Pulse OF THE City

Fools And Their Money



Why Dallas business leaders backed a racist for school board.



was John Wiley Price behind the Dallas Citizens Council’s latest blunder?

Bank One chairman Ron Steinhart, Pettis Norman, and other business leaders on the council were embarrassed to discover they backed a shady and patently unqualified candidate, Richard Evans, in the August school board special election.

The move recalled David Biegler and Liz Minyard’s precipitous jump to the defense of Dallas schools CFO Matthew Harden, who later was forced to resign under clouds of suspicion. Biegler, chairman of the wealthy business group, and Minyard, who heads the Dallas Chamber, backpedaled and later apologized for not doing their homework.

In the latest snafu, one source says. Price demanded that Council members back Evans, his hand-picked candidate, in return for the county commissioner’s help in passing the Trinity River bond and sports arena deal earlier this year.

“It was a quid pro quo,” the source says. “Evans is his boy.”

Evans, a high school dropout with a misdemeanor fraud on his record, is widely regarded as both a racist and an antiSemite. (Evans reportedly once referred to former school board president Sandy Kress as “King of the Jews”) He has sometimes affected a bogus “Dr.” before his name and refers to himself as a “management consultant.” even though he apparently lacks an office or any known employees.

Evans also apparently does not live within the district.

The fiasco has left political observers shaking their heads once again at how clueless some otherwise savvy members of the business community can be.

Taking the Law into her own Hands

Justice fora slain sister.



JANET HOLLEY, 35, BRINGS UNIQUE experience to her new job as a paralegal in the Collin County District Attorney’s office. After her sister Sandy’s brutal shotgun murder in 1991, Holley and Texas Ranger Don Anderson helped build a circumstantial case against Sandy’s best friend, De Ellen Bellah, and the victim’s former brother-in-law, Don Dial. However, the Hunt County DA declined to take the case to a grand jury, claiming the evidence in hand was too weak.

Undeterred, Holley took advantage of an obscure Texas law to lay out the case to the 12 grand jurors herself. After Holley\s two-hour presentation, the panel indicted both Bellah and Dial, as well as Sandy’s ex-husband, Lynn Dial.

This spring, justice finally was served when Bellah and Don Dial were tried and convicted for conspiring to murder Sandy, and were sentenced to 50 and 80 years in prison, respectively. Charges against Lynn Dial were dropped.

Emboldened by her triumph, Holley decided to become a paralegal; she was hired, in part, on the recommendation of Duncan Thomas, the Hunt County prosecutor who three years earlier had balked at pursuing the prime suspects,

Holley says her next step is a law degree, and then a career as a criminal prosecutor.

’This whole thing has been pretty fascinating.” she says. “I really found my niche.”

MediaBites



Uh, let’s see, that’s seven, carry the one…



Debating numbers in court.

district judge Robert W. Francis1 libel and slander lawsuit against Channel 11 and its owner, Gaylord Broadcasting, is headed for mediation, where reporter Angela Hale’s math skills are sure to be tested.

Last November, in a seaming three-part expose called “Judgment Day forjudges,” Hale reported that according to computer records, Judge Francis left work early 67 percent of the time and worked half-days half the time.

Trouble was, Hale relied in part on parking records from November and December of 1996. Francis didn’t take the bench until January 1,1997. Hale’s second set of parking entry and exit records, which in Francis’ case covered 17 days in all, were drawn from February and March of 1997.

Francis’ attorney, Joe Chumlea, contends the record really shows that his client worked a respectable schedule in February and March, putting in a half-day only once and ducking out early less than a quarter of the time.

As a public official, Judge Francis faces an uphill legal battle, but Chumlea says the judge had no choice but to sue after being “verbally assaulted” by his GOP supporters and the public at large.

Channel 11 has pending a change of venue motion, claiming that the station would not get a fair hearing in front of any Dallas judge.

“Our story is certainly not defamatory, and it’s not malicious,” says Channel 11’s attorney, Marshall Searcy, citing the two key elements in legally proving libel. “Judge Francis is a public figure, and we have the right to air matters of public interest.”

He’s Back!!

Ruined TV preacher sermonizes anew.



PUBLIC DAMNATION APPARENTLY IS NOT eternal-at least not if you’re Bob Tilton.

The discovery seven years ago of dump-sters stuffed with unread prayer requests (contributions removed) helped topple Tilton’s Farmers Branch-based video ministry. But demon-blasting Pastor Bob persevered through nine civil suits and now is back on the air from South Florida, where he lives at an undisclosed address.

The Teflon Televangelist-who used to bring in $80 million a year-now buys local TV time in America’s poorest zip codes and pays $50,000 a month to be on Black Entertainment Television, beaming across America his pleas for$ 1,000 “vows of faith.”

“He’s keeping a lower profile, but it’s still the same old pitch: ’Give me your money,”’ says Harry Guetzlaff, a former fleecee and member of Tilton’s flock who now works for the Trinity Foundation, a Dallas-based televangelist watchdog group. “It’s bothersome that anyone would let him back on the air.”

YESTERDAY



The Last Hero



A legend endures.



HE NEVER CAME CLOSE TO GAIN-ing 1,000 yards rushing in a single season, and he wasn’t even the best passer on his own team, but he was good enough to be called “the most authentic all-around player in football history” by legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice. Sure, that was a long time ago, but sports sage and novelist Dan Jenkins still says SMU’s Doak Walker is the best all-round college football player who ever lived.

