star-telegram.com: Bud Kennedy

What would the Donald say? New trustee can guess

Sun, 11 May 2008 09:11 CDT

By Bud Kennedy

He got beat by the football team from Friday Night Lights.

Then Donald Trump fired him off The Apprentice.

At 30, Arlington marketing executive Bowie Hogg is no longer living a life straight out of reality TV. He now has a genuinely tough task: serving on his hometown school board.

Hogg keeps Trump's number in his iPhone.

"If I called, he would tell me, 'Hard work pays off,'" Hogg said Saturday, gathering with friends in suburban Pantego to celebrate his first victory in politics.

Hogg imagined how The Donald might analyze the campaign.

"He would say, 'You out-marketed the competition,'" Hogg said. "He always said that it's all about your reputation and whether people respect you. People respect him because he's tough."

That was four years and 20 million viewers ago.

On Saturday, Hogg was elected not only off his TV fame, but also off the reputations of his schoolteacher parents and the respect they earned in 40 years in Arlington.

Great public school trustees always have a passion for their city's children. Hogg rattled off his legacy: Duff Elementary, Bailey Junior High and Arlington High School, where he played guard on Colts state playoff teams, including the 1995 team eliminated by the Odessa Permian Panthers of Friday Night fame.

Football is both Arlington's passion and its problem.

The district has a proud history of state champions and playoff victories. But lately, Arlington is having more problems with youth discipline and violence, partly because it has large, impersonal, powerhouse-size high schools instead of more, smaller neighborhood schools.

Hogg does not sound interested in changing that.

"Football and sports are critical because they build a town," he said. "Big schools can offer more programs. At small schools, there's more direct involvement with each child and the parents, but you don't have the participation."

North Fort Worth voters also voted out of passion -- but maybe for the past.

New school trustee Carlos Vasquez, 40, is an outspoken former principal about to start a new job teaching at Texas Wesleyan University.

He defeated District 1 trustee Camille Rodriguez, 39, by arguing that north-side schools were better under predecessor Rose Herrera and the last superintendent, Thomas Tocco.

That might be true. Both were vocal education leaders. But they were also horrendous tax watchdogs and sloppy business managers.

"There was a flier saying that I wanted the 'days of corruption' to come back," said Vasquez, the son of teachers in Brownsville and most recently a spokesman for a textbook publisher. "Look, Tocco made mistakes. But the children in this district were better off."

The board president's race remains undecided. For the first time in more than 20 years, the Fort Worth school board president will not come from the Paschal High School neighborhood.

Florida debate on bumper ornament bill gets cut off

Fri, 09 May 2008 04:34 CDT

By BUD KENNEDY

Luckily for all Texans, our state Legislature is taking the year off.

In the absence of the usual zany antics in Austin, we have been forced to turn to Florida for entertainment.

Ending a debate that could have come straight from under the Texas Capitol dome, the Florida House has curbed a bill that would have fined motorists $60 for driving with "obscene decorations."

The bill was meant primarily to outlaw a certain popular metallic truck-bumper ornament.

Let's just say that it looks exactly like the bovine body part that separates the bulls from the steers.

Taking a sharp knife to a Republican's highway safety bill, the Florida House carved off and discarded a Senate amendment that would have outlawed displaying any image of "reproductive glands."

State Sen. Carey Baker, a conservative and a gun-shop owner from Eustis in Lake County, had convinced the Senate that police should ticket any driver with a bullish ornament hanging from a bumper.

The Senate had handled the matter gingerly through two days of debate, arguing about "glands" in front of a gallery of Florida schoolchildren.

Baker called the decorations obscene, even though the real thing is plainly visible in any pasture. Without a bull attached, the argument goes, the ornaments look more like something human that legally can't be displayed in Florida, not even on the beach in Key West.

According to reputable Florida newspapers, Baker actually said, "If we overlook the small obscenity, then it could grow into a larger one."

Another Republican state senator, Jim King of Jacksonville, debated Baker. King bragged about how he had one of the big bumper ornaments on his Suburban -- at least, until his wife complained. When men started honking and waving at her when she drove, she told King to cut the bull.

During the debate, King asked, "At what point do you say, 'Big Brother or big government are stepping in areas they shouldn't?'"

