LETTERS

Who’s Right About White Flight?

It was my great misfortune to buy my copy of the August issue of D Magazine late in the evening at an all-night 7-11. My indignation kept me awake and scribbling furiously until the quiet hours of a stormy summer morning. I was incensed by Tracy Curts’ poorly researched and biased story, “Is White Flight Ruining the Dallas Schools?” I speak on behalf of the thousands of white parents and children who have not fled.

Mr. Curts obviously did not read the story about Dallas schools which appeared in the August 1975 issue of D Magazine. According to that story, the total enrollment at Longfellow Elementary School in 1974-75 was less than 250 children – grades kindergarten through seven, black and white. Enrollment fell the next year, 1975-76, to approximately 230 children – again including grades kindergarten through seven, black and white. No more than 40 percent of these 230 children were anglo; therefore, there could have been no more than 100 white children at Longfellow in 1975-76 – substantially less than the 323 quoted in the article, from which was calculated the percentage of anglo decline in that school.

Mr. Curts relates to us that, outside Longfellow last year, “a teacher was beaten up.” It is true that a teacher was struck once and her purse was taken. No one knows the identity of the guilty person. This is pronounced as a condemnation of the entire neighborhood. Is Mr. Curts suggesting that crime is a problem only south of Northwest Highway? Are there never any muggings or violence north of Northwest Highway?

Mrs. Linda Roberts’ opinions of Longfellow, product of one year’s experience there, are quoted extensively. I know of no one except Mrs. Roberts who is afraid to attend Longfellow meetings at night. We have lived in the Longfellow neighborhood for fifteen years. Our children have attended Longfellow School since 1968. I have walked home from school meetings – accompanied and unaccompanied. I have friends who have done the same. Whatever fears Mrs. Roberts has about our neighborhood, she obviously brought with her from her own neighborhood.

The dominant theme of Mr. Curts’ story is that parents who are fleeing from Dallas schools are fleeing not from prejudice but from an honest concern for academic achievement. Yet he cites a recent survey of public opinion which says, “A plurality of people named busing, integration, and racial conflicts as the number one problem facing the DISD.” These people did not declare poor academics as the number one problem facing the Dallas schools. They are concerned with busing, integration, and racial conflicts. That, Mr. Curts, is prejudice, whether you recognize it or not!

Whenever DISD is the topic of conversation, the first point usually made – delivered with all the gravity of a death knell – reads thus: “For the first time in DISD, whites are in the minority.” Is there anyone out there who will join us in a thunderous reply, “So what?” Ideally, the public schools should be a microcosm of our diverse society. Nevertheless, a school district with a “non-white” majority can survive and prosper. Since our beginnings as a nation, our non-anglo brothers have survived – and some have even prospered – as a minority. Black children have never had the comfort and ego reinforcement of outnumbering their white friends. Perhaps we can benefit from being a minority for a change. Perhaps we can learn to live on our individual merits without leaning on the strength of a great anonymous mass of white brothers.

Like most parents, my final judgment is largely influenced by my own children. Living as we do in a “private school” neighborhood, my children have many friends who attend private school. Perhaps – and that’s a big perhaps – the private school students enjoy a beginning edge in academics. I will argue that point. But there is no arguing this point: Unless a child plans to spend the remainder of his natural life on campus at Hockaday or St. Mark’s, then his private school cannot teach him to cope with the world in which he will live. Fifty years ago, this social isolation might have been a negligible disadvantage, but we no longer live in a monochromatic world. Children reared and educated in the sterile environment of “sameness,” which exists in many parts of Dallas and its suburbs, are just as poorly equipped to become productive, successful, and happy adults as are those children who do not acquire the basic academic skills. Education must prepare for life. It must foster attitudes and values and judgments as well as dispensing the rules of reading and mathematics. Diversity is strength, God preserve it; and only public schools possess the diversity to teach that vital lesson.

Is white flight ruining the Dallas schools? It is harming the Dallas schools. But far greater harm comes to the people who are fleeing from the chance to live in a larger and more challenging world.

