As Dallas grows up. power derived from position – either elected or appointed – is , on the rise. Under the old rules, City Council members who strayed from the sanctioned fold were quietly replaced.. An arts curator who became too temperamental was moved on for fear he would disrupt the flow of fundraising. Today, as everyone knows. relatively new and disparate forces (neighborhood groups, blacks, gays) help elect their own stalwarts to public office-and often support them as long as they’re there. This can only increase as Dallas continues to work to assure voices from many different communities a place at the microphone. The news media also play a role by giving folks in elected and appointed positions far greater visibility and credibility now than in the past-making a quiet re-’placement very difficult to engineer. For these reasons and more, position is the stratum of power where women, black, Hispanics, and liberals tend to thrive. The most obvious examples are council members Diane Ragsdale and Lori Palmer, County Commissioner John Wiley Price, and most of the Dallas Independent School District board members. The white male power structure of Dallas probably would have loved to banish any or all of the above at one time or another. But they have little power to do so. The power of position is, however, limited. Terms of office, the need to be reelected or reappointed, and the desire to move on to better-paying private sector jobs an the check that tilt the balance. Angry demagogues may tire; those squeamish about contentious rhetoric may retire to the sidelines. But it’s the need to earn a living that most often takes people away from public service, and that’s likely to remain a problem. Dallas voters have turned down attempts to raise salaries for the mayor and council to a comfortable level, and they’re likely to do it again if it comes to a vote in December. That means that citizens of modest income will continue to be torn between making a living and serving the city, which is yet another limitation on the power of position. As it is now, those who possess the most money or those who can win lasting influence through a high profile tend to endure.
Mayor ANNETTE STRAUSS has presided over Dallas during a period of severe economic recession and transition in the political power structure. It would have been hard for almost any leader to enjoy success and respect during this period, and Strauss has had her troubles.
The city’s first woman to be elected mayor, Strauss is generally well liked personally, but she is widely perceived as weak in a time when most of her critics want a strong mayor to “control” city government. “Annette’s decisions depend on whom she talked to last,” says a former supporter. Conservative council members say that Strauss lets council members Lori Palmer and Diane Ragsdale “run all over her.” Others would argue that Palmer and Ragsdale simply beat Strauss at her own game-they come to the table prepared, and she’s easily intimidated by those who do their homework.
Before entering politics, Strauss was a premier Dallas socialite and charity fundraiser. Her future as mayor is unclear. With the restructuring of city government, she may choose to fade into the woodwork.
District Attorney JOHN VANCE, who is running unopposed this fall, has had PR problems with celebrated cases like those of Randall Dale Adams and Walker Railey. But he has proved that when he sets priorities he can get the job done. Early in his tenure as DA, Vance declared war on porn, and now he boasts that he’s reduced the number of adult bookstores by half. The net was widened to include 2 Live Crew and Andrew Dice Clay. Who’s next?
Council member LORI PALMER is the council’s resident neighborhood activist. She is considered even by opponents to be the brightest member of the council. Palmer’s ability has gained her influence with the mayor and respect from the conservative wing of the council. She came under attack from grass-roots Hispanic groups for voting to approve a 12-1 council system. At one point, they threatened to force a recall election on her.
Palmer’s district includes much of the city’s liberal and progressive residents, including Dallas’s gay community. She flirted briefly with running for Congress this year, but will probably go for another council term in 1991.
RON ANDERSON, the CEO of Parkland Memorial Hospital since 1982, is exactly the kind of against-the-grain leader who could never have existed in the old Dallas. He’s intelligent and focused, with a clear mission to improve public health services in Dallas County and establish Parkland as a leader in health education and programs for the disadvantaged. He has survived despite critics’ charges of mismanagement and a few losses-he’s realistic and resilient.
Dallas County Commissioner JOHN WILEY PRICE is one of the most visible-and activist-black politicians in Dallas. He’ll still leap into the fray with cries of racism-witness his recent defense of beleaguered police chief Mack Vines-and he’s been a major force in getting setasides and minority contractors working with the county. But when it comes to budgets, Price can pinch a penny with the best of them.
Price ignited an acrid debate in the black community when he began painting over billboards advertising liquor and cigarettes. But the flap kept him on the front page, not a bad spot for someone eager to run for Congress in 1992.
