BEN HOGAN, THE GREATEST GOLFER OF ALL TIME (YEAH, WE SAID IT)
SCHULENBURG: Getting Acquainted with Small-Town Texas / QUINCE: The Long-Awaited Fine-Dining Spot
Abraham Alexander Rising
If you don't know this soulful crooner already, don't worry, you will.
Fort Worth musician Abraham Alexander talks about what inspired him to write the music that appears on his first full-length album SEA/SONS.
BY SHILO URBAN
Ben Hogan
Ben Hogan’s rise from poverty to the heights of the golf world is on par to be one of the most compelling stories in sports history.
BY JOHN HENRY
From a Corner in Rivercrest
Kelly Wilson of Bowen Wilson Development takes us on a tour of the company’s latest project: a a complete renovation of a charming home in Rivercrest.
BY KELLY WILSON
16 Buzz Travis, the newest pachyderm born at the Fort Worth Zoo, struts his stuff in public for the first time.
22 Calendar
From championship bull riding to Mayan art, staying confined to a couch is a near impossibility during the month of May.
24 Fort Worthian
TCU dance major and aspiring singer-songwriter Betty Grace isn’t scared of hard work — or ghosts, for that matter.
28 Art
Puerto Rican installation artist Sheryl Anaya has the table set for her art career, figuratively and literally.
32 State Lines
Schulenburg, Texas, which is halfway between Austin and Houston, is home to some of the Lone Star State’s most ornate and decorative 1800s-era German and Czech-style churches.
36 Restaurant News
Local foodie and baker Lindsey Lawing celebrates a culinary milestone by opening her first pie shop near the home of the Horned Frogs.
86 The 68th Jewel Charity Ball helped raise funds and the roof with music from Kool & The Gang, plus dinner provided by Wolfgang Puck.
88 Fort Worth Magazine holds a cocktail party in honor of its Top Doctors list event at 5th & Carroll.
74 Marlene Small and Carole Harston of Heritage Design Studio talk their Dream Street home and current design trends.
and
the
CLOSE
104 Modern attendee
photographer Kate Branning captures
meta image of a museum patron taking a photo of an art installation made of photos.
DREAM STREET
The Up-and-Comer Is Here to Stay
Doing a feature on local upand-comers for our January 2019 issue wasn’t my idea. I had only recently earned the title of executive editor and was, with the exception of a few shots from the proverbial hip, working off the previous editor’s lineup of stories. It was a good idea, a piece of content one often finds in a city lifestyle publication such as ours. But at the time, I was still relatively new to the area. I hadn’t yet earned my stripes as a bona fide Fort Worthian; I was what one might call a Cowtown greenhorn.
With such little knowledge of the area, I wouldn’t dare interject my opinion on a list as important as the one I had before me. So, I enlisted the help of a few people I deemed authorities on the subject of Fort Worth — people who had their ears to the ground and their fingers on the pulse of the city. I remember asking our managing editor at the time, Samantha Calimbahin, who she thought should be on the list. “Abraham Alexander,” I remember her saying. Needless to say, each of the other four people whose opinions I had requested listed the same name. Having zero clues who he was, a quick Google search brought up a young, handsome singer/songwriter who was invariably connected to Leon Bridges — now there’s a name I knew. Yet, in all honesty, I wasn’t convinced. Outside some well-received live performances and a socially conscious (and quite excellent) single called “America,” I didn’t see any “there there.” I felt there were other musi-
Brian Kendall EXECUTIVE EDITOR
cians who had more Spotify listens and had a more impressive following. In hindsight, if this isn’t a reflection on, what was at the time, my poor understanding of the city or my terrible judgment, I don’t know what is. ’Cause, here’s the thing, in a few years, an up-and-comer should no longer be an up-and-comer, waiting patiently for their moment. No, their moment should be now. Following the release of his debut album, SEA/SONS, it is not a stretch to say Abraham’s path from up-and-comer to stardom is on the verge of completion.
It’s now been over four years since we named Abraham a Fort Worth up-andcomer, when he came to our office clad in a slick blue blazer and brown fedora — one could never accuse him of lacking style. And, during this stretch of pandemic-filled quarantines, political unrest, and 51 issues of Fort Worth Magazine, I’ve had the privilege of not just interviewing him as a subject of online and print stories, but also knowing him as a human being. He’s helped in a pinch when I’ve needed an interview, and he’s always been gracious with his time and poetic with his words — a trait I envy. For one reason or another, I on occasion get giddy seeing a certain face on the cover of our magazine. A certain sense of genuine happiness for that person. This is one of those occasions.
ON THE COVER: Our director of photography, Crystal Wise, had the brilliant idea of photographing Abraham Alexander in a church. Trying to find one, our editor typed “old white church” in his Google search bar and St. Barbara’s Catholic Church in the ghost town of Thurber appeared as a result. An hour’s drive from Fort Worth, the church building is over 120 years and has a steeple that’s currently slanting northward. The Thurber Historical Association is currently taking donations to repair the steeple. Visit thurbertexas.com for more information.
Corrections? Comments? Concerns? Send to executive editor Brian Kendall at bkendall@fwtexas.com.
Scotty Scott’s food is delicious!! We’ve got to come see the new food truck. @artsyscoop
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Tiffany is also an amazing human, to boot. @kayeskins
That [Honeysuckle Rose Vintage] looks very interesting! Perhaps I ought to stop by sometime; it’s essentially in my neighborhood (River District). @brielkate
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Easy as Pie
Sweet Lucy’s, a pie shop off Blue Bonnet Circle, offers delectable sweet treats by appointment or for Saturday walk-ins. Page 36
Big Baby on Board
Travis, the newly named elephant calf at the Fort Worth Zoo, celebrates one month of life by stepping out into the limelight.
BY FWTX STAFF
Travis, the Fort Worth Zoo’s newest Asian elephant calf, made his first public appearance in the main yard of Elephant Springs with mom Belle and grandmother Rasha on April 4, according to a release. This new 1-month-old addition to the Fort Worth Zoo is reported to weigh a healthy 345 pounds.
To celebrate his healthy growth thus far, Travis was allowed to roam around the main Elephant Springs section of the zoo for the first time.
During his first day out, zoo officials say that Travis stuck close to his mother’s side, tiptoed near the water, laid down in a bed of hay, and received a dust bath, all within the first few minutes.
Now that Travis has grown and acclimated to his environment, guests can see him in the main habitat of Elephant Springs daily from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., just a few feet away from his half-brother, Brazos, who was born Oct. 21, 2021.
Since Travis’ birthday on Feb.
23, 2023, he has spent most of his time bonding with his mom and grandmother in the barn and behind-the-scenes yards. This allowed Travis to acclimate to his surroundings and grow stronger every day (gaining 2 to 3 pounds per day). Zoo officials say that Travis has already been showing signs of independence, acing his swimming lessons in a smaller pool so well that keepers decided he was ready for the deep end. And what a deep end it is. Elephant Springs is equipped with a 400,000-gallon “river” in which many herd members regularly swim.
Zoo records indicate that Travis is the fifth-born Asian elephant calf born at the Fort Worth Zoo, following the arrival of Brazos; Belle, his mother, in 2013; Bowie in 2013 (Bowie now resides at the Oklahoma City Zoo); and his aunt, Bluebonnet, in 1998. This newest calf adds to the three generations of elephants that call the zoo home, which mimics how herds are established in the wild.
» Taking a Cruz Through Cowtown
Texas’ junior member of the United States Senate stopped by the Fort Worth Club on Wednesday morning, April 5, for a visit with civic leaders in a meeting hosted by the Fort Worth Chamber.
“My No. 1 priority in the Senate is jobs,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Houston) said. “It is focused like a laser on jobs, jobs, jobs. For one very simple reason: That’s the top priority of Texans. If you travel the state, it doesn’t matter what region of the state you’re in. You can be in East Texas or West Texas. You can be in the Panhandle or all the way down to the Valley, Texans want jobs, we want more jobs, we want higher wages, we want a greater opportunity for our kids.”
The meeting with the senator, which included a short address and a Q&A session, focused on job creation and growth in a booming Texas economy, education, regulation, and taxes and their impact on the “dynamism of the free enterprise system.”
Cruz also discussed the importance of small businesses, vocational training, and school choice and added that bipartisan opportunities for economic development existed within the Senate chambers. The senator also expressed concerns about government spending and debt reduction.
Cruz, elected to the seat held by Kay Bailey Hutchison, Lloyd Bentsen, Ralph Yarborough, Price Daniel, Tom Connally, and Charles Culberson, among others, will face voters in 18 months in a bid for a third term. His reelection in 2018 was too close for his comfort, made all the more so by Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s edging Cruz by the smallest of margins in Tarrant County.
In making his meteoric rise in 2018, O’Rourke, a former U.S. Congressman, outraised Cruz by $33 million, much of it sourced out of state, and an ambitious grassroots organization that included the Democrat visiting each of Texas’ 254 counties. O’Rourke was also able to capitalize on Cruz’s reputation as unlikable and polarizing.
Since then, O’Rourke has made failed bids for president and governor. To date, he has given no hint of a second run at Cruz. — John Henry
High Rollin’ Charity
The Big Good opened some deep pocketbooks during its second annual charity event, which included a live auction and intimate performance by Leon Bridges.
BY FWTX STAFF
Aroom full of felt Stetsons and a stage with two of Fort Worth’s most beloved celebrities is sure to bring out the pocketbooks for charity. And, sure enough, that’s precisely what happened at Tannahill’s Tavern and Music Hall during the second annual Big Good fundraising event.
The event, which took place Thursday, March 30, exceeded the previous year’s mark of raising over $1 million via a silent and exciting public auction, which saw donated items going for hundreds of thousands of dollars. All proceeds benefit the organization’s three main beneficiaries, including The Tarrant To & Through Partnership, United Community Centers, and Upspire.
“We just want to continue doing all we can for these three organizations,” Bridges said via a press release. “These causes are all very near and dear to our hearts. Being from Fort Worth and getting to come home and be a part of this really is what it is all about.”
The evening also included performances by one-half of Big Good, Leon Bridges, and Durand Jones and a catered steak dinner provided by Tim Love.
Bridges partnered with legendary former TCU football coach Gary Patterson in 2020 to form The Big Good in an effort to combine and increase their charitable efforts in Fort Worth.
“One of the reasons Leon and I partnered together was so we could be bigger, and, thus, we could help more,” Patterson said in 2022 interview with Fort Worth Magazine “I think, together, we can raise more money and help more people.”
» Matthew McConaughey to Star in ‘Yellowstone’ Spinoff Series
Well, it’s official folks. Academy Award-winning actor and Texas native Matthew McConaughey is indeed lined up for a “Yellowstone” spinoff, according to Paramount Media Networks head Chris McCarthy. The show titled “6666” will surround the Four Sixes Ranch in West Texas, where Fort Worth Magazine had a chance to interview the show creator Taylor Sheridan last November.
McCarthy confirmed this rumor in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter late last March. In this interview, McCarthy revealed that the spinoff will be moving forward regardless of whether Kevin Costner returns as “Yellowstone’s” lead character, John Dutton.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, what we can verify about his new series is that Sheridan himself is the executive producer. Plus, the show will be filmed on location at the real Four Sixes Ranch. The series is set to follow the lives of cowboys living and working on the historic 6666 Ranch in West Texas. There is no official release date for “6666”; however, fans should expect it in late 2023 or early 2024.
In the meantime, “Yellowstone” fans and aficionados will have to wait and see if Costner will in fact be leaving this widely popular franchise’s flagship show. When asked about Costner’s possible exit from the show, McCarthy responded that “Yellowstone” wouldn’t be what it is today without Costner and that Paramount hopes that he stays for a long time to come.
— Stephen Montoya
Leon Bridges and Gary Patterson
Methodist
Balance -
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Sister, Sister
Formerly conjoined twin AmieLynn rejoins her sister JamieLynn and family at home.