Jane Greer Dallas



We feel the article, “Is White Flight Ruining the Dallas Schools?”, is decidedly one-sided, especially as it pertains to Longfellow school. We do not deny that white flight is a reality in the DISD, but we are tired of hearing only negative comments about the Dallas schools. No one ever seems to be interested in hearing from whites who are staying with the Dallas public schools.

We have had children at Longfellow for four years. There have been a few problems, but, on the whole, we feel our children have received a good academic education as well as an excellent lesson in human relations.

Until a month ago, we lived two blocks from Longfellow. Our children never felt unsafe or threatened as they walked to and from school. We would often walk to our nighttime P.T.A. meetings.

Recently, we moved to a home in the Withers school area. However, both of our children will be returning to Longfellow. Our daughter will be in the fourth grade and will be bused back. We plan for our son, a second grader, to return on a majority-minority transfer. Even though we do not care for busing, it is allowing us to return our children to the school where they can continue to receive a good education and be happy.

We realize that there are many whites in Dallas who do not agree with us. They are entitled to their opinions. However, if people only hear negative things about the Dallas public schools, they will believe that a good public education in the city of Dallas is a thing of the past.

In addition, we would like to suggest you check your figures concerning anglo enrollment at Longfellow in 75-76. Longfellow did not have 323 anglos enrolled. It did not have 323 students in the entire school.

What positive purpose can a one-sided article like this serve?

Mr. and Mrs. R.G. Scaggs

Dallas



Editor’s Note: The first column of numbers in the table was erroneously labeled. The figures in it were not the enrollment counts for the schools during 1975-76. They were, rather, DISD projected counts for the 1976-77 year, based on actual enrollment in each school plus their feeder schools. These are the figures on which Judge Taylor based his order. Longfellow did not have 323 anglos in 1975. That figure was the calculated enrollment for the 1976-77 year, when there were, in fact, only 157 anglos. The percentage of decline remains the same. The projected figure given for F.P. Caillet was a typographical error; it should have been 238 anglos.



Your article on Dallas schools was unique – it portrayed the situation exactly like it is.

Force has never been the best way to solve the problem of desegregation; but currently it is politically expedient.

A friend of mine in real estate tells me that her clients are unanimous in one aspect. They request not to be shown any homes in areas where their children would have to be bused. This has got to be hurting Dallas.

Irene PenceDallas

Oops! Oops!

Thumbs down to D Magazine’s proofreaders who “have (not) gone much farther toward eliminating costly duplication …” of copy stating “Tarrant County Hospitals have gone much further toward eliminating costly duplication of services and equipment than have their Dallas counterparts,” on pages 68 and 69 of the August ’77 issue.

Paige Hendricks

Dallas

Ice Cream Scoop

I appreciated your using ice cream from one of our stores in your “Sweet Relief article in the August issue. Even though our chocolate ice cream rated among the tops in town, I feel that you sampled the wrong flavor to judge anyone’s ice cream.

Chocolate is a flavor-masking flavor. It is so strong that it covers up the flavor of the true basic ice cream ingredients. Vanilla is the best flavor to judge because the true ingredient flavors come through. Our all-natural ice cream with pure fresh whipping cream has the cleanest, purest flavor of any ice cream that 1 have tasted.

I did take offense to the wording that you used, “Ashburn’s (though now merged in some odd way with the Polar Bear Ice Cream Chain).” I really see nothing odd about blood relatives. I would appreciate your setting the D Magazine readers straight on that count.

Bennie R. Brigham

President, Polar Bear Ice Cream

Company, Inc.

Dallas



Editor’s Note: The manager of the Polar Bear store in Oak Cliff was a nephew of Martin Ashburn; he first bought his ice cream from his uncle, then set up his own plant, using the Ashburn’s formula. Finally, in 1970, the production for the two companies was consolidated into one plant.



Republic’s Auto Bank

In D Magazine’s June issue, Charles Matthews terms the 1977 A.I. A. awards “controversial,” although he finds real fault with only one of nine awards. He describes Republic’s new Auto Bank as “an energy waster, traffic snarler, and a fouler of the environment,” although I have a feeling Mr. Matthews drives to his own bank (and wastes energy). Would he prefer to have the thousands of bank customers who use the Auto Bank driving through downtown (snarling traffic) instead? Motor banks being what they are, is there another he finds more attractive? He also uses the occasion of the Auto Bank’s victory to take pot shots at Republic’s office towers, although it would be difficult, I think, to find a building in Dallas, dedicated in the mid-fifties, that has faced the passing of time with more style or grace. Those “monotonous” stars are aluminum shields which helped cool the building long before “energy conservation” was a catch phrase.