Congressman STEVE BARTLETT, R-Dallas. is bright, hard-working, and a champion of conservative causes. Bartlett won the seat in the 1982 Republican primary when he was a thirty-five-year-old Dallas councilman, beating former state legislator Kay Bailey Hutchison by emphasizing gun control and abortion. He is considered an up-and-comer in Washington, and he retains a strong base of support in Dallas with frequent newsletters, annual picnics, etc., designed to demonstrate his concern for his constituents. There’s talk of a Bartlett-for-mayor push next year.
Council member JIM BUERGER spent millions in a losing effort against Mayor Strauss in 1987 and is burning to run for mayor again. He’s smart and has good intentions, but his Boy Scout-ish attitude can be somewhat grating. Although he votes with the business majority, some business leaders don’t trust him to hold higher office. But with his fat campaign war chest, they may not be able to stop him. Buerger is serving his first term on the council.
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, the first black state senator from North Texas since reconstruction, is a power in the black community-just how much of a power, we’ll see when she and Price lock horns for a congressional seat in ’92.
In the Seventies, Johnson won three terms in the Texas House. She was the first woman to chair a major House committee. She also served as vice chair of the state Democratic party. In 1977, Johnson resigned in midterm to join the Carter administration as regional HEW director.
RICHARD UPTON, president of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, is rebuilding the chamber, which had fallen on hard times. But the chamber remains in the shadow of the Citizens Council in influence. The fifty-four-year-old Upton is frequently criticized for being aloof; his military-style demeanor takes some getting used to.
Congressman JOHN BRYANT, D Dallas, used Jim Wright’s muscle in his first term to land a seat on the most coveted legislative committee for a Texan. Energy and Commerce. A rebellious liberal in high school. Bryant was elected to the Texas Legislature in 1974, two years after finishing SMU Law School, and won his current district in 1982. His recent stand against a flag-burning amendment and his continuing cries for “economic nationalism” (Japan-bashing, critics say) have increased his national reputation as a spokesman for Democratic causes.
GUADALUPE “LUPE” GARCIA, the owner of Calvario Funeral Home, is the chairman of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. He is one of two Hispanics on the Dallas chamber board. His wife, Dr. Yolanda L. Garcia, is busy on the civic circuit as well, serving on the board of the Dallas Opera and the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce. She presently co-chairs a mayoral commission on the homeless.
ORIS DUNHAM, the executive director of D/FW International Airport since 1986, is straightforward and focused. His power comes from the importance of D/FW to the area and the support of American Airlines boss Robert Crandall- and he clearly demonstrates the fragility of appointed power. Recently, after American made noise about taking business to Love Field, Dunham found himself re-explaining a statement he had made in a news conference that there would likely be years of litigation if American took its business away from D/FW. When the Dallas Times Herald proclaimed in a front-page headline that D/FW would sue American, Dunham ate his words for breakfast in an early-morning call to Crandall.
DISD board member YVONNE EWELL, a retired Dallas school district administrator, is considered by many to be the brightest light on the Dallas school board. She is smart, articulate, an education scholar, and she has strong relationships in both the black and the Anglo community. If Ewell decides to lead to her fullest capabilities, she can help take DISD through the next level of reforms.
County Judge LEE JACKSON may be the unsung powerhouse in local government. Quiet (some would say dull), extremely bright and able, Jackson is credited with establishing a newfound harmony in county government. A former Republican state representative, he’s a consensus player who minimizes partisan ties on the court, and he has steered that body away from the demagoguery that once plagued it. Barring a disaster, Jackson will easily survive Max Goldblatt’s last (maybe) hurrah and win another term this fall. And if the talk of regionalized government ever goes anywhere, Jackson will be in the catbird seat.
MONICA SMITH is the dogmatic, plodding president of the Dallas Police Association, which has functioned like a government in exile over the past several years. A soft-spoken former nun, she’s been a crown of thorns for chief Mack Vines. She’s a strong example of the continuing decentralization of power in the city-a Hispanic woman who often crosses swords with the black members of the council over police issues.
The executive director of the Dallas Housing Authority, ALPHONSO JACKSON, is a bundle of contradictions-a conservative hard-liner preaching self-reliance to welfare recipients-who may make a real difference if he’s not lured away to Washington for a top government job. He’s respected in housing circles nationally and a close friend of HUD Secretary Jack Kemp and Ron Brown, chair of the National Democratic Party. The Dallas native wars against the “slimy degenerates’-the pimps and druggies that slither through his projects-but he drew fire from community activists when he evicted homeless people who had moved into abandoned housing units on DHA properties.