BY FWTX STAFF
Formerly conjoined twin AmieLynn Finley went home on Friday, April 7, for the first time since she was born, to rejoin her twin sister JamieLynn, her parents, and the rest of her family.
This is a fitting finale to what many have considered a North Texas miracle. In January, JamieLynn and her sister AmieLynn made history as the first conjoined twins in Cook Children’s history to be successfully surgically separated. This was an especially difficult procedure since the girls were conjoined at the chest and shared a liver.
Their 11-hour surgery, which would prove successful, involved a team of 25 medical professionals, including six surgeons.
AmieLynn, the quiet twin compared to feisty JamieLynn, has made huge progress even though her journey has been more difficult, a release from Cook
Children’s stated. Amie stayed at the Cook Children’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) to recover from recent surgery to improve her chest incision and create more space for her heart, diaphragm, and lungs.
“This is kind of the beginning again,” James Finley said as he cradled JamieLynn. “Surgery was one beginning, and now we’re going home to another beginning.”
Both girls still have some work to do, including rehabilitation, to help them reach their full potential. The girls’ care team hopes they will continue to grow up healthy, happy, and independent young ladies with their amazing family.
“It’s definitely a weight lifted,” Amanda said. “I’m excited and happy; it’s a lot of emotions. We still have a long way to go.”
AmieLynn (left) and JamieLynn (right) pictured with their father, James Finley, and mother, Amanda Arciniega.
MAY 4 – 7
Mayfest
The annual family-friendly festival, which just might be the biggest dang party in the city that doesn’t include bull riding or bronco busting, will once again return to the banks of the Trinity. The event will include rides, live music, and delicious fair foods out the wazoo.
Trinity Park 2401 University Drive mayfest.org
MAY 4 – 21
‘Cruel Intentions: The ’90s Musical’
A musical take on the popular Sarah Michelle Gellarstarring 1999 flick, which itself was a modern take on a 1752 novel called Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Lacios. Theater-goers will get a welcomed earful of ‘90s hits set to this epic game of cat and mouse.
Stage West stagewest.org
MAY
6
A Coronation Dinner
The American Revolution aside, the coronation of a new monarch in England is as good a reason as any to cook a fancy meal and pair it with a glass of wine. On the day Charles o cially becomes King Charles III, Central Market will host a cooking class where attendees will prepare a rack of lamb and crispy potatoes. And, in a tip of the hat to previous colonies, the meal will include flavors with Asian and Indian influences.
Central Market 4651 West Freeway centralmarket.com
MAY 7
Mother’s Day Afternoon Tea
The downtown cooking studio Indulge o ers a way for sons and daughters to celebrate Mother’s Day a week early. If one’s mother partakes in the consumption of the ageless brew — and enjoys doing so at 2 p.m. — there are few better options for celebrating maternal love.
Indulge
425 W. Third St. indulgefw.com
MAY 7 – SEPT. 3
Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art
The Kimbell brings a bounteous amount of ancient Mayan art — some pieces dating back to A.D. 250 — to Cowtown for a four-month exhibit devoted to masterpieces from the ancient culture. According to the Kimbell, these nearly 100 rarely seen masterpieces “evoke a world in which the divine, human, and natural realms are interrelated and intertwined.”
The Kimbell Art Museum 3333 Camp Bowie Blvd. kimbellart.org
MAY 9 Y La Bamba
The eclectic indie folk pop band (yes, that was four separate genres necessary to describe their diverse sound) from Portland makes its way to Cowtown in support of their new album Lucha, which is due to hit streaming services April 28. We recommend checking out their Tiny Desk Concert on NPR to get a feel for their sound.
Tulips
112 St. Louis Ave. tulipsftw.com
MAY 12 – 20
Fort Worth Foto Fest
Whether you’re a casual shooter or taking a deep dive into the world of photography, this week-long festival, which includes over 30 workshops, is sure to refine your skills. Events include learning equine portraiture, photographing piglets, underwater fashion shoots, aerial photography, and learning the art of snapping editorial images from Fort Worth Magazine’s own Crystal Wise. Various locations fortworthfotofest.com
MAY 12 – 21
PBR World Finals
As if this city didn’t have enough bull riding — between the weekly events at Billy Bob’s and Cowtown Coliseum — the rodeo capital of the world is also hosting the Profession Bull Riders World Finals. For the second year, and what is likely to be many more, Dickies Arena will play host to the world’s best bull riders atop the world’s most menacing bulls.
Dickies Arena
1911 Montgomery St. dickiesarena.com
MAY 13 – AUG. 27
Arthur Dove: Miniature Laboratories
Art is in the eye of the beholder; this is especially true if you are in need of a pair of glasses to view it. This just might be the case for fans of Arthur Dove’s miniature works — each 3-by-4 inches — taken from the Carter’s actual collection. View hundreds of small pieces of art created by Dove when he was confined in his home and the surrounding area in Long Island, New York, due to health issues in the 1940s.
Amon Carter Museum of American Art
3501 Camp Bowie Blvd. cartermuseum.org
MAY 16 – 18
Sara Schaefer
Critically acclaimed stand-up comedian, Emmy Awardwinning writer, and producer Sara Schaefer is stopping by Cowtown to tickle funny bones and share how she sees the world from her unique perspective. Schaefer was the Head Blogger for “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” from 2009 to 2011, for which she won the Emmy Award for Creative Achievement in Interactive Media (nonfiction) in both 2009 and 2010. In 2011 she wrote for the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and was named one of the Huffington Post’s “53 Favorite Female Comedians.”
Amphibian Stage Productions 120 S. Main St. amphibianstag.com
MAY 18
Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles
It was over 50 years ago today that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band wowed audiences with what was considered the very first concept album in pop history. Join Rain, a Beatles tribute band, as they play numbers from this pivotal album as well as songs from Abbey Road, the Rooftop Concert LIVE, and more.
Will Rogers Memorial Center 3401 W. Lancaster Ave. fortworth.com
MAY 20
Tacos and Tequila Festival
Two Texas favorites, Tacos and Tequila, are joining forces for the upcoming festival being held at the Panther Island Pavilion. Don’t miss live performances from hip-hop legends, DFW’s best taco vendors, hand-crafted margaritas, lucha libre wrestling, an exotic car showcase, a Chihuahua beauty pageant, art installations, and much more.
Panther Island Pavilion
395 Purcey St. pantherislandpavilion.com
MAY 9 – 14
MAY 26 38 Special
Hold on loosely while Southern-fried rockers 38 Special go rockin’ into the night at Billy Bob’s. After more than three decades together, 38 Special continue to bring their signature blast of Southern rock to over 100 cities a year. Relive your youth while experiencing the vocals of Southern rock royalty Donnie Van Zandt’s brother to late Lynyrd Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zandt.
Billy Bob’s Texas 2520 Rodeo Plaza billybobstexas.com
‘Tootsie’
Don’t expect to see Dustin Hoffman in drag for this musical performance of the hit 1982 film, which saw Mr. Hoffman garner an Academy Award nomination — and a win for Jessica Lange. This will mark the first time this Broadway musical comes to the Fort following its year-long run at Marquis Theatre in 2019.
Bass Performance Hall 525 Commerce St. | basshall.com
Betty Grace
BY STEPHEN MONTOYA
BY
Dance enthusiast, ghost hunter, and singer-songwriter
PHOTO
CRYSTAL WISE
Local TCU student, dance enthusiast, and ghost tour guide Betty Grace says she hasn’t sat still since she was 3 years old. Not wanting this gift of energy to go to waste, Grace’s parents placed her in ballet at 11, an art form she stuck with longer than many of her peers. In fact, dance has been such a major part of Grace’s identity that she currently studies modern dance at TCU and teaches aspiring dancers at the Dance Connection, a Fort Worth studio.
Despite partaking in the schedule of a busy college student and dance instructor — going to class, having a social life, and practicing form and movements — Grace manages to find the time to write original music for an upcoming EP release and serve as a US Ghost Adventures tour guide in the historic Stockyards. With so much to juggle and passion to spare, Grace embodies the essence of what makes the great city of Fort Worth so artistically diverse.
“I moved [to Fort Worth] my sophomore year of college, but I have family here. So, I’ve been coming [to this city] since I was born,” Grace says. “I love the culture, the cowboys, and going to Billy Bob’s. [It’s great] seeing line dancing in-person and joining in.”
Though she enjoys the Stockyards for its nightlife and intentional Western flair, she’s also deeply invested in its history.
Currently, Grace is one of several tour guides for US Ghost Adventures across the nation, which offers groups of attendees the chance to experience the supernatural while learning about the history of a certain city or area. Her tour takes a deep dive into the seedy characters of this once-wild area,
where the spirits of many a famous outlaw reportedly linger.
“I knew the Stockyards were probably haunted, but after doing some research for this job, I can pinpoint who those spirits belong to and the acts they did when they were still living,” Grace says. “Now I know that Bonnie and Clyde stayed at a hotel here and who all of the famous outlaws that lived and unfortunately died here were.”
But what really gets her excited is hearing other people from her tours tell their own ghost stories after the tour is done.
“Many times people will tell me that they have seen a ghost in the house they are currently living in, like literally in the pantry,” she says with a grin. “That makes this tour so special because I get to hear these personal stories, and being able to talk to people in that way has been really great.”
While Grace wears a lot of hats — dancer, student, tour guide, and even a cowboy hat for good measure — her true passion is music, and she eventually wants to take to the road as a professional singer-songwriter.
“My dream is to be a touring musician and then use dance as part of my show,” she says. “I would love to do a mixed show, where I get to do a cool dance scene and then play some songs.”
Grace describes her music as a folk guitarbased style that has a bit of a Phoebe Bridgers’ tinge to it. “I absolutely draw from personal experience as my muse,” she says. “The main things I’ve been focusing on songwriter-wise are talking about trauma and how it stays in you, and, of course, love songs because they are so fun to write.”
1. At the TCU dance senior photo shoot. 2. Hosting a US Ghost Adventures tour at the Stockyards. 3. Performing at Opening Bell Coffee Shop. 4. In ballet class at TCU. 5. Students perform a dance piece Grace choreographed last semester. 6. From her upcoming single “Eidolon” release. 7. The Taylor Swift Society student organization at TCU.
Getting Artsy with Sheryl Anaya
The installation artist knows how to push the envelope — and maybe some buttons, too — but Sheryl Anaya’s also well aware that she’s not tackling any of this solo. It’s the community that makes the artist.
BY SHASTA HAUBRICH
While most artists are considered somewhat introverted — spending hours alone creating work — connection to fellow artists through community and collaboration is a necessity to create new and interesting work and find opportunities for exhibitions. With a combination of traditional schooling and residencies, Puerto Rican installation artist Sheryl Anaya has sought such connections throughout her career as an artist.
Raised in the heart of the Concho Valley in San Angelo, Anaya eventually made her way to San Antonio, where she would graduate from high school and gained an interest in photography. Anaya then began her higher education at UNT while dabbling in sculpture and printmaking at Dallas College Brookhaven Campus. Open to new mediums, she began working with fibers, creating massive crocheted site-specific installations for The Foundry office and the first Art Tooth (a local nonprofit dedicated to creating opportunities for local artists) exhibit, Amuse Bouche. After receiving a BFA from Texas Woman’s University in 2013, Anaya applied for membership into the 500X Gallery in Dallas, where she would immerse herself in a community of North Texas artists. “500X was great because it was a lot of different artists working toward the same goal, which was putting together exhibitions and collaborating with other artists … getting the community involved,” Anaya says.
“It just felt like a really special time. We would meet and be up late putting together our exhibitions and installing shows, and everyone would come out for the openings. Especially with an institution that’s been around for so long, it just felt really special to be a part of that.” While in Dallas, Anaya was also part of The Cedars Union’s first cohort and a residency in Iceland, where she spent three months with fellow photographer Dannie Liebergot at the end of 2018.