It was the perfect time for heroes. For the first half of the 1940s, America’s idols were in faraway foxholes counting off the seconds on hand grenades to lob into Nazi pillboxes. Here was a chance to read about and see in person a real Ail-American gladiator on another field of combat right here at home. There was no television to distract Dallas fans, and the nearest pro football team was in Chicago. It was the era of single-wing and one platoon football, which gave Walker the chance to run, pass, punt, quick kick, place kick, call signals, block, tackle, intercept passes, and do whatever else might be necessary to bring glory to the Hilltop.

And all with such humility. When he reported for duty at Brook Army Medical Center in 1946, he stated on his questionnaire simply that he had “played football in high school,” neglecting to mention that he had made All-State at Highland Park. After becoming the first player to win the Heisman Trophy as a junior, he wrote Collier’s magazine and asked not to be considered for the ’49 Coaches All-American team because he felt he had missed too much time due to injury and ill- less. The morning that the edition of Life magazine fea-uring Walker on its cover hit he streets, the entire SMU team lined up to buy copies. Walker’s college teammates and devoted fans across the country are still pulling for the Doaker in his battle to recover from the ski accident in Colorado last winter that left him paralyzed.

Washington Stiffs Dallas Drug Warriors



City lacks the right friends in Congress.



LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS SAY that up to $6 million in special federal drug-fighting funds thai Congress may soon approve for North Texas would have been allocated much sooner if urgent local need-not pork barrel politics-determined how such money is spent.

The key to receiving the funds is to be designated an HIDTA, for High Density Drug-Trafficking Area, which qualifies a community for federal funds to help area agencies coordinate their campaigns against the drug trade. Last year, Congress ladled out $140 million to 24 existing HIDTAs.

“Congress is selecting the sites and selecting the level of funding,” says one high-level official who has been trying to secure funding for North Texas for several years. “We’ve really had to dot our i’s and cross our t’s. In other areas, they’ve barely had to put in an application, particularly in places where there’s a powerful person on the appropriations committee.”

Members of the Senate appropriations committee who have HIDTAs in their states include Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin), and Christopher Bond (R-Missouri).

“Dope coming from Dallas goes there” observes another exasperated senior drug fighter of these existing HIDTA locations.

Dallas’ drug problem was underscored recently when federal prosecutors announced 29 indictments against those they allege are connected to a “calculated and cold-blooded” conspiracy to sell heroin to young people in Piano, where 14 or more heroin-related deaths have occurred in the past few years.

The local tide of illegal drugs seems to be rising. So far this year, about 36 1/2 pounds of heroin have been seized at D/FW Airport, compared to 10 1/2 pounds for all of 1997.

The seized narcotics, which originated in several foreign countries, also have been much more potent this year than the typical heroin hauls of the past. In some instances, the dope has been more than 97 percent pure.

Centrally located Dallas, which is well served by both airports and highways, is highly attractive to drug traffickers. The entire North Texas region, together with Oklahoma, has no more than 180 police officers and agents devoted to combating drug smugglers. Houston, by contrast, has three times that number; Miami has 800 agents.

MONEY SHOULD BE FUN

Dallas computer game creator John Carmack’s fifth Ferrari, a brand-new F50 worth S750.000. is not just uniquely valuable among local motor cars. According to its owner, the shiny red sportscar is the only F50 in the world to be modified with twin turbo boosters.

Consequently. Carmack can zip along in excess of 200 mph, although to do so generally requires special venues such as race tracks and airport runways.

“Between any two freeway exits you can get way beyond where you should be,” he says.

Carmack’s other Ferraris include a 328 he gave away in a promotion for his best-known computer game, Doom a Testarosa currently undergoing engine replacement; and a GTO that is in the shop for a new frame and other alterations.

That narrows his driving options ta a road-worthy F40 and its newer cousin, the F50. Carmack’s current choice for getting around town. He doesn’t even mind the sleek speedster’s low gas mileage-only 12 miles a gallon.

“It’s a nice, civilized car that I drive everyday,” Carmack says.

Authors in Aprons

A culinary guide to Lone Star writers.



Wordmongers are better known for abused livers than cultivated palates, and for good reason. Find out why in Stirring Prose: Cooking with Texas Authors. Even Deborah Douglas, a San Antonio pathologist (appropriately enough) who assembled the droll cookbook for Texas A&M Press, admits in her introduction, “I don’t enjoy eating all that much.”

Inside, the fare ranges from “Chicken McGovern,” a surprisingly complex recipe from seriocomic crime novelist Kinky Friedman, to Prudence Mackintosh’s “Calves’ Liver (Disguised as Chicken Fried Steak),” with which the Dallas writer says she unsuccessfully sought to beguile her sons. “My boys weren’t fooled,” Mackintosh writes. “They fed it to the dog, and when she died, they resorted to stuffing it in the waistband of their underwear to get away from the table.”

Two contributors confess their submissions were cribbed: journalist Brian Wooley’s “God’s Own Pimento Cheese,” from Reynolds Price, and Western author Elmer Kelton’s Linzertorte, from his Austrian-born wife.

Most writerly of all the recipes (and the only one that Douglas acknowledges testing) is “Dr. King’s Asian Flu Hot Liquid Life-Saver” from playwright Larry L. King, a high-test libation which, as King puts it, “Serves one. All night long.”

FOR THE RECORD



“I’ve always said the sickest patients need the best doctors. When you have a problem and need brain surgery, you probably don’t want to go to proctologists.”



-Westlake Alderman Dave Loeser on how new consultants and negotiators have helped resolve the Tarrant Country community’s bitter warfare with Ross Perot Jr. over development or Perot’s Circle T Ranch.