PEOPLE HAIL AND FAREWELL

Jerry R. Junkins

BY DAVID BIEGLER

IN A WORLD IN WHICH HEROES ARE DIFficult to find and true role models are desperately needed but rare, Jerry Junkins stood out. He was not just liked and not just admired, he was deeply respected.

He was respected for his professional accomplishments. Although he consistently gave credit for the reinvigoration of Texas Instruments to the TI family, few doubt that his role as head of that family made it happen. He had the strength to surround himself with a group of executives who together accomplished what many consider the greatest turnaround of any large semiconductor company. Professional respect extended beyond the electronics industry. When the United States’ position on free trade was in jeopardy, he became a vocal and effective advocate for free trade, including taking on an instrumental role that resulted in private-sector support for the North American Free Trade Agreement.

He was respected for civic leadership. For many in Dallas, this was the Jerry Junkins they knew best. His leadership was not just one of involvement, but one of accomplishment. When Paul Quinn College wished to establish itself in South Dallas and again provide that community with an institution of higher education, he was instrumental in making it happen. When the United Way campaign needed extraordinary effort in 1989 after the economic downturn began having its effect, it was Junkins who served as campaign chairman and made the effort a success. When he assumed chairmanship of the Citizens Council, the community needed desperately the style of accomplished leadership he provided. In quiet and effective ways appropriate to the need, he addressed tough issues such as racial strife. This was not a one-man effort, but leadership directed at mobilizing the business community and forcing it to confront issues and resolve them.

Junkins will be remembered for civic leadership in no area more than education. He was at the heart of many community education initiatives-out of personal passion, not just from an assigned community position. He studied public education, devoted his time to understanding what worked and what didn’t, and he put his leadership and reputation on the line to bring improvement. When his work with Dallas Public Schools resulted in a recommendation for cash awards to promote excellence in education, he was not content to just submit a report. At a gathering of the key leaders of the business community, Junkins made his points-he understood this, believed in it, considered it essential and felt the business community had a responsibility to make it happen. There was never a doubt; funds for the education excellence awards were raised immediately.

As much as anything, Jerry Junkins will be remembered not for what he accomplished, but for who he was. He combined a vision of how to make things better with a personal commitment to making things happen. He combined executive skills with leadership, accomplishment with humility. Dallas’ respect for Jerry Junkins was deep and well-deserved.

David Biegier is chairman, president and CEO of Enserch Corporation.

Greer Gars

BY CAROLE BRANDT

DURING WORLD WAR II, A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG ACTRESS with titian hair, blue-green eyes and ivory skin swept across the silver screen and captured the hearts of millions. To a generation of moviegoers, Greer Garson was the reigning queen of the powerful Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. She enjoyed huge popularity in the 1940s; she dazzled audiences with her sincere portrayals of strong, courageous women.

After she left Hollywood to marry Dallas oilman and rancher E.E. “Buddy” Fogelson, Garson became a heroine of another sort to the city of Dallas. She was a philanthropist with a generous heart. Like the women she portrayed, Garson touched the hearts and fives of those around her, and she left an indelible impression on this city.

She was born on Sept. 29, 1904, in London, but grew up in County Down, Ireland. After college and various jobs, she struggled for a time as an actress in London’s West End, but went on to appear in 13 plays in three and a half years. In 1938, Garson left for Hollywood and a lucrative contract with MGM. The 1939 release of her second film, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, made her an international success. In the next five years, she received five more Oscar nominations, one for her portrayal of Edna Gladney in Blossoms in the Dust, the 1941 film about the founding of what is now the Gladney Center for unwed mothers in Fort Worth.

Carson’s generosity and grace outshone that of any of her screen characters. She lived for many years in Dallas, her adopted home after her marriage in 1949 to Fogelson. The couple gave generously to many Dallas-area institutions, and after Fogelson’s death in 1987. Carson continued to endow projects in honor of her late husband, including Fogelson Forum at Presbyterian Hospital, the Fogelson Pavilion at the Meyerson Symphony Center, the Fogelson Fountain at the Dallas Arboretum and Pegasus Plaza in downtown Dallas.