In 2019, Anaya moved to Fort Worth to live with her wife, photographer and professor Dr. Diane Durant, and began the MFA program at TCU. Outside of the standard academic and career benefits of a master’s program, Anaya says she learned about delegating and collaborating with other artists. “I think transitioning from working in the studio on my own — especially my first year of grad school — was hard because you’re expected to be making work consistently and kind of working through ideas pretty
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quickly, which I was not used to doing,” Anaya says. “I tend to do tedious work that takes a long time or more elaborate projects that I can’t necessarily complete quickly or on my own.” The experience also changed her approach to creating work. “I am more open to maybe starting to make work without really knowing where it’s going yet and then trusting that process, whereas I think before, it was like, ‘Okay, here’s this idea. It has to look like this, and this is how it has to happen.’”
This unique combination of experiences led to her recent thesis exhibition, “Let Things Taste of What They Are,” at the Moudy Gallery. The installation piece is a massive table setting that serves as an allegory for women’s bodies and gender roles. The work includes work shirt table settings and tablecloths and pears wearing crocheted aprons and Minne di Sant’Agata (an adorable cake with a bizarre origin we’ll let you investigate on your own). The piece asks the viewer to consider the consumption of women’s bodies through media and labor division where women are expected to constantly nourish and provide. After an intense and fast-paced three years, the exhibition is her last step to completing this part of her academic journey.
Anaya’s next step is to create a studio with her wife and hopefully succeed at constructing that allimportant balance between work and family. And, despite closing this particular chapter in her career as an artist, Anaya looks to continue connecting with the art community. “I think that’s the thing that I’m gonna miss the most about grad school is constantly being surrounded by people. I feel like I’ve been lucky enough going from undergrad to 500X to Cedars Union to grad school. I’ve always been surrounded by a community. I think that’s something that I’ve realized is really important to me as an artist. We’ll see what that looks like after grad school.”
“Let
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■ Barbara and Thurman are passionate about the community and support local education through their involvement in Fort Worth Country Day School. In 2022, they served as the ambassador family at the Signature Chefs Auction for the March of Dimes.
■ When they’re not hard at work, these agents have a wide range of interests. Barbara is a lifelong tennis player; Thurman is active with the Boy Scouts of America; Shelly is a professionally trained chef and yoga instructor; and Trey devotes his free time to his two young sons and volunteering at Trinity Valley School.
One of the smartest decisions we made was using The Schweitzer Group to sell our parents’ home. Losing both Mom and Dad in the same year — and parting with a home chock-full of our childhood memories — seemed like a daunting task. The Schweitzers and their team of amazing professionals literally rolled up their sleeves and went to work on our behalf. They did their research, applied sound marketing strategies and partnered with us for the successful sale of a unique property. We recommend them highly!” —Diana J. & Kimberly B.
“Thurman is the best! He is knowledgeable and upto-date on the current market. Great communication, always helpful and timely when getting answers to any questions. He does a fantastic job and does whatever needs to be done. Thurman has the client’s best interest in mind. He’s not just trying to get the deal done, he’s there for you!” —Gary S.
Schulenburg, Texas
Population: 2,669
BY SHILO URBAN
You see the steeple first. Soon a humble little church comes into view, a quiet testament of faith beside a winding country road. But the modest exterior belies the kaleidoscopic imagery that awaits inside: painted walls and ceilings adorned with graceful angels, gilded stenciling and flowers abloom. Colorful life-size statues gaze at trompe l’oeil murals and elaborate wooden altars carved by hand. Somehow the effect is not gaudy but reverent, a panoply of devotion that evokes the dreams and hopes of the hardworking immigrants who built it.
Dating from the late 1800s and early
1900s, Schulenburg’s four painted churches were constructed by Czech and German settlers who wanted to bring a bit of the old world into the new. With few resources but grand inspiration from Gothic cathedrals in their native lands, they made do. Painting faux precious metals and marble columns with turkey feathers, their handiwork still dazzles today.
Clustered around the small town of Schulenburg (halfway between Austin and Houston), one can explore the quartet of Catholic churches in a single afternoon. With numerous saints in their names (including two Marys), it’s easier to keep track of the churches
by their locations: Dubina (Saints Cyril & Methodius Church), Ammannsville (Saint John the Baptist Catholic Church), Praha (St. Mary’s Church of the Assumption) and High Hill (St. Mary Catholic Church, Nativity of the Blessed Mary).
Delicate painted greenery takes its finest form in Dubina, where vines dance under a sky-blue ceiling with 3,000 golden stars. This quaint church has more windows than any other, creating an airy ambiance that draws your attention upward.
In Ammannsville the vibe is cozy and warm by virtue of the rose-tinted walls that curve overhead into an architectural embrace. Rich green carpeting plays off the pink. The minimal stained-glass windows tell stories of the region’s Czech roots in the language of color and light. So, too, does the gilded white altar, a tradition in the immigrants’ homeland.
The altar at Praha is also embellished with white and gold, luminous between the polished wooden floor and crystal
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chandelier. The church’s arched ceiling is a bluegreen vision of the Garden of Eden with a twist: Texas flora. The careful eye can discern 66 different species of native flowers and plants. Outside, the spire rises 130 feet into the firmament above. According to legend, when the church was built in 1895, the congregation couldn’t find anyone brave enough to shimmy to the top of the steeple and attach the cross — until they offered a keg of beer to the climber. One man volunteered for the feat, secured the cross, then did a handstand to boot (no word on whether he drank the keg before or after the stunt).
Finally, we reach the “Queen of the Painted Churches” at High Hill, the largest and most opulent of them all. German splendor is on full display. Eighteen stained-glass windows cast a rainbow glow on well-worn wooden pews. Gold ribbing vaults into the pastel blue cupola. Intricate floral designs frolic across the ceiling; they were painted first on canvas panels and then glued in place by the artists. The entire effect is aweinspiring.
Schulenburg’s painted churches are generally open to visitors on Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (with some exceptions). The Chamber of Commerce also runs guided tours to the tune of 500 per year, and you can call 979.743.4514 to set one up.
Tours leave from the cute historical downtown, which centers around Sengelmann Hall — poke your head inside for a peek at this restored 1890s dance hall. Three nearby museums showcase polka music, model airplanes, and local history. But for living history, just look around: Half of Schulenburg’s residents are descended from the German and Czech immigrants who crossed the ocean for a better life in America, built churches, and lifted their eyes toward the heavens with unfaltering faith.
Savor: A café, gift shop, and nursery, the Garden Co. sets a peaceful stage for treats like Korean street tacos and baked brie with riesling fruit chutney. Visit Jack & Mary’s coffee shop to chill out in the large, grassy yard with an iced Italian soda or boba tea. Tillie’s Café shines for lunch and breakfast with banh mi burgers and green chili queso eggs Benedict. If you have a sweet tooth, Original Kountry Bakery’s scratch-made pies, kolaches, and apple strudel have been tempting townsfolk for three generations. Prefer something savory? Stop by City Market — “Home of the 50 Foot Wiener” — for a brisket sandwich or a signature housemade hot dog. You can also snag some sausage to take home; they make 10,000 pounds every week.
Shop: Schulenburg’s newest boutique is Unique & Fabulous on Main Street. Opened in late 2022, it’s stocked with handmade, artsy finds like driftwood suncatchers and “fruit loop” candles. Potter Country Store sells a little of everything but is known for its fresh and roasted pecans in wild flavors like red velvet and buffalo ranch. Cheese fans may want to hunt down Stryk Jersey Farm, a familyowned endeavor that churns out creamy cheddars and raw milk. For painted church memorabilia, there’s a gift shop at High Hill that opens in conjunction with tours.
Enjoy: Catch live music at Sengelmann Hall or a short drive away at Moravia Store, an old-time post office/diner/dance hall built in 1889. Enjoy oddball entertainment like sausage
tossing and tricycle races at the Schulenburg Festival in August and the Sausage Fest in April, along with big beer gardens in the shade. For wine, head to Majek Vineyard for a spicy red or semisweet white and a tasty charcuterie board. Summertime is church picnic season, and all the painted churches host day-long celebrations with quilt auctions, cake walks, fried chicken, and German sausage. The biggest picnic is at High Hill on the Sunday before Labor Day, which starts with a polka mass and finishes with fireworks.
Snooze: Your best bet for a stay in Schulenburg is to check out the short-term rentals on sites like Airbnb and VRBO. You’ll find several restored vintage houses in and around town, from the Victorian Das Meyer Haus bedand-breakfast to an adorable 1890s cottage featured in Country Living magazine. You can also sleep in a Sinclair gas station that’s been converted to a chic, modern-meets-midcentury home with a working 1950s jukebox and rooftop deck. Updated farmhouses proliferate in the countryside nearby, many with swimming pools and hot tubs.
How to Get There: Drive south on Interstate 35 to Waco and take Exit 333A for Valley Mills Drive. Turn left and cross under the freeway. At the traffic circle, take the second exit onto U.S. Route 77 South and follow it through the countryside to Schulenburg. The trip takes about three hours and 45 minutes with no stops.
caption for the photos above here short and sweet
Baking It Happen
After 10 years of selling pies at farmers markets and foodie events, local baker – and single mom — extraordinaire Lindsey Lawing has opened a sweet treats shop near TCU.
BY MALCOLM MAYHEW
PHOTOS BY CRYSTAL WISE
Lindsey Lawing named her business — and new pie shop, Sweet Lucy’s Pies — after her daughter, Lucy.
About 10 years ago, Lindsey Lawing received the good news she’d been hoping for: She had been invited to sell her pies at the Crestline Farmer’s Market in Fort Worth. There was just one thing: She’d never made a pie before.
“The very first market, that’s when I baked my very first pies,” she says. “Six pies in 18 hours. I was so proud that first morning I set up there. I sold all six pies, and, man, I thought I had made it big. I often say I feel sorry for those six customers because I know they were probably the worst six pies I’ve ever made.”
A decade later, Lawing is now running her own pie shop, Sweet Lucy’s Pies, and after years of experimenting with and perfecting her recipes, selling out at farmers markets and at other foodie events, and building her name and brand in Fort Worth food circles, it’s safe to say Lawing knows a thing or two about pie now.
Opened earlier this year on the Bluebonnet traffic circle, Sweet Lucy’s Pies is a tiny bakery — more storefront than restaurant. It’s open by appointment through the week for people who call in or order online. On Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., pies are sold to the public.
Sweet Lucy’s menu changes seasonally. Current pie flavors include the Sweet Lucy Pie, a strawberry cream pie; malted milk chocolate; salted honey, Coffee Cream Dream Pie; Oh, Snap, Carrot’s Back, a sweet carrot pie; and a double-crusted strawberry pie. Lawing lucked out finding this particular space: It’s the former home of Daddy Ray’s Famous Gingerbread, so it was already set up for a commercial kitchen. There’s not much of a seating area, though; most get their pies to go. “It’s perfect for what I want to do now,” she says. “It’s small inside, but when the weather’s nice, I’ll probably put out a few tables so people can eat there if they want.”
Family has always been an important factor in the decisions Lawing has made with her life, so it’s no surprise
Sweet Lucy’s is connected to two important family members: her daughter, Lucy, for whom Lawing’s business and shop are named, and Lawing’s sister, Jodi Marie, who runs her own cookie business out of Sweet Lucy’s space called Fort Worth Cookie Gal.
“Our partnership goes back to the beginning of Sweet Lucy’s,” Lawing says of sis. “When I first launched Sweet Lucy’s, I was working at Reata, juggling single motherhood, trying to bake pies on the weekends. I quickly enlisted my sister’s help. We would often stay up all night baking pies, boxing, wrapping samples, and writing out labels. I would get a few hours of sleep and head to the market to sell. She would help me with Lucy while I set up at the markets. Those were long days, but looking back, it was so much fun.”
