The quickest way to learn firsthand about the history of a place \u2014 a city or region \u2014 is through its cemeteries. Walk among the gravesites, and you\u2019ll see a story of a community etched in stone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The pioneers who built it with their hands and fortunes and their sons and daughters, many of whom became the soldiers who defended it. Those families whose names now belong to streets and schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The faces, many of them unknown except to their family and friends, who gave the place character.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oakwood Cemetery on the city\u2019s North Side has always been a place of reprieve. Here is the final resting place for some of Fort Worth\u2019s most notable, including Burk Burnett, K.M. Van Zandt, Luke Short and nemesis Jim Courtright, and Major Horace Carswell. R.L. Paschal is here, as are some Monnigs. Euday Louis Bowman, the hard-luck composer of the famed \u201cTwelfth Street Rag,\u201d has a nice place at Oakwood.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
And whenever I visit, like this visit, I make my way to the \u201cHenry\u201d plot. It\u2019s the final resting place for my great-grandparents, two of their daughters \u2014 my great-aunts, both unmarried \u2014 and a grandson, one of those infants lost before life began.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m standing at the gravesite, located just inside the arch that welcomes visitors like myself to this section of the cemetery. It carries the inscription \u201cCalvary.\u201d A cardinal sits atop it. The top two markers carry the inscriptions for the patriarch and matriarch with dates of death of 1920 and 1947.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Down and to the left lies the grandson. To his right should be the two markers of my great aunts, but both are covered with overgrown grass. I begin to kick at the grass until gray granite begins to appear.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI really wish someone would come out here and clean that up,\u201d I hear a voice say from the direction to my left. It startles me more than a little, my having been caught up in my own world.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was that?\u201d I say as I turn to look toward the voice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI really wish someone would come out here and clean that up,\u201d says a man I clearly recognize from a picture I have in the house.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s my great-grandfather!\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you work here?\u201d he asks me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cN-n-n-n-n-no,\u201d I stammer. \u201cHey \u2026 uh, pardon me \u2026 what is your name?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m Alex Henry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I take a deep breath, trying to gather my wits. What in the hell is going on here? I blink hard, half-expecting the image to vanish, but he\u2019s still there, as real as the headstone at my feet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is either the strangest day of my life or the beginning of a very long conversation with the dead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I flinch at the sight of a coyote about 100 yards in front of me. That\u2019s not something else you see every day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s just Wiley,\u201d Alex says. \u201cHe roams the property for squirrels at lunchtime.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWiley?\u201d I say. \u201cLike Wile E.? Wile E. Coyote?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d He looks at me, blank. No flicker of recognition. No smirk of shared Saturday mornings watching cartoons on a television that, to him, would be something out of science fiction.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I\u2019m John Henry. Like you. I\u2019m one of yours. I\u2019m your great-grandson.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hell you say! I\u2019ll be damned. Who\u2019s your daddy?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He also probably wouldn\u2019t recognize the humor in that phrase. He didn\u2019t know my dad either, but I tell him. He knows my grandfather \u2014 his son \u2014 of course.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHoly cow. This is deep. You come here often?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He thinks this is deep, I say to myself. Generally, once a year, I tell him.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be honest with you,\u201d I continue. \u201cWiley isn\u2019t the one who is scaring the bejesus out of me. How is it that you\u2019re here right now?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alex tells me that when a person dies, the soul lifts free from the body but can hover. It can feel the gravity of the flesh pulling at it. That pull never fully releases. Even a century later \u2014 centuries later, he says \u2014 the spirit may return, drawn to the remnants of the body.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s never allowed to rejoin.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo why do you appear in almost perfect form?\u201d I say. \u201cYou don\u2019t look like a ghost.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The spirit retains a perfect memory of its physical self, he says. What I see is not the body returned, but the soul projecting how it remembers itself \u2014 face, posture, even clothing from the moment it last felt most alive.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTo the living, this appears as a \u2018full body form,\u2019\u201d he says, \u201cthough in truth, it\u2019s a luminous imitation, not flesh.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI can come and go as I please,\u201d he says. \u201cI love my afterlife home, but it can get kind of boring.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never boring down here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
