Interview with Joe Frank Ferguson, musician and vocalist, concerning his experiences as a musician/vocalist with Bob Will's "Texas playboys" and the "Light Crust Doughboys" western swing bands, 1936-42; comments about Bob Willis and band members Marvin Montgomery, Kenneth Pitts, Al Stricklin, "Smokey" Dacus, "Knocky" Parker, Leon McAuliffe, Eldon Shamblin; forming his own groups and playing the Fort Worth, Texas, night club circuit, 1950-70; comments about western swing, big band, and pop music.

Interview with Marvin "Smokey" Montgomery, musician, concerning his experiences as a member of the "Light Crust Doughboys" western swing band, 1935-42. Early musical career as a banjo player in a traveling tent show; employment with the 'Wanderers"; comments about Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel; work with Gene Autry and Republic Pictures; acquiring the nicknames "Junior" and later "Smokey"; "Doughboy recording sessions; comments about Bob Willis; comments about individual members of the "Doughboys" band; World War II and its effects on the "Doughboys"; employment making naval shells for Crown Machine and Tool in Fort Worth; relations between Bob Wills and 'Pappy' O'Daniel; moonlighting on the honky tonk circuit with the "Southern Selectors"; the "Doughboys" record sales; jamming with African-American musicians; performing with the "Duncan Coffee Grinders" during World War II; his return to the "Doughboys" after World War II; performances with the "Texo Hired Hands"; performing with the "Levee Singers" in the Levee Club in Dallas during th the 1960s; comments about rockabilly performer Ronnie Dawson; comments about the record business; his career as a music arranger; operation of the Sumet-Bernet Recording Studios in Fort Worth; employment as music director for the "Big D Jamboree," 1941-60; his song writing career; experiences with "Lefty" …

Interview with Sheila Allen concerning her experiences as a resident of Hamilton Park, Texas from 1958 to 1991. Allen discusses her education at Hamilton Park School, the desegregation of Hamilton Park School, her experiences at Richardson Junior High, her experiences in law school at the University of Texas, the relationships between Hamilton Park and other African-American communities, school activities as a teenager, and the "Buy Out."

My Darling Boys is the story of a New Mexico farm family whose three sons were sent to fight in World War II. All flew combat aircraft in the Army Air Forces. In 1973 one of the boys, Oscar Allison, a B-24 top turret gunner and flight engineer, wrote a memoir of his World War II experiences. On a mission to Regensburg, Germany, his bomber, ravaged by German fighters, was shot down. He was captured and spent fifteen months in German stalag prisons. His memoir, the core of this unique book, details his training, combat, and prisoner-of-war experience in a truthful, introspective, and compelling manner. Fred H. Allison, the author and Oscar’s nephew, gained access to family letters that supplement Oscar’s story and bring to light the experiences of Oscar’s brothers. Harold Allison, the author’s father, was sidelined from combat as a bomber copilot due to a health condition. The letters also tell of the brother who did not come home, Wiley Grizzle Jr., a P-51 fighter pilot. Wiley’s last mission brought his squadron of Mustangs into a pitched battle with German fighters bound for the front to attack American troops. The letters also introduce the boys’ family, who fought …

Interview with R.A. Wolfe concerning his experiences during and after his employment in the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. Wolfe worked at camps in Waxahachie, Texas (Company 878) and Dallas, Texas (Company 2896).

Interview with O.L. Davis concerning his experiences while employed by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. Davis worked at a camp in Carlsbad, New Mexico (Company 2868).

Interview with Mary Anna Sewalt concerning her participation in the development of the Republican Party in Texas (1944-1993). Sewalt discusses her youth in West Texas, her employment with WPA (Works Progress Administration) during the New Deal years, her decision to join the Republican Party in 1947, her conservative philosophy, organizing the Republican Party of Denton County, the 1952 presidential campaign, activities with the Texas Federation of Republican Women, her positions on abortion, the Religious Right, and women's rights in general.

Interview with Curtis Smith, an airline employee and community leader, concerning his experiences as a resident of Hamilton Park, Texas from 1956 to 1990. Smith discusses his early life in East Texas, his employment in Dallas, his service in the U.S. Navy during World War II, job promotions with Braniff, African-American housing in Dallas, his decision to purchase a home in Hamilton Park in 1956, flooding problems, shopping in the community, traffic and access problems, social activities, church activities, Civic League, Hamiltonians, Interorganizational Council, political activities, zoning controversies, Willowdell Park, and the "Buy Out."