The idea of banning the bull baubles started earlier this year in Virginia, where a Democrat wanted motorists fined $250 for displays "resembling human genitalia."

State Rep. Lionell Spruill Sr. of Chesapeake asked, "What about the kids?"

He told a television station, "It comes to a point where there are certain things you just can't do." And hanging a bullish ornament from a rear bumper is "just too much," he said.

But other Virginia lawmakers declined to give law officers the added assignment of being the bumper-good-taste police.

This appears to be a Deep South phenomenon. In Texas, we don't ride around showing off those things.

We fry them.

Riscky's Steakhouse in the Stockyards inherited the legacy of Theo's Saddle & Sirloin. According to local legend, it was the first restaurant anywhere offering the chuckwagon delicacy gently called "calf fries."

Some original owners pass the restaurant twice daily -- not in trucks but as part of the real-life Fort Worth Herd longhorn cattle drive.

Eats Beat: Last-minute places for mom

Sun, 11 May 2008 09:11 CDT

By Bud Kennedy

So, did you remember Mom?

If not -- don't wait till Sunday.

Mother's Day is the busiest restaurant Sunday of the year.

If you haven't booked a table yet, try these last-minute choices:

Byblos Lebanese Restaurant, 1406 N. Main St., Fort Worth, will expand its lunch buffet and include lamb kebabs and spinach pies along with the first-rate baked chicken and baklava; $19.95, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 817-625-9667.

Hedary's, Byblos' west-side cousin at 6323 Camp Bowie Blvd, will serve its Sunday buffet for $18.95; 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 817-731-6961.

Ferrari's Italian Villa, the busy new Italian showplace in Grapevine, 1200 William D. Tate Ave., will serve a bold menu with shrimp and spaghetti ($36), roasted sea bass ($42) and a roasted lobster tail ($57), 817-251-2525.

Birraporetti's, 668 Lincoln Square in Arlington, serves an Italian Sunday brunch weekly for $13.95; 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m., 817-265-0555.

A flashier Sunday buffet in Arlington is nearby at Olenjack's Grille, 770 E. Road to Six Flags, featuring a special "Mom's comfort food" menu of jambalaya, ham, pork loin and usual brunch items; $25, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 817-226-2600.

The Covey Restaurant & Brewery, 3010 S. Hulen St., Fort Worth, has developed a reputation for Sunday fried chicken dinners. For Mom, there's a special buffet with prime rib and brunch items; $39.95, 11 a.m- 3 p.m., 817-731-7933.

Lili's Bistro, 1310 W. Magnolia Ave., Fort Worth, is doing a simple brunch menu featuring eggs Benedict, crepes and lighter lunch items such as onion-crusted tilapia or King Ranch chicken; $8-$15, 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., 817-877-0700.

Vidalias, 222 Main St., Fort Worth, inside the Worthington hotel, has unusual availability after noon for its Sunday brunch; $45, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., 817-882-1719.

Reata, 310 Houston St., Fort Worth, serves brunch every Sunday with huevos rancheros, omelets, plus the full steak and grill menu; brunch $10-$12, 11 a.m.- 2 p.m. and 5-10:30 p.m., 817-336-1009.

The new Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, 815 Main St. in downtown Fort Worth will open at 3 p.m., 817-348-0080.

On any Sunday, the Fort Worth Stockyards offers a choice of four excellent mid-price steakhouses within two blocks: venerable Cattleman's, the flashy H3 Ranch, historic Riscky's Sirloin Inn and the just-good-food Star Cafe. Look for the shortest line, or just browse along Exchange Avenue east and west of Main Street after the daily 11:30 a.m. longhorn cattle drive.

In Dallas, restaurants with lunch tables available at midweek included the excellent and family-friendly Grill on the Alley at the Galleria, along with hotel restaurants such as Dragonfly at Hotel Zaza, Craft Dallas at the W and Central 214 at the Hotel Palomar.

Mayoral candidate hints at endorsement from on high

Wed, 07 May 2008 04:37 CDT

By BUD KENNEDY

Lord knows we need more politicians in church.

But not when they drag the church into campaigns.

That's what one candidate is doing in Weatherford.

