minnix, John Mitchell, Myrtle Mize, Jesus Molina Jr, Candido Monson, Sanchellado Monson, Joseph Monteon, Benito Montesillo, Pearl Moon, Alice Mae Moore, Early Moore, James William Moore, Joe Moore, John WIlson Moore, John Moore, Mary Jane Moore, Sally Moore, William Henry Moore, Opal Emma Morahan, Foster Morales, John Moreno, Jean Mores, Jessie Ann Morgan, Roy West Morgan, Son of Wayne Morgan, Ernest M Morris, Hubert Odell Morris, John Morris, Louise Morris, Olen Joseph Morris, William Morris, Dale Clinton Morrison, James Morrison, John H Morrison, Thomas Milton Moseley, Jack Moser, William A Mullicane, Raymond Munos, Pablo Munoz Jr, Salvador Munoz, Ray Murphy, Warren Murray, Edward Nash, Dau of Lewis Augustus Nash, Lewis Augustus Nash, Albert Nelson, Bill Nelson, Lee Nelson, John Nemic, Joseph Hiram Nicholas, Maria Nino, Gertrude Melba Northcutt, H H Odem, Susan Ann Oden, Gaylord Seaborn Oliver, Viola Oliver, Pedro Ortega, Margareto Ortez, Gertrude Osborne, Betty Lou Mathis Pace, Inacio Pacheco, Nathaniel Page, Jesus Paramo, Dau of Felix Paredes, Charlie Lee Paris, George Park, Harry H Park, J D “Jade” Parker, Connie Patterson, Essie Bell Patterson, Robert Leroy Patton, Mattie Peacock, H L Peed, Jim Peeler, Merlin Henry Penrod, Albino Perez, Feleciana Perez, Lalo Perez, Pasquall Perez, Timoteo Perez, Victor Perez, Elbert Howard Perkins, Dau of Harvey Perry, Miller Harvey Person, Richard Elmer Person, Marcus F Peterson, William Peterson, Sadie Jane Phillips, Frederick Joseph Pieper, Frank Pierce, Elmer Charles Pierson, Pauline Pilkington, Toribia Pina, Annie Pitts, William Earl Pogue, Rudolph Vanslow Polacek, Jack Polk, Eva Powell, Robert Presley, Robert Pride Jr, John B Pruitt, Isabell Pyles, Juan Querdo Jr, Concepcion Quevedo, Manuel Quijana, Adolph Quinlantan, W V Raines, Son of George W Rainey, Dovie Rambo, Dora Ramirez, Filiberto Ramirez, Jose Angel Ramirez, Ladia Ramirez, Rodrico Ramirez, Son of Timothy Ramirez, Rosand Ramos, Albert Doyle Randell, Ynes Ranel, Dominga Rangel, James E Rawson, Melville Alexander Ray, Mary Reddick, Dau of Forrest Reed, Mira Bell Reed, Oscar Reeves, John Renken, Anita Reyes, Pedro Reyes, Mary Reynolds, Manuela Cobarrubia Reza, William H Rhein, Emberson E Rhodes, Billy Marvin Rice, Will Richardson, Henry Richeson, John H Rickman, Larry Darnell Riley, John W Rimes, Jose Rivas, Marquito Rivas, Anastacio Rivera, Agnes Lyles Roberts, Sam Roberts, Robert Robinson, Ascension Robledo, Son of Virginia Rock, Julia Rodarte, Ella May Rodgers, J D Rodgers, Manuel Rodriguez, Ben Rodríguez Jr, Benny Rodriquez, Florenca Rodriquez, Guilibaldo Rodriquez, Isabell Rodriquez, Janacia Rodriquez, Lenora Rodriquez, Theresa Rodriquez, Olivia Rodriquez, Joe Romo, Rosalio Rosales, Sue Ross, Joseph Royster, Maurio Rubio, Felipe “Felix” Ruiz, Frank Rusik, Roy B Russell, James M Rutherford, Nora Salazar, Santiago Salosar, Benito Salvania, Felix Samanigo, Calletaena Sanbobol, Eufemia Salise Sanchez, Marcelino Sanchez, Maria Sanchez, Pablo Sanchez, Clarence E Sanders, Mary Williamson Sanders, Mariana Hernandez Sandoval, Son of Bulah Harris Satterwhite, Justo Saucedo, Leonora Schmidt, Henry Halleck Schuessler, Catherine Schulenburg, Edward Schulenburg, Wesley Schultz, Helen Scoggins, Jessie C Scott, Lennie E Scott, Martha Scott, Wendy Scott, Frank See, Alma Segoviano, Helen West Seighman, Edwin O Senn, Simon Sepulveda, Seamona Sereseroz, Gurley Taylor Shaw, Lizzie Bell Shelton, Roy Gene Shipp, Monroe Wesley Short, Simon Joseph Shuskamy, Walter Overton Sickles, Christin Sillers, Ethel Simmons, Frank Goodwin Simmons, Lawrence Simon (aka Unknown Black Man/Mr X), Jimmie Sims, Francisco Sisneros, John Albert Skaggs, John R Slaughter, Edwin Thomas Slusher, William L Smalley, Adolphus Smith, Allen Alonzo Smith, Charles W Smith, Frank Smith, Frank Smith, Hattie Belle Smith, Son of Jesse L Smith, Jessie B Smith, John D Smith, Lizzie Smith, Tom Smith, Walter Bell Smith, William Smith, Wilton Smith, Unknown White Man Smith, Charlie Snowden, Charles B Snyder, James B Snyder, Ester Solis, Cavino Jose Soria, Sam Sorto, Son of Mastin Travis Sprinkle, William Spurlock, Alma Standley, Ira Standley, Son of Merle Staples, James William Starkes, James Draper Starnes, James Marion Staton, Gus Stevens, Melvin Stevenson, Bertha Stewart, Son of Elizabeth Stewart, Mary Louise Stibbens, Will Stiner, Bennie Stokes, Lonnie V Strait, Toyina Yuvain Stratford, Jimmie Tarver Parks Stringfield, Fritz Struckmeyer, Geneva Sullivan, Earnest M Swanson, Edward Swayne, Barry Tarvin, Bertha Taylor, Dal Taylor, Fred Taylor, Gertrude Taylor, Viola Taylor, Willie B Taylor, Effie Teague, Cecelia Teran, Alice Thomas, Australia Thomas, Darrel Thomas, Edward Ernest Thomas, Sadie Thomas, William Henry Stevens Thomas, Charles Thompson, Jim Thompson, Joe Andrew Thompson, Jessie Thurmond, Georgia LaVerne Tiel, John Dean Tittle, James F Tiwongowhyteze, John Walter Toker, Matthew Armo Tooley, Salita Torres, Tomas Torres, Marie Towns, Patsy Ann Trammell, M W Travis, Gene Trawick, James Trevor, Antonio Trinidad, Roy Tubbs, Dau of Marie Tucker, Dau of Albert Turner, John Turner, Harry Thomas Turpin, Son of Doris Tutson, Charles Pharoah Tyler, Unidentified Male Infant, Unknown Black Man, Unknown Hispanic Male # 8, Unknown Infant Baby Girl #30, Unknown Infant White Male, Unknown White Male, Unknown White Male #4, Unknown White Man, Unknown White Man, Unknown White Man #1, Unknown White Man #1, Unknown White Man #11, Unknown White Man #12, Unknown White Man #5, Unknown White Man #6, Unknown White Man No 2, Unknown Woman #7, Elena Urtada, Herman Van Munzenberger Sr, Hardy Reynolds Van Tine, Abram Vanlieu, Jose Vasquez, Earnestine Vaughn, Letha Vaughn, Paul Elliott Vaughn, Ben F Veal, Dau of Louis Vela, Juana Tamayo Velasquez, Son of Andrew Vera, Timatia Villapondo, Dau of Maurice Villarreal, Betty Villega, Margaret Wages, Dau of Joe Wagner, David Waite, Alice Faye Walker, James Perry Walker, Leonard Walker, Margaret Walker, Margie Walker, Nance Lula Walker, Vivian Walker, George Howard Wallace Jr, Troy Hubert Wampler, George Powell Ward, Harry Thomas Ward, John D “Jack” Ward, Mathew B Warren, Faniel Washington, James Watson, Warren Jordan Watts Jr, Alfred West, Mary L West, Madeline Wheeler, Lottie Bell Whiles, Billy A Whitaker, Hattie M White, Mary Emily White, Ruby Mae White, S M White, Walter Clayton White, William P Whithrow, William A Whitney, John Whittemore, Raymond Wilcox, William Wilds, Glenn Wilfred, J R Wilhight, William Henry Wilkening, Harry Wilkerson, Abe Williams, Arthur Williams, Jerry Williams, Jimmy Williams, John Henry Williams, Johnine Mae Williams, Laura Williams, Lynn Williams, William S Williams, Jim Willis, James B Wills, Johnie Lewis Wilson, Monroe Wilson, Son of Rex Wilson, William Maaze Wilson, Oscar Windon, Henry Joe Woellert, Eva Lee Womble, Mrs Mary Woods, Martin Yanez, C J Young, Lela Young, Robert Young, Guadalupe Zamora, Manuel Zaragosa Jr, and Maria Zaragosa.

See you soon!

The scale of that moment was visible before the first aircraft left the ground. Contemporary reporting in the Dallas Morning News described the inaugural operation in concrete terms. Two aircraft were prepared for departure, carrying between 20,000 and 25,000 letters, a volume that signaled both public demand and institutional confidence in the new service. This was not a symbolic launch. It was a working system from its opening hour, moving tens of thousands of pieces of mail into the air at once.