During World War II the United States mobilized its industrial assets to become the great “Arsenal of Democracy” through the cooperation of the government and private firms. The Dallas Story examines a specific aviation factory, operated by the North American Aviation (NAA) company in Dallas, Texas. Terrance Furgerson explores the construction and opening of the factory, its operation, its relations with the local community, and the closure of the facility at the end of the war. Prior to the opening of the factory in 1941, the city of Dallas had practically no existing industrial base. Despite this deficiency, the residents quickly learned the craft of manufacturing airplanes, and by the time of the Pearl Harbor attack the NAA factory was mass-producing the AT-6 trainer aircraft. The entry of the United States into the war brought about an enlargement of the NAA factory, and the facility began production of the B-24 Liberator bomber and the famed P-51 Mustang fighter. By the end of the war the Texas division of NAA had manufactured nearly 19,000 airplanes, making it one of the most prolific U.S. factories.

Interview with John Haynie, professor of trumpet at the University of North Texas from Ralls, Texas, regarding his career at the College of Music at UNT, the growth and development of the school, his colleagues, students, and family.

Interview with Curtis O. Greer, Jr., a former member of the Civilian Conservation Corps from Fort Worth, Texas, regarding his experiences and memories of participating in the CCC during the Great Depression. An appendix with an outline for the interview is included.

Identified with Texas is the first published biography of Texas Governor Elisha Marshall Pease (1812-1883), presented by historian Elizabeth Whitlow as a dual biography of Pease and his wife, Lucadia Niles Pease (1813-1905). Pease volunteered to fight in the first battle of the Revolution at Gonzales, and he served with the Texan Army at the Siege of Bexar. Pease served in the first three state legislatures after Texas joined the Union in 1845, was elected governor in 1853 and re-elected in 1855, and returned to the governorship as an interim appointee from 1867 to 1869 during Reconstruction. His achievements in all these positions were substantial. Lucadia Niles Pease was known as the Governor’s “Lady.” Moreover, her early, independent travel and her stated position as a “woman’s rights woman” in the 1850s, as well as her support for sending a daughter away to college in the 1870s to earn a degree, all serve as markers of her intelligence and the strength of her convictions. To tell their story, Whitlow mined thousands of letters and papers saved by the Pease family and housed in the Austin History Center of the Austin Public Library, as well as in the Governor’s Papers at the …

“There are some poets we admire for a mastery that allows them to tell a story, express an epiphany, form a conclusion, all gracefully and even memorably— yet language in some way remains external to them. But there are other poets in whom language seems to arise spontaneously, fulfilling a design in which the poet’s intention feels secondary. Books by these poets we read with a gathering sense of excitement and recognition at the linguistic web being drawn deliberately tighter around a nucleus of human experience that is both familiar and completely new, until at last it seems no phrase is misplaced and no word lacks its resonance with what has come before. Such a book is Austin Segrest’s Door to Remain.”— Karl Kirchwey, author of Poems of Rome and judge

Utilizing many sources new to publication, James L. Haley delivers a most readable and enjoyable narrative history of Texas, told through stories—the words and recollections of Texans who actually lived the state’s spectacular history. From Jim Bowie’s and Davy Crockett’s myth-enshrouded stand at the Alamo, to the Mexican-American War, and to Sam Houston’s heroic failed effort to keep Texas in the Union during the Civil War, the transitions in Texas history have often been as painful and tense as the “normal” periods in between. Here, in all of its epic grandeur, is the story of Texas as its own passionate nation.

America’s Wild West created an untold number of notorious characters, and in southwestern Texas, John King Fisher (1855– 1884) was foremost among them. To friends and foes alike, he insisted he be called “King.” He found a home in the tough sun-beaten Nueces Strip, a lawless land between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. There he gathered a gang of rustlers around him at his ranch on Pendencia Creek. For a decade King and his gang raided both sides of the Rio Grande, shooting down any who opposed them. Newspapers claimed King killed potential witnesses—he was never convicted of cattle or horse stealing, or murder. King’s reign ended when he was arrested by Texas Ranger Captain Leander McNelly. In no uncertain terms he advised Fisher to change his ways, so King became deputy sheriff of Uvalde County. But his hard-won respectability would not last. On a spring night in 1884, King made the mistake of accompanying the truly notorious gambler and gunfighter Ben Thompson on a tour of San Antonio, where several years prior Thompson shot down Jack Harris at the latter’s saloon and theater, the Vaudeville. Recklessly, King Fisher accompanied Thompson back to the theater, where assassins were …

Interview with Ray Ogle, U.S. Army veteran (2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, Texas National Guard) and a member of the "Lost Battalion," concerning his experiences as a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese during World War II. Ogle discusses the fall of Java and his capture, Bicycle Camp in Batavia (1942), Changi Prison Camp in Singapore (1942), building the Burma-Thailand Death Railway (1942-1944), Kanchanaburi, Thailand (1944), railway maintenance work (1944-1945), and his liberation. The Appendix includes photocopies of World War II correspondence provided by Mr. Ogle.