And with that we begin to walk. He\u2019s leading the way. I follow along, my fear having subsided, and my curiosity turned up to full blast.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019re walking among droves of grave markers, almost all of them first laid more than a century ago. Those stones are reminders, Alex tells me, that a real person left their own mark on the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of them have a story to tell,\u201d he says. \u201cAll of those stories are worth listening to. Keep it down. Don\u2019t rustle up that son of a bitch.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He points in a direction to our right.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a fellow buried over there who was as notorious as they come. Jim Miller was his name, though most folks called him \u2018Deacon Jim\u2019 in his day. Don\u2019t let that church-going nickname fool you,\u201d he says before continuing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
By the time an angry mob strung him up in Ada, Oklahoma, in 1909, he had the blood of dozens of men on his hands. Some say it all started right back here in Texas, near Gatesville, when he was accused of killing his brother-in-law. That was the first time he was accused, but it sure wouldn\u2019t be the last.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jim eventually became a hitman, all the while carrying himself as a gentleman preacher. He didn\u2019t drink or cuss, and went to church regularly, and he always wore fine clothes too, including a diamond ring on his finger, stick pin on his coat, and that long black frock coat even in the blazing Texas heat.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was hot here then, too,\u201d Alex says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fort Worth was where he lived, but his work took him across the Southwest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jim killed upwards of 50 people, they say, and got away with every one of them \u2014 mostly because witnesses wound up dead \u2014 until Ada, where he killed a rancher and former U.S. marshal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jim was arrested, but the townsfolk weren\u2019t waiting on due process. A mob of about 200 stormed the jail and dragged Jim and three other men to a stable.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alex continues: \u201cAs the noose was going over his head, Jim asked for two things \u2014 that his diamond ring be sent to his wife and that he be allowed to wear his black hat, which, as gentlemen, they permitted. Then he straightened himself up, looked out at the mob, and said, \u2018Let \u2018er rip.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That was that. Jim Miller was returned to Fort Worth for proper burial.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To our left as we walk up the road is a section for soldiers of the Confederacy. A memorial pays homage to their service. Edgy, I think.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another voice suddenly breaks in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFolks think Texas marched in lockstep to secession, but here in Tarrant County the difference was just 28 ballots out of more than 700,\u201d the man says to me. \u201cIt was neighbor against neighbor, and the tally could have tipped the other way with a handful of men changing their minds.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s John Peter Friggin Smith, I say out loud to no one in particular.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCall me Peter,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The \u201cFather of Fort Worth,\u201d Peter Smith served three terms as mayor and oversaw the organization of the city\u2019s public schools, remaining one of their strongest advocates.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
He went to Franklin College in Indiana and then entered Bethany College in West Virginia. The same year he graduated with honors, he moved to Fort Worth. The move to Texas was transformational for both.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFort Worth was little more than an abandoned fort at that time when I got here in the early 1850s,\u201d he says to me. Peter says he taught in the town\u2019s first school, established in an old hospital.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
That school was the foundation for AddRan Christian University. Addison Clark got his first classroom experience there under Peter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI wonder whatever happened to AddRan,\u201d Peter asks to no one in particular.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s TCU! It\u2019s in Fort Worth,\u201d I answer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alex appears not to hear me. He was alive when TCU moved to Fort Worth in 1910. Peter simply ignored me. He died in 1901 in St. Louis on a trip to bring commerce to Fort Worth. By then he was the largest landowner in Fort Worth. Some of that he donated for this very cemetery, Peter says before getting back to the topic: secession.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI did my damnedest to stop it. I was with Sam Houston and Throckmorton and, here, Middleton Tate Johnson in opposing raising a new flag.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tarrant County was pretty equally divided, likely because of Peter Smith\u2019s opposition to leaving. Once it was decided, however, Peter went off to fight for the Confederacy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