The sisters, who grew up in southeast Texas, have spent their lives traveling different paths, only to once again come together. Lawing, who at 36 is two years older than Marie, went away to college at Mary Hardin-Baylor to study biology and nursing while Marie finished high school. Lawing left school and moved to Fort Worth while Marie graduated and moved to Houston.
Not long after Lawing moved to Fort Worth, she landed a job at Reata. Not far behind was Marie, who followed her big sis to not only Fort Worth but to Reata, too, where both worked as servers.
“Neither one of us has had any formal culinary training, but we definitely understand the service industry,” Lawing says. “I think that’s one reason we are good at what we do. I never really had a passion for cooking and certainly was no baker by any means, but Jodi always had a knack for baking. It’s funny how I ended up being the pie-maker.”
Those seeds were planted when she ran across an article about a pie shop in Brooklyn called Four & Twenty Blackbirds. At the time, Lucy had just been born, and Lawing, a single mother, was looking for ways to supplement what she was making at Reata.
“Pies, that was an idea,” she says. “I didn’t know how to make a pie and quite frankly very rarely ate pie, but I knew I could do it. I knew there were no other pie shops in Fort Worth at the time, and I went for it.”
She immersed herself in the world of the home cottage food industry and its many complications. To maneuver this prickly maze of rules and regulations, she took classes in her spare time, learning how to launch a home-based bakery.
Then came the hard part — learning how to bake pies. She had learned enough to wing it during her auspicious debut at the Crestline Farmer’s Market, but it’s taken her years and tears to perfect her recipes. Cues have come from several sources: Four & Twenty Blackbirds, her grandmother’s recipe book, and local farm-to-table restaurants. “I knew from the beginning that I wanted to partner with local farmers and producers for ingredients,” she says. “Knowing something was literally picked out of the ground yesterday and made into a pie today is super cool to me.”
In addition to locally sourced fruits and other fillings, she uses a Texas-milled flour when it’s available; the alternative is a high-quality unbleached flour. Her butter is high in fat and European. “I will never go back to basic butter again,” she says.
She won’t reveal the ingredients in her sublimely flaky crust, but it used to give her fits. “Crust, I knew the crust was going to set me apart,” she says. “It was hard and fussy. Should I use butter or shortening or both? Should I use water or vodka? In those early days, I would make one crust at a time and the hours were so long. But they kept getting better and better, and I knew I was onto something.”
Lawing’s mother and grandmother were always sources of support and inspiration. So was a least likely source: a customer. Lawing’s very first phone customer grew into a friend and mentor. “Her name was Renie Steves. From early on in our friendship, she saw the potential I had. She would
invite me to her house to talk all things pie and recipes. I would bring her my latest pies, and she’d critique them. ‘A little more salt,’ she’d say. She was never afraid to [be honest], which helped me grow as a baker. Without her guidance, I don’t think I would have the same flaky crust that people seem to love.”
Wanting to spend more time with her daughter, Lawing took a leap of faith and quit Reata to focus on working full time at home. With help from two Reata employees, Russell Kirkpatrick and Gigi Howell, Lawing came up with a logo and social media presence. Lawing knew, however, it would be tough trying to sell pies for a living, so she networked, set up at farmers markets near and far, and mastered the art of social media.
As her momentum continued to build, along came the pandemic to cause her to doubt what she was doing.
“Everything came to a screeching halt,” she says. “I was going through some serious personal things and quite honestly didn’t think that I would keep doing Sweet Lucy’s. After some time off and some serious soul searching, I asked God to lead me, and that’s when things really took off for Sweet Lucy’s. We did our biggest year to date in 2020, and things have never been the same. I think I needed to hit rock bottom to get to where I am today.”
The pandemic also brought Lawing and her sister back together.
“Sweet Lucy’s began to grow, and my sister decided it wasn’t what she wanted to do,” she says. “It wasn’t until the pandemic hit that she started her cookie business. We started marketing together and eventually setting up shop together at the Clearfork Farmer’s Market. Working together again made sense, and we started helping each other grow our businesses.”
Finally, the sisters decided to take a shot at the brick-and-mortar route.
“When the opportunity for a brick-and-mortar presented itself, I knew that she would be a huge part of that,” Lawing says. “So here we are, baking the days away in our very own kitchen. It’s hard work — we often argue about silly things — but at the end of the day, I think we are right where we were always meant to be.”
Bits and Bites
Tannahill’s Tavern & Music Hall has launched a weekly brunch and live gospel concert series. The Stockyards venue’s Sunday Gospel Brunch & Social happens every Sunday at 11:00 a.m. A big brunch buffet starts at 12 p.m., and live music, courtesy of Linny Nance & The Network, begins at 12:30. Buffet items rotate and so far have included pecan smoked ham, herb roasted leg of lamb, smoked salmon, crispy fried smashed potatoes, smoked cheddar grits, charred carrots, and French toast bread pudding. Cost is $49 a person, plus a mandatory 20% gratuity. Booze is extra. Tannahills.com
A familiar face in the local restaurant industry has taken over one of the city’s oldest restaurants, Margie’s Original Italian Kitchen, a staple of the Westland area since 1953. Gigi Howell and biz partner Bourke Harvey recently acquired the restaurant from longtime owner Keith Kidwell, who acquired it from the family of Italian immigrants — including Margie Walters — who opened it. Margie’s will be closed for about two months as Howell and Harvey make tweaks to the menu and interior. One change they’ve already made: The restaurant is now called Margie’s Italian Gardens.
Margie’s is in great hands. As I noted in a profile I wrote about her last year, Howell has strong ties to the 70-year-old restaurant: Her parents met there while they were both employees — her mom a hostess, her dad a busboy. Matter of fact, Howell’s family was instrumental in the development of Westland, and now Howell is doing her part to revitalize the once-bustling area. In addition to revamping Margie’s, she recently opened a burger spot just a few feet away, JD’s Hamburgers. Look for Margie’s to reopen this summer. margiesitaliankitchen.com
It was great to see Fort Worth’s Lola’s Cuban Food on NBC/Channel 5’s news a few weeks ago. After four years of running a food truck, husband-wife owners Liliam Morin and Miquelin Herrera are on the eve of opening a brick-and-mortar at 4608 Bryant Irvin Road, Ste. 440. In early April, NBC did a segment on the restaurant and how a low-interest loan from the new CDFI Friendly Fort Worth helped. According to the NBC story, since it started last year, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund has provided $10.3 million so far in new capital to minority-owned businesses in Fort Worth. On its website, CDFI Friendly Fort Worth describes itself as “an independent, not-for-profit organization that exists solely to match CDFIs to financing needs in Fort Worth.” For more info on CDFI, visit cdfifriendlyfortworth.org.
or
For smaller appetites, Sweet Lucy’s offers 3-inch mini pies.
Restaurant news written and compiled by Malcolm Mayhew. You can reach Malcolm at malcolm. mayhew@hotmail.com
on Twitter @foodfortworth.
Third Time’s the Parm
After two attempts in the West Seventh area, Fireside Pies comes back to Fort Worth, a few blocks to the east, with a new look and menu.
BY MALCOLM MAYHEW
While most restaurants are lucky to get a second chance, Fireside Pies’ Fort Worth location is on its third.
After opening and closing twice in the tumultuous West Seventh area, the restaurant has found a new home
a few blocks to the east, in the Left Bank Shopping Center. The space is smaller and brighter than the West Seventh original — a change in direction not only for the Fort Worth store but the chain as a whole. The Fireside in Lake Highlands has also adopted a brighter, cheerier atmos.
The menu, too, has changed but only slightly. Most of the pies for which Fireside was known, from the Prosciutto & Parm to the vegetarianfriendly Garic White, are on the new menu, along with pastas, including the addictingly rich butter noodles, and hugely popular — and just plain huge — salads. New menu items include stuffed eggplant, a garlic shrimp pie, and a shrimp Alfredo pasta.
Tristan Simon opened the original Fireside in Dallas, where the two freely experimented with interesting and exciting flavor combinations. By the time the restaurant opened a Fort Worth location, in the then-new West Seventh area, the Fireside brand was well known for its forward-thinking food.
With its dim lighting, oversized banquettes, hip vibe, and grade-A service, the Fort Worth store thrived, becoming one of the city’s toughest tables to snag. But over time, Fireside began to suffer from the same problems that plagued other early West Seventh restaurants, from the confusing parking garages to the surplus of unruly patrons to the multiplying number of bars that fueled them.
“I opened the Fort Worth restaurant as executive chef, and during those first few years, it had a great energy,” says Bozarth, who’s been with Fireside 16 years. “To see how much the area was changing was a shock. The traffic was terrible. There were a lot of incidents at those bars. It didn’t feel safe for our guests or employees. It just got to be too much.”
Fireside Pies, 628 Harrold St., firesidepies.com
Also refreshed is the weekend brunch menu, which now includes dishes such as frittatas with bacon and avocado or chorizo, and chicken and waffles.
“This is us hitting the reset button,” says Joe Bozarth, director of operations. “It’s a new look and new menu but with the same high standards in terms of the food, service, and experience.”
When it comes to gourmet pizza, Fireside Pies is a pioneer. In 2004, long before the chef-inspired pizza trend hit North Texas, Dallas chef Nick Badovinus and then-partner
The restaurant, too, lost a bit of steam after it had undergone a change in name and ownership. For a while, it was known as 13 Pies before ownership changed once again and the original Fireside name was reinstated. By that time, West Seventh was no longer the ideal place for Fireside, Bozarth says, and it quietly closed in 2022.
A year later, it has reopened, with a new look and vibe — this time for good, Bozarth says.
“It was always our plan to return to Fort Worth,” he says. “This is a much more approachable location. You can park right outside, for free. It’s more family-friendly, too, but there are also a lot of young couples from the apartments nearby. It’s good for family night or date night. This is a Fireside that’s for everyone.”
Fireside Pies’ wood-fired oven pizza is back in FW.
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Good Vibrations
Quince, one of the city’s most anticipated new restaurants, brings Insta-worthy views, an upbeat vibe, and a globe-trotting menu to Fort Worth’s WestBend area
BY MALCOLM MAYHEW
It’s not of the La Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel in Mexico by any means, but the view you get while perched on the double-decker patio at Quince is still lovely. Have another fiery yet refreshing Diablo Margarita, and this view of the Trinity River will, no doubt, look more and more beautiful.
Nearly two years have passed since owners of the Mexico-born restaurant Quince announced their plans to open a spinoff in Fort Worth’s WestBend shopping center. But the pandemic spared no one, and the restaurant, pronounced “Keen-Say,” was delayed. In late March, it finally arrived, taking over the space last occupied by upscale Mexican restaurant Bartaco.
Opened in 2016 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, the original location won multiple accolades for its rooftop dining, which offers stunning views of the 17th century La Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel church. The patio at the Fort Worth branch, which includes balcony seating on the restaurant’s second level, overlooks
the Trinity River. Not quite the same experience, but it’s a pleasant view.
Inside, co-owner, former hedge fund manager, and TCU grad Brian Sneed led an impressive remodel that has resulted in attractive marble and parquet floors, exquisite paintings of women painted by women, a doublesided fireplace made in San Miguel, and colorful, midcentury-inspired furniture. Curated music playlists emphasize upbeat and clubby. Although the concept was born in Mexico, Quince is not a Mexican restaurant. Rather, Sneed calls the menu a “global collective,” a collection of dishes inspired by his and his chef’s worldly travels. Entrees consist of truffle risotto with portabella mushrooms; pankocrusted sea bass in a pool of ancho pepper cream; and a 28-ounce bonein black angus rib-eye. Appetizers and shared plates include lamb dumplings, Aguachile de Picaña, a dish of sliced roast beef with aguachile and avocado habanero mousse, and octopus and sea bass ceviche.
In addition, there are burgers and sandwiches at lunch, and for weekend brunch, there are huevos rancheros, eggs Benedict, chilaquiles verdes, and eggs shakshouka.