MARVIN EDWARDS, the DISD superintendent since 1988, gets mixed reviews. He was expected to make sweeping changes; instead he has taken a slow approach. Some complain that Edwards has vision but lacks the strength to implement it. The superintendent is faced with a disheartening job. He must deal with a divided, bickering school board, a multilingual student body, and a system with a high dropout rate and rampant drug use. though Edwards has not become a leader in either the public sector or the black community, he is an enormous power because he holds the future of 130,000 Dallas school children in his hands.
City Council member JERRY BARTOS is tied to his northwest Dallas constituents, who tend to be white, pro-police, pro-business, and conservative. Bartos contends that “liberal” policies are driving the middle class out of Dallas, and often vehemently opposes tax increases and bond issues. But it is his obsession with lifting the Wright Amendment, which restricts air traffic at the city-owned Love Field, that has run him aground with the city’s business leaders. Look for him to be opposed in the next city election.
TOM LAZO is the new chairman of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and also chairs Hispanic Political Action of Dallas. He’s a newcomer in civic circles, but was recently tapped to join the Dallas Assembly. Lazo is president of Custom Programming Services, Inc., a computer data services firm, and serves on several boards dedicated to identifying minority firms to do city business.
City Council member CHARLES C. TANDY, M.D. is completing his second term as a council member from Southwest Dallas. The quiet, bespectacled anesthesiologist is often ignored in the council hubbub, but he may play a dominant role in the future of Oak Cliff-he is leading the fight to keep it from being fragmented into four separate council districts.
City Manager JAN HART, who was promoted to the post in March, seems undaunted by the difficult circumstances she’s facing, from the budget crunch to the Mack Vines controversy-or is she just shell-shocked? She’s able, serious, and a very hard worker, and her style seems to suit the council just fine. In fact, Hart may just be the best thing to hit Dallas in a long time.
RICK BRETTELL, director of the Dallas Museum of Art, has alienated some board members and irritated a tew potential contributors, but his style – strung, brash, visionary-is emblematic of the New Dallas Way. He has strong support among the general arts community, due both to his scholarship and his egalitarian vision.
Radical in ideas but not tactics, JOHN THOMAS, executive director of the AIDS Resource Center, has developed a strong network over the last ten years. He is bright, not a master politician but in a key place to voice the gay community’s concerns and rebuild bridges all but fire-bombed by his activist predecessors. Thomas also serves on the board of governors of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, a national political action committee that supports gay and lesbian issues.
A. KENNETH RYE, president of Southern Methodist University, came to SMU in the wake of | Ponygate from Duke University, where he had held many posts, including acting president. Speaking a mysterious new dialect-something about academics taking priority over athletics-Pye initiated an investigation of the athletic scandal and also began to close the budget deficit through austerity measures, higher tuition, and fundraising.
KEEP AN EYE ON . . .
JIM GRAHAM, an oil and gas man known to be cocky and brazen, was elected last year as president of the Park and Recreation Board after his Rambo-style negotiating won the city a better deal on the Starplex amphitheater complex than it had been able to cut on its own. A former owner of the Dallas Sidekicks. Graham has been active in helping Dallas reach for the 1994 World Cup soccer tournament.
First-term council member GLENN E. BOX is emerging as an unbending strategist for conservative causes. He was steadfast in his insistence that 10-4-1 stay on the table during the redistricting fight, and was the only council member to vote against putting 14-1 before voters in December because he opposed giving the voters only one choice. Unless he gets derailed by the new council districts, which may cut away some of his conservative support in East Dallas, Box is someone to watch.
The self-styled Mayor of West Dallas, MATTIE NASH has worked tirelessly on behalf of her fellow West Dallasites almost all of her sixty-plus years. One of Mayor Strauss’s advisers on the low-income projects there, Nash has led the fight to preserve housing resources. She hung tough to win an all-single-member-districts council election plan, a position later validated by court mandate. Nash is a tireless grassroots worker who was instrumental in the closing of her neighborhood’s lead smelter.
DEAN VANDERBILT, VP for financial services for Recognition Equipment Inc. and a former City Council member (’83-’88) is well respected as a genius with numbers and a tough negotiator. Though Vanderbilt was “called home” by REI and forced to resign from the council, he may reemerge as a future leader-he is presently executive vice president of the North Texas Commission.