In celebration of their 30th wedding anniversary in 1979. Buddy Fogelson honored his wife by establishing the Greer Garson Awards at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, which provided scholarships for theater students and began a long and special relationship with the university. In 1990. Garson gave $10 million to build and endow the Greer Garson Theatre there.

Garson insisted that she contribute all the funds necessary for the theater’s construction and endowment. ’LShe didn’t want anyone else to have to give five cents. She felt that she should pay for everything,” says Jack Roach. Garson’s friend and attorney.

Greer Garson was strong-willed yet generous, outspoken yet tender-hearted. She left a legacy that will continue to enrich and grace our city.

Carole Brandt, Ph.D., is Dean of Meadows School of she Arts at Southern Methodist University.

AIDS TAKES ITS TOLL…

Pam Arth, 33, dedicated the end of her life to saving others from the disease that would eventually kill her. The former American Airlines flight attendant was a tireless AIDS educator, traveling across Texas with an important message for high school students: Anyone can get HIV.



A leader in the Dallas movement to feed the hungry. The Rev. Matt Englishdiedatage40. From 1987 until 1989, he chaired the Greater Dallas Community of Churches Hunger Task Force, putting in place a mission that still grows. The Summer Food Program, a result of the task force’s work under English’s guidance, now feeds 40,000 hungry children in the Dallas urea. From 1985 until 1993. English was executive director of North Dallas Shared Ministries, where he doubled the food and financial assistance programs for the hungry and the poor before AIDS forced his retirement.



Brooks Turtle. 39, was a trailblazer in Dallas’ avant-garde theater movement, staging unconventional productions and establishing Deep Ilium as a theatrical destination before losing his life. A respected producer, actor and choreographer, he directed Shakespeare in the Parking Lot and was co-promoter of Club One’s “One Universe” on Friday nights.



Rodeo clown Chris Mcllvain. 34, never suffered a major injury from his dangerous vocation of fighting bulls. He broke an ankle in a high school rodeo, but managed to escape the more serious injuries that regular rodeo participants expect to have. His is a well-known rodeo family, and Mcllvain was often in the position of drawing a bull’s attention away from one of his bull-riding brothers. Chris won first place for rodeo clowning at the Wrangler Bull Fight in Mesquite in 1994.



Actress Diane Fields McKittrick. 27, who performed under the name Dee Dee Fields, was a 1987 graduate of Dallas Arts’ Magnet High School. During high school and college, she performed with the Dallas Children’s Theatre and in 1993 toured nationally with a New York production of Cinderella. While on that tour, she learned that she was HIV-positive. During the last years of her life, she made hundreds of appearances trying to raise awareness about AIDS with the message: “It’s an equal-opportunity disease.”



Fashion designer Michael Ballas 32, was a favorite of Dallas society types. The Dallas native’s collections were hot in Dallas al both Neiman Marcus and The Gazebo, now-defunct. His career stalled in 1988, when his mother committed suicide and he began to struggle with substance abuse. In 199 !, Bal las and 10 other lop designers dedicated a spring show to helping addicts, donating proceeds from an auction to the cause. Ballas had just opened a Seventh Avenue showroom when he died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage.



The Rev. Billy Weber, 53. founded the powerful Prestonwood Baptist Church in 1977. The charismatic preacher built Prestonwood to a membership of more than 11.000 before being forced to resign in 1988 after admitting to an extramarital affair. In 1990, Weber started the nondenominational New Hope Community Church in Piano. He succumbed to brain cancer.



Buck Wynne III. 40. a Dallas environmental lawyer, served as the state’s top environmental official and as regional chief of the Environmental Protection Agency. In 1992. while he held the EPA office, members of the Earth First! environmental group burned him in effigy. A photograph of the publicity stunt was one of Wynne’s favorite souvenirs and adorned the reception area of his law firm, Monning & Wynne. Wynne was a fourth-generation Texan and a grandson of the late Toddie Lee Wynne. Jr., chairman of American Liberty Oil. He died in askin-diving accident in Belize.