After the war, Peter returned home to practice law and deal in real estate, quickly rising in Fort Worth society as one of its largest landowners. He was a leading advocate for moving the county seat from Birdville.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWas it true, the story about Fort Worth stealing a barrel of whiskey out of Birdville and giving it out to voters as incentive to get to the polls,\u201d I ask.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a legend,\u201d he says. Or was it?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Peter, who turned down a number of overtures to run for governor, backed key projects like the Fort Worth Street Railway and the Texas & Pacific Railroad. By the 1880s and into the 1890s, his influence extended to building the city\u2019s first stockyard and supporting countless cattlemen and business ventures that shaped Fort Worth\u2019s growth.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was there that afternoon when the great concourse followed his body to its final resting place,\u201d Alex says. \u201cIt was the largest gathering anybody can remember ever seeing to honor the dead in Fort Worth. I stood among his countless admirers, all of us mourning the loss of Fort Worth\u2019s best friend and one of Texas\u2019 greatest citizens.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I follow Peter, who began to walk. I turned to find Alex, but he was suddenly nowhere to be seen.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother anti-secessionist was David Culberson in East Texas,\u201d says Peter, before being interrupted. A very dapper man stood before me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe voted against it in the Texas Legislature,\u201d says this new man, who takes over the story. \u201cBut, defeated, he served his state in the Confederacy. Good afternoon, I\u2019m Charles Culberson. David Culberson was my father. He\u2019s out in East Texas.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Charles Culberson \u2014 who arrived in Oakwood in 1925 \u2014 has always intrigued me. He is in the Harrison plot, very near the mausoleums of Burk Burnett and John Slaughter, as well as K.M. Van Zandt.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though his father went on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, the son grew up to become a darling of Texas politics \u2014 attorney general, governor, and a member of the U.S. Senate, where he served for almost 25 years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Culberson\u2019s mark as governor was a special session in 1895 to ban boxing. He had a Prohibitionist\u2019s zeal against the sport.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI summoned that special session not for spectacle, but for duty \u2014 to place upon our statute-books a law making prize-fighting a felony,\u201d Charles says to me. \u201cSuch exhibitions, as practiced in many places, are incompatible with the morals and safety of our citizens. Texas must refuse to sanction cruelty under the guise of sport and must draw a firm line: If men wish to strike blows for gain, then law must interpose and forbid.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That effort to stop the fight in Dallas between James Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons eventually turned to spectacle. In the end, Roy Bean held a fight between Fitzsimmons and Peter Maher on a sandbar in the Rio Grande, on the Mexico side, spitting in the face of the law and Charles Culberson.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat exhibition upon the Mexican bank of the Rio Grande was not a triumph of sport but a mockery of law,\u201d Culberson says, now seemingly preaching to me. \u201cIt was a deliberate attempt to evade the sovereignty of Texas and to flout the authority of this office. Let no man mistake it \u2014 when individuals stage such spectacles within sight of our soil, thumbing their noses at statute and order, they do violence not only to the letter of our law but to the dignity of the state itself.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Culberson made his mark, however, in the Senate as a friend of President Woodrow Wilson. In 1912, he introduced Texas to Wilson, the rising political star, at the Texas State Fair in Dallas. It would lead to Texas going Wilson at the Baltimore convention and, ultimately, presidential triumph.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once Wilson reached the White House, Culberson, and even more so his political rainmaker, Col. Edward House, became one of the president\u2019s closest friends and most reliable allies in Congress. When the reform-minded Wilson needed a steady hand in the Senate, it was Culberson he turned to.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI voted for him twice,\u201d says Alex, having suddenly reappeared, of Wilson. Alex dabbled in politics. In fact, he was an alternate delegate to the state Democratic convention in San Antonio in 1916.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was an all-Wilson conclave,\u201d he says. \u201cThe \u2018Harmony Doctrine.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Culberson, looking a little annoyed at Alex\u2019s interruption, supported Wilson\u2019s efforts for a permanent peace through the Treaty of Versailles.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThough my own fortunes waned, I left Washington certain that history would judge our failure to ratify the treaty as a lost opportunity for America to lead wisely in the world,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No one in Texas saw Culberson for his reelection bid in 1916, the first direct election in Texas of that august body. He was too sick to come back to campaign. Rumors of his attachment to the bottle swept across the lips of muckrakers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard the whispers, and I will not pretend I am without frailty,\u201d Culberson says to me with the flair of a lawyer making a closing argument. \u201cBut I would remind those who judge that a man is not measured by his failings alone, but by his service to his state and country. If my hand has ever trembled from private weakness, it has never trembled in the discharge of my duty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He turns and walks away, never to return.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m suddenly on my own, the senator having beat a path to somewhere, and dear, ol\u2019 great-granddad taking a break \u2014 I guess.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019d always heard that Fort Worth\u2019s greatest ballplayer was here somewhere, though I\u2019d never found his gravesite.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joe Pate was born in Alice, Texas, in Jim Wells County.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you know who Jim Wells was,\u201d says this young man in a Fort Worth Cats baseball uniform.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t,\u201d I say to a guy \u2014 I\u2019m getting used to talking to the dead \u2014 I\u2019m guessing is Joe Pate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMe either,\u201d Joe says. \u201cI wasn\u2019t there but a few years before we moved to Fort Worth.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