Dallas had already defined how it wanted to be seen. By the early 1920s, the city promoted itself as the “City of the Hour,” a phrase grounded in immediacy rather than inheritance. It was a claim about timing. Dallas intended to matter now. When Contract Air Mail Route 3 opened, that message found its mechanism.

CAM‑3 linked Dallas northward to Chicago and, through connecting routes, to the eastern seaboard. What began with those two planes and tens of thousands of letters did not remain local. It moved outward through a coordinated aviation network that compressed distance into measurable hours. The results were immediate, and they were recorded across multiple cities.

In Chicago, first-day operational reporting reflected the same scale seen in Dallas. The route opened not as an experiment, but as a functioning enterprise. The Chicago–Dallas service generated $8,411.14 in revenue on its first day, confirming that the system was commercially viable from the outset.

Yet, the story in Dallas told, not of the postal value, but of the financial contents of the cargo carried with a whopping $100,000 in cargo being received.

Dallas coverage also emphasized execution. The flights departed. The schedules held. The large initial volume of mail was accepted, processed, and carried forward. The tone was direct and confirmational. Dallas had taken its place as a southern terminal in an operating national system.

On this day, Dallas became the “Hub” and Fort Worth became the “Sub.” It’s a story from another day, but Fort Worth had bet that having 3 airfields would better position themselves to be the hub. Dallas had bet on just one airfield, Love Field. Dallas threw everything they had into the one airport in a make-or-break effort. It turned out that having a single stop per city was more desirable as it meant a simpler delivery system. It would be decades before the reality became clear and by that time, it was too late to change the trajectory.

By May 14, the results of those first two aircraft had reached New York, where the significance became unmistakable.

The New York Times reported that mail leaving Dallas at 7:00 a.m. on May 12 arrived in New York in just twenty-six hours, cutting more than a full day from the fastest rail service. Newspapers printed in Dallas that same morning were physically in New York reading rooms the following afternoon. The system did not promise speed, itt delivered it.

Within that same report, the message Dallas had prepared traveled alongside the mail itself. A Dallas newspaper sent eastward included a promotional booklet describing the city as “The City of the Hour.” The phrase did not remain within Texas. It arrived in New York at the exact moment the network proved its capability.

The message and the mechanism reached their destination together.

That convergence defines the importance of May 12, 1926.

The aircraft that carried those first 20,000 to 25,000 letters were Curtiss Carrier Pigeon biplanes, operated by National Air Transport. These aircraft were not designed for spectacle. They were built for reliability, payload, and schedule discipline. Their significance lies in their ability to sustain a timetable, to move volume predictably, and to transform distance into schedule.

Dallas understood that immediately.

The surviving postal cover, displayed at the start of this article, was mailed at 7:00 a.m. that morning carries the full record of the moment. A timed Dallas postmark fixes the hour of entry into the system. A first-flight cachet marks the inauguration of CAM‑3. A civic marking identifying Dallas as the City of the Hour places the city’s identity directly onto the object moving through that network.

Each marking serves a function. Together, they form a statement.

The cover does not simply show participation. It shows intention. Dallas did not wait for recognition from outside. It placed its identity into circulation along with tens of thousands of letters and allowed the network to carry both outward at speed.

Chicago measured the revenue. Dallas recorded the operation. New York recorded the time.

This was not a local milestone observed later by others. It was a coordinated national event, visible simultaneously at the point of origin, across the route, and at the point of arrival.

The significance of that day lies in alignment. The volume of mail, the readiness of aircraft, the discipline of schedule, and the presence of national media attention all converged within a single operational window. The claim embedded in the phrase City of the Hour became measurable in letters carried, hours saved, and distance crossed.

Dallas was not forecasting its future. It was documenting its arrival.

In effect, it was a semaphore moment in time, Dallas signaling its presence across the nation in real time, carried in the mail itself.

The hour did not remain in Dallas.

It traveled.

They accurately point out that Love Field was established in 1917, during the First World War. At that time, it was created as a military training ground.

But even then in 1917, it reflected something important about Dallas, a willingness to invest in infrastructure before the outcome was fully known. For Dallas lobbied hard to get this facility built in our city.

The facts on the plaques tell a good story. But they don’t tell all of it.

Aviation arrived here early. And it arrived intentionally.

In the years that followed the War, aviation was present in Dallas, but it wasn’t yet permanent. Flying was still experimental. Still uncertain. Still proving itself.

What hadn’t arrived yet was obligation.

That changed with the Kelly Act of 1925. For the first time, the federal government authorized private companies to carry the mail by air. This transformed aviation from spectacle into service.

It introduced schedules, contracts, oversight, and consequences. When Contract Airmail came to Dallas, the city became part of a national communications network. Reliability mattered more than heroics.

Dallas proved itself not in a single flight, but day after day.

Yesterday’s centennial of Contract Air Mail’s arrival in Dallas on May 12, 1926, went unnoticed by the world.

Not because it wasn’t important.

But perhaps because it wasn’t dramatic.

And yet, it explains nearly everything that followed.

Contract Airmail built the airlines that we all know today by providing a steady profitable route for which to allow passengers to be carried along with the mail.

This form of Air Mail was originated the previous month by none other than Charles Lindbergh. 13 months later Lindbergh would become the first person to cross the Atlantic on a non-stop flight from NY to Paris and would become the most famous person on the planet.

By the time he arrived on his victory lap in Dallas on September 27, 1927, this place was already doing the work. The system was already in motion.

Lindbergh was an imperfect man. Like many figures who loom large in history, his later life would complicate how he is remembered. But in the mid‑1920s, at this moment in time, he was the most famous person on the planet, and everyone wanted a picture with him. This was Dallas in 1926, “The City of the Hour!”

His visit to Dallas didn’t begin the story. It confirmed it.

This video is of Southwest Airlines Flight #210 bound for Chicago, just as two brand new Curtiss “Carier Pigeons” did on this day in 1926. Over the next 503 days I will be telling the story of Contract Air Mail and all that it lead to in the last century. Please Subscribe (it’s free) and join me for the ride as we fly the friendly skies together.

I have no relatives buried there. No family ties. No inherited obligation. What I had was a moment in 2017 when I first walked onto that forgotten ground and something inside me said, “Someone has to do something about this.” And with no one else standing there, I understood that the someone was me.

Since then, this project has been tested in every way imaginable. The early estimates were simple. Just $20 per marker! We were close to raising what we needed when COVID slammed the brakes on everything. By the time the world reopened, shipping costs had quadrupled. Granite prices were rising monthly and then weekly. My original marker design had to be re‑engineered so they wouldn’t sink like the ones before them.

Then came the bureaucratic gauntlet: registering as a vendor with the city, filing paperwork, chasing grants, navigating drainage issues that stalled progress again and again, and watching tariffs and material costs climb faster than donations could keep up.

But I refused to let the cemetery wait any longer. We were losing purchasing power by the week. If I waited one more day, the tariff was set to rise 100% to 128% in all.

On September 30th, 2025, I pushed all my chips onto the table. I emptied our coffers and ordered as many markers as we could afford — not because it was safe, but because it was necessary. Calvary Hill Funeral Home met me halfway with an at‑cost bid, and I laid the rest of my faith on the line. This is my Field of Dreams. I believe that if you build it, they will come.

We need 2,097 markers. I have no idea where the funds for the remaining 1,097 will come from. But I know this: I am winning, and I will win. And if I don’t, it won’t be because I stopped trying. It will be because my clock ran out while I was still giving everything I had.

My personal motto has always been to be the change I wish to see in the world. I adopted that long before I knew it was attributed to Gandhi. In my mind, I learned it from Michael Jackson — I’m starting with the man in the mirror.

This project has never been about me. It has always been about dignity, memory, and the belief that forgotten people deserve to be remembered. That everyone deserves a place of rest.

But today, receiving this award, I’m reminded that sometimes one person really can make a difference — not because they are extraordinary, but because they refuse to walk away.

I want to thank the members of the Dallas Genealogical Society for recognizing the importance of this project. It means more than I am able to say.

From the very bottom of my heart, Thank You!

Help us Complete our Work

Presented here are three one‑of‑a‑kind event posters prepared as advertising for Heritage Auctions’ Star Wars Day sale. Created for use, not mass distribution, each pairing of artwork and official Heritage frame represents a moment when pop culture, fine art, and Dallas history briefly aligned inside Heritage’s headquarters. As with most of the items I curate, these were never meant to survive. They are intended as single-use items and are generally discarded after the event. But they miraculously have survived this once in a lifetime event that brought fandom to Heritage’s doorstep for a single day in time, May 4th, 2025.

Together, these three works form a quiet trilogy. Each tells a different story about how Star Wars has been celebrated across decades, mediums, and audiences, all passing through Dallas before finding a permanent home.

The Saga Continues, in Translation

Japanese Chirashi Proof Sheet, Return of the Jedi

Visit the Museum Store

The first piece is a Japanese chirashi proof sheet for Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, featuring Drew Struzan’s iconic artwork. Created in the early 1980s and debuting theatrically in 1983, this sheet shows eight individual poster images arranged in a proof layout, never intended for retail walls.

Visually, it is dominated by a crimson field, Darth Vader’s silhouette looming over the duel between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, framed by cosmic blues and whites. Japanese text anchors the bottom of each image, reinforcing that Star Wars was global from the outset.

The Heritage frame selected for this piece carries a subtle starfield effect, deliberately echoing the artwork’s cosmic backdrop while allowing the red composition to command attention. The result is archival in presence, appropriate for an object that lived behind the scenes of international film promotion.

This is Star Wars as worldwide mythmaking, filtered through translation, design, and strategy of the 1980s.