An Austin location of Quince is also in the works. Quince, 1701 River Run, quincesma.com
Quince’s global menu includes items like Aguachile de Picaña, left, and sushi rolls.
Quince’s classy interior
Going the Extra Mile
Will Adams is one busy guy in charge of business development at Stonetex Oil Corp., on the board of the BSA Longhorn Council, and local chair of the National Eagle Scout Association. So, when the time rolled around to buy his family a brand-new vehicle, he needed a no-hassle, easy-to-buy experience. Adams looked to Platinum Cadillac in Terrell to fulfill all his automotive needs. “Justin Rudd and Jacob Dabbs were quick and professional during the car-buying process, which was incredibly smooth,” he says. “They continued to be helpful and engage when I’ve had questions or needed help.”
Adam’s most recent purchase, a spacious and opulent 2023 Cadillac Escalade, offers tons of passenger and cargo room, a luxurious interior, and a long list of standard and available features. “My family needed a bigger SUV, and of the options available in this class, the Escalade outperformed in comfort, technology, and design,” he says. “We’re taking our first driving family trip since our son was born, and this SUV will make the long drive a lot easier.” But the Escalade’s luxurious features aren’t the only reason Adams is such a satisfied Platinum Cadillac customer. The Gilchrist Platinum Valet Service helped seal the deal. “The door-to-door service was exceptional. With a young kid, it’s always a little harder getting places, so their dropping off the vehicle and picking up our old car we traded in was really going the extra mile!”
PICTURED: Justin Rudd, General Manager of Platinum Chevrolet Cadillac; Stephen Gilchrist, Dealer Operator; Will Adams, customer.
On The Verge
Abraham Alexander — singer, songwriter, and overall good dude — just dropped one of the most anticipated debut albums from a Fort Worthian, ever.
BY SHILO URBAN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CRYSTAL WISE
Light dances on the seagreen surf. A handful of little boys — brothers — play together in the soft foam of the ocean’s edge, facing forward into the unknown. Slightly faded with the grainy haze of yesteryear, the photograph captured a moment of childhood innocence. It was an irreplaceable treasure … and Abraham Alexander lost it.
Now 32 and fresh off the release of his debut album, SEA/SONS, the Fort Worth singer and musician is a stirring storyteller with a philosopher’s soul. He was just 10 years old in the snapshot, which was taken where he grew up in Athens, Greece.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” says Alexander, who first came across the vintage photo in 2019. “It blew my mind. It brought back all these memories and was so nostalgic for me. And immediately I knew what I wanted to call my album and what I wanted the concept to be about.”
The cherished picture would take pride of place as the cover art. “I knew that whichever [record] label partner I would have, this is what I wanted.”
Then the pandemic arrived and swept everyone’s plans away. Three years later, Alexander signed to Nashville’s Dualtone Records and set an album release date — but the photograph had disappeared. He remembers the tension: “I can’t find it. I’m stressed. Anxiety starts to creep in, and I’m complaining to everyone and their mama, to all my friends.” Then his best friend, Elle, spoke up. She had wanted to surprise him with a gift on the day of his record release, but it would have to come early: She had painted the photograph. While Alexander was away on tour with Leon Bridges, Elle (who hadn’t picked up a paintbrush since high school) had been inspired to recreate the happy scene, transforming the lost snapshot into something even more meaningful and beautiful than before. Her painting is what you see now on the cover of SEA/SONS, which was released on April 14 of this year.
“This record has been a healing process for me,” says Alexander, who has overcome tragedy and trauma to emerge cleareyed
and confident, with a calming presence and a quiet strength of character. “I’m excited to share something special.” Full of hope and sorrow, love and loss, the album’s intimate lyrics and stripped-down aesthetic touch a nerve, bypassing the brain to connect directly with the heart. “They say that your pain can bring answers to someone else’s, and that’s all I want to do … I’m just talking about my life, and I hope that people can understand theirs when they listen.”
Pure, powerful emotion inhabits the sound of the singer-songwriter and guitarist, whose self-taught style is all his own — a silken blend of contemporary folk, blues, and soul that feels like a deep breath of truth. Alexander’s album has been a long time coming. “Ten years ago I was just trying to figure out how to play the friggin’ instrument,” he laughs, reflecting on the musical journey that has led him here, standing on the verge of becoming a true phenomenon. But his story starts long before that.
I would go would treat me differently … it was an interesting juxtaposition to be in.”
But Alexander didn’t have to face that juxtaposition alone. He’s the second oldest of nine children in the family, eight brothers and a sister. “It’s a blessing and a gift,” he says. “It’s magical to be honest, and we’re not all biological, but there is a bond, a different bond between all of us that’s really special.” Having so many siblings has played no small role in Alexander’s ability to connect with listeners as an artist. “It prepares me to dive into people’s epicenters and try to see things from their perspectives and see what their joys are and what their heartaches are.”
A time to be born Raised in Athens by Nigerian immigrant parents, young Alexander romped and played in the ancient city of philosophers. “It was such a beautiful place to grow up,” he says. “I was always a very curious kid.” Schooling often took place in the open air. “We were learning outside and in nature. I would ride my bike, and there’s the Acropolis, and here’s the Parthenon. There’s such a beauty and freedom within that.”
Growing up in Greece gave Alexander a unique view of the world, but all too often he was on the outside looking in. He and his siblings were the only Black children in their school. He was a Greek-speaking Greek citizen who was born in Greece, but some people only saw the color of his skin. “I wasn’t really accepted,” he says. But he didn’t understand why. “I just knew there was always something different about me. Kids would treat me differently, the places
Heartaches were looming. Looking to escape Greece’s economic woes and racial tension, in 2002 the family uprooted itself across the sea to a faraway land called Texas. The three older boys traveled first with their parents, settling in Arlington.
“I cried,” admits Alexander, who was 11 years old at the time. “I knew something was different. The air felt more dense … it’s weird to explain. There was a lot of crime that we would see constantly. The food was different. I hardly spoke English, and so I found myself in a new place, new country, new language, and still isolated. I just remember feeling heavy. I didn’t feel as free.”
The brothers dealt with the upheaval in different ways. “My younger brother was kind of oblivious to it all … he was just excited by the new experience.” Alexander’s older brother struggled a bit, wearing a pink shirt and yellow pants on his first day of high school. “He got dubbed Banana Split,” says Alexander, who had an easier time fitting in. “I was able to tap into sports really quickly and find friends from that.” But all three brothers relied upon each other. “That was when our bonds really started to form because we were all experiencing the same thing at the same time, but on different levels.”
Then nine months after they arrived in Texas, a heart-shattering tragedy befell the
family: Alexander’s mother was hit and killed by a drunk driver.
“I’m still trying to process,” Alexander says. “It was extremely hard, extremely difficult, losing the one person that is an anchor when you’re between two places and three different cultures. I just felt a gap, and there was a sadness there. Kids have an interesting way to separate what’s physically happening and what’s mentally happening, and I had, to a certain degree, a wall of innocence that was shielding me from a lot of the pain and the grief.”
Alexander now views the loss through the lens of acceptance. “That was what was bestowed upon me … If that didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be who I am today.” He’s sometimes asked to give advice to others who have experienced terrible loss. “There’s no advice, really,” he says. “It’s grace.”
A time to heal Alexander sought solace through his teenage years in the place where he felt the most comfortable: on the soccer field. His mother’s death had sparked a chain reaction in the family, leading Alexander to be adopted into a foster family at age 16. With their loving support and his impressive athletic prowess, he landed a spot on the college team at Texas Wesleyan University and a new home: Fort Worth. But his dreams of a future in professional soccer went down the drain when he tore his ACL, which sidelined his career before it began. Alexander was crushed, practically immobile and slipping under the shadows of depression.
And then someone handed him a guitar.
“That’s when my love for music took off,” he says. He watched YouTube videos of musicians Gary Clark Jr. and Bill Withers and slowly taught himself how to play the instrument, crafting a distinctive sound in the process. “It was lack that fueled my creative being — a lack of mobility, a lack of my athletic identity — and now I see that it’s just a part of who I am. It’s always existed, but the way that I’ve been able to express it has been different.” As a boy he had conveyed his creativity by updating his hand-medowns with style tweaks or wearing his soccer socks unlike anyone else. “When you don’t have a lot of resources, you
have to find a way to make do … I think I was just trying to find my own way.”
Providence helped him out. A series of chanced moments — a friend running late, a street blocked by construction, two guys moving electronics — led to Alexander meeting Leon Bridges and singing backup on his album Coming Home. Bridges encouraged him to play open mics around town; the two became good friends and later toured together. Soon Alexander was asked to open a show for the R&B singer Ginuwine, and he quit both his jobs to pursue a musical career full time. He was finding his way.
The UK’s Mahogany Records thought so, too, and signed a development deal with the young artist in 2017. Alexander began recording an EP, splitting his time between Abbey Road Studios in London and Modern Electric in Dallas. “It was such an incredible opportunity and one that changed my life for sure.” He discovered much musical inspiration in London’s collaborative milieu but missed the Texas highways — a longing that’s woven into his No. 1 song to date, “Stay.” The homesick ode appeared on his eponymous debut EP, which was released in September 2019.
hatchee) and Matt Pence (The Breeders, Yuck). Alexander’s longtime inspiration Gary Clark Jr. plays an evocative electric guitar solo on a new version of “Stay” while octogenarian Mavis Staples lends her burly vocals to “Déjà Vu.”
“It was lack that fueled my creative being — a lack of mobility, a lack of my athletic identity — and now I see that it’s just a part of who I am. It’s always existed, but the way that I’ve been able to express it has been different.”
January 2020, Alexander stood on stage at the Kessler Theater in Dallas and told fans to expect a full-length album later that year. Man plans, God laughs, and COVID-19 battered the music industry. Like many artists, Alexander spent the forced downtime to create, writing several new songs that now appear on the newly released SEA/SONS.
A time to speak With an enduring crossgenre appeal, SEA/SONS stretches out from its base of soulful blues and acoustic folk to embrace elements of rock, pop, hip-hop, and R&B. Some tracks dip their toes into electronica, and others are lifted with gospel with Alexander’s soothing voice glowing through them all. He co-produced the record with a little help from his friends, including Grammy-nominated songwriter Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxa-
Sparse, uncluttered arrangements leave ample space for feelings to flow, as they do in the first song “Xavier.” The gentle breath of an organ leads us into the hymn-like requiem, which Alexander wrote after his brother Xavier was robbed and murdered in 2017. Yet this is no mournful dirge; it is a hopeful prayer rising up to the heavens. Hope and pain stream through the album together, cresting in “Heart of Gold,” the first song Alexander ever wrote. In its pathos lies its potency. Tender and raw, it’s a message to his younger self to stay strong and survive the moment as he’s blacking out from a beating by his birth father. Alexander has called their relationship “the epitome of abuse.” Peeled back to reveal the musician’s vulnerable, wounded core, the song connects with the vulnerable, wounded core within us all — and in that connection, we can find new strength.
Alexander has found something else: forgiveness for his father. “Our relationship has been rekindled, in a way. It’s good now,” he reflects. “The child in me might not be able to forgive or figure out how to, but the man that I am now can, because I understand. I understand what it’s like to be in pain, what it’s like to try to figure out the world and not being able to. Forgiveness has so many different shades and colors, but what has to be at the center of it is perspective.”
Martin Luther King Jr. famously said: “Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a constant attitude.” Like King, Alexander’s attitude of forgiveness is greatly informed by his deep Christian belief. “My faith is extremely important. It’s very much a part of who I am and a part of how I view the world and make sense of it,” he says. “It’s
the only comfort I have, to be honest. It tells me that I am just a piece of the puzzle, and I’m just here to be a conduit. It helps me not try to control what I can’t.”
A time to mend Alexander’s journey of renewal has coincided with the creation of SEA/SONS. “Over the last few years, a lot of my relationships have been mended and made whole, which is so healing to have in conjunction with releasing this record.”