Former Mayor Tom McLaughlin, now a chronic City Hall critic, must think Jesus is on his side against Mayor Dennis Hooks.

McLaughlin's signs name the ultimate campaign endorsement: "Vote McLaughlin -- A Man Who Stands for Christ and the People."

Hooks, 61, is a car dealer who has served as a City Council member off and on since 1992, as Weatherford has grown from a town of 15,000 people to a city expecting 40,000 by 2030.

He said McLaughlin's signs don't bother him.

"He must be a Christian man," Hooks said by phone. "Well, I'm a Christian man, too. I just don't go shouting it."

Maybe McLaughlin, 56, is truly a devout evangelical Christian. Maybe he's eager to share his personal testimony.

Maybe he truly wants to shout his faith from the hilltops near his home along Fort Worth Highway.

However, I couldn't even get him to return a call.

Somebody else answered his phone Tuesday.

"I don't know if he'll talk to you," she said.

He did not.

So I called Matthew Wilson, an associate professor of political science at Southern Methodist University. Wilson often comments on religion and politics for The New York Times and Newsweek, but never before had he been called for expertise on a Weatherford City Council campaign.

Wilson said he's not sure he's ever heard of a candidate campaigning with Christ's name.

"Many Christians would regard that as unseemly," Wilson said. "The implication is that other candidates are not for Christ."

Unless faith has been debated, Wilson said, using the Savior's name in a political campaign seems "gratuitous."

Hooks said neither religion nor faith has been an issue at council meetings or in the mayoral campaign.

"Being a Christian to me is a way of life," he said. "It's not something you go advertising."

City Council candidates wasting no breath of clean air

Sun, 11 May 2008 09:11 CDT

By BUD KENNEDY

Is your city council trying to clean up our air?

No?

Then vote somebody else onto your city council.

North Fort Worth, Keller, Roanoke and Newark endured the filthiest air in Texas last year, primarily from car exhaust blowing north and west.

Down south, Mansfield and Arlington are perpetually at risk thanks to Ellis County, where cement plants produce some of the worst industrial pollution in America.

Now, an American Lung Association report card gives our air an F, dirtier than Dallas'.

At the turn of the century, Tarrant County's air wasn't that bad compared with, say, Houston's. We barely made the list of the nation's 50 most polluted counties.

Lately, we've zoomed onto the top 10 list.

In seven years, Tarrant County has gone from No. 46 to No. 10. The only county to get filthier faster is near Sacramento, Calif., where pollution settles in the valleys.

We don't have valleys to trap the smog.

We have wide-open prairie.

And air that's making us sick.

According to the lung association, about 1 of every 11 children here has asthma.

Nearly 50,000 Tarrant County residents have chronic bronchitis. More than 600,000 children and older adults face the greatest risk.

Yet I don't see city council candidates anywhere talking about clean air.

The north Fort Worth-Keller area usually has the region's dirtiest air. Now, it's the state champion.

But air quality -- and the potential effect on home sales -- are barely discussed in the ongoing Keller City Council election. The primary issue seems to be a petty debate over whether city taxes should pay for small art projects.

Council challenger John Baker, an airline pilot, seems like the only candidate fussing for cleaner air. Or at least, he made it a campaign slogan: "A Breath of Fresh Air!"

Baker, 57, is one of three candidates challenging incumbent Mark Harness. The others are investor Kevin Jerome, 42, and sales manager Scott Zang, 34.

Harness, 47, is a church administrator. He's one of three Keller council members who voted to reject a regional "clean fleet" agreement.

Lay blame for JPS where it belongs

Sun, 04 May 2008 09:11 CDT

By BUD KENNEDY

Let's put the blame for our county hospital system where it belongs.

The most recent boss was hired in 2001 with a former Euless mayor casting the tie-breaking vote. The votes to hire that candidate -- even though he had no public hospital experience -- came from trustees appointed by suburban Republicans on the Tarrant County Commissioners Court.

All four votes against hiring David Cecero, an out-of-work private hospital administrator from Illinois, came from Fort Worth trustees.

One, the late attorney and former board Vice Chairman Morton Minton, predicted that Cecero would run into problems with public oversight and accountability.