Celebration as Iconography

Star Wars Celebration IV, Randy Martinez Key Art

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The second piece moves forward into the 2000s and into celebration itself. Created in the mid 2000s and debuting in 2007, this is original key art by Randy Martinez for Star Wars Celebration IV.

Here, familiar figures are stacked in a dynamic vertical composition, radiating outward with ceremonial intensity. The Death Star hovers in orbit, Darth Vader advances in armor and shadow, and the composition feels less like a movie poster and more like a banner for pilgrimage.

The Heritage frame reinforces that role. Strong, architectural, and deeply dimensional, it gives the piece the gravity of an object meant to preside over a gathering rather than advertise a single title.

This poster represents Star Wars as community, ritual, and destination.

Vader, Reconsidered

Robot Chicken Stop‑Motion Puppet Poster

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The third piece intentionally breaks with tone.

This poster depicts Darth Vader not from the films, but as rendered for Robot Chicken, the stop‑motion series that premiered in the early 2000s and debuted this incarnation of the character in that decade. It is a version that exists only because Star Wars had become durable enough to withstand affectionate parody.

This is not cinematic Vader. This is cultural Vader, scaled down, reinterpreted, and disarmed through humor.

The ornate Heritage frame leans fully into the contrast. Gilded and formal, it treats satire with museum seriousness, elevating parody into artifact. The tension between subject and presentation is precisely what gives the piece its edge.

United by Dallas

What binds these three works together is place.

Each was created as event advertising by and for Heritage Auctions. Each passed through Heritage’s Dallas headquarters, one of the most influential collecting institutions in the world.

They are not reproductions. They are not mass‑market posters. They are working artifacts that escaped the wall intact.

Together, they trace how Star Wars has been sold, celebrated, and reimagined across four decades, all converging briefly in Dallas before moving on again.

Availability, Pricing, and Local Pickup

Each framed poster is offered at an introductory price of $325 per piece.

Multi‑piece discounts are available:

• 20% off when purchasing any two

• 30% off when purchasing all three

Sales are offered on a first‑come, first‑served basis.

Local pickup only. Pickup begins at 9:00 AM Saturday morning and is arranged in Northwest Dallas near the Marsh Lane and Forest Lane intersection. Shipping is not available.

Apple Cash, Zelle and Cash are all accepted.

Each piece may be collected in time for your May the Fourth Be With You celebration, making them ideal centerpieces for themed gatherings or pop culture displays.

Please pardon reflections visible in the glass, including surrounding trees and sky. Reflections are environmental only and not part of the artwork.

In three frames, Star Wars becomes international cinema, fan devotion, and self‑aware parody.
In Dallas, those moments briefly aligned and I would like to honor their place in Dallas by keeping them here where they belong…in Dallas.

And as always, the saga continues.

If you are able to attend and are unfamiliar with the library’s parking system, use your GPS to navigate to “Dallas Public Library”. With driving directions, it will take you to the rear of the building where there is ample free parking and you won’t have to deal with the rain either.

I would love to have you there with me, so we can celebrate the kickoff of this new construction phase. It was 8 years ago this month that we first gathered en masse to survey the cemetery

I couldn’t be more excited to have our Cemetery rescue begin to see the recognition we need to raise the remaining funds to finish the job.

1000 headstones down and 1097 to go!

This poster comes from August 1983, a moment when North Texas stood at exactly that kind of crossroads. It reads simply, almost impatiently: “Don’t just sit there. Vote DART. August 13.” The image shows people trapped in their cars, stalled, surrounded by metal and motionless lanes. It does not explain policy. It does not promise comfort. It demands a decision.

That was the first election I was old enough to vote in.

I remember walking into the polling place with a sense of arrival that is hard to recreate once it has passed. Voting did not feel routine. How could it? It was my right of passage as I had finally become an adult (back then 18 was the Legal Age for everything). It literally gave me chills!

Marking a ballot for DART felt like stepping into the future of Dallas itself, not because the outcome was guaranteed, but because the choice required trust. Trust that growth could be guided. Trust that neighbors across city lines mattered. Trust that some problems were larger than any single municipality.

What voters approved that summer was not a transit system. There were no rail lines to admire, no stations to point to, no maps with reassuring timelines. What we voted for was the authority to imagine something bigger, the patience to build it, and the willingness to pay for a shared solution before the benefits were visible.

More than forty years later, the system that vote set in motion stretches across the region. Buses, rails, stations, park and rides. None of it arrived quickly. None of it arrived without argument. DART is not perfect, and it never has been. No institution shaped by decades of compromise can be. But it is real, and it exists because a generation of voters chose coordination over fragmentation.

The poster has not aged gently. I found it at an estate sale down the street from my home in December and instantly knew its purpose. I’ve held on to it so that I could share it with you now.

Its edges are worn, its surface creased, its colors softened by time. That wear feels honest. The same can be said of the system it helped bring into being. Both have been used. Both have absorbed criticism. Both have weathered changing expectations. Neither is pristine, and that is precisely the point.

Today, DART finds itself once again at a decision point. The language has changed. The debates now arrive wrapped in spreadsheets, ridership metrics, and fiscal return. Those tools matter. Accountability matters. But numbers alone cannot measure what is lost when regional cooperation begins to fracture.

In 1983, voters did not ask what they would personally get back the next year or even the next decade. They asked what kind of region they wanted to live in, and whether they were willing to invest together in something unfinished.

That question has not gone away.

Another vote is coming on May 2nd in Addison, University Park and Highland Park. The stakes are not abstract. They are civic. Infrastructure can be dismantled more easily than it is built, but the deeper risk lies elsewhere. When a region begins to turn inward, it forgets why shared systems exist at all.

I remain a passionate supporter of DART because I remember what it represented the first time we were asked to choose. Growth demands cooperation. Mobility is a regional promise. United we stand. Divided we fail.

Call to Action

That promise now rests, once again, with voters. On Saturday, May 2, 2026, residents of Addison, University Park, and Highland Park will decide whether their cities remain part of Dallas Area Rapid Transit.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with early voting already underway.

If you have friends and family in those cities, please call and encourage them to get to the polls, because the cost of doing nothing could cause the collapse of a system that is just starting to realize its promise we first established in 1983.

This is not a symbolic choice. It is a defining one. The decision made in these suburbs will echo far beyond their boundaries and shape whether North Texas continues to move as a region or fragments into smaller, isolated systems.

Find your Voting Center using this link

Vote Center Finder

So, while we are on the subject, let’s answer that question and others surrounding why the city named a road after him. As for the prostitutes, I guess that was just a matter of getting lucky.

Harry Hines was born in 1886 in Dallas County, a time when North Texas roads were little more than wagon ruts cut through Blackland prairie. He grew up in a world where travel was slow, unpredictable, and often impossible after a rain. The idea of a paved, all weather highway system did not exist yet. That world shaped him. It gave him a lifelong belief that Texas could not grow unless its roads improved.

Hines began his career as a businessman, working in real estate, construction, and civic development. He was not a politician in the traditional sense. He was a practical man who understood how infrastructure shaped communities. He served on local boards, worked with county officials, and built a reputation as someone who could get things done. His work brought him into contact with the people who were trying to modernize Dallas during the early twentieth century.

By the early 1930s, Texas was struggling with the Great Depression. The state needed leaders who could think beyond the crisis and plan for the future. Hines was appointed to the Texas Highway Commission during this period. It was the most important transportation position in the state, and he quickly became its dominant voice.

The Road Builder

Hines believed that Texas needed a unified highway system. He pushed for paved roads that could withstand weather and heavy use. He insisted on consistent numbering so that travelers could navigate the state without confusion. He traveled constantly, inspecting routes in person and meeting with local officials. He was known for being direct and demanding, but also for being fair. He wanted roads that worked, and he expected the same from the people who built them.

His influence was felt across the state. Under his leadership, Texas built hundreds of miles of paved highways. The work laid the foundation for the routes that would later become the Interstate system. Hines understood that roads were more than transportation. They were economic lifelines. They connected farms to markets, towns to cities, and Texas to the rest of the country.

A Dallas Ally

Dallas leaders recognized that Hines was essential to the city’s growth. They worked closely with him to improve the Dallas to Denton corridor, which would become one of the most important routes in North Texas (seriously!). Hines supported these efforts. He believed that Dallas was positioned to become a major transportation hub, and he wanted the state to invest in the region.

His support helped Dallas make a stronger case for hosting the Texas Centennial. When the state evaluated the competing bids, Dallas could point to ongoing improvements in its road network. It could show that the city was working closely with the Highway Commission. It could argue that visitors would be able to reach the Centennial grounds safely and efficiently.

The Honor

In 1936, the same year the Centennial opened at Fair Park, Dallas renamed Hi Line Road as Harry Hines Boulevard. The decision reflected the city’s gratitude. It acknowledged the role Hines played in modernizing the region’s transportation network. It also aligned Dallas with the man who had become the most influential voice in Texas highway planning.

The renaming was more than symbolic. It marked the beginning of a new era in Dallas transportation. Harry Hines Boulevard became a major north south corridor. It carried U. S. 77 for decades. It supported the growth of motor courts, diners, and commercial development. It became part of the story of how Dallas expanded and how the city adapted to the rise of automobile travel.

Later Years and Legacy

Hines served on the Texas Highway Commission for more than a decade. His tenure shaped the future of transportation in Texas. Many of the roads he championed later became parts of U. S. 77, U. S. 75, State Highway 114, State Highway 183, and Loop 12. His work influenced the early alignments that fed into the Interstate system.

He died in 1956, but his legacy lived on. Newspapers across Texas described him as the man who helped pull the state out of the mud and into the modern era. His name remains on one of Dallas’ most important corridors, a reminder of the role he played in shaping the city and the state.