Drenched in emotion and awash with heart, SEA/SONS speaks to the essential role that each season plays in our lives: summer as well as winter, dark as well as light. “Every single season is so important to the next,” he explains. “There isn’t essentially a good or a bad — everything is essential. And everything is an ingredient to us as a whole and to the mission and the calling that we have. When I look back on each season that I’ve had, in that specific moment I thought, it’s the worst or it’s the highest of the highs … but I think it’s that balance we need to find.”
Alexander’s music is imbued with love in the widest sense of the word. He sings of romantic love, yes, but also love for home, love for family, love for listeners he will never meet. Like forgiveness, love has many shades for the artist and is better expressed in his native Greek language with words like “philia” (brotherly love) and “agape” (unconditional love for humankind). “Love could mean just being vulnerable. Love could mean being selfless and carrying something that no one else wants to, or going the extra mile. Or saying something that might not be acceptable but yet needs to be said — that’s love because you care,” he explains. “From that standpoint … my album is about love. Love that I’ve experienced, love that I’ve lost.”
better, sing loudly, sing quietly, don’t sing at all, just listen,” he says. “I want them to be childlike again … I want them to feel nostalgic and to long for the days when phones were connected to the walls instead of us being connected to the phones. I want them to long to spend time with their family and travel and create memories.”
A time to dance Alexander has been busy creating memories of his own on a month-long tour that caps off in early May. He’ll come full circle at his two-night album release party on June 2 and 3 at the Kessler, where he stood on stage four years ago and promised the crowd a new record. “Now I want to go back and say it again … and just kind of close that chapter in a way.” Sweet redemption. He’s also playing the mega-festival Bonnaroo this summer, which attracted 80,000 music fans last year. “It’s crazy. I’ve never even been — I’ve wanted to, but just couldn’t afford to go. And now I get to play there,” he says. “There’s always that dream and that hope, that aspiration that you’ll get to be on stage in front of thousands of people … it’s going to happen this summer.”
“I hope [people who listen to my album] feel everything. I hope they feel joy, sadness, question, understand, love, love the person sitting next to them better, sing loudly, sing quietly, don’t sing at all, just listen.”
In SEA/SONS, Alexander has transformed his loss and pain into something beautiful: a healing salve for listeners. “I hope they feel everything. I hope they feel joy, sadness, question, understand, love, love the person sitting next to them
Touring and playing festivals tap into Alexander’s affinity for traveling, which he calls “one of the best educations you can get.” But his adventures all come back to the same place. “I love Fort Worth. I love the city, I love the people in it, and I feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself,” says Alexander, who lives downtown. “The more I travel, the more I enjoy being home. I say going and coming back is not the same as never leaving, because I get to go and appreciate what home is for me. It’s wild, I love this place so much … There is an energy that cannot be replicated anywhere else.”
Hometown support has been “huge” in shaping Alexander as a musician.
“It allowed me to develop that artistry. And not just that, but if people weren’t receptive, then it would have been shut down. I’m a firm believer that the second person who believes in the dream is more important than the dreamer. Fort Worth was that for me.” Now he’s an unofficial ambassador for the city wherever he goes. “It’s awesome to represent Fort Worth … it’s an alma mater, and I wear that diploma with pride and honor.”
All of Alexander’s siblings eventually found their way to Texas, including all the little brothers in the photograph. “Thanksgivings are great,” he says, although they don’t wait for a holiday to hang out together at the family ranch. “Being at my family’s place every Sunday that I’m here is extremely important to me.” They play cards and Nintendo Wii. “It puts things into perspective and gives me a sense of peace. It doesn’t matter what happens — I have this community, and I have people that love and cherish me no matter what … I’m super fortunate to be here.”
Philosophers have long spoken of suffering as a source of wisdom and enlightenment, perhaps the source. In the streets of ancient Athens, Socrates taught that a life without suffering was no life at all; Aristotle wrote that we cannot learn without pain. Our modern minds eschew this idea — we want to eliminate suffering, not accept it. But by accepting life’s inevitable pain and grief, we learn compassion, empathy, and understanding. Perhaps the Sufi poet Rumi said it best: “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
Abraham Alexander has suffered the depths of darkness and come away filled with light — a light that he now shines upon others, lifting them up with a healing beacon of song and a philosophy of hope. With a new album to share with the world, he has entered a new season in his life. “I’m in spring. I am in a season of seeing what was planted, a season of seeing the hard work being manifested, and it’s such a blessing,” he says. “I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”
SEA/SONS by Abraham Alexander is available on digital streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple and at local record stores.
HOGAN
The ascendance of one of the greatest to ever play the game.
Not long after daybreak, the SS United States, the fastest liner on the seas at the time, came into view of the breathtaking sights to be seen.
To the left rose the Statue of Liberty, her burning torch raised to the heavens symbolic of so many American virtues. Next was Staten Island. Back off to the right was Brooklyn. To the rear the Manhattan skyline came into view on this cloudy and foggy July morning. The Empire State Building’s peak broke high into the mist hovering above this cold and impersonal city.
Enterprising reporters covering the scene sped out into New York Harbor on cutters to meet the big ship.
Boarding the vessel through a passageway in the midsection, the press corps tramped through the corridors and took turns riding elevators up to the
BY JOHN HENRY
captain’s bridge.
Their destination was the reason for all the fuss: Ben Hogan, now unchallenged as golf’s best player and a citizen of the world just returning from Scotland, where he had conquered the only unmetchallenge of a rags-to-riches career that had taken him from the sand traps at Glen Garden Country Club he once used as bedding to the ultimate greeting, a ticker-tape parade in New York City.
He stood there with his wife, Valerie, answering questions from the inquiring correspondents who all wanted to shoot questions to the most popular man in the Western world.
“I’m a golfer and have been since I was 12 years old,” said Hogan, just shy of his 41st birthday. “Tournament golf is my life.”
Hogan had won six of golf’s major championships entering the 1953 season.
On the shelves of his trophy case were the 1946 and ’48 PGA Championships; the 1948, ’50, and ’51 U.S. Opens; and a Masters trophy from 1951.
Despite what he had done in all the years previous, there were many who were unwilling to compare Hogan to the game’s greats until he crossed the Atlantic to prove that he could master the winds and the dunes of Britain’s great seaside courses in the Open tournament setting.
Considering the pressure he was under to prove his place in history, conquering Carnoustie in July 1953, his only British Open appearance, with a 6-under par four-round total, might have been Hogan’s greatest achievement in a life full of them. Hogan’s appearance at Carnoustie generated so much interest and publicity that if he didn’t win it, it would have been, as one writer put it at
the time, one of sports history’s “great anticlimaxes.”
As it happened, Hogan left no doubt, firing a course-record 68 in the final round. Winning at Carnoustie was the capstone to the greatest year any golfer ever completed since Bobby Jones in 1930.
The Scots adored him. The “Wee Ice Mon,” he was fondly called by the Scots, who gave him the Elvis treatment. Actually, maybe it was Elvis who got the Hogan treatment. The first hint of Elvis wouldn’t occur until the next month.
Disembarking after a layover in France, Hogan and Mrs. Hogan were welcomed to America’s cultural and economic capital the way it had all the beau ideals who had come before him, all those national and international knights idealized for their courage, achievements, and virtue.
Only the select few had been feted by the New York’s ticker-tape parade. Theodore Roosevelt; Gen. John J. Pershing, following his triumphant return from Europe in 1919; Edward, the Prince of Wales, before his fall from the House of Windsor; David Lloyd George; Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, and Wiley Post, Will Rogers’ good buddy; Jesse Owens; Eisenhower, de Gaulle, Wain-
wright, Nimitz, and Harry Truman; and Churchill and MacArthur.
To name only a few.
And now Ben Hogan, son of Fort Worth, was receiving this hero’s reception, the ultimate survivor, in every sense of the word, and the winner of the Masters, U.S. Open, and British Open in 1953 — forever known as the “Hogan Slam.”
All 70 years ago this July.
From the ship, Hogan was led to a long, black convertible. He sat on top of the backseat. Valerie was escorted to a car behind.
With 50 police motorcycles, their sirens howling, the motorcade sped 20 miles around the city. Reporters noted revelers ranged from shirtless factory workers to white-collar office people. Nurses and other medical professionals waved from a hospital. As the cars advanced slowly, men, women, and children yelled, “Hi, Ben,” or “Hi, Champ.” The fire department boats in the East River saluted with tremendous, shooting streams of water and the sounds of their horns.
When they had reached the start of the parade at the Battery, the cars crept up a packed Broadway, 100 mounted police officers and the 100-man fire department
band leading the way. Ticker-tape paper fell from the sky like a snowfall in the middle of a North Dakota winter. Tens of thousands stood cheering, applauding, and waving.
Hogan smiled broadly, waved, and nodded.
The destination was a platform at City Hall. There Hogan accepted a scroll presented by Mayor Vincent Impellitteri, an underdog populist who had neither a band nor a platform for his inauguration in 1950 after sending the powerful political bosses a message of being unbought and unbossed. The mayor read a message to the populist golf superstar from President Eisenhower.
“Millions of Americans would like to participate with the New Yorkers today who are extending their traditional welcome upon your return from your magnificent victory,” the President wrote. “We are proud of you not only as a great competitor and a master of your craft, but also as an envoy extraordinary in the business of building friendship for America. With best wishes to you and Mrs. Hogan.”
Said Hogan, anything but the stern, ice-cold competitive killer he was reputed to be: “This is the hardest course I’ve ever played. I’m so grateful that I can’t explain it in words. This sort of thing brings tears to my eyes. I have a tough skin but a soft spot in my heart, and things like this find that soft spot.”
The emotions undoubtedly stemmed also from the memories, all of them likely flashing before him at this moment, the triumph and trauma, all blended together made a complicated man.
The story of Hogan’s hike to this time and place is one of the most captivating in 20th century American history, up to and including his own personal war on poverty, a cycle broken by an uncommon will.
As the newspaper recounted on that day in 1922, a day before Valentine’s Day.
“Daddy, what are you going to do?”
asked Hogan’s brother, 12-year-old Royal Hogan.
Chester Hogan, 37, a struggling black-
The New York City ticker-tape parade that welcomed Hogan following his victory at the 1953 Open Championship.
smith, answered by rummaging in his handbag. He found what he was looking for. Chester took out his gun and shot himself just over the heart in a room at their home in the 300 block of Hemphill. It was the coda of a tragic life.
Chester Hogan had been noticeably ill since early 1921. According to The Brothers Hogan: A Fort Worth History, written by Royal’s daughter Jacqueline Hogan Towery, her husband Robert Towery, and Peter Barbour. Chester had often thought about death and at times was unable to work. He was drinking more than he ever had, and his moods varied from one extreme to the other.
Hogan’s mother, Clara, recognized the crisis and that no hospital in the family’s hometown of Dublin could diagnose, much less treat, his condition. The family believed, in hindsight, that what likely ailed him was bipolar disorder, a condition further complicated by alcohol consumption. Clara relocated her family to Fort Worth. Chester, according to The Brothers Hogan, began outpatient treatment at a hospital here, but when he couldn’t find work as a mechanic, he returned to Dublin and reopened his blacksmith shop, which struggled to stay open as the trade’s demand had diminished significantly in the area.
Chester had returned to Fort Worth to try to coax his family back to Dublin. Clara merely wanted to wait until the school year had completed before considering it.
Hogan, then 9, his brother, and their older sister Princess, 15, were left without a father. Their mother was left with three children to raise on her own.
Needless to say, the prosperity of the Roaring ’20s never made a stop at the Hogan home. Freedom from want was as foreign to the Hogans as the ruble. “These people were destitute,” was how one described the family to a reporter in the 1970s.
Royal, himself an accomplished amateur golfer, as his Colonial club championships would suggest, quit school in the sixth grade to help his mother support the family. Royal Hogan became a successful businessman as head of Hogan Office Supply.