Known now primarily for a 16-mile section of U.S. 175 running southeastward from downtown Dallas. C.F. Hawn, 89, was an Athens, Texas, businessman and former state highway commissioner who championed highway improvement and safety. He worked throughout the mid-“50s and early ’60s lobbying for better interstate highways that would eventually link small towns throughout Texas to major metropolitan areas. He was known as “Mr. East Texas” for his support of the region and served as president of the East Texas Chamber of Commerce.



Richard Condon

BY TOM STEPHENSON

IN 1980, FAMED AUTHOR RICHARD Condon adopted Dallas as his home. When he died in August at his Asbury Road residence in University Park at the age of 80. we lost not only one of the region’s and the country’s finest writing talents but also, perhaps, our most engaging and eloquent raconteur.

Long before Condon began penning such classics as The Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi’s Honor, he worked at jobs he hated. He first wrote professionally in the advertising department of a toothpaste company. Next he entered the high-pressured stratosphere of the Hollywood studio publicist (his first project was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). After 21 years and three ulcers. Condon retired from the PR game in 1957 to write his hugely successful first book, The Oldest Confession.

He wrote books the rest of his life, once unabashedly recounting to an interviewer, “I am a public entertainer who sees his first duty as the need to entertain himself.”

Among critics, Condon enjoyed an

erratic reputation. He was praised for his second novel. The Manchurian Candidate. The author’s distrust of American institutions permeated his work and fueled his reputation among like-minded citizens during the turbulent ’60s and early ’70s.

Until the 1982 publication of Prizzi’s Honor, critical acclaim seldom again visited the writer’s revolving households. The Condons (wife, Evelyn; daughters, Wendy and Deborah) lived all over the world-London, Paris, Spain, Mexico and the writer’s beloved Ireland. Richard and Evelyn settled in Dallas to be near Wendy and the grandchildren.

Scholarly critiques may have treated Condon unevenly. His friends did not, Big fish in Hollywood and lesser fry in Dallas equally enjoyed his communion.

John Huston, who met Condon when both lived in Ireland, loved the writer for his “outrageousness” and eventually acted in and directed film versions of Condon’s novels. Dallas store-minder Stanley Marcus saw the high drama and wide-sweeping paranoia so prevalent in Condon novels as very much at odds with the man himself, saying, “In person, he was very nice, kind and gentle.”

In addition to his 25 novels and one play, Condon waxed publicly and in two nonaction books on two passions: traveling and fine Mexican cooking (And Then We Moved to Rossenarra: The Act of Emigrating and The Mexican Stove: What to Put on It). In the cookbook, Condon sounded like a true adopted Texan. “Mexican food is an aphrodisiac which excites the passion for living,” he wrote. “It courts, seduces, ravishes, then cherishes all five senses (as well as the sense of most worthy accomplishment) by treating each as if it existed alone, as if all satisfaction were dependent upon this one sense, while it orchestrates all five into complex permutations of sensation.’’

Condon collected dictionaries. More than 100 of the study books graced his library at his death. He was a good sport. Some of us recall the dignified author in his role as grand marshal of the Original Lower Greenville Avenue St. Paddy’s Day Parade. It was the first year the city brought out the riot squad, and Condon still managed to bring a certain dignity to the occasion despite being positioned directly behind three flatulent green elephants.

All who knew him miss him.

Tom Stephenson is a Dallas writer.

Dick Hitt

BY JIM ATKINSON

WE ARE-OR SHOULD BE, ANYWAY-REMEMBERED BEST for the ironies we leave behind. In the ease of my colleague and friend, former Dallas Times Herald columnist-raconteur-dude-about-town, Dick Hitt-who died this past June of throat cancer at age 63-the paradoxes were many and profound. When summoned up in the memory’s eye, I see a man who was…vain but shy…pretentious but modest…a writer of immense natural talent who used it primarily to spin out three-dot fluff on the comings and goings of whatever passed for Dallas glitteratti during the ’60s and ’70s.