Today, Harry Hines Boulevard carries the history of early Dallas highways, the rise of motor courts, and the civic pride that shaped the city in the 1930s. While not the most glorious streets in the city, it stands alongside the Art Deco buildings at Fair Park as a symbol of the Centennial moment when Dallas reinvented itself and embraced a modern future.

“It is only 89 here, but I was never more uncomfortable. I prefer Oklahoma dry heat.”

That single line captures the feel of a Dallas August before air conditioning was common. Eighty-nine degrees sounds gentle for late summer, but the humidity was the real force at work. Dallas in the 1940s still had wide open fields, creeks that held moisture, and long stretches of unpaved ground. After a rain, the air could turn heavy and still. Without the wind channels created by later freeways, the heat simply settled over the landscape. Even a mild day could feel like a steam bath.

Mildred was right. Oklahoma heat was hotter, but it was also drier. Dallas humidity made a modest temperature feel like something entirely different. Yet today most Dallasites would think an 89-degree day in late August to be most splendid! Especially after 109 degrees just 13-days earlier.

The Many Names of Harry Hines Road

The postcard places the Tower Hotel Courts at a crossroads that carried several identities over time.

“At the Circle on Hines Boulevard intersecting Highway 77, 183, 114 and Loop 12.”

That single sentence is a snapshot of Dallas’ road history.

Hi Line Road

Before the city renamed it, the corridor was known as Hi Line Road. It followed the railroad high line that paralleled it. Early county maps show it as a rural north south road that cut through farm tracts and the old Ware Estate.

Harry Hines Boulevard

Dallas renamed the road to honor Harry Hines, the Texas Highway Commissioner who pushed for modern road building. The name stuck, although the numbering changed more than once.

U. S. Highway 77

For decades, Harry Hines carried U. S. 77, the main north south highway through Dallas. Tourist courts, diners, and motor inns grew along it, including the Tower Hotel Courts. U. S. 77 was effectively decommissioned in Dallas in 1969, when Interstate 35E fully replaced it through the city.

But the number lingered in pieces elsewhere in Texas until the early 1990s.

State Highways 114 and 183, and Loop 12

As Dallas expanded, the intersection became a meeting point for several major routes. The postcard captures a moment when the roads were still recognizable, but the freeway era was already beginning to reshape the landscape.

As The Circle was never planned as a permanent fix, map makers overlooked it and the only reference I could find was through an odyssey of maps on TxDot’s Real Property Asset Map in their Right-of-Way files. It is an incomplete view of the almost constructed “Circle”.

The Circle That Once Defined the Intersection

The Circle mentioned on the postcard was a large rotary where Harry Hines, Loop 12, State Highway 114, and State Highway 183 all met. It was built in the early 1950s as a modern solution to growing traffic.

For a time, it worked well.
As Dallas grew, the Circle became a choke point.
By the late 1960s, the rotary was removed and replaced with the directional interchange that stands today.

By the early 1970s, when I remember seeing the giant neon sign for The Circle Inn, the Circle itself had already vanished. Its bright neon sign was standing on a rocky hill like a beacon that welcomed me home each time we passed it. I believe it was just as NW Highway descends to go under Old Denton. You know, it’s that area that likes to flood whenever we get heavy rain. It seemed huge to me, but keep in mind I was only in 2nd grade.

In my 7-year-old historian voice, I pointed out one day that there wasn’t a circle anywhere to be found. You see, I was already developing my smart-alecky tone, but my parents gave a simple-vague answer that they thought there used to be a circle there, but it was gone. The name survived long after the road feature was gone. As I recall it, there was a theatre that appeared to stand alone, and I wondered how it came to be.

Every time we would drive down Spur-482 from 183 and round that corner onto Loop 12/NW Highway I would gaze at that bright neon sign and imagine all the wonderful things that must have happened there to warrant such an amazing sign. I might have overshot on my expectations, just a tad.

The place shut down in late 2005 and by that time was in a miserable state. It was demolished the following year, but the sign was apparently purchased by DART and donated to a private collection. You see DART was building the Northwest Rail Line, which later became part of the Orange Line (get out your color wheel).

More about that some other time, as it turned out not to be the same hotel. It only took me 3 hours of research to find that out. Yay for me!

Curious readers will note that the left side of the property borders Hinton Dr. This street was standardized as Denton Drive and was influenced by the adjoining railroad corridor since it paralleled the line toward Denton County.

The Tower Hotel Courts: A Landmark That Disappeared

The Tower Hotel Courts opened around 1940 on land carved from the G. W. Ware Estate. It sat between the railroad and Harry Hines, just south of the future Circle. It was a classic motor court of its time, with rows of individual cabins, a central office, bright neon, and the promise of one hundred eight modern, air-conditioned rooms.

For travelers on U. S. 77, it was a welcome sight.

Its location, however, placed it directly in the path of Dallas highway expansion. When the state rebuilt the interchange for State Highways 114 and 183, the Tower Hotel Courts stood exactly where the new ramps needed to go. The property was acquired, the buildings were removed, and the site became part of the growing freeway system.

Today, part of the hotel’s footprint lies beneath the sweeping interchange of 114, 183, and Loop 12. Nothing remains of the hotel, but the postcard preserves a moment when the hotel was new, the Circle was a landmark, and Harry Hines was still a highway lined with tourist courts.

Just south of the area where NW Highway meets Spur 482 and beyond DART’s Orange line, you will find a new landmark which bears the name U-Haul at 9929 Harry Hines. It’s not a neon sign and but the place still bustles with activity.

A Postcard as a Time Machine

Mildred’s message captures a world that has vanished.
The Circle was still intact.
Harry Hines was still a major highway.
The Tower Hotel Courts was still a fresh addition to the roadside.
And Dallas was still a city of postcards, motor courts, and humid August evenings.

Who would have thought a simple postcard could reveal so much about our history? I sure didn’t!

The first 50 entries took 70 minutes to complete, which translates into nearly 24 hours of continuous work for the full set of names. To help streamline the process, the information has now been organized into an Excel file that arranges each name into the 3 to 4 rows used on the markers. This should significantly increase the pace of data entry, and with it, bring the project closer to completion.

Even with these improvements, entering the information will still take a few weeks. Once submitted, the headstones will move into a 3 to 6 month production timeline. Because each one is a custom size, they must be individually cut and polished before the sandblasting can begin.

Destiny is currently exploring whether the information can be submitted in batches of 100. If so, production could begin sooner, allowing these markers to take shape without delay. More updates will be shared as soon as that option becomes clear.

This is meticulous work, but it is meaningful work, and every step ensures that those laid to rest are honored with the dignity and accuracy they deserve.

Stay tuned for more updates coming soon!

My fascination with the past began long before I had words for it. As a kid, I would stop at the Marsh Family Cemetery in Farmers Branch, the small one at Rockmartin and Chaparral, every time I walked to and from school. I stood among those weathered headstones and wondered who the people were, how they lived, and what stories they carried with them. I visited that cemetery more times than any reasonable person should admit, and one day, in 3rd grade, I even knocked on the door of the Marsh family homestead just to ask about the cemetery and whether they were related to the names carved in stone. To their great credit, they were incredibly kind to a curious little kid.

Seven years later, I included that same homestead in an extra credit presentation for my history class. The place stayed with me, and I will take you there one day, but that is a rabbit hole for another time.

What Matters is This

My greatest passion is for history that can be seen, touched, and experienced. Even when a building no longer stands, I can visit the spot, feel the ground beneath my feet, and picture the world as it once was. Something about being physically present makes the past feel almost alive.

I have spent my entire life trying to understand this beautiful, complicated, heartbreaking, inspiring place called Dallas. And now, I feel ready to begin sharing its stories.

Dallas is a city of motion, always shifting, always reinventing itself. Not every change has been kind, not every step has been graceful, but the city has never stopped moving. And within that constant motion are the stories that matter most to me, the ones that belong to everyday people whose ordinary lives shaped an extraordinary, imperfect city.

Nothing brings me more joy than finding a small artifact from Dallas history, something humble and overlooked, and tracing its path through time. I follow each clue as far as it will go and let the object reveal the people, places, and moments connected to it. These items become windows into lives that deserve to be remembered.

My plan is simple. I will keep collecting pieces of Dallas history, researching them, and telling the stories they uncover. But once a story is told, I do not need to hold onto the item forever. Its purpose will have been fulfilled, and I want to make room for the next discovery waiting to speak.

Retail Space

So, I have secured space at the North Dallas Antique Mall where I can display and sell these collections that I have conserved and curated. , ready to face another century and ready to become part of someone else’s personal museum. I will include notes about their conservation and the story each item carries.

Journey Through History:
Where Dallas Becomes a Collection

My aim is to provide curated collections of at least 2-3 pieces that each augment the other to help bring a narrative to the items you are viewing. I lean heavily on our arts scene, local artist works, Dallasana, Texana & Americana. The airlines and railroads that helped shape us are also primary targets for the display. Primary targets are Braniff, American Airlines, TWA, Pan-am & Southwest. My hope is to provide a sounding board to provoke discussion through each item on display.

This is a vision that is just now coming into view, and you can say you saw it here first. There are still gaps in the collection and on the shelves, and I’m striving to keep them stocked. I have so much more to show you as we move forward and I couldn’t be more excited about it.

I don’t want to take over this blog by making it into QVC, So, I’ll only post once every week or so and I’ll share the items I’m working on and work to tell their stories. They will eventually end up at the antique mall, if they are not pre-claimed by one of our followers. If you see something you can’t live without, please message me directly

Visit my booth on “Avenue D at Boardwalk” in the North Dallas Antique Mall. I’m including photos of many of the items that are already on display to give you an idea of what to expect.