“One has to consider what might’ve been different if that moment in my family’s past had never happened,” Jacqueline Hogan Towery wrote. “Would my father have become a successful businessman? Would he have quit school when he did? Would he or Uncle Ben have attended college? And, most importantly, would Daddy or Uncle Ben have ever picked up the game of golf? I wonder.”
Hogan discovered golf at Glen Garden Country Club.
Royal had begun selling Fort Worth StarTelegram newspapers outside its offices on Seventh Street. Ben, then in the fourth grade at Carroll Peak Elementary, would come join him after school. Royal would give him some papers and position him at the T&P Station. Royal would return to Seventh Street.
Hogan was introduced to the idea of caddying by a friend at school who told him he could make more money carrying and cleaning golf clubs than he could selling newspapers. And if you worked hard enough at it, one could carry two sets of clubs for two golfers, meaning double the compensation.
Hogan walked the six miles to the course to ask for a job. He wasn’t embraced. There were more caddies on the course than they needed. So, he had to literally fight his way, hazed and harassed all the way, according to his niece’s book.
“Uncle Ben was a scrapper,” Hogan Towery wrote. “He told me they still made him fight one of the larger boys as a final test to become a caddy, and he got the better of this fellow because he knew how to fight. Sooner or later the boys who wanted it badly enough made the grade to become a caddy, and Ben made it.”
were allowed to use the practice range.
“It wasn’t long before Ben knew that this was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life,” his niece said. “Golf was the perfect game for Uncle Ben’s fondness for solitude and his ability to concentrate. He was able to work alone, without teammates, and to accept all the credit or blame for the results. Golf provided competition, and if nothing else, Uncle Ben was very competitive, either by nature or through the concentrated determination he learned from his mother.
Glen Garden also set the stage for another of Hogan’s seminal moments. Also working at Glen Garden was Byron Nelson, another who would become one of the game’s greats. The two were the same age, Nelson about six months older.
The 1927 Caddy Tournament became more than a footnote in history.
Hogan and Nelson finished tied. Hogan won what he thought was a nine-hole playoff. Hogan, according to golf writer and friend Dan Jenkins, remembers two members racing up to say the playoff was actually 18 holes.
“Golf was the perfect game for Uncle Ben’s fondness for solitude and his ability to concentrate. He was able to work alone, without teammates, and to accept all the credit or blame for the results.”
- Jacquelin Hogan Towery
Nelson, who went on to win by sinking a 30-foot putt on 18, always thought it was 18 holes.
“What angered Ben the most was that Byron was given a junior membership in the club, and Ben was told he could not use the practice range,” said Jenkins, who died in 2019, in an interview with the writer. “I don’t think he ever got over it.”
Hogan, with a rougher edge, was never embraced by the members like Nelson was.
He soon discovered an affection for the game. His first club was one he found, a left-handed iron. Hogan, of course, was a righty, but he would hit balls with it every weekend morning, when the caddies
Slighted, Hogan left in a huff as a 15-year-old, not to return for decades, taking his game and his drive to Katy Lake, the course a few miles away that became a shopping mall on Seminary Drive that today is the La Gran Plaza de Fort Worth.
What part, if any, the experience
shaped him as a competitor or person, no one really knows.
“He liked to say his mother told him not to forget that he was as good as anybody, and he set about proving it,” Jenkins said. “Golf was his way of reaching a higher social level.”
His mother, however, also challenged her 16-year-old about the wisdom of her son’s fascination with the game. Wouldn’t it be wiser to go get a real job like his brother?
“I intend to become the greatest golfer in the world,” he replied.
Perhaps no one was as important to what Hogan made of himself than his mother.
Clara Hogan was an accomplished seamstress. Soon after Chester’s suicide, she found steady work at Monnig’s Department Store downtown on Fifth Street between Houston and Throckmorton. It sat across the street from where The Tower is today.
Her granddaughter, Hogan Towery, recalled her as a “real taskmaster” and “perfectionist.”
“Mama Hogan taught me to sew when I was 12 years old, and I learned in a hurry not to cross her. She would say, ‘Do it right or don’t do it at all.’ She expected sewing to be done perfectly, which meant her way. When I was young, she could be as sweet as pie, but she didn’t show that very often. And when she was determined, look out. It made a difference to her about sewing the absolute best it could be done.
continuously since the accident in Van Horn in 1949.
Wrote Gene Gregston, a reporter who covered Hogan: “Ben didn’t want to play his best that day. He wanted to be the best every day.”
It was written: A faithful friend is medicine for life.
Hogan had that. Without Marvin Leonard, Hogan’s day in New York City probably never happens.
Leonard was Fort Worth’s leading citizen in his day and, according to one description, its “voice of reason, compassion, and optimism.”
And, of course, the city’s leading promoter and benefactor of the sport of golf, which he revolutionized in Texas with the introduction of the bent grass greens everyone told him he couldn’t grow in North Texas because of the heat. He put them on the championship-caliber course he built near TCU which hosted the 1941 U.S. Open and an annual PGA Tour stop beginning in 1946. The other club he built, Shady Oaks, had them, too.
“Hogan quit playing the very day he realized he could no longer win.”
Much has been written on the topic of friendship, since before and including the Greeks’ great thinkers to singers and songwriters to script writers at NBC and elsewhere.
said from his lectern at the Lyceum, it is presumed, in poverty and other misfortunes in life.
The name Leonard and the department store he and brother Obie owned and operated for the better part of 70 years cannot be separated from the history of Fort Worth.
One reason is because Leonard was incited to noble deeds.
One example was retold in a Leonard biography, Texas Merchant, authored by Walter L. Buenger and Victoria L. Buenger.
A program to feed hungry school children during the Depression, financed by the state and county budgets, had run out of money. Leonard told the schools superintendent to keep the program going and send him the bill. He quietly paid the $35,000 bill to do so. He wasn’t the kind of guy to go on Facebook — had there been a Facebook — and tell the world what he had done.
He didn’t operate that way. Leonard was a “quiet giver,” his daughter once said, adding in one testimonial that he was always “helping people in some way, whether it happened to be with paying bills, or with food programs at local schools, providing college funds, or helping out in a personal crisis. Everybody loved him, and that was because Daddy loved people.”
“This disciplined attitude was a quality she bestowed on her children and a philosophy she applied to everything. When she was teaching me, if a seam on a sleeve had the tiniest flaw, I mean the smallest pucker, I would have to take it all apart and start over until I got it right.”
It was his mother’s fingerprints that made the son. Hogan quit playing the very day he realized he could no longer win. That day was May 13, 1971. Hogan withdrew from the Houston Champions International Golf Tournament because of severe leg pain, which he suffered
It’s the relationships that matter, friends being the essential ingredient to making good in this world — no matter how that is defined — and for Hogan, Leonard was that friend, who stood by him and helped him get his career and perhaps even his life off the ground.
“The best way I can describe [the relationship] is the inscription Hogan wrote to my father in his first instruction book,” says Marty Leonard, daughter of Leonard. “‘To Marvin Leonard, the best friend I will ever have. If my father had lived, I would have wanted him to be just like you.’”
“That tells you as much as anything. That was certainly the way Hogan felt, and I know my father felt the same way as well.”
True friends are a sure refuge, Aristotle
This was a guy who didn’t finish high school because, as his brother Obie said, as retold in Texas Merchant, he didn’t want to burden his parents with the expense of buying him a graduation suit.
Leonard’s Department Store was also the first in Fort Worth to remove the last ugly vestiges of Jim Crow, according to Texas Merchant. The store had always welcomed Black shoppers, but it had separate water fountains and bathrooms. Blacks were also not allowed in the buffet line of the store’s restaurant.
It was an example that is credited for making way for the one of the most peaceful transitions of desegregation in the South.
Of his quiet philanthropic pursuits, Leonard would say later in his life, “Whatever I might have contributed to the field of golf and to the welfare of my city, I received deep personal satisfaction —
more than I know how to express.”
As it concerns golf, Leonard initially put the game away as quickly as he had picked it up. He tried to play in his early 20s but found the game took too long to play. He reasoned that even as a bachelor, he was too busy with an upstart business in downtown Fort Worth to mess with chasing a white ball around a golf course.
A doctor convinced him to change his mind some years later when Leonard was in his early 30s.
“I woke up one morning feeling so low that I went to my family doctor, and he said to start playing golf or start preparing for a crack up,” Leonard said, according to Texas Merchant.
He returned to Glen Garden and began playing at least nine holes in the morning before breakfast. His hobby turned to obsession, as we all know the story of his proving that bent grass greens could not only survive but thrive in Texas. He had discovered them in California.
It was at Glen Garden that Leonard met the hardscrabble Hogan, then a teen.
Leonard befriended him, and it’s not a stretch to suggest that the older man — 17 years older than his new protégé — was the only true friend of Hogan, at the time, at least.
Hogan quit school at age 17, leaving Fort Worth Central High School to pursue a career in golf.
In those early days on tour in 1931, Leonard seeded Hogan’s first year. By Christmas, he was out of cash and stuck on the West Coast with no way to get home. He called Leonard for another advance. Leonard wired him money, with enough to buy his fiancé a Christmas gift.
Marty Leonard said she doesn’t know how much money her father gave to Hogan, other than the crude, simple onepage document kept in the Hogan Room at Colonial. It’s a matter of a few hundred dollars (roughly $5,000 today).
“I’m sure there were other instances,” she said. “That’s the one we have record of.”
Hogan’s first 10 years as a professional were difficult. His first victory didn’t
come until 1940 at the North and South Open in Pinehurst, North Carolina. The war had shut down golf for the better part of four years. But from 1945-49, Hogan won 37 tournaments, including the PGA and U.S. Open twice.
The accident in Van Horn almost ended it all. Hogan cheated death twice from the collision with the bus. He suffered a broken left ankle, a fractured collarbone, multiple fractures in the pelvis, and a damaged rib when his car, which also carried his wife, Valerie, as a passenger. In the aftermath of surgery to repair his injuries, he also developed what was described as a serious blood clot condition that compromised his life.
The issue was the casts that covered his body. His brother-in-law, Howard Ditto, Princess’ husband, a medical doctor, flew to El Paso to visit Hogan.
He was “appalled by the casts,” Hogan’s niece wrote.
“He took Royal out into the hallway and told him they had to get the casts off immediately, or Ben would continue to
Hogan’s mother, Clara
The wreckage of Hogan’s 1949 Cadillac. The nearfatal crash nearly cost the golfer the use of his legs.
Hogan on a stretcher following the automobile accident near Van Horn.
Ben and Valerie Hogan
clot and have circulation issues. He felt Ben’s condition would require the services of a surgical specialist to operate, or Ben would not survive much longer.”
Ditto suggested contacting Alton Ochsner, a professor at Tulane University Medical School and considered by many to be the best vascular surgeon in the country.
“I remember being awakened by the telephone in the middle of the night,” Marty Leonard says. “Mr. Hogan, Royal that is, had called my dad to seek his advice on how to get a doctor from New Orleans to El Paso. My dad was very, very upset about Ben’s condition.”
Leonard counseled Royal to seek out the assistance of Hogan’s former Tarrant Field commander during the war. David Hutchinson, by then a brigadier general, had also been Hogan’s golf partner in exhibitions. The general agreed to issue a command to send a B-29 bomber from Carswell Air Force Base to New Orleans to pick up Ochsner.
Eight hours later, a B-29 landed at Biggs Army Airfield in El Paso. Ochsner was transported to Hotel Dieu Hospital to see Hogan. The doctor ultimately made an incision in Hogan’s abdomen and tied off the vein from where the clots had appeared.
It was similar, the doctor said, to “turning off a water faucet.”
“We removed the danger of any more clots,” he told reporters then, “and another one could have been fatal.”
He predicted that Hogan would be “up and around in a few months,” though he would be lucky if he could ever walk properly again, much less play golf.