At Central High School \u2014 today we call it Paschal \u2014 Joe was a standout quarterback before turning to baseball. He went on to become a star pitcher for the Fort Worth Cats, where he spent eight seasons (1918\u201325) under legendary manager Jake Atz.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pate won 30 games in both 1921 and 1924 \u2014 making him the only two-time 30-game winner in Texas League history \u2014 and added four more 20-win seasons during his tenure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Cats won five Dixie Series championships in six years with Pate as their ace, and in 1924 Amon Carter even took him to Washington, D.C., to meet President Calvin Coolidge after one of their victories.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d pitched a lot of tough innings, but walking into the White House to shake hands with the President was something else entirely,\u201d Joe says to me. \u201cMr. Coolidge wasn\u2019t a man of many words \u2014 in fact, not surprisingly, he said very little. Baseball had carried a Fort Worth boy farther than I ever dreamed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 1926, at age 34, Pate joined the Philadelphia Athletics under Connie Mack. He went 9-0 with a 2.71 ERA and six saves as a rookie, tying a major league record for most consecutive relief wins to start a career.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
During his two years with the Athletics, Pate shared the clubhouse with future Hall of Famers including Ty Cobb, Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane, Jimmie Foxx, Eddie Collins, and Lefty Grove.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTy Cobb was fierce, sharp as barbed wire, and he played every inning like it was the last out of the World Series,\u201d he says. \u201cJust to wear the same uniform was something I never forgot.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
After returning to Fort Worth in 1928, he played eight more years of minor-league ball before retiring. Later, he operated a newsstand and domino parlor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought running a newsstand and dealing dominoes would keep me busy, but truth be told, nothing ever filled the hole baseball left. Baseball wasn\u2019t just what I did, it was who I was.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joe turns to the side as if something big were approaching.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
There was something big approaching: a beautiful woman. Holy mackerel, I think to myself, as this glamorous young beauty walks toward us. She is wearing a long, form-fitting gown, its shimmering sequins shining brightly in this Texas sun. Her heels are, let\u2019s just say, high.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s Adrienne Ames,\u201d Joe says to me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI am Adrienne Ames \u2026 once upon a time Ruth McClure of Fort Worth, Texas, but the world came to know me beneath the brightest lights.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the six years before her death, she was the voice of Hollywood and Broadway on WHN radio, broadcasting twice daily and interviewing leading celebrities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou reside here, I presume?\u201d I asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d she says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The elegant Ms. Ames was often referred to as \u201cthe orchidaceous Miss Ames\u201d and frequently listed among America\u2019s best-dressed women.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
After marrying New York broker Stephen Ames, she was introduced to Manhattan society. She continued her education, studying literature at Columbia University and art at the Metropolitan Museum. A vacation to Honolulu with her husband led to a detour in California, where striking photographs of her beauty caught the attention of Paramount executives. They offered her a contract without even a screen test.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt still astonishes me,\u201d she says. \u201cA handful of photographs changed the course of my life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ames went on to star in numerous films throughout the 1930s, including \u201cTwenty-Four Hours,\u201d \u201cThe Road to Reno,\u201d \u201cTwo Kinds of Women,\u201d \u201cFrom Hell to Heaven,\u201d and \u201cGeorge White\u2019s Scandals.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
She also had a Hollywood track record in matrimony, marrying three times, the first to Texas oilman Derward Truax.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cShe died in 1947 at 39,\u201d Joe says. \u201cI died the next year.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The tallest obelisk in Oakwood Cemetery sits on the plot that houses the remains of Fort Worth businessman William Madison McDonald, a pioneer in every sense of the word, a leader of the Texas Republican Party for more than 10 years as the founder of its \u201cBlack and Tan\u201d faction that sprung to life in the late 1890s.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That the obelisk faces the former Ellis Pecan Co., a former Ku Klux Klan hall, is no accident, at least according to lore. It was intentional, the placement of the monument, which he built some years before his death in 1950 at age 84.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not saying that\u2019s true,\u201d says McDonald, who has appeared in front of his memorial in the Trinity section of the cemetery. \u201cI\u2019m not saying it\u2019s not true.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