Still, appointees from Arlington and Northeast Tarrant County got their private-sector candidate by a 5-4 vote.

We must blame County Judge Glen Whitley of Hurst and the four commissioners -- including two more votes from the county's northern edge -- for the failures of a hospital system that now seems both uncaring to patients and unaccountable to taxpayers countywide.

There is nobody else we can blame.

We don't get to elect our own hospital trustees.

We have to trust the choices of the Commissioners Court.

In turn, we expect commissioners to choose leaders who will watch our money wisely and run a sound hospital system, the way Parkland Health & Hospital System runs a reliable network in Dallas.

Instead, Cecero and the JPS Health Network trustees have watched public money flow into their savings account while frustrated doctors and patients flow out the door.

A 34-year surgeon retired this week. We had quoted him as saying that Cecero and system officials were "not that interested in patient care" and routinely denied or discouraged low-cost care for the needy, instead making more time and space to favor insured and paying customers.

"That is absolutely contrary to what the surgeons think is the true mission that was set up originally by Mr. John Peter Smith," Dr. Chuck Webber said, invoking the name of the six-term former Fort Worth mayor who donated 5 acres in 1877 for a future hospital "for the poor of the city and county."

It would be the 1930s before the city and county governments would build a hospital there, moving from a downtown site where it served the bar brawlers and "soiled doves" of the old saloon district known as Hell's Half Acre.

Until eight years ago, John Peter Smith Hospital and the JPS Health Network mainly fulfilled the charity-hospital role that Smith put into writing when he donated such valuable land.

Cecero, now a Southlake resident, wasn't hush-hush about his plan to change JPS into a profit-minded, free-market hospital that would fill its $97 million piggy bank with public tax money, yet compete with private hospitals for paying patients.

When he was hired, he said plainly that his goal was "going after more patients who are insured."

Along the way, he didn't even tell his own trustees about a $600,000-plus report full of scathing criticism. He will collect nearly $900,000 in paychecks before he officially leaves in July 2009.

Speaking to a Republican club in downtown Fort Worth on Thursday, Whitley promised that he and commissioners want to have a "hard discussion" with their JPS board appointees. (The judge and commissioners appoint two trustees each, with the 11th trustee chosen at large.)

Whitley was on the committee that chose Cecero. In an interview after the club meeting, Whitley praised Cecero for knowing healthcare finance and for adding services and clinics countywide, saying that Cecero leaves JPS "in much better financial shape" than predecessor Tony Alcini.

Texas literary pioneer subject of book, university exhibit

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 04:37 CDT

By BUD KENNEDY

Forget those TV beer ads.

Texas author Edwin "Bud" Shrake might be the most interesting man in the world.

At the very least, he might be the most interesting Fort Worth author of our time. After all, what other writer covered a racial protest and the Kennedy motorcade, co-wrote the bestselling sports book ever, wrote Western movies for Dennis Hopper and Steve McQueen, and survived stints both inside the Governor's Mansion and aboard Willie Nelson's bus?

To find out about him, you have to go to a college in San Marcos. Or you could just buy a book.

The new exhibit in the Southwestern Writers' Collection showcases Shrake's 60-year writing career, which took him from Paschal High School and the old Fort Worth Press newspaper to Dallas, New York, Hollywood, London and back home to Texas.

It's timed with the publication of a new University of Texas Press anthology, Land of the Permanent Wave, that collects some of Shrake's best writing, mixed with excerpts from letters to friends such as writer Larry L. King.

Shrake, 76, has long been known as a favorite author for other Texas authors. His writing is like fine champagne compared with former Press colleague Dan Jenkins' whiskey-flavored sports novels, and they collaborated on the 1976 novel Limo, which accurately predicted the future lunacy now known as reality TV.

Shrake was a Press police reporter back when Fort Worth mobsters were killing each other with car bombs. The week of the Kennedy assassination, he was romantically, or at least anatomically, entangled with one of Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby's striptease dancers.

Yet he is famous for co-writing Harvey Penick's Little Red Book of golf tips.

At a signing party Saturday in the library at Texas State University-San Marcos, he told students how he grew up during the Depression in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Fort Worth, and later on Elizabeth Boulevard in Ryan Place.