I had a copy of Breath! on the table in the TBRU Marketplace. It is the book created for the Chorales twenty fifth anniversary, filled with every name that shaped those first decades.

A first timer at TBRU (Texas Bear Round Up), visiting from Oklahoma City, stopped when he saw it. He told me that while going through his father’s estate, he found a single record showing that his father had once played piano with the Chorale. He had always suspected his father was gay, but they never discussed it either way.

was one of those quiet suspicions that families carry without ever speaking aloud.

I told him we could find out. At the time this book was printed in 2004, the Chorale had lost some 100 members to the plaque of AIDS. I opened the book to the inside cover where every member from those twenty-five years is listed. He leaned in, searching line by line, almost afraid to hope.

Then he saw it. His father’s name.

His finger suddenly froze along the back inside cover; he closed the book gently and pulled it into his chest like something precious he had been missing for years. He held it in a tight bear hug, eyes shining, right on the edge of tears. I joined him, because I have a strict rule that no one cries alone in my presence. It felt like watching a door open inside someone. A door he thought would stay locked forever.

We shared that moment of revelation together, which is something I never expected for my very first vendor market for the Dallas history brand that I’m creating.

We’ve exchanged info and I’m reaching out to the members of the Turtle Creek Chorale to see if there are any active members that would have worked with Keith Whitmore.

If you have any memories of Keith, it would be the honor of my life to introduce you to his son, who also plays piano and is also a proud gay man.

I am determined to help connect him with his father on a plane that couldn’t happen in the living years.

It is stories like this that I wish to uncover as part of my work on Dallas Rediscovered. I’m still evolving the ideas on how I want to run this endeavor. I respond to history that I can see and touch. Proximity is of utmost importance to me, and I plan to procure things that will help me tell the story of Dallas! One story at a time.

While in my possession, I will undergo conservation efforts to protect the artifacts from decay and at times rescue them from the brink. In most cases, once I’ve told their story I no longer need the item, so to help keep me from becoming a hoarder, I plan to release those items back into circulation as rejuvenated works of art. I don’t intend to push a sales angle on anyone, but if a piece speaks to you reach out to me privately and we can work out the terms of transfer.

What began at 9:00 a.m. on March 4 as a special-called meeting to consider the future of City Hall ended in a decision that moved Dallas closer to abandoning its most iconic civic building and further from the will of its residents.

This was not governance.

This was treason in the extreme and the man leading the storm on City Hall was our most unpopular mayor Eric Johnson. He’s been railroading this decision through the council since the beginning. He doesn’t seem to understand that he should be working for all the people of Dallas and not just his billionaire friends.

But the most appalling thing to me was that my own council person Gay Donnell Willis supported this treason. Rest assured that she will never garner my vote again.

A Vote Forced Through Under Manufactured Urgency

The push for this vote did not arise from thoughtful deliberation. It was the product of an orchestrated, rapid-fire process initiated by Mayor Eric Johnson, who set the March 4 special meeting explicitly to force a vote on a resolution directing the City Manager to begin relocating core city operations and to explore redevelopment of the current City Hall site. [fox4news.com]

City staff were to be ordered to:

• Move 311, 911, and emergency operations to new government facilities “as quickly as possible.” [fox4news.com]

• Investigate relocation options for all remaining City Hall personnel.

• Pursue redevelopment concepts, effectively placing the I.M. Pei‑designed landmark on a path toward displacement. [fox4news.com]

Residents recognized immediately what was happening. They filled the chamber days earlier, insisting the process was rushed, opaque, and misaligned with the city’s democratic obligations. Their frustration was not speculative; it emerged from the city’s own figures and timeline.

The Billion-Dollar Boogeyman

At the center of the push was a cost estimate claiming that keeping the current building operational for another twenty years would require $906 million to $1.4 billion in repairs and upgrades. [fox4news.com]

But that figure has been challenged repeatedly:

• Preservationists and architects questioned the validity of the analysis, calling the report inadequate, misleading, and not independent. [dallasobserver.com]

• Others noted that the estimate conflated urgent repairs with modernization enhancements and other optional upgrades.

• Past assessments painted a dramatically different picture - including one estimating only $37–$39 million in required repairs. [newsbreak.com]

Still, nine Council members embraced the highest possible number without interrogating its assumptions. They allowed fear, not facts, to guide a decision of historic consequence.

The Most Personal Disappointment: Council Member Gay Donnell Willis

My greatest disappointment lies with Council Member Gay Donnell Willis.

In prior discussions, Willis publicly emphasized that City Hall would always remain a welcoming civic space with an open plaza, regardless of its location. It was a reassuring sentiment from a representative entrusted with protecting the public’s access to its own government. [nbcdfw.com]

Yet when the defining moment arrived in the pre-dawn hours of March 5, she voted in favor of the resolution - a vote that, by its very nature, accelerates the displacement of civic life from the building that has symbolized Dallas’ democratic identity for nearly fifty years.

She did not slow the process.
She did not question the timeline.
She did not defend the building or the people who spoke passionately in its defense.
She did not listen to the 90% plus of her constituents that told her to “Save City Hall!”
She did not stand up for what was right.

The disappointment is justified.

A Decision Taken After the Public Could No Longer Watch

If the proposal itself was troubling, the timing of the vote was worse.
By pushing deliberations deep into the night and ultimately into the next day, the Council guaranteed that only the most dedicated observers could follow the proceedings. The vast majority of residents, including those who had taken time to show up and speak earlier in the week, had no realistic ability to witness the conclusion. Fortunately, I’m a night owl.

A democracy cannot function when the most consequential decisions are finalized after midnight, under exhaustion and diminishing public visibility.

What Dallas Stands to Lose

This vote is more than a question of HVAC systems and leaking roofs. What is at stake is:

• A civic landmark: One of the most distinctive buildings in Dallas, designed by I.M. Pei and featured prominently in the city’s cultural history. [newsbreak.com]

• A public asset already paid for: A building that belongs to the people, not to developers or speculators. [fox4news.com]

• Democratic space itself: The chambers, plaza, and public areas that define how Dallas sees itself, assembles, and participates in its own governance.

• Continuity and identity: Once City Hall is moved, the symbolic and practical center of Dallas fractures.

Opponents of the proposal made this clear when they spoke during earlier hearings, with residents calling the process “corruption,” “insulting,” and a profound betrayal of public trust. [fox4news.com]

The Fight Is Not Over

Although the 9–6 vote moves Dallas closer to abandoning the current City Hall, it is not final. There remain pathways for preservation:

• The Landmark Designation Committee has already begun exploring a historic designation, a move that could complicate efforts to demolish or radically alter the structure. [newsbreak.com]

• Further public pressure can demand transparent, phased repair assessments rather than the all-or-nothing framing presented thus far.

• Civic organizations, architects, and residents can organize to challenge the redevelopment narrative and defend the building “paid for by the people for the people.”

The story of Dallas City Hall is not finished.
But the events of March 4–5 will remain a stain on the city’s reputation.

Conclusion: A Breach of Trust That Will Not Be Forgotten

The early-morning vote was not responsible leadership.
It was a rushed and reckless breach of the public trust, carried out after an exhausting sixteen-hour session that left little room for accountability.

Dallas deserves better.
Dallas deserves transparency.
Dallas deserves representatives who are willing to stand firm in the face of political pressure and procedural manipulation.

And Dallas will remember who stood for the people -
and who stood against them.

Here is the link in case you don’t have time to read the rest of this message: CONTACT YOUR COUNCIL MEMBER NOW

Key Takeaways:
Wednesday, March 4 at 9am the City Council will meet to be briefed on recommendations from Finance Committee and Economic Development. At the direction of Mayor Eric Johnson, Council will vote to continue to process of abandoning Dallas City Hall.

Your public presence and input matters. We cannot slow or stop this process without you.

A Message from the Executive Director of Preservation Dallas

City Hall must be saved.

Not just because it was built in 1978.

Not just because it was designed by I.M. Pei.

Not just because of its history.

Not just because of its significance.

Not just because of nostalgia.

Not just because it appeared in a famous movie.

Not even because it stands as a symbol of government transparency.

City Hall must be saved because this is, plainly put, a boondoggle.

The owners of the Dallas Mavericks want our City Hall. Plain and simple. This has never truly been a conversation about repairing the building or addressing deferred maintenance. There is no meaningful negotiation over costs, no independent second opinion on the details. The speed of this process is meant to meet the needs of the Mavericks, not the needs of downtown, not the needs of the people, or even the needs of Dallas itself.

As a result, Dallas has become afraid. Afraid of losing opportunities, afraid of lost revenue, afraid of losing more downtown businesses, and, most of all, afraid of losing the Mavericks. A growing chorus of voices now loudly proclaims the need to invest in the southern portion of Downtown Dallas and that City Hall no longer serves its intended purpose.

But what is City Hall’s “intended purpose”? Was it intended to be handed over to billionaire interests?

If City Hall is sold to the Mavericks, the deal could become one of the most expensive decisions in our city’s history. Not only will we have to bear the cost of relocating City of Dallas operations and securing a new City Hall, but you can bet we will be paying to subsidize a new stadium, too. Even more concerning, based on Dallas history, we will likely be circling back to this same issue in 25 years when the new, shiny arena is somehow no longer suited to the future owners of our sports team and our lease is up on the new corporate compound that may be our future City Hall.

Promises of future revenue, increased “activation,” or economic impact do not erase what we will have to pay, and it is wholly dependent on factors outside of our control: the market, the economy, and frankly - how well the Mavericks perform.

And you’ve already seen how much Dallas fears losing.