…who made it his workaday business to know and be known, but who, in truth, much preferred the quiet company of his wife and kids, or a drink with a few close buddies at some cave-dark bar where none of the aforementioned glitteratti ever dared tread…who published an incalculable number of column inches of wry, pithy observation of his life, his family, his likes and dislikes, and yet who was, even to those who presumed to know him well, an enigma…The Prince of the City who was, at heart, still an insecure country boy from the smalltown nothingness of West Texas… an egomaniac with an inferiority complex… who loved to make others laugh and played the role of professional bonhomie well, but who was, when recalled precisely, a somber, taciturn, vaguely tragic figure, perpetually, as he once described himself to me, “alone in a crowd.”

… who was self-conscious enough about his baldness to wear a toupee that almost-but-not-quite matched his bushy beard, but who was self-confident enough to laugh at himself about it. as in the time he informed me, with a perfectly straight face, that whenever he encountered a Bad Hair Day, “I just send it out to One Hour Martinizing for a quick tumble dry and a press”…who, when it was fashionable, could make a cranberry doubleknit leisure suit, NikNik shirt, white shoes, white belt and gold medallion look almost aesthetic.

…who was, as fellow writer A.C. Greene opined not long after Dick’s death, “as humorous in person as he was in print, but he wasn’t a funny man”…a writer whose work as a young reporter-rewrite man during coverage of the Kennedy assassination earned him the rep of being a “newsman’s newsman,” but who seemed more comfortable composing compact, witty. Bombeck-esque ditties on urban angst and the bemuse-ments of modern domestic life.

…who, despite his reserve, forged a successful moonlight career as a drive-time radio quipster for the late KNUS and a sometime local TV news anchor at Channel 4…but who, despite his expansive talent, rarely took his byline outside the pages of the Times Herald (as much as many of us thought it belonged in Esquire or on a hardcover)…who, as gently mocking as he could be of both himself and the notion of legacies, nonetheless left a more than respectable one as the personification, in his many manifest contradictions, of those heady, neurotic days of the ’60s and ’70s, when Dallas went from being the universally loathed City of Hate to being the universally envied Buckle on the Sunbelt in little more than a decade.

…who, after years as the Herald’s marquee writer, seemed to find genuine serenity only when he stepped out of it later in his career and took his family on a cross-country jaunt, a la Kerouac, and wrote of it for USA Today…who subsequently ditched the leisure suits and the toupee, though not without one last jab at himself. “It wasn’t really my idea to go natural,” he informed me during a Dallas pit stop during his year-long sojourn, “I just happened to stick my head out the window someplace outside Taos and off it went. Just as well-it kind of looked like roadkill anyway.”

…who probably had more “friends” than any other single human being I’ve ever known, and yet who, for the last awful year of his illness, refused to take visitors because, according to his wife Polly, “he wanted them to remember him the way he was the last time they had a drink together.”…(I do.)…who during his long, rich career as a professional communicator had more opportunity than most men do to tell others-both close and distant- just what he felt about them, but who. at his death, was concerned that he hadn’t let people know how much he had loved them…

…(I did.).

Jim Atkinson is a Dallas writer.

Dance instructor Texte Waterman Howard. 64. took cheerleading professional in 1972 as the first choreographer of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Until Howard ran the squad, Dallas-area high school cheerleaders had filled the sidelines. Howard helped make the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders world-famous. In 1979, she played herself in the television movie The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and its sequel. She judged every tryout until her retirement in 1983.



Sharon Pollack Griffith. 57, died suddenly of a brain aneurysm while working to make Reggie-The Series a reality. Reggie is a rhinoceros Pollack created to help kids learn to be responsible and make the right choices. The Piano resident was the sister of director Sidney Pollack.



Meteorologist Irving P. Krick, 89, raised the ire of conservative Christians in Dallas in 1952, when he was hired by the city to seed clouds with silver iodide to increase rain during a drought. His critics voiced their belief that only God could make it rain, but during the six months following Krick’s visit, good rains increased Lake Dallas by 26.2 billion gallons. As an Army colonel, Krick’s forecasting was used to set the date of the D-Day invasion of Europe as June 6, 1944.



