Thursday, March 28, 2024 Mar 28, 2024
73° F Dallas, TX
Advertisement
Publications

The Very Complicated Legacy of Dr. William Samuell

William Samuell’s bequest to Dallas—320 acres of land, a trust to create parks—should have been a blessing. Instead, it started a 70-year battle.
By Gretel C. Kovach |
Image

Image
photography by Elizabeth Lavin
After a year of investigation and negotiations, the Texas Attorney General’s office and the city recently stepped back from the brink of a court battle over the Samuell parks. The city’s lawyers had argued that they held title to the Samuell lands, but finally caved and conceded they were held in a charitable trust and therefore subject to state oversight. The AG’s office announced a settlement in April, saying Dr. Samuell’s will did not simply give the property to the city of Dallas “for use as city officials see fit,” and they pledged to protect Samuell’s charitable purpose and ensure that his gift “will remain parkland that is open and available to Dallas families for generations to come.”

The city agreed to supply periodic reports about the finances and operations of Samuell Farm and the other parks, but won a significant concession that they were not required to spend anything on the Samuell properties beyond the money that flows from the Samuell trust fund.

Christopher Bowers sighs when he’s asked why we’re still arguing over this will 70 years later. As first assistant city attorney, he was deeply involved in the negotiations with the AG’s office. For one, Samuell did not hire a lawyer when he wrote his will, he says. “Unfortunately there was so much property involved and a large enough fund over the years that disputes have arisen as conditions have changed,” he added. “Hopefully this memo of agreement will resolve all issues so we can all move on and get about our business of administering the parks.”

Dyer, the park director, says he’s “very happy” with the settlement. But his pursed lips and the weary look on his face betray what an ordeal the long Samuell Farm controversy has been. “There have been several personalities who got involved along the way,” Dyer mutters, “even before Friends of the Farm.”

All of the city’s Samuell deals got a kiss on the cheek from the courts and the City Council and were vetted by anyone who cared to attend the park board meetings, city officials note. When the city sought the sale of 1208 Main Street, the former parking lot had not been rented in five years. It had been on the “do not sell” revenue-generating list, but what good was it doing the Dallas park system after years of no income? And the lot across the street from the hotel that was acquired in the Statler swap? Today it is being incorporated into the Main Street Garden park that city officials tout as key to resuscitating downtown. Samuell’s lands are helping bring more green space to central Dallas. “Is there anything wrong with that? Is that a heinous thing?” Dyer asks.

As for the missing millions, the AG didn’t address the issue in its settlement, so why is the permanent fund worth a fraction of what it could be? One factor is that the income isn’t compounded; it is skimmed off the top quarterly and placed in a multiyear account for the day-to-day needs of Samuell parks, just as Dr. Samuell wanted. It certainly isn’t because the city bought its own municipal bonds to tap the Samuell funds willy-nilly for restricted uses, as Brooks mistakenly believed. No, the bank trustees bought U.S. Treasury and war bonds in 1944, during World War II.

Patriotism aside, bank trustees who managed the portfolio for the city thought it prudent to sacrifice long-term growth potential for stable returns, so they tripled the bond holdings and, with the encouragement of city officials, stuck with the fixed-income strategy for decades. By 1956, the scales had tipped so far that the fund held twice as much in bonds as stocks. Eventually they switched to a more aggressive portfolio, and watched the value plummet with the stock market during the current Great Recession.

The Samuell parks had also become a victim of their own success. In 1964, when the city opened the landmark rec center at Samuell-Grand Park and chilled it with costly air conditioning, the city began to pay more to operate the Samuell parks than the permanent fund could throw off in income each year. Fast-forward to this decade, and the Samuell Farm, for example, was able to pay for only half its operating costs before it sunk under the waves. Critics howl that the city is drawing money off the Samuell properties for the general fund, but the annual reimbursements for mowing and other maintenance are only a fraction of what the city kicks in for the Samuell parks, which haven’t been able to pay their own way in decades.

Not that he’s complaining, Dyer says. The city would have been thrilled to receive the parklands alone, even if Samuell hadn’t added a permanent fund for life support. “Even without the endowment, it’s a wonderful thing he did for the city. Just the property itself, particularly Samuell-Grand and Samuell-Garland,” he says. “So many people have been touched by those parks. It’s a real blessing.”

Samuell’s attempt to make the parks self-sustaining was visionary, because with Samuell Farm and the other outliers at the mercy of budget fluctuations, they are not likely to survive unscathed when the wheat is threshed from the chaff in lean years like this one. Dyer has to answer to Dallas residents who wonder why the city would spend money on parks way out there, he says, pointing in the distance, when they don’t use those parks. They may be wonderful pieces of property, but “there is not one person per park for the entire system, and to have one caretaker out there or several would be very costly,” he says.

