Like most people growing up in the last decades of the 20^th century, I can’t remember the first time I heard of Bonnie and Clyde. They were always just there, like Pecos Bill, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, or Paul Bunyan. They existed in the imagination as a blend of history and fiction, part of a larger-than-life cast of folk heroes that helped explain some aspect of the American character.

My interest only deepened when I saw Arthur Penn’s seminal 1967 film and fell for songs like Serge Gainsbourg’s beautiful elegy to the lover-outlaws. Moving to Dallas made their story a little more tangible. In time, I sought out the porch of the Barrow filling station, some of the banks they held up, the storefront cafe where Bonnie once worked, and the streets of West Dallas that still looks very much like they did when it was rife with two-bit criminals and known as the “Devil’s Back Porch.”

But it wasn’t until late last year when I stumbled upon an obscure YouTube interview of Clyde Barrow’s nephew, Buddy, that I began to think about another, little-known side of the Bonnie and Clyde story. In that interview, Buddy speaks about some of the grief his family endured during the decades after Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down outside of Gibsland, La. He also speaks the families’ desire to bring some closure to the past by moving the body of Bonnie Parker to a burial plot next to Clyde. The Barrows have kept it empty and waiting for her since 1934.

Listening to Buddy, I realized that he and his family had their own story to tell.

Rhea Leen Linder and Buddy Barrow’s attorney called the offices of the Crown Hill Memorial Park cemetery in northwest Dallas last summer with a seemingly simple question: how could his clients dig up their dead relative? Rhea Leen’s aunt had been dead for 85 years. Her body had already been unearthed once, when it was moved to Crown Hill from a small cemetery near Fish Trap Lake in 1945. This sort of request was unusual but not unheard of. DeWayne Hughes, whose family has run Crown Hill since the mid-1960s, walked the attorney through all the signatures and permits they would need to gather. Toward the end of the conversation, Hughes asked whom they wished to disinter.

“Bonnie Parker,” the lawyer said.

The phone went quiet.

Bonnie Parker—half of the infamous outlaw duo Bonnie and Clyde—is without a doubt the most famous resident of Crown Hill. Her gravestone is a shrine for pilgrims who, more than eight decades later, are still entranced by the story of the two young lovers from West Dallas whose crime spree became a tabloid sensation during the Great Depression and eventually transformed Bonnie and Clyde into American folk heroes. Today the pair is regarded as something like a 20th-century Romeo and Juliet, and their story has inspired films, popular songs, and books. On any given day, you will find fresh flowers, mementos, and letters left at Bonnie Parker’s grave—as well as at the grave of Clyde Barrow, who is buried at Western Heights Cemetery, on Fort Worth Avenue, in West Dallas.

And it was that fact—that Bonnie lies in northwest Dallas while Clyde rests near the West Dallas neighborhood where the couple met—that prompted Rhea Leen, Bonnie’s 85-year-old niece, and Buddy, Clyde’s 71-year-old nephew, to contact Crown Hill. They want to reunite the lovers by moving Bonnie’s body and burying it next to Clyde’s.

It was, after all, Bonnie’s dying wish to lie next to her lover forever. But Bonnie’s mother wouldn’t hear of it. “He had her in life,” Emma said at the time. “He can’t have her in death.”

Emma’s reaction is understandable. Bonnie and Clyde’s gang allegedly killed nine police officers and several civilians during the couple’s brief life of crime. The murders devastated their families. In subsequent decades, each member of the family had to endure some measure of the shame, ignominy, and indignation that came with being a Barrow or a Parker. They were attacked, harassed, and imprisoned. They fled their homes. They hid from neighbors, police, and the media. They tried to forget all about Bonnie and Clyde.

So why do the families now want to dig up Bonnie? The spectacle would only thrust them back into the spotlight. Rhea Leen and Buddy can explain. Many of the details in this story—about their motivations and their familial legacy—have never before been published.

You may remember the name Mark Doty from back when we did our Lost Dallas issue. Doty is the Chief Planner of the City of Dallas Historic Preservation Section and the author of the book Lost Dallas, which was a major resource in our research into the city’s forgotten past. This week, over on the website of the City of Dallas Historic Preservation Program, Doty’s colleague Jennifer Anderson shares a batch of slides Doty recently discovered in the city’s archives.

The images are from the 1970s and early 1980s, and they capture downtown Dallas in a pivotal moment of transition. There are pictures of city hall, Reunion Tower, and the Coamerica Bank Tower under construction. There are also images of lost buildings, like the Baker Hotel, Honest Joe’s Pawn Shop in Deep Ellum, and a shotgun house in Little Mexico.

Anderson adds some context to each of the shots. Check them all out here.

Ed. note: Tales From the Dallas History Archives is an ongoing series in which we employ a Dallas Public library archivist to dig through public collections for forgotten photographs. The photos come from the Dallas History and Archives Division. To learn about how you can do your own digging, see the note at the bottom of this post.