With a majority of City Council too afraid to say “no” to the Mavs, we must rely on you, the people of Dallas.

After all, it is your building. Your say. Your city.

Sarah Crain
Executive Director
Preservation Dallas

So, what can you do about it?

Wednesday, March 4, City Council will meet to be briefed on recommendations from Finance Committee and Economic Development. At the direction of Mayor Eric Johnson, Council will vote to continue to process of abandoning Dallas City Hall.

Your public presence and input matters. We cannot slow or stop this process without you.

Saving Dallas City Hall

As you know, Preservation Dallas is working alongside a coalition of citizens and organizations in an urgent effort to save I.M. Pei’s 1978 City Hall.

Our most important request of membership is to ACT NOW to contact your council member directly. Using this link, it takes just 30 seconds!

CONTACT YOUR COUNCIL MEMBER NOW

Here are a few more steps you can take to really make a difference:

Share our ACT NOW link with your networks – via email, text, and social media. We’re in the best position to talk about the issue and engage more citizens in the cause.

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok to stay apprised of upcoming events. Remember, your engagement with social media (e.g. likes, shares, comments) helps get the message in front of more citizens.

Pick up a yard sign from our office, 2922 Swiss Avenue, between 10am-2pm Monday through Thursday (they are going fast)!

Check-out the new SaveDallasCityHall.com, where you can find information about this iconic building, the Council’s rushed timeline, recent media coverage, and more.

Call your council member’s office to ask for a meeting to discuss your concerns, especially if you have a relationship with them.

Thank you for your advocacy. Together, we can flood the council with our voices of reason – and ensure this decision is based upon transparency, solid facts, & careful consideration.

CONTACT YOUR COUNCIL MEMBER NOW

If you have any further questions please visit

www.preservationdallas.org/contact

Then Randolph spoke, his voice low. “I stopped by Parkland today,” he said, eyes fixed on the flame. “To see Uncle Will.”

Armenda’s fork paused mid-air. “How is he?”

Randolph shook his head slowly. “Not good. They’ve got him in isolation now. You should’ve seen the precautions! They don’t let you near a man with this sickness without a mask. Just a strip of gauze tied across my mouth, but it’s something. I kept my distance, didn’t touch a thing. The nurse cracked the window wide open so the air could move. They say that’s the only way to keep the germs from hanging in the room.”

He pushed his plate away, hands trembling slightly. “I washed my hands till they burned before I left. Didn’t dare take a sip of water while I was there. Everything he touched, everything in that room… it’s dangerous. This disease! It floats in the air when he coughs. You breathe it in, and it settles deep in your lungs. That’s how it starts.”

Armenda reached for his hand, her eyes wide with worry. Randolph squeezed back gently. “I had to see him,” he whispered. “But Lord, I pray I didn’t bring anything home.”

He leaned back, staring at the candle as if it held answers. “They say it’s a slow march. It started with pneumonia last summer, then toxemia and his pleural effusion on New Year’s Day. Since then, nothing but downhill. I feel so helpless, Armenda. He was more of a father to me than my own daddy. We all came here from Paris thinking Dallas was our bright future. Now…” His voice cracked. “Now I’m watching him slip away.”

The Call

Two days later, Valentine’s warmth had faded into a gray February morning. Randolph clocked in at the Sears building on Lamar Street. It was a sprawling 1.5 million square foot monument to commerce just South of Downtown Dallas. He was barely settled when his boss approached. “Phone call for you,” the man said, his tone clipped.

Randolph’s stomach tightened. He walked the long corridors slowly, dread pressing down with every step. At the switchboard, he lifted the receiver, his voice barely a whisper. “This is Randolph.”

The words that followed shattered him. A Parkland orderly delivered the news in a single, merciless sentence: Will was gone.

Randolph fell to his knees, sobbing, the sound swallowed by the hum of machinery and footsteps. His world had collapsed, but there was no time for grief. Jobs were scarce, and his straw boss wasn’t known for mercy. He wiped his face, stood up, and finished his shift hollowed out by loss.

That night, he walked to his uncle’s home at 1819 Lincoln Street to gather what little remained before it was discarded. Among the belongings, he found a photograph of the two of them at a church barbecue back in Paris, TX. It was a moment of joy frozen in time. He tucked it into his coat and began the long walk back to the prestigious address of 3736 Stanford Avenue, in University Park, more than an hour on foot. When he arrived, he didn’t walk through the front door, but through the alley and into the servants’ quarters.

Dallas was tightly segregated at this time, and he would never be allowed to enter through the front door of this home. That was for the white white people. Instead, he was tucked into the servants’ quarters buried deep behind a grand estate. His wife, Armenda, was a domestic for the family that owned the property. Their apartment didn’t have running water or electricity. It wasn’t much, but it was theirs, and in the depths of the Depression, that counted for something.

Exhausted and late for dinner Randolph finally came through the door. Armenda saw the bundle in his arms and instantly knew what happened. She rushed to him, and as he tried to explain, he pulled out the photo and dissolved into tears.

The Burial

Will Dawkins had been the first in their family born free. His life deserved dignity. But dignity was hard to come by in 1932. Plans for Mount Auburn Cemetery fell through. Forest Lawn was considered, then abandoned. In the end, there was no choice but the pauper’s cemetery. Most were buried there the same day they died. Will waited three days, a measure of the family’s anguish and torture at not being able to provide funds for his burial.

On February 16, Randolph and Armenda traveled far north of town to lay him to rest. The place was called Letot, TX. The City & County of Dallas had banded together to purchase this new tract of land that would house their needs for decades to come. Randolph remarked to the grave digger, “I thought this was a cemetery.” To which the reply came, “It is now.” Will was the very first burial at Dallas City Cemetery.

The land was pristine, acres of open country. Standing at the edge of the grave, Randolph clutched the photograph in his coat pocket, the last tangible piece of a man who had shaped his life. The wind swept across the fields, carrying with it the silence of things left unsaid.

This wasn’t the ending they dreamed of when they left Paris, TX for Dallas. But in that moment, with Armenda’s hand in his, Randolph vowed to keep Will’s memory alive. Because even in the shadow of despair, love endures.

Will Dawkins was born in 1888 to a freedman named Nathan who was just 12 at the time the Civil War ended. The parents fled the plantations of South Carolina and brought Samuel (15), Nathan (12) and, Roda (8) to Paris, TX to start a new life. There they gave birth to at least 5 more children: Harriett, Sanford, Rachel, Clarksville & Lewis. It was in Paris that they were finally able to legally wed in 1873.

Note: The houses on Lincoln and Stanford no longer stand.

Today marks a turning point! Not just for a forgotten cemetery in Northwest Dallas, but for the 2,054 people who were laid to rest there without the dignity of a lasting marker. After years of research, advocacy, and quiet persistence, the City of Dallas has released $90,000 to help fund the purchase of 1,000 new headstones for Dallas City Cemetery, also known as the Dallas Pauper’s Cemetery. They were matching the $50,000 of private donations already allocated to the effort.

A Personal Note

Today also happens to be my birthday, and I can’t imagine a better gift than this. After years of research, advocacy, and quiet determination, to receive the funding that will finally give 1,000 people their names back feels like the most meaningful birthday present I could ever receive. It’s a reminder that history isn’t just something we study; it’s something we can change.

As soon as the funds clear my bank, they will be transferred directly to Calvary Hill Cemetery, fulfilling the contract I signed on September 30, 2025. On that same day, I will deliver the list of the 1,000 individuals whose stories will finally be anchored to the ground where they rest.

And then the work begins.

While the markers are being created, I’ll be sharing regular stories about the cemetery’s permanent residents — the people whose lives, struggles, and final days shaped the early 20th‑century city we inherited. They deserve to be known. They deserve to be remembered.

A Cemetery That Tells the Story of a City

They say there are a million stories in the naked city. Dallas City Cemetery is no exception. In fact, it may be one of the most concentrated archives of human experience in the entire county.

A staggering 84% of all burials occurred in the cemetery’s first decade, from 1932 to 1942 — years defined by the Great Depression, widespread poverty, and the absence of modern medical care. As prenatal care progressed, antibiotics emerged, and tuberculosis treatments improved, the burial rate dropped sharply. The cemetery’s population is a demographic snapshot of a city in crisis, then in transition.

Most Common Places of Death

• 1,002 – Parkland Hospital/Woodlawn (including 278 stillborn)

• 177 – Bradford Memorial Hospital

• 116 – Hutchins Convalescent Home

• 75 – St. Paul

• 43 – Baylor Hospital

• 21 – Hope Cottage

These institutions cared for the city’s poorest, sickest, and most vulnerable residents, and their records form the backbone of this cemetery’s story.

Unnatural Deaths

Among the 2,054 burials, 171 were attributed to external or unnatural causes, a sobering reminder of the dangers of early‑20th‑century urban life.

• Homicide: 24

• Suicide: 18

• Drowning: 8

• Burns: 29

• Poisoning: 16

• Train/Railroad incidents: 19

• Explicitly “Accidental”: 9

• Stab/Knife wounds: 9

• Hanging/Strangulation: 7

• Exposure: 5

• Gun-related (subset): 31

Each number represents a life cut short, often violently or tragically — and until now, often anonymously.

What Comes Next

The die is cast, but the story is still unfolding.

Over the coming months, as the markers are carved and prepared, I’ll be sharing the histories of the people who will soon have their names restored to the landscape. Some stories will be heartbreaking. Some will be surprising. Many will challenge assumptions about poverty, race, illness, and survival in Dallas during the hardest years of the 20th century.

But all of them will remind us why this work matters.