Image
photography by Elizabeth Lavin
Dallas had planned to let Samuell Farm go to seed as an unsupervised open space before Friends of the Farm took over in 2004, and that may be the best hope as the city seeks to trim its budget by $190 million. Pauline Medrano, whose district encompasses Samuell-Grand park, says the City Council is scouring the budget for nips and tucks to avoid deep cuts to programs that pay the electric bill for seniors during the potentially deadly summer heat, and to avoid laying off upwards of 800 city workers. “I can appreciate Dr. Samuell for having the vision and forethought of leaving green space for the future,” she says. “But at some point, we’re going to have to say, ‘There’s no more money.’ What can we do?”

Samuell Farm has long been known as the $60 million piggybank the city can’t crack. But Betty Ann Beckett Wilkie, Dr. Samuell’s 71-year-old grandniece who lives on a Sunnyvale farm passed down through her family, says it’s time to get the hammer. Sell the farm, she says, “and use the money to buy more petunias” for Dallas parks. Wilkie thinks advocates like Hugh Brooks have good intentions, but the city has to be practical. “It was terrible there for awhile at Samuell Farm before Hugh took it over,” she says. “They were dumping all kinds of trash out there. The city employees’ view was ‘nobody’s looking.’ That’s why I say sell it and get out of that problem where there’s no oversight and it’s just a drain on the funds that could be used to help the other Dallas parks.”

Brooks says Dr. Samuell would be spinning in his grave at high rpm if the city ever tried that. “Dr. Samuell should have added three more words to his brief will,” he says. “Perhaps if he had added ‘I mean it’ after ‘Not to be sold’ we wouldn’t be arguing about his will today.” And no money is no excuse for ditching the Samuell parks, in his view. “Before you start telling me how broke you are, let’s talk about how much you’ve wasted.”

Pat Melton doesn’t have much fight left in her after so many years of struggle over Samuell Farm. She got a little wistful this winter when the seed catalogs came out, thinking of the waves of pink primrose. “I have my heart and soul in the gardens,” she says. “I met so many people—church groups, prisoners, kids that thought vegetables came from the store. They’d put the seeds in their hands,” she says, cradling her palm, “and dream of what it could one day become.”

As Samuell Farm volunteers they went through much the same process. But there’s no going back. “At some point, you look like the Indians at Alcatraz,” Brooks says. “We don’t own the property. We can’t chain ourselves to the gate.”

It is surprising he didn’t. When the AG bowed out, Brooks kept trying to prove his allegation that the city had engaged in fraud and an illegal property swap to benefit the hotel people. On a gorgeous sunny day in late May when he would have been wandering through the prairie at Samuell Farm in better times, Brooks went looking for a 19th-century deed and found it mysteriously absent from the city records. The microfiche copy was missing as well. “This is so frustrating. Every time I frown, I wrinkle my tinfoil hat,” he joked.

He may laugh about it, but some people think Brooks’ obsession with the Samuell bequest has curdled into a sour personal grudge. Says one person close to the dispute: “When you start looking for communists under every mailbox and start looking for conspiracies—over a park? It’s just not worth it.”


===Samuell Farm has long been known as the $60 million piggybank the city can’t crack. But Betty Ann Beckett Wilkie, Dr. Samuell’s 71-year-old grandniece, says it’s time to get the hammer. “Sell the farm,” she says, “and use the money to buy more petunias” for Dallas parks. !==

Out at Samuell Farm on a broiling recent Sunday afternoon, red paint peels in sheets off the barn. The animal pens have been vacant for years, but the windows of Dr. Samuell’s home are boarded over with fresh sheets of plywood. Vandals shattered the glass at a small cottage stacked with oversized candy canes, and the banks of an evaporating pond are pocked with plastic drink cups and a Coke can bleached yellow in the sun. Despite it all, the Farm looks better than it has in months.

Bands of children roam the freshly mown grass, hopping under burr oaks from puddle to puddle of shade, past antique farm equipment and fresh mulch spread in the playground. A gardener sits nearby in the corn patch pulling weeds, sweat dripping from under the brim of his hat. A large birthday party spills out of the town hall toward hay bales. A man kneels in the grass, tying lures for two young boys fishing at the edge of a lake. Maybe it isn’t what it used to be—or what it could have been. But on this summer afternoon, the farm Dr. Samuell bequeathed to the people of Dallas many decades ago is still good medicine.


Gretel C. Kovach is a contributing editor to D Magazine. Write to [email protected].

Related Articles

Image
Arts & Entertainment

Here’s Who Is Coming to Dallas This Weekend: March 28-31

It's going to be a gorgeous weekend. Pencil in some live music in between those egg hunts and brunches.
Image
Arts & Entertainment

Arlington Museum of Art Debuts Two Must-See Nature-Inspired Additions

The chill of the Arctic Circle and a futuristic digital archive mark the grand opening of the Arlington Museum of Art’s new location.
By Brett Grega
Image
Arts & Entertainment

An Award-Winning SXSW Short Gave a Dallas Filmmaker an Outlet for Her Grief

Sara Nimeh balances humor and poignancy in a coming-of-age drama inspired by her childhood memories.
By Todd Jorgenson
Advertisement