Women have shaped Dallas’ history since its beginnings, and by understanding their influences on the city, we can better understand its past while envisioning its future. You can feel the impact of Dallas’ trailblazing women inside these photos. Let’s dive in.

This photograph titled Anita Martinez boarding plane with other members of a Dallas Chamber of Commerce delegation is one of many images related to Anita Martinez (1925-), who was the first female Mexican-American to be elected to the Dallas City Council in 1969.

She has continued to serve the people of Dallas in subsequent decades through various roles. The Anita Martinez Collection contains photographs, speeches, newspaper clipping files, and correspondence related to her career and pursuits in politics and community activism.

If you haven’t yet watched the HBO documentary United Skates, you should. But be prepared: it’s no Roll Bounce. I mean, it’s got all the good feels that come from combining James Brown, modified skate wheels attached to Chuck Taylors, and choreographed nutcracker splits on a hardwood floor. But things get dark.

Going to Ohio Skate as a kid in a white suburb of Toledo, I was oblivious to the history of racism that has pervaded roller rinks pretty much since they were first introduced to the American public in Rhode Island, shortly after the end of the Civil War, in 1866. Nor was I aware that, despite their history of nearly a century of overt segregation, they had become a cultural touchstone for African-American communities across the country, complete with coded inclusive language (“Adult Night”) to counteract the coded exclusive language (“No Saggy Pants” as well as the more obscure “No Small Wheels”).

What brought on the waterworks was the surprisingly emotional impact that the wave of recent closures is having on the people who have relied on them for generations for safe and low-cost exercise, entertainment, after school recreation, and socializing. Not to mention the loss of a one-of-a-kind art form.

The documentary blames the trend less on changing millennial interests and more on the rising value of land that these low revenue, high square footage businesses sit on (not unlike boxing gyms). It made me curious about the state of affairs in Dallas, so I took a look back at Alice Laussade’s feature from a couple of years ago about the best roller rinks in town. I was heartened to find that of the eight she included, only one–Mid-Cities Skateland–has closed. And that another one that we didn’t include, Southern Skates Roller Rink, which happens to be owned by the city, still offers an Adult Skate on Thursday nights.

Before they changed the game of bridge, before they captured the United States’ first world championship in more than 15 years, before the million-dollar computer and celebrity hangers-on and discipline imparted by a former Air Force colonel named Moose, the Dallas Aces needed to fire their boss.

Ira Corn was a unique presence, a 300-pound multimillionaire with a proclivity for throwing his financial weight around. “He was large, so he had to live large,” says his daughter, Laura. There were conventional luxuries: fine art, rich food, cigars the size of Lincoln Logs, a penthouse apartment in Manhattan. But he reserved his most grandiose spending for his passions. He loved American history, so he purchased an original copy of the Declaration of Independence for $404,000, the highest price ever paid for a printed document at the time. He loved to read, so he subscribed to dozens of periodicals and finished a new book each night.

Most of all, in 1968, he loved bridge. So he decided to bankroll a professional team—even though one had never existed before. He had designs on toppling Italy’s famous Blue Team, the game’s great juggernaut, winners of 12 of the last 13 world championships. Not only that, he intended to defeat them himself.

“He thought if he got five good players, he could play with them and win anything,” says Mike Lawrence, one of the team’s original members. “That was the furthest from the truth imaginable.”

Which is what led Bobby Wolff, the team’s first recruit and Ira’s handpicked partner, to pull his benefactor aside on a Tuesday in late August. They were in Minneapolis for one of the most important events of the year, the Spingold national bridge championship. Five days in, their team was treading water, eking out victories over opponents they should have dismembered. It had been that way ever since the Aces were formed that February, a collection of world-class talent lugging along an amateur. Finally, after one close call too many, “the time had come for truth,” Wolff says now.

Wolff broke the news in a hotel hallway, as Ira puffed a typically giant cigar: The Aces will never become what you want them to be—what they can be—if you keep playing. Ira said nothing. Wolff half-expected Ira to dissolve the team, and perhaps that wouldn’t be the worst thing. Ira had the best of intentions but he was dragging his creation down. And then, as Wolff began to plot out his next endeavors, Ira spoke.

“Well, you better win,” he grumbled. They lost the next day.

One year later, they routed the field. By then the Dallas Aces were in the throes of one of the most audacious experiments the game had seen, an unprecedented and mostly unduplicated attempt to build a better bridge team. When they dissolved after 15 years, the Aces had collected four world titles and numerous domestic championships. Two of their stars formed one of the most decorated partnerships in history. Along the way, they prototyped strategies that are now ubiquitous in modern sports culture.

The story of the world’s first full-time professional bridge team is one of Dallas succeeding where the rest of America failed. It all owes itself to a large man who chased an appropriately huge dream.