A cemetery is not just a place of burial. It is a record of a community’s values — and for too long, Dallas allowed this one to fade into obscurity. Today, with this funding, with these markers, and with this renewed commitment to remembrance, we take a step toward correcting that.

Alea iacta est.
The die is cast.
And the work of restoration — of memory, of dignity, of history — moves forward.

I am immensely humbled by this moment and I’m flipping back and forth between the gravity of what we are about to do and the joy of being able to finally roll up my sleeves and get to work!

Please subscribe to this blog so that we can enjoy this journey together!

For posterity’s sake, I’m reposting the article in case the link stops working someday. I was surprised it still worked when I went to it today, because it was almost 6 years ago.

Original Article:

‘No one cared about them in life or death’: Why one man fights to restore Dallas’ old paupers cemetery

Until Dan Babb came along, no one even knew how many people are buried there (2,053, to be exact)

Robert Wilonsky Editorial columnist, Dallas Morning News, Dec 25, 2019

Vernon Johnson’s grave marker is wrong. First, because that is not Vernon Johnson buried beneath it.

Buried here is the infant daughter of Vernon Johnson and Virgie Chandler, who once lived on South Austin Street in the Cedars. The marker also says this child was born Dec. 25, 1932, and died the same day. But that is not what happened. The girl was actually born at 10:30 p.m. Christmas Eve, at Parkland Hospital, and died three hours later, at 1:40 Christmas morning.

“Born premature,” said Dan Babb. I was astounded that a 54-year-old man raised in northwest Dallas would know even a single thing about a child born 87 years ago who lived for 190 minutes, much less her very brief life’s story.

The child’s mother was just 6½ months along when the baby was born, Babb said as we knelt in the dirt and grass and stared at faded letters stamped into a thin piece of metal nailed to a crumbling concrete block. “Remember,” he said, “this was during the Depression.” And, during an outbreak of illnesses that killed hundreds of children here in the 1930s.

“This cemetery,” Babb said, “speaks to a lot of different things.”

This cemetery is the old pauper’s cemetery, buried, as it were, inside a warehouse district off Walnut Hill Lane near Denton Drive. And here, it’s not at all uncommon to find markers with wrong or misspelled names or inaccurate dates of birth and death. That is, when you can find the markers at all.

The Dallas City Cemetery, it’s called on Google Maps, a rectangle of quiet green surrounded on all sides by motor and moving and construction companies. It’s seemingly impossible to find — only a small white sign marks the entrance — and difficult to access down the end of a narrow white-dirt road that ends in 3 acres of what looks like pastureland.

There once was a large metal sign over this land that read “DALLAS CITY CEMETERY,” but it appears to have been thrown away. Part of the fencing has vanished. And an adjacent alleyway is overgrown and causes the land to flood, which is why part of the ground is muddy and, often, underwater — the corner where 256 infants who died in 1932 and 1933 are buried.

Babb says there are 2,053 people buried here, off Shady Trail Drive. And you would never know it, save for 1,000 or so remaining markers — the tintype nailed to concrete — that have survived the devastation wrought by erosion and lawnmowers.

“Might as well be a Civil War battlefield,” Babb, a graduate of W.T. White High School, said as we scanned the vista, unable to see a single marker from the narrow entrance. “Nothing.”

The city bought this burial ground from Forest Lawn Cemetery, nearby on Walnut Hill and Harry Hines Boulevard, in the early 1930s, when this part of the city was unincorporated and called Letot, and Dallas needed virgin land in which to bury the dead claimed by illnesses born of “economic distress,” as this newspaper put it then. Dallas made it a “special use park” in 1968, and stopped burying people here eight years later. In the summer of 1978, City Hall sold off 10 unused acres to the industrial uses that now crowd around it.

Every now and then, a story like this one will be told about the city’s abandoned dead and the flooding and how awful that is, because it is awful. But its existence remains unknown to most. I paid my first visit just last week, drawn by the small, strange red-and-white sign I noticed out the corner of my eye while touring the October tornado’s devastation along Shady Trail.

The internet sent me to Babb’s website, where he has begun chronicling tales of the dead buried without a penny or family. I read there, too of his passion to restore the place — “this time piece of Dallas’ history,” he writes. I called Babb on Tuesday night, and he offered to meet me there Wednesday morning, at the place that consumes most of his spare time when he’s not working at a software company.

Babb, a genealogist by hobby, calls it an obsession. “My husband,” he said, “calls it an addiction.”

But why this place, this almost abandoned potters field?

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just walked in and was like, ‘Somebody needs to do something about this,’ and I set about doing it. I honestly never thought it was going to be this much work. Maybe I’m a little crazy. But this is my cemetery.” He paused, grinned. “Well, no one is fighting me for it right now, anyway.”

For his diligence, we should be grateful; so, too, the relatives of the forgotten and misidentified dead often relegated to this last-chance resting place by family members and “uncaring people,” as its former caretaker told this newspaper in 1977. They would otherwise have been erased from history had Babb not found this place three years ago and made it his cause and calling.

Since he became the cemetery’s unofficial caretaker, he and a small army of volunteers have scoured the grounds with metal detectors to find nameplates shorn off by weather and groundskeepers. They have pored through endless death certificates and maps to match names and correct what coroners and careless workers got wrong — or ignored altogether — when no one was paying attention.

Babb has posted to the Find a Grave website more than 1,000 photos of the markers that do remain. And, as a result, he has even reunited a handful of the living with the dead who have not been visited since they were covered with dirt decades ago.

“It’s amazing what Dan is doing,” said Omar Narvaez, the Dallas City Council member whose West Dallas district stretches into this part of the northwest. “But there are people for whom this is important, meaningful, powerful. Honoring those who have passed is how we secure our history and our future.”

Narvaez knew nothing of this land until Babb introduced it to him three years ago. When he first saw the cemetery, he said this week, it was “a big surprise.” And, he said, “there was some shock — how did we let something like this go into such disrepair?”

In the 1970s, this was one of a handful of abandoned cemeteries that fell to the Park and Recreation Department’s care; staff estimates maybe $6,000 is spent here annually, about what City Hall spends each year on the rotting Reverchon Park baseball field. In recent days, parks staff pulverized a tree stump in the cemetery’s floodplain, but even without recent rains the infants’ graves still lie far, far below the mud and stagnant water.

Oscar Carmona, a longtime assistant parks director about to decamp for the top job in Raleigh, N.C., said this week that there was a recent meeting with parks, Dallas Water Utilities and Public Works to discuss finally solving the flooding problem that dates to at least 2004. But that work stalled out — why, Carmona can’t say. Miscommunication, perhaps.

“Or maybe someone was daydreaming during that meeting,” he said.“This is a process that has taken too long, in my opinion, especially since we have a volunteer willing to be a caretaker or steward,” said Carmona with the bluntness of someone walking out the door. “I hate that the city is making him wait while we get our stuff together. I would like this cemetery to be a classroom into the history of Dallas. And I would like for people to say Dallas takes care of its past.”

Babb has plans for this paupers cemetery — and a price tag. He would like to add to each gravesite a new marker — a black marble brick with the deceased’s correct name and dates of birth and death, for starters. Such an effort would cost around $40,000, and he has already raised about one-third of that through quiet, limited efforts.

“It is my hope to turn this back into a place of rest,” Babb said as we walked the cemetery. “Right now, I feel it’s a place of torture.”

“Torture?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Well, rich or poor, everyone wants to have peace in the afterlife,” he said. “Having your grave flooded nine months out of the year is not peaceful. Having your loved ones unable to find you is not peaceful. It’s a tragedy not just that they died in poverty, but that no one cared about them in life, no one cared about them in death and no one has cared about them since.”

No, not until now.

By Robert Wilonsky

Robert Wilonsky is Dallas Morning News editorial columnist.

Such is now the case with the Iconic Dallas City Hall, built by I.M. Pei, who has a total of 5 projects in this city. Dallas boasts proud ownership of more of Pei’s structures than any city on the planet, save New York City, which has 6. Pei passed away in 2019, so there won’t be any more coming forth.

The original construction cost of Dallas City Hall, completed in 1978, was about $70 million (or $330 million today). With repair estimates already ranging higher than the building’s cost, the net effect is that the building is now effectively totaled.

This pattern spans iconic buildings, public venues, and basic infrastructure, often drawing public ire when beloved or critical assets fall apart. A recent estimate of deferred maintenance for the city is $17 billion. But I guess that number just rose to $17.345 billion.

I should also explain that planning began for the current City Hall in 1964 as a response to the Kennedy Assassination in an effort to modernize Dallas’ image & infrastructure. At the time the seat of our city government was at what we call the Municipal Building, which was the scene where Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. So, its time on postcards was drawing to a close.

A Back Story

There is an undercurrent for this story to me that is personal. The nexus for this blog and my love of local history dates to an extra credit project I did in 11^th grade American History class at W.T. White High School. I received permission to use local history so I could do a visual presentation, having done research on the ground and taken pictures myself. I was also able to use the Dallas and Farmers Branch Public Libraries. At the Dallas Public Library, I found a book by the name of Dallas Rediscovered, by Ian MacDonald. It was published by the Dallas Historical Society, who currently occupies the Hall of State building at Fair Park.

This book electrified me. The problem with Dallas not respecting its old buildings was on full display in 1978 when the book was published. On each page, a property was featured using an old photograph. A short history was added and then and then the gruesome truth about its fate lay in the captions. I was aghast that most of the buildings had been torn down, only to have a vacant lot or a convenience store replace it. It was, and still is, beyond tragic.

That book still electrifies me to this very day, and its name serves as the title of this blog, for that very reason. I hope someday to work with the Dallas Historical Society to put out Part II, along with a second printing of the original. But I digress.