Fort Worth Mayfest founder Phyllis Tilley, 63. was a longtime community volunteer and former Junior League president who helped to beautify the Trinity River through the annual spring fund-raiser at Trinity Park. Mayfestcelebrates its 25th anniversary this year.



For nine years, seamstress Amalia DeLira “Mollie” Valderas 75, made elaborate clown costumes for the Adolphus Children’s Christmas Parade downtown. As a seamstress for the Adolphus for 13 years, she had maintained staff uniforms and occasionally sewed on buttons and repaired hems for guests. But her time to shine was the annual parade. Valderas began sewing in the ’40s and over the years also worked for Victor Costa and Neiman Marcus.



Professional baseball player Bob Muncrief, Jr. 80, pitched against Hall of Famers Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, Hank Greenberg and Joe DiMaggio during his 25-year career. Muncrief played on two Ail-Star teams while in the Texas League. He pitched in two World Series, with the American League St. Louis Browns in 1944 and with the world-champion Cleveland Indians in 1948. He led the American League in win-loss percentage in 1945. In 1948, Muncrief, in relief, pitched 27 consecutive scoreless innings. As the best relief pitcher of the season, he was named Fireman of the Year in 1949 while playing for the Chicago Cubs.

Boone Powell Sr.

by david hitt

BOONE POWELL, Sr? DIED IN SEPTEMBER AT AGE 84. LEAV-ing a broad legacy of achievements, most notably as a pacesetter for medical care and a rebuilder of Old East Dallas. The huge, respected Baylor Medical Center that developed under his leadership is an easily recognizable monument to him. but his greatest accomplishments probably were in behind-the-scenes subtleties, the challenges he accepted and the choices he made, and the breadth of influence he exerted.

Powell became Baylor Hospital’s chief executive in 1948. Baylor was reeling from loss of its identity as the teaching hospital for Baylor Medical College. That loss placed the future of Baylor’s medical and surgical residency training in doubt. Powell saw education as the bedrock of excellence. His avid support of continuing educational programs set the pace for other Dallas hospitals. The programs in turn attracted medical authorities, who spread Dallas’ reputation as a referral center.

No new hospital facilities had been built for years but Powell pressed for a completely new hospital and made it feasible. When the Truett Hospital opened in 1950, it began 30 years of hospital development that made Dallas a mecca for patients.

Baylor grew through Powell’s leadership, creating jobs and other economic activity and became, in effect, an oasis in East Dallas. He used his position as board chairman of an East Dallas bank to gain corporate support for neighborhood renewal.

He was ebullient, larger than life, always looking to the future and stimulating others to high goals. A life-long Boy Scouts supporter, he was uncompromising on long-term values such as integrity and humanity. Powell focused on fundamentals, evident in his visits to patients every day, a practice that continued years after he “retired.”

David H. Hitt is president emeritus of Methodist Hospitals of Dallas.

Before immigrating to the United States in 1949, University of Texas at Dallas professor Andrew R. Cecil. 85, taught law and economics in Europe and was imprisoned in Siberia for fighting against the Russians. He taught and wrote about social justice and ethics in Dallas for 38 years. For many years. Cecil was associated with the Southwestern Legal Foundation as its president, chancellor and chancellor emeritus. In 1979, the Andrew R. Cecil Lectures on Moral Values in a Free Society at UTD were named in his honor.



El Chico’s Kathleen Norman Cuellar, 87, was managing her father’s dimestore in Wills Point and singing on the radio as Yetta when she met Gilbert Cuellar, Sr.. who later started a Mexican restaurant on Oak Lawn Avenue that spawned the El Chico chain. She and Cuellar married in 1939 and moved to Dallas. Over the years, she stayed involved in restaurant operations and, after her husband died in 1986, became a consultant monitoring quality throughout the chain.



Richard S. Hazen. 52, was first officer of ValuJet Flight 992. which crashed in the Florida Everglades in May, killing all 110 people onboard. For 20 years, Hazen served as a mechanic and first officer in the Air Force. He also flew for Federal Express and Southwest Airlines before going to ValuJet.



Jennifer Lynn Stearns. 21, a ValuJet flight attendant, also died in the May crash. Stearns, a 1994 graduate of R.L. Turner High School, was a captain with Explorer Post 676, a group that introduces young people to police work, and aspired to be a police officer.