McDonald rose to prominence as both a businessman and political leader, becoming, it is believed, the first Black millionaire in Texas.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
After the death of Norris Wright Cuney in 1897, McDonald assumed leadership of the Texas Republican Party. He forged a strong political alliance with Edward Howland Robinson Green, and together they led the \u201cBlack and Tans.\u201d Though their control was challenged and briefly lost to the \u201cLily Whites\u201d in 1900, McDonald and his allies regained influence in 1912 during the \u201cBull Moose\u201d upheaval.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alongside his political career, McDonald built a powerful business legacy in Fort Worth. With the backing of Black fraternal lodges, he founded the Fraternal Bank and Trust Company, which became the principal financial institution for Black Masonic lodges across Texas. This achievement cemented his reputation as both a savvy financier and a civic leader.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI am most proud of the bank,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was more than a business. With the support of our lodges, we created an institution that gave our community a measure of control over their own destiny. For years, it proved that Black enterprise could not only survive but thrive in Texas.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
McDonald had the obelisk erected as a memorial to his son, who died in 1918 while away at Howard University in Washington, D.C.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe day I lost my boy was the hardest of my life. He was only 20, just beginning, full of promise, with a mind set on helping his community. I had dreamed of handing him the burden and the blessing of leadership, but God saw fit to call him home before his time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
W. T. Waggoner was the kind of man who seemed larger than life. His fortune stretched across oilfields and cattle ranges, but his heart beat to the rhythm of hooves.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA horse will tell you more about yourself than any banker ever will,\u201d says Tom Waggoner, who is standing just outside his grand mausoleum.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I immediately look for a way to remember what he just told me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tom Waggoner was one of Texas\u2019 most remarkable sons. He was raised on the unforgiving frontier and carved out distinction as one of Texas\u2019 most celebrated cattle barons \u2014 who with his father built one of the largest cattle operations in Texas \u2014 and landowners.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
On that land, he eventually found a lot of oil, becoming one of the richest men west of the Mississippi. His Wichita County lands sat atop one of the great oil pools of the Southwest, and while derricks eventually sprouted where cattle once grazed, he never lost his identity as a cowman.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He turned down offers in the tens of millions for his holdings, measuring success in the quality of herds, not in barrels of oil.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To Waggoner, cattle meant more than profit; they represented a way of life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He still says to me on this day that it was water he was digging for, not oil, when crude appeared.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted water, and they got me oil,\u201d he says of the memory. \u201cI was mad, mad clean through. I said, \u2018Damn the oil. I want water.\u2019 Oil may fatten a man\u2019s purse, but cattle feed a man\u2019s soul. I\u2019ll take the herd over the derrick any day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He poured his fortune into causes that mattered to him: strengthening Fort Worth and supporting education and, perhaps most famously, realizing his dream of building Arlington Downs \u2014 one of the finest horse racing tracks in the nation. There, his passion for good horses found a stage equal to his ambition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite his immense fortune, Waggoner never traded simplicity for extravagance, as I witness on this day. He\u2019s plainspoken, generous, and as old-fashioned as an old shoe.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was a civic leader, pouring money and energy into his adopted city, Fort Worth. He funded dormitories and fine arts buildings at Texas Woman\u2019s College, and he erected two of downtown\u2019s landmark office towers \u2014 the Dan Waggoner and W. T. Waggoner buildings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause in the end,\u201d Tom says, \u201cwe will be judged in how we treated each other.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The quickest way to learn firsthand about the history of a place \u2014 a city or region \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3341,116,118,3342,117,3340,2862,3339,3344,3343,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-2831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-destination","9":"tag-fort-worth","10":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","11":"tag-fort-worth-history","12":"tag-fort-worth-news","13":"tag-historic-landmark","14":"tag-john-henry","15":"tag-oakmont-cemetery","16":"tag-places","17":"tag-texas-history","18":"tag-top-story"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}