"The sight of bread lines and soup kitchens was always scary to me," he said. "I had this fear of being destitute. Somebody said the other day, 'Well, if you were afraid of being broke, you sure picked quite a way to make a living.'"

Later, he said, when he was studying literature at Texas Christian University, Texas had maybe a handful of professional authors. Larry McMurtry was still a teenager in Archer City, and it would be 10 years before Billy Lee Brammer's The Gay Place ushered in the era of modern Texas political novels.

Even by the 1970s, "you could count the number of writers on one hand," he said. "Now, there are thousands of really good young writers in Texas. Back then, you could get everybody in one living room."

When Shrake and future Texas Monthly senior writer Gary Cartwright were in the same living room, the result was usually literary gold. A Texas State exhibit features their party performances as the slapstick Flying Punzars caped acrobats.

Cartwright, 73, an Arlington native and former Star-Telegram and Press reporter, was among the guests in San Marcos to hear a glowing introduction by college officials and powerful dramatic readings of Shrake's works by G.W. Bailey, who plays a detective on TV's The Closer.

Cartwright said: "Somebody came up and asked, 'When did you guys know you were legends?' I said, 'About 15 minutes ago.'"

Among the essays Bailey read was a Texas Observer piece by Shrake recalling the Press, an evening newspaper that closed in 1975.

As a police reporter, Shrake found one day that an officer had run over a deer in Trinity Park. Somebody said it might have belonged to a family, but it ended up as venison.

The Press, never hesitant, headlined the item: "Cops Eat Kid's Pet."

Today, the old Press building on Jones Street is a police station.

'Black Like Me,' but not quite like a presidential candidate remembers

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 05:55 CDT

By BUD KENNEDY

Nearly 30 years after his death, Texas author John Howard Griffin and his book, Black Like Me, have come to life again in Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Former presidential aide Karl Rove recently criticized Obama on CNN for saying in his 2004 book that Obama had a childhood "revelation" when he saw an old Life magazine photo layout about an African-American man who underwent chemical treatments to make himself white.

Chicago Tribune reporters could find no such magazine photos. Maybe it was Ebony, Obama said. Still no photos.

But in Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote vividly about remembering photos of an "older man in dark glasses" and close-ups of his chemically recolored hands.

That exactly describes Griffin's groundbreaking 1960 article in Fort Worth-based Sepia magazine, the Life-sized competitor to Ebony. The report previewed his book, Black Like Me.

Obama didn't get the story quite right. Griffin, a white Mansfield author, chemically darkened his skin for a series of first-person reports on life as a black American in the segregated South.

Time and Newsweek magazines both picked up Sepia excerpts. Obama might have seen an old, bound volume of one of those magazines as a 9-year-old in the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia, although the Illinois senator apparently tangled not only the details of the story but also the name of the publication.

But Obama's description seems to directly match Griffin's article, even down to a description of a close-up of the man's glasses, "heavy lips" and "broad, fleshy nose."

Sepia's photo shows Griffin looking in the mirror.

San Antonio author and poet Robert Bonazzi wrote a biography of Griffin: Man in the Mirror.

"It's very possible that Barack Obama could have seen a copy of Sepia," Bonazzi said by phone Friday, agreeing that Obama's description seems to match Griffin's article, although the storyline is different.

"It would seem unlikely that Sepia itself would have penetrated all the way to Indonesia," Bonazzi said. "But those particular articles made such an impression that people kept them and remembered them."

I couldn't find a copy to show you. The Fort Worth Public Library has Sepia, but not that issue.

But Obama mentioned the man's glasses.

Griffin wore dark, black-rimmed glasses for a reason: He lost his eyesight for 10 years until recovering in 1957.

Obama also wrote specifically that the story involved a man undergoing chemical treatments.

Under the care of a Louisiana dermatologist, Griffin took a photosensitizing medication and used ultraviolet rays to darken his skin.

Griffin's articles stirred immediate and emotional response in Mansfield, still raw from a 1956 confrontation where whites protested and Texas Rangers intervened to prevent the court-ordered desegregation of Mansfield High School.

When Time and Newsweek came out, Griffin was hanged in effigy from the stoplight at Main and Broad streets.