What bothers me is not that the article was written by Mr. Matthews (D’s Managing Editor, taking time from his novels-and-movies beat to review children’s literature and classical music, as well as architecture), or that it provided another excuse to use the Republic Bank for target practice (at first amusing, now curious . . . )or even the fact that it could have been a much needed look at contemporary Dallas architecture. What bothers me is that it seems to be part of a Dallas trend toward vapid critique. There is a difference between prooking thought and provoking anger. Embarrassing attempts at cynical humor cannot replace informative appraisal. This review (only one of many examples) screaming controversy and trying for sarcasm, seems closer to Tattler or the National Lampoon than D would want to get. We suggest Mr. Matthews take a dose of Ada Louise Huxtable every four hours and call us next month.

Julie Chistensen Banks

Dallas

With the banking system on the threshold of paperless entries, a motor bank would seem obsolete, but cogent arguments were advanced by associates which convinced me of the wisdom of Republic’s investment in a new motor bank facility.

Intensive studies, the last of which was cornpleted on November 1, 1973, proved to us that the facility in the basement of our office building was operating at capacity and was not servicing the needs of our customers properly. Approximately 1,200 cars a day, and representing 4,935 accounts, used the facility from July 17, 1973, to August 17, 1973. Responses to questionnaires showed the old facility to have many bad features including waiting time, street congestion, traffic problems at entrances and exits, emission fumes, etc.

We could not tolerate the inferior facility for what appears to be a long and indefinite period. Studies of a new location for Republic’s motor bank by consulting engineers indicated the superior present site at Woodall Rodgers and Field Streets, and the property was already owned by our investment affiliate, Howard Corporation. Omniplan was selected to design Republic’s motor bank, and I am delighted with the award winning facility and the choice of architects. My exact words at our annual Shareholder’s Meeting of April 19 as taken from the official minutes are as follows:

“I would like to talk . . . about our marketing strength, our liquidity and our new drive-in bank, although I will say that our new drive-in bank because of its color and lack of landscaping has created quite a little comment inside and outside the bank so maybe we’re going to doll it up just a little bit.”

The landscaping process is now nearing completion and the result will speak for itself. Our customers appreciate the convenience of the new location and the physical shortcomings previously documented have been eliminated. On June 3, 2,551 cars used the facility and our average is about 35 percent higher than the record for the old facility.

James W. Keay

Chairman of the Board

Republic National Bank of Dallas



Where There’s Smoke

Upon receiving the July issue of D Magazine, we were pleasantly surprised to note an article entitled “Strictly the Pits.”

However, may we inquire as to Tom Peeler’s method of researching the subject? Apparently he was either misguided or misinformed regarding the statement, “Mr. Meat brand is said by many to be the best.” To whom does he refer by the word many?

As a manufacturer of far superior smokers, Smoke’N Pit and Country Cooker, we do not feel that Peeler was justified or correct in his statement and urge a retraction.

Smoke’N Pit Corporation and Country Cooker Corporation will gladly place our products side by side Mr. Meat for ultimate comparison, and feel sure that he will agree that our products are most definitely superior. We feel that Peeler was totally unjustified and unfair in his erroneous statement.

Lissa McCaskill

Advertising Coordinator

The Brineman Corporation

Dallas



Mr. Peeler replies: Good grief!



Good Deed

As an employee of the Consumer Product Safety Commission – and a citizen concerned with safety – I read with much interest the article “Emergency!” in the July, 1977 issue of your fine magazine.

My home is in Carrollton and we’ve found the 911 number easy to remember and quick to use. Sandy Estrada made a good case for its universal use and her comprehensive background was informative. The tear-out sheet of numbers was an excellent idea and each one should be in the proper location by everyone’s phone. A big salute to this fine work.

Thank you for exhibiting such concern for the safety of all citizens – it was a good and noble deed.

Elizabeth B. Hendricks

Carrollton