By the time I made my presentation, using an Opaque Projector (remember those?), I was all in! I told a joke to highlight the problem. Humor is my way of coping. I prefer laughter over tears. The joke went like this:

Q: What is a 30-year-old building in Dallas?
A: Marked for demolition!

The Pattern of underfunding and neglect

Below are several examples of how this systemic underfunding has plagued Dallas for more than 100 years. It starts with a case study on Parkland Hospital and is followed by several recent examples of the same pattern of neglect and underfunding.

Old Parkland Memorial Hospital (1954–2023)

On Harry Hines Boulevard

Significance:
This hospital was where President John F. Kennedy was pronounced dead in 1963, making it a site of national historical importance. It served Dallas for over six decades. I should note that since 1954 Dallas County assumed control over Parkland Hospital, ending shared governance with the City of Dallas which had been in place prior to this date. However, the fate of the hospital remained the same.

Deferred Maintenance & Demolition:
After the new Parkland Hospital opened in 2015, the old facility was left largely unused. By 2022, it had deteriorated severely, with obsolete systems and unrepairable infrastructure. Officials opted for phased demolition, completed in 2023. No attempt was made to save the historic entrance where the official public announcement of John F. Kennedy’s death was made. The operating room was also lost.

Public Reaction:
The decision sparked debate, especially since the building was never granted historical landmark status. Former staff and preservationists expressed sadness over the loss of a site with deep historical resonance. Officials defended the move as a cost-saving necessity.

Old Old Parkland Memorial Hospital (1913–1954)

aka The Red Brick Parkland and until 2015 aptly named “Old Parkland”

Significance:
This structure is located at Oak Lawn and Maple and is deemed “Old Parkland Hospital”, which was true at the time of its rescue in 2006. This hospital still stands, despite decades of neglect, that finally ended with the purchase by Crow Holdings who has restored the buildings at great expense and uses it as their headquarters. After the demolition of its successor, this is the only “Old” Parkland building still in existence.

Deferred Maintenance:
The hospital, built in 1913, was considered obsolete by the 1950s. Despite expansions in the 1930s—including new wings, a psychiatric ward, and a venereal disease clinic—the facility could no longer meet the demands of a growing city or modern medical standards.

Overcrowding and Expansion Needs:
By the early 1950s, Dallas’s population and healthcare needs had outgrown the old hospital. The site was too small and constrained to accommodate further expansion. The city and county opted to build a new Parkland Hospital, on Harry Hines, a mile away to better serve the community and support the newly formed Southwestern Medical College, which had been using the old hospital for clinical teaching.

Shift in Medical Education and Services:
The old hospital had become a hub for chronic care, tuberculosis treatment, and psychiatric services, but it lacked the infrastructure for advanced medical education and acute care. The move to a new facility aligned with Dallas’s ambition to become a center for academic medicine and research, especially with the growth of UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Post-Abandonment Use and Decline:

After the hospital relocated in 1954, the old building continued to serve various purposes, including housing long-term patients and later functioning as a low-security jail. However, it eventually fell into disrepair and vandalism, with only partial renovation attempts until it was left vacant for years.

A Rare Rescue:
This building was spared the wrecking ball, due to extensive renovations and rehabilitation by Crow Holdings which uses it as their headquarters. In 2006, Crow Holdings purchased the property and began a $300 million transformation into a private business campus. The redevelopment preserved the historic architecture while adding new office space, turning the site into one of Dallas’s most exclusive commercial addresses.

Old Old Old Parkland Memorial Hospital (1894–1913)

aka, the Wooden Parkland or the Original Parkland

Significance:
This was the original Parkland hospital that was made of wood and the nickname the Wooden Parkland is used to differentiate it from its successor on the same plot of land. It was located on a 17-acre tract that was originally intended as a City Park, hence the name Parkland.

Outdated facilities & Demolition:
Replaced Due to Overcrowding and Modernization Needs. By the early 20th century, Dallas’s population growth and medical demands had outpaced the capabilities of the wooden hospital. A meningitis epidemic in 1911 underscored the need for better facilities, prompting the construction of a brick hospital in 1913 on the same site. This original set of buildings lasted only 19 years.

Fair Park (1936–Present)

Significance:
Fair Park is home to Art Deco landmarks, museums, the Cotton Bowl, and the State Fair of Texas. It was the site of the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition and is considered a cultural treasure.

Deferred Maintenance & Risk of Demolition:
Decades of neglect led to crumbling facades, non-functional fountains, and leaky roofs. The Hall of State suffered millions in damage during the 2021 winter storm due to aging infrastructure. Without intervention, some structures faced potential demolition. This massive complex is expensive to maintain and many efforts to improve the situation have ended in failure. One recent success story is the recent completion of extensive Cotton Bowl improvements to bring the stadium up to modern standards.

Public Reaction:
Outrage grew as images of decay surfaced. Preservationists and park officials condemned the neglect, calling it a betrayal of Dallas’s heritage. A scandal erupted in 2024–25 over mismanagement of funds by a private partner tasked with upkeep. Make some popcorn, because this battle is far from over!

Reunion Arena (1980–2009)

Significance:
Reunion Arena was a city-owned indoor venue that hosted the Dallas Mavericks (NBA), Dallas Stars (NHL), major concerts, and the 1984 Republican National Convention. It was a central hub for sports and entertainment in Dallas.

Deferred Maintenance & Demolition:
By the early 2000s, the arena was losing money after its major tenants relocated. In 2008, the city voted unanimously to demolish the 28-year-old facility, citing the high cost of upkeep and lack of viable reuse plans. Demolition was completed in 2009.

Public Reaction:
While some residents mourned the loss of a beloved venue, most accepted the decision as fiscally necessary. Critics pointed out the city had no proactive plan to repurpose the site, and millions were spent maintaining an empty building before demolition.

It’s not just buildings anymore!

City Streets & Roads

Significance:
Dallas maintains over 11,000 lane-miles of roads, essential for mobility, commerce, and emergency services.

Deferred Maintenance & Impact:
The city has a $7 billion street repair backlog. Many roads went decades without repaving, leading to potholes and structural failures. Some bridges became unsafe and required full replacement.

Public Reaction:
Nearly half of Dallas residents rated street maintenance as “poor” in a 2024 survey. Complaints about vehicle damage and unsafe conditions are widespread. Neighborhood groups have protested the slow pace of repairs and demanded increased funding.

Traffic Signals & Street Lights

Significance:
These systems are vital for traffic safety and urban functionality.

Deferred Maintenance & Impact:
Over half of Dallas’s traffic signals are more than 40 years old. After the 2019 tornado, FEMA refused to fund modern replacements, not covering outdated equipment. Some intersections had temporary signals for over four years. The City had to foot the bill for over $30 billion in damages, because they weren’t conducting regular updates of our infrastructure.

Public Reaction:
Residents voiced frustration over prolonged outages and safety risks. Officials acknowledged the absurdity of maintaining obsolete systems. The situation became a symbol of bureaucratic failure and infrastructure neglect.

Call to Action:

In each case above, deferred maintenance snowballed over many years, eventually making the cost or feasibility of rehabilitation prohibitive. By the time the city or county took action, options were limited to either an expensive overhaul or teardown, often the latter. This trend isn’t new – it stretches back for 100+ years and continues to this today.

We need to stop this pattern in its tracks by updating the City’s charter so that maintenance cannot be deferred. If you don’t take your car in for maintenance, it will decline more rapidly and result in far larger charges in the future. It’s that simple. Say “NO” to deferred maintenance.

The writing I see on the wall, is that the American Airlines Center at Victory Plaza will become the next neglected building as the Mavs plan their exit in 2031. Otherwise, my prediction is that by 2041, we will face this same dilemma, and this cherished landmark will face the wrecking ball with everyone shrugging their shoulders and saying there is nothing more we could do.

The “new” Parkland Hospital will eventually suffer this fate and within months of opening was already overcrowded, despite the fact that it was intended to last for decades.

But as for Dallas City Hall, if we MUST now lose this architectural wonder, I say that our price tag should be $17.345 billion. They want it for a casino, let’s face it, and can easily make it up. Otherwise, they can go fleece some other city with their team as a dangling carrot. I’m sure Arlington is happy to give away the store, as they always are. We can use that money to catch the city up on deferred maintenance and break the cycle.

Bibliography of Sources

Dallas City Hall Maintenance Costs: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/26/dallas-city-hall-is-crumbling-should-we-save-it-or-start-over/

Reunion Arena History: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2008/11/17/reunion-arena-demolition-begins/

Old Parkland Hospital Redevelopment: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2006/06/29/parkland-s-old-campus-to-become-office-complex/

Fair Park Deferred Maintenance: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2024/01/30/fair-park-board-members-angry-over-years-of-neglect-and-mismanagement/

Dallas Traffic Signal Repairs After Tornado: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/12/after-4-1-2-years-dallas-finally-replaces-tornado-damaged-stoplights/

Dallas Street Conditions Survey: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/19/dallas-residents-rate-street-maintenance-as-poor-in-city-survey/

Dallas County Hospital District History: https://www.parklandhealth.org/parkland-history

Old Parkland Hospital History: https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2011/june/the-history-of-old-parkland/

Crow Holdings Redevelopment of Old Parkland: https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-ceo/2011/june/old-parkland-crow-holdings-dallas/

I.M. Pei Projects List: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_I._M._Pei_projects

Dallas Tornado FEMA Repairs: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2020/01/10/dallas-traffic-signals-damaged-by-tornado-wont-be-upgraded-fema-says/

Dallas City Hall Landmark Status Debate: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/03/01/dallas-city-hall-landmark-status-im-pei-demolition/