Established in Waco in 1968, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum honors the iconic Texas Rangers, a service that has existed, in one form or another, since 1823. Thirty-one individuals—whose lives span more than two centuries—have been enshrined in the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame. They have become legendary symbols of Texas and the American West. In The Ranger Ideal Volume 3, Darren L. Ivey presents capsule biographies of the twelve inductees who served Texas in the twentieth century. In the first portion of the book, Ivey describes the careers of the “Big Four” Ranger captains—Will L. Wright, Frank Hamer, Tom R. Hickman, and Manuel “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas—as well as those of Charles E. Miller and Marvin “Red” Burton. Ivey then moves into the mid-century and discusses Robert A. Crowder, John J. Klevenhagen, Clinton T. Peoples, and James E. Riddles. Ivey concludes with Bobby Paul Doherty and Stanley K. Guffey, both of whom gave their lives in the line of duty. Using primary records and reliable secondary sources, and rejecting apocryphal tales, The Ranger Ideal presents the true stories of these intrepid men who enforced the law with gallantry, grit, and guns. This Volume 3 is the finale …

William L. Wright (1868–1942) was born to be a Texas Ranger, and hard work made him a great one. Wright tried working as a cowboy and farmer, but it did not suit him. Instead, he became a deputy sheriff and then a Ranger in 1899, battling a mob in the Laredo Smallpox Riot, policing both sides in the Reese-Townsend Feud, and winning a gunfight at Cotulla. His need for a better salary led him to leave the Rangers and become a sheriff. He stayed in that office longer than any of his predecessors in Wilson County, keeping the peace during the so-called Bandit Wars, investigating numerous violent crimes, and surviving being stabbed on the gallows by the man he was hanging. When demands for Ranger reform peaked, he was appointed as a captain and served for most of the next twenty years, retiring in 1939 after commanding dozens of Rangers. Wright emerged unscathed from the Canales investigation, enforced Prohibition in South Texas, and policed oil towns in West Texas, as well as tackling many other legal problems. When he retired, he was the only Ranger in service who had worked under seven governors. Wright has also been honored as an …

Denton County and the City of Denton are named for pioneer preacher, lawyer, and Indian fighter John B. Denton, but little has been known about him. He was an orphan in frontier Arkansas who became a circuit-riding Methodist preacher and an important member of a movement of early settlers bringing civilization to North Texas. After becoming a ranger on the frontier, he ultimately was killed in the Tarrant Expedition, a Texas Ranger raid on a series of villages inhabited by various Caddoan and other tribes near Village Creek on May 24, 1841. Denton’s true story has been lost or obscured by the persistent mythologizing by publicists for Texas, especially by pulp western writer Alfred W. Arrington. Cochran separates the truth from the myth in this meticulous biography, which also contains a detailed discussion of the controversy surrounding the burial of John B. Denton and offers some alternative scenarios for what happened to his body after his death on the frontier.

Interview with Barton B. Wallace, Jr., engineer and Army veteran (Quartermaster Corps Graves Registration Service-China Zone), concerning his experiences with Recovery Team No. 4 in the recovery of the remains of American military personnel in China, 1945-46. Appendix consists of letters, chronology, Separation Qualification Record, and extracts from various forms.

Transcript of an interview with Gary Olp, an architect and the founder of GGO Architects (the first green architecture firm in Dallas). He discusses how he became involved in sustainable architecture and with LEED rating systems, as well as his community outreach activities related to various green practices.

Transcript of an interview with Wallace "Tim" Duke, World War II Army veteran, 86th Infantry and retired Santa Fe Railroad agent. Duke shares concerning his childhood in rural North Texas; the Great Depression; war work at Consolidated Steel Shipyard; draft into infantry; training at Camp Howze and Camp Livingston; European Theater; push from Cologne to Altena, Germany; the Ruhr Pocket; push into Austria; V-E Day; reassignment to Pacific Theater; Philippines; post-war work experience; post-war life in Dallas. Appendix includes photos of Duke and his twin brother circa World War II, newspaper clippings, and a map of the fighting record of the Blackhawk Division (12 p).

Transcript of an interview with Paul Hudgins, U.S. Army World War II Veteran, illustrator, and author. Hudgins discusses his childhood in Texas; family history; enlistment in U.S. Army as a medic; staged in France on V-E Day; stationed on hospital train running between Germany and France; post-war college; artistic career; writing career; Honor Flight trip. Appendix includes illustrations and short stories by Hudgins as well as photographs.

Transcript of an interview with Ed Bearden from Ellis County, Texas, concerning his experiences while employed by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.