CHARLES “CHUCK” ANDERSON, the consummate bureaucrat who segued from city manager to executive director of DART, is tenacious if nothing else. After the nadir of the 1988 referendum loss, he’s moved to polish the image of the city’s still largely theoretical transit system.
WARREN ILIFF, as the enormously popular director of the Dallas Zoo, is committed to building a world-class facility there. Like the DMA’s Brettell. Iliff has blown in like a fresh breeze, preaching the joys of pluralism and environmental awareness along with the mating habits of the orangutan.
VIVIAN JOHNSON took up public service twenty-one years ago when she was named the first staff member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Three years ago. she was appointed to the Dallas Park and Recreation Board, a unique body in Dallas government because of its small size and administrative (not just policy-setting) role. Johnson is well respected for her intellect and her drive-she recently helped locate a permanent home for the Junior Black Academy of Arts & Letters-though her strident tones, especially during the flap over the future of the Juanita Craft house, scared some supporters away.
BETTY CULBREATH, a dose friend and longtime assistant to County Commissioner John Wiley Price, won a bloody battle to chair the Dallas City Plan Commission and achieved a city milestone in the process-she is the first black to hold that post. Culbreath earned her stripes in the campaign trenches, working for Jim Buerger and former mayor Starke Taylor as well as Price. Appointed to the plan commission in 1987 by Al Lipscomb, Culbreath is distrusted by some neighborhood groups, who view her as pro-development. Her abrasive style also tends to worry some. She may use her position to promote her own candidacy, probably for City Council.
HARRY ROBINSON JR. has been director of The Museum of African-American Life and Culture for the past sixteen years, where his recent focus has been the capital campaign to raise $3 million for a new facility at Fair Park. Robinson, who has a master’s and doctorate in library science, has been a strong minority voice in the arts community on the board of trustees of the Dallas Museum of Art, the board of directors of the Dallas Theater Center, and as founding vice-chairman of the Friends of the Dallas Arts District.
As owner and publisher of Dallas’s premier black newspaper, The Dallas Weekly, JIM WASHINGTON has the power to persuade, both in his readership universe and in other pockets of the community where respect for him is great. Even when Washington is prodding with admonitions to “do the right thing,” his style is so loose and his charm so ingratiating that few take offense.
Dallas Urban League president BEVERLY MITCHELL, a molecular biologist who landed in public service by accident, has directed the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, the Greater Dallas Community Relations Commission, and until recently ran the community traps for DART-a taxing task considering the circumstance. As head of the Urban League, Mitchell will doubtless bring that institution a higher local profile. Her intelligence and warmth should help win corporate and community support for the league’s trademark job skills and scholarship programs.
At-large City Council member HARRIET MIERS is relatively new to the city government scene. As the first female president of the Dallas Bar Association. Miers was not new to leadership in Dallas, but many wondered how her lawyerly style-often given to lengthy orations-would translate to the council battlefield. Answer: very nicely. She won respect for sparring on the settlement of the city’s lengthy court battle over low-income housing and for speaking in favor of the 14-1 council plan, if not the process by which it was achieved. Miers’s blasts at the city attorney and other council members were a hint that there’s might behind that genteel demeanor.
POWER OF THE FEDERAL COURTS
Like many a Southern city, Dallas spent decades fearing and deriding the federal government, or fed’l gummint, as our forebears put it. While other cities depended on Washington’s largesse to build roads and provide services, Dallas eschewed that approach, knowing that there were faint but unseverable strings attached to the federal honey pot. Only as recently as J. Erik Jonsson’s mayorship (in the early Seventies) did the ” powermongers grudgingly accept federal funds for needed infrastructure and services.
As a result of this parsimonious approach, the federal courts had little impact on Dallas until relatively recent limes. Unfortunately, Dallas has shared one important trait with the rest of the stale and the South in general: the unwillingness to grant all citizens equal treatment until sued into doing so.
The federal courts have now intruded on Dallas decision-making in ways previous generations never dreamed of. Using the Voting Rights Act, Judge Jerry Buchmeyer is not only redesigning the way the Dallas City Council is elected, he’s shifting power from whites to blacks. (Hispanics may be too dispersed to benefit significantly hum Judge Buchmeyer’s decision.)