That was three miles from his family's home on his in-laws' farm out West Broad Street in what remains rural Tarrant County near Lillian Road.

There's no place like Rhome for city council high jinks

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 06:58 CDT

By BUD KENNEDY

Nothing against the candidates debating gas wells and downtown colleges, but the most fascinating local election this year might be in Rhome.

When last we heard from Rhome, state officials made the town dismantle its cash-cow speed camera.

Now, maybe somebody should put a camera on the City Council.

A posted agenda for an "Open Forum for Election Discussion" on Saturday tells the rest of the world that all is not right in Rhome.

A few topics under "questions and answers":

"Discussion on violating the Open Meetings Act."

"Discussion on the process of firing the former police chief."

"Seizure of citizens' property."

"Possible termination" of an employee and "violation of her rights."

"Personal attacks on former chief."

"Status of death threats."

Besides those lively topics, other subjects include beautification committee and parks.

Look, I realize Rhome doesn't have a $150 million bond issue at stake in the local elections beginning Monday, or a Trinity River Vision.

But it sounds as if sometime between now and the end of voting May 10, folks there might want to visit with their council candidates.

As it turns out, this rock-'em-sock-'em agenda isn't really for an official City Council meeting at all.

Apparently, Rhome's council majority is crosswise with the mayor.

Two council members, Brandon Davis and David Wilson, are running against Mayor Mark Lorance.

Davis originally scheduled the "forum." But Rhome's city attorney intervened to ask whether a majority of the five-member council, led by Mayor Pro Tem Patty Robison, might attend.

Attorney Walt Leonard of Fort Worth said that if three council members attend, that would make the event an illegal, unposted public meeting.

So Davis agreed to submit an "agenda" of topics for discussion.

Did removal of sect's kids open a door that can't be shut?

Fri, 02 May 2008 10:15 CDT

By BUD KENNEDY

As he drove home late on a lonely West Texas highway, the director of Fort Worth's best-known children's agency wondered how much the state can really help 437 girls and boys from the YFZ Ranch.

Like the rest of us, Ted Blevins is not sure whether state officials did the right thing in investigating possible statutory rape and child abuse inside the compound.

But he has met the children.

And he says we are doing the right thing now.

"A door has been opened that cannot be closed," said Blevins, director of Lena Pope Home, a 78-year-old family counseling and foster care agency founded by a Fort Worth mother to rescue Depression-era orphans.

Ten Lena Pope counselors and child-care workers volunteered in San Angelo last week, pitching in with other agencies from around the state to help child welfare investigators care for the children.

"Once evidence was found of behavior that's against our laws, it would not have been appropriate to ignore it," Blevins said.

"But we have to realize that by removing these children, the state might not be able to guarantee any greater safety in the outside world. Our people had to wonder: Is what we're doing really going to protect them that much more?"

Investigators report finding evidence of five underage pregnancies.

If five of 437 children in the compound were pregnant or have babies, that is better than the underage pregnancy rate in the rest of Schleicher County, according to state statistics.

In other words, 14-year-old girls might be less likely to get pregnant inside the YFZ than in Eldorado.

Investigators originally said they found evidence of 20 abused children. No charges have been filed in any case.

"We understand why the children can't live where they were living," Blevins said. "But we know from local experience that even when you separate children from abusive parents or an abusive home, the separation itself does harm. There are always severe problems when a child is separated from the mother."

Another problem isn't inside the ranch.

It's out here.

"How will these children assimilate into our culture?" Blevins said. "They've never known traffic, noise, lights, the Internet -- they will be adjusting to a totally different life."

The Lena Pope Home workers helped care for children 12 hours a day, spelling other volunteers and state workers. The Fort Worth agency was called in for its long experience with child and foster care, Blevins said. For all the misgivings, he strongly supports the state investigation.

"If we had word of something like this going on inside a house in Fort Worth, the neighbors would not just sit by and let nothing be done," he said. "I don't think our state had any choice in this situation."

A 2005 law authored by state Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, overhauled child welfare in Texas and also raised the minimum age for marriage. The bill was originally filed by Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville, who represents Eldorado.

Testimony focused on the YFZ Ranch, with Hilderbran accusing residents of "underage marriage, alleged child abuse, incest and election fraud."