West Dallas housing pioneer Joe Celia Tipton. 100. started building homes in West Dallas in 1921 before the area was part of the city. When she saw a need for a place for children to play, she donated land to the city near Bernai Drive and Westmoreland Road to be developed as Tipton Park. “After my father died in 1939, she took over his business,” says her son, Dr. George W. Tipton. Sr. of Austin. “It wasn’t easy for a woman to get a loan at a bank in those days, but she did. and she made a go of it”



Rowena Caldwell Elkin. 79. was a sculptor and a mentor to many who aspired to make a career in the arts. Though she didn’t sell her work-abstract pieces in a variety of mediums from rope to copper and steel-she has four sculptures at the Dallas Museum of Art and others on display at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., the El Paso Museum of Art, the Los Alamos Gallery at Fuller Lodge, the Clarksville Library and Texas Woman’s University.

Jay P. Sanford, 68. was an internationally recognized expert on infectious disease and AIDS. A medical educator and author known for his handbooks on antibiotic treatment. Dr. Sanford’s most recent focus had taken him around the world studying HIV and AIDS. The Sanford Guide to HIV/AIDS Therapy is in its fifth edition, while his earlier work. The Sanford Guide 10 Antimicrobial Therapy, is in its 26th printing. Sanford had been vice chairman of the department of medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas as well as director of the diagnostic microbiology laboratory and chief of the infectious disease section.

McHenry Tichenor. 98, founded Dallas-based Tichenor Media Systems, which owns 20 Spanish-language stations. Tichenor started in the radio business in 1949 with the purchase of KGBS in Harlingen. The company he built is currently involved in a merger with Heftel Broadcasting, which owns 16 stations including KESS-AM 1270, KMRT-AM 1480 and KMRT-FM 106.7 in Dallas.



South Dallas pharmacist and S12.9 million Texas Lottery winner Johnny R. Brewster. 49. died after collecting only one of his 20 $600,000 annual payments. Brewster’s 9-year-old niece, Ashley Griffin, picked his winning numbers. Brewster was well-known for supporting his neighborhood in a variety of ways. He bought a marquee for a school near his pharmacy, gave each student there a $2 bill for Christmas and regularly donated food for PTA meetings. Brewster was a 1965 honors graduate of Lincoln High School and an honors graduate of Texas Southern University in Houston.



Alice Jones DeSanders. 74, owner of Lone Star Cadillac, was an active community volunteer and philanthropist supporting the Dallas Museum of Art. the Dallas Symphony Association, the Dallas Historical Society, the Dallas Summer Musicals and many other nonprofit organizations. She was a 1942 graduate of the University of Texas in Austin.

Sloan Simpson

BY WICK ALLISON

SLOAN SIMPSON, A DARK, RIVETING, LONG-LEGGED BEAUTY AND former fashion model with the John Powers agency, preserved her beauty and charmed admirers well into her seventh decade. She died in November of lung cancer at age 80.

At 33, Simpson met William O’Dwyer, then mayor of New York City, at a fashion show. Handsome at 59 years and no mean charmer himself, O’Dwyer was spellbound. Soon after they married, O’Dwyer resigned (neatly evading a corruption investigation) and was named Ambassador to Mexico. The O’Dwyers divorced in 1953.

Simpson traveled to Spain, a journey that received much publicity. She was photographed fighting bulls, and it was reported that she had many romantic involvements although she remained loyal to O’Dwyer until his death.

Returning to Mexico, she became Braniff International’s “Ambassador of Fun” in Acapulco. where she also wrote for Women’s Wear Daily and Town & Country. Simpson was the daughter of Col. Sloan Simpson, who rode with Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War, and Eleanora Myer, a fabled beauty from Baltimore.

Simpson attended boarding schools before graduating from Highland Park High School. Although Simpson lived in New York City and in Mexico for many decades, she returned to Dallas often, especially during opera season, and lived here during the final years of her life.

It is said that no man who met her could ever forget her. I know 1 won’t.