This power is new and almost incomprehensible to the traditional Dallas power structure. Federal judges, appointed for life, are beyond the usual community influences. They care nothing for the pedigrees or club memberships of those who come before them. They don’t need money to run for reelection and they are not looking for a private sector job after a career in public office, so they don’t care what the boys downtown think about their rulings.
The federal court power, therefore, is difficult to control or even to anticipate. It is not absolute-decisions can be appealed. But this is a long and exhausting process of swimming upstream. Like it or not, the federal judgeship has become one of the true seats of power in Dallas. Thai’s a sad commentary, since the involvement of federal judges often means that a community’s leaders have abdicated their responsibilities.
The judges who have had the most impact to dale are Buchmeyer and Barefoot Sanders, both Democrats on an increasingly Republican federal district court. Buchmeyer, appointed in 1979 by President Carter, handled the Dallas housing discrimination suit and struck down the state’s sodomy law. And then he was handed the City Council election discrimination suit, giving him in effect the power to redesign our system of electing council members.
Buchmeyer, who was born in East Texas, took his law degree from The University of Texas. He spent twenty-one years with Thompson and Knight before being appointed to the federal bench.
Sanders, the veteran politician, came to the bench after a career in Democratic party politics and years in Lyndon Johnson’s Justice Department. He has handled the D1SD school desegregation case and held the state in contempt several times in an effort to improve the care and treatment of both the mentally ill and the mentally retarded.
The Republican judges on the Dallas bench are Robert B. Maloney, Joe Fish, and Sid Fitzwater. In comparison to their Democratic peers, the three Reagan appointees have had less local impact-in part owing to their less activist judicial philosophy, in part due to the nature of the cases that have fallen to them. But Judge Fish is expected to lead a Nineties push to crack down on white-collar crime.
POWER
PROFILE
DIANE RAGSDALE, A FIREBRAND, A SHOUTER-AND A GENTLE WOMAN WHO READS POETRY AND WANTS TO BE MORE SERENE.
When Dallas councilwoman Diane Ragsdale lifts her eyes from the reports and documents cluttering her desk in City Hall, her gaze locks onto a drawing hung on the opposite wall. The work of a black Dallas artist, it depicts a woman raising a rose to her face, perhaps to inhale its fragrance, perhaps to kiss its softness.
“I have that there so I will see it every time I look up,’’ Ragsdale says of the picture. “II reminds me to stop and take a deep breath and blow it out. I need to be more serene.”
Serenity is the last quality other City Council members and most Dallas voters would associate with Diane Ragsdale. Admirers and detractors alike describe her as a firebrand, a shorter, a physically small woman hardly able to contain a gargantuan rage. ’’People think I am always angry, but that’s because most people don’t know anything about me except what they see on the TV news,” Ragsdale insists. “The media always show me shouting or pounding the table. But I’m not always like that. Sometimes you hit the ball hard and sometimes you hit it softly. I’ll do whatever it takes to get results.”
There can be little doubt that Ragsdale does, in fact, get results. Since she first won a City Council seat in a 1984 special election, she has wheedled $65 million in public works projects for her forty-four-square-mile, predominantly black district. She was a powerful force in winning city support for the South Dallas-Fair Park Trust Fund and the Southern Dallas Development Corporation, organizations pumping money and jobs into the city’s poorest neighborhoods. She also has fought successfully for police reform, low-income housing, South Dallas-Fair Park rezoning, and an expanded human services budget. More recently, she steered the council toward putting the 14-1 plan before the voters in December.
“Those are tangible things I am proud of,” Ragsdale says. “But my biggest accomplishment is intangible. People say to me, ’Diane, we had a long conversation about you on the job today.’ I am raising the consciousness of the white community. 1 am forcing them to talk about government and participate.”
As she discusses her six years on the council, Ragsdale slouches into her chair, bobs up, and slouches again. She fidgets constantly with her hands. But she does not light one of the cigarettes that once were as much a part of her as the African fila she always wears, “I went to Schick, and gave it up. I don’t even want a cigarette anymore,” she says proudly. Then, she brays in unexpected laughter. Ragsdale laughs easily, often at jokes that only she understands.
Except, perhaps, for Mayor Strauss, who cuts ribbons and welcomes conventioneers along with her other duties, Ragsdale is the hardest-working council member. She arrives at City Hall by 9 or 9:30 a.m. Rarely does she return to the modest South Dallas home she shares with her mother before 10:30 or 11 p.m.
In a typical day, she talks with thirty-five to forty constituents who call to complain about police officers, garbage collection, trashy yards, overgrown lots, or poor street maintenance. Most afternoons, she meets with city staffers to demand action on these complaints.
Time that is not spent on phone calls and meetings goes to reading the mountain of paper city bureaucrats churn out each day. Occasionally, she squeezes in a few hours of private work as a registered nurse to augment her city salary, $50 per meeting.
Almost every evening and most Saturdays, Ragsdale visits neighborhood groups or special-interest organizations concerned about current issues. Three nights a month, she hosts town hall meetings, two at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center and one that floats from neighborhood to neighborhood.
“I listen to people in my district, and I hear more than just what they say.” she explains. “I hear they are angry and frustrated and helpless, and I want everybody in this given city to know about those feelings.
“When I speak in a council meeting, I say what my constituents would say if they were there. And I say it exactly the way they would say it. That’s why I get so mad. People elected me to speak for them, and I do.”
In the rare free moment, Ragsdale enjoys jazz at Caravan of Dreams or Strictly Tabu. She also loves reading. Her choice of authors is suggested by the references to W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that pepper her conversation. She makes time for the works of Nikki Giovanni and Phyllis Wheatley because “poems deliver profound messages in a very concise way. You don’t have to read a whole book to get the message.”
Ragsdale wishes she had more time for family, for reading, for being alone. But there is too much to do. Constituents need her, she believes. If she does not serve another term on the council, which will be possible only if a city charter limit on consecutive terms is changed, she will run for county commissioner, the stale legislature, or Congress.
“1 am learning to enjoy my victories,” she says. “But I can’t rest on victories. You knock one problem down and there’s another one in your face.”
The comment reminds Ragsdale of the toy that sits behind her desk. lt is an inflatable plastic punching bag designed to spring back up each time she socks it over, It is white. Most of the air is gone.
“I guess I’ve just about beat that thing into submission,” Ragsdale says thoughtfully. Then she laughs.
BY DENNIS HOLDER
PULPIT ROWER
For a city blessed, it seems, with a church on every block, few religious leaders are counted among Dallas’s powerful. Still, a few-mostly of the social gospel variety-have made a mark in the city. They include the REV. ZAN HOLMES JR. of St. Luke’s Community United Methodist, a political and spiritual mentor to most of Dallas’s black professionals; the REV. DR. S. M. WRIGHT of the Peoples Missionary Baptist Church in South Dallas, once the city’s most powerful black minister; and DR. W. A. CRISWELL of the First Baptist Church. Criswell’s clout has waned with age, but he’s still capable of speaking out for his causes.
Five years ago, that Mat would have held at least one other name: the REV. WALKER RAILEY of downtown’s First United Methodist Church, who had perfected the art of eloquently nudging his congregants toward social tolerance. His and Baptist minister BILL WEBER’s fall into disgrace may have weakened the influence of the local clergy as a whole. Still, stalwart Protestant pulpiteers tike Highland Park United Methodist’s DR. LEIGHTON FARRELL, Lovers Lane United Methodist’s DR. DON BENTON, and the brilliant DR. WILLIAM CARL at First Presbyterian continue to strive for an opening of the communal heart. Criswell Center for Biblical Studies’ PAIGE PATTERSON is a leading Baptist fundamentalists.
The influence of the newer charismatic-fundamentalist leaders is harder to assess. Pastor LARRY LEA, shepherd of the still-growing Church on the Rock, is the spiritual guide to thousands of suburbanites. Word Of Faith’s ROBERT TILTON, though no longer based here, beams his gospel of the sweet buy-and-buy to a nationwide audience.
One religious leader to watch is newly installed Bishop CHARLES GRAHMANN, who hints at being more outspoken on issues of concern to the Catholic Church than his predecessors. Whether he’s a Cardinal O’Connor in the making remains to be seen.
POWER BOARDS
In a Nineties rundown of the town’s most prestigious boards, the ones below would have to lead the way. But this list may foe most notable for the names not on it…
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL CENTER
DALLAS/FORT WORTH
INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
COMMUNITIES FOUNDATION OF
TEXAS
DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
DRESSER INDUSTRIES
TEXAS INDUSTRIES
DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART
MEADOWS FOUNDATION
A.H. BELO CORPORATION