History tells us how this remarkable story ended. In June of 1950, 18 months after the accident, Hogan, then in his mid-30s, won the U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club, and he went on to win six more majors.
He endured incredible pain in his legs through all of them. The traumatic injuries and the aftermath would limit his schedule for the rest of his career.
Hollywood grabbed onto the story, too. “Follow the Sun,” starring Glenn Ford, debuted in May 1951, a mere month after Hogan’s first Masters championship. Perhaps the only reason he didn’t win all four majors in 1953 is because the PGA Championship schedule conflicted with the British Open.
The friendship between Leonard and Hogan remained steadfast until the end of each other’s lives, said Marty Leonard, who noted also that her father was an investor in the Hogan Co., a manufacturer of golf clubs.
“He threw out the first set of them because he didn’t like them,” she said. “I think he lost some of his investors when he did that, but not my father.”
Colonial members held a roast of Leonard in 1969, which turned out to be the final year of his life.
Hogan was the star attraction.
“For the edification of you out-of-towners, we here in Fort Worth like to honor people who have never made a success of anything,” Hogan said dryly. “We pick out people who have never contributed one thing to this city’s success. We only honor complete parasites.”
After pausing, he added: “Our honoree tonight goes beyond that.”
Hogan joked that Leonard’s career had been a series of “mistakes,” which
his brother Obie had to bail him out of, including coming to the rescue of Leonard’s Department Store after discovering Marvin was “giving away” the merchandise. “While Marvin was home sleeping, Obie was down at the store changing prices.”
Hogan then grew serious and said: “Marvin Leonard has done more for golf with his time and his knowledge and his money than anyone I know. I don’t know that anyone else would have the nerve and foresight to do the things he did. I doubt if Colonial would exist. I doubt if Shady Oaks would exist. I doubt if the U.S. Open would have come here. Marvin, I salute you.”
There also might not have been the Ben Hogan we know.
In the years that followed Hogan’s success, the golfer offered to pay back the money Leonard had given him, Marty Leonard said.
“Ben,” Marvin Leonard said, “you don’t owe me anything.”
Hogan won at Leonard’s Colonial Country Club a record five times, the last time in 1959.
That was Hogan’s last victory on the tour.
Fort Worth, too, got its chance to welcome home its favorite son in 1953.
The City Council proclaimed July 27 “Ben Hogan Day.”
A parade was part of the festivities. A police-escorted motorcade took Hogan and Valerie from Western Hills Hotel to City Hall where they were received by Mayor Edgar Deen and other city officials.
Councilman Mansfield McKnight said Hogan’s greatest accomplishment was not his mastery of the links but in overcoming. From there, the motorcade traveled south on Houston to Ninth and east to Commerce and Eighth. A reception awaited at the Hotel Texas.
Rev. Granville Walker, pastor of University Christian Church, where the Hogans were members, took the podium to discuss “Hogan as a Man.”
Walker closed his remarks: “If there is anything more remarkable than Hogan’s record, it is Ben Hogan.”
Amon Carter and Hogan
Byron Nelson and Hogan
Hogan Is tHe goat
With all due respect to Jack and Tiger, we have our own Cowtown logic when discussing the greatest golfer of all time.
BY JIMMY BURCH
Without question, Fort Worth golf legend Ben Hogan has earned a spot on professional golf’s Mount Rushmore with an inspiring, odds-defying career capped by his status as one of five golfers to complete the Modern Grand Slam. Such a feat requires victories in all four of professional golf’s major championships: the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship. Hogan, who died in 1997, is joined on that list by Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Gary Player, and Gene Sarazen. That puts him in elite company.
But does Hogan truly stand alone as the greatest of all time? Is he really golf’s GOAT?
A two-word response will suffice. Acceptable options include: Of course.
HELL, yes!
Not Jack.
Tiger, WHO?
Feel free to Google it, folks. But this much is not debatable: Hogan achieved milestones and overcame challenges that no other professional golfer faced, much less surmounted. The short list includes an impoverished childhood, a near-fatal car crash in 1949, and a painful daily stretching regimen required to get him to the first tee before every subsequent round … including the 24 that secured his final six major championships. Hogan’s tragedy-to-triumph tale triggered a movie (“Follow the Sun,” 1951), inspired a nation, and still resonates loudly with those who know and appreciate the sport’s history.
You don’t need to factor in any Cowtown Math to reach that conclusion. But it is a useful tool when explaining why Hogan, credited with nine major championships by the PGA Tour, stands taller than Jack Nicklaus, winner of 18 professional majors, on golf’s all-time list. Fortunately, I studied long enough under the tutelage of the late, great Dan Jenkins to earn my Ph.D. in Cowtown Math. Jenkins, a fellow Fort Worth native and Hall of Fame golf writer, shared countless tales about shots he witnessed and rounds he covered during Hogan’s heyday.
Years earlier, I had grown to appreciate his otherworldly skills during my days as a teenaged employee in the Shady Oaks golf shop. Part of my job description meant regular duty as Hogan’s practice companion when he chose to hit balls at the club and needed someone to retrieve them.
Combining what I witnessed with everything Dan told me, it is clear that Hogan got more out of his talent — and had more of it available during the peak of his career — than anyone who ever played the game. That sounds like the definition of golf’s GOAT to me. Yet the pesky shortfall in major titles won in comparison to others persists. Here is where the Cowtown Math comes into play. First and foremost: Hogan won the 1942 Hale America Open, a
wartime U.S. Open substitute overseen by the U.S. Golf Association — the same organization that makes the U.S. Open venue impossible for professionals every June. In 1942, the course was every bit as rugged as any USGA-designed Open layout in previous or subsequent years. Hogan’s triumph was heralded as his “first major title” in Star-Telegram headlines on June 22, 1942, and the gold medal he received that day looks exactly like the four he was awarded for winning the U.S. Open in 1948, 1950, 1951, and 1953. That’s verification enough to credit Hogan with his 10th major championship, even if the USGA does not concur.
Next, Hogan won an unprecedented five titles at the Colonial NIT, which any Fort Worth golf fan recognizes as golf’s “fifth major.”
Nicklaus won there only once, in 1982. Using Cowtown Math, the Golden Bear has been upgraded to 19 major titles. But the Hawk is nipping at his heels with 15, one more than Tiger Woods’ total.
So, we move on to the merits of proper context and the eyeball test. If those components can be used to differentiate competitors in the College Football Playoff, they are certainly good enough to draw lines in the sand when determining the Golf GOAT.
Nicklaus, a strapping lad who routinely outdrove PGA Tour peers by 30-50 yards off the tee, was a standout, five-sport, amateur athlete in Columbus, Ohio. He was an All-Ohio selection as a shooting guard for his high school basketball team and excelled in football to the point that Ohio State coach Woody Hayes discussed making him a Buckeye in that sport as well. But after watching the youngster play golf, Woody urged Jack to focus on the sport that eventually made him famous because his athletic gifts were too well-suited for a long and profitable golf career, and he could not stomach the idea of seeing that dream erased by an ACL injury on the gridiron.
Hogan, nicknamed “Bantam Ben” because of his diminutive size (5-foot-9, 146 pounds) and fiery spirit, willed his way to a golf career despite limited, God-given, physical skills. Through
relentless practice, he mastered a set of tools that were laughably outdated compared to the ones Nicklaus used on the PGA Tour, let alone Tiger.
In 1946, the year of Hogan’s first major championship, his typical drive went 265 yards. The maximum distance for a 7-iron was 135 yards, and no golf balls were tailored to match a player’s launch angle or spin rate, as they are today. When Hogan wanted to move a ball from left to right, or keep it low when hitting into the wind, he adjusted his grip and stance to make it happen. Those nuggets should help with context. So should the fact that Hogan once made 16 consecutive appearances in the U.S. Open — or its “wartime equivalent” — between 1940 and 1960 without finishing outside the Top 10. During that stretch, he also mixed in five victories at the year’s most challenging layout.
And the eyeball test? Well, that’s the clincher. During my days at Shady Oaks, I was Hogan’s target/ball retriever — a “shagger,” in the parlance of the day — on more than 30 occasions. During our sessions, he would empty a shag bag filled with practice balls near his golf cart. I walked a while before placing the empty bag on the ground at 80 yards, Hogan’s established sand wedge distance. Then, I stepped aside and watched the magic happen. Eventually, I moved the bag back slightly with each club change as the Hawk worked his way with the bag. Even in his late 60s, the man still did the unthinkable. We never ended a practice session without Hogan putting at least one ball into the bag on the fly. Usually, it was multiple shots. One day, he buried six. It remains the damnedest practice session I have ever seen.
Years later, I shared that story with Jenkins. He countered by rattling off a LONG list of starry-eyed young touring pros he had spotted at the practice range through the years, just watching Hogan do his thing. So, I checked out his story. Ben Crenshaw admitted he was there. So, too, was Lanny Wadkins. And, yes, a young Jack Nicklaus conceded that he did likewise. What does that say?
“I don’t know,” Jenkins said that day. “I just know that I saw Jack Nicklaus watch Hogan hit practice balls dozens of times. I never once saw Hogan stop to watch Nicklaus.”
That makes perfect sense to me. Why would the Golf GOAT waste his time watching the runner-up?
Major Ben Hogan
Ben Hogan won nine ‘official’ major golf championships, but if you ask him, that number is a wee bit higher.
BY JOHN HENRY
History records that Ben Hogan won nine majors, nine behind the all-time leader Jack Nicklaus and six back of prodigy Tiger Woods.
There is little doubt that had WWII or his near-fatal accident in Van Horn, there would have been more.
For his part, Hogan believed there actually was one more that wasn’t counted. The Hawk went to his grave in 1997 believing he had won 10 majors, and all of his staunchest defenders believe the same.
In 1942, some seven months after the American entry into WWII, the USGA canceled the U.S. Open. However, in an effort to advance the war effort through bond sales, the USGA, the Chicago District Golf Association, and the PGA partnered to conduct a onetime-only event: the Hale America National Open at Ridgemoor Country Club in Chicago.
It included all those qualifiers drawn from 1,600 golfers who had participated in local and sectional qualifiers, just like the U.S. Open. Its field included the best players in the world not serving, including defending U.S. Open champion Craig Wood, who won his national title at Colonial the year before, Masters champion Byron Nelson, and Jimmy Demaret, Lloyd Mangrum, Horton Smith, Jug McSpaden, and Lawson Little. Of the tour’s best players, only Sam Snead could not compete because of military service.
Hogan won, shooting a 17-under par 271 to defeat Demaret by 3 strokes.
Hogan “always felt he had won five [U.S. Opens] because of his victory over a stellar field in the 1942 Hale America Open,” his niece Jacque Hogan Towery wrote in The Brothers Hogan: A Fort Worth History. “He received the identical gold medallion given to the National Open winner. Uncle Ben told me late in his life that he deserved recognition for winning five Opens.”
The Hale America win would have given him the record for the most national championships, more than Willie Anderson, Bobby Jones, and Jack Nicklaus.
“All of his life, Uncle Ben felt he won five Opens; he had the medals to prove it. Uncle Ben was very proud of this achievement, and near the end of his life, he still felt deprived of that recognition.”
Well, here are Hogan’s nine official major championships, including his three wins in 1953.
Hogan swung his way to victory four times at the U.S. Open.
1946 PGA Championship:
Defeated Ed Oliver, 6 and 4 | $3,500 Bantam Ben, weighing in at 135 pounds, captured his first (official) major by batting Ed Oliver, at 207 described as “the colorful fat man from Chicago,” 6 and 4 in the match-play finals in Portland. Hogan overcame a three-hole deficit in what historians have called one of the most gripping PGA Championships. Hogan birdied three of his last five holes. On 18, the pair hit nearly identical tee shots. Oliver hit within 25 feet. Hogan worked an 8-iron to within a foot of the hole. Oliver missed and conceded. “I think Ed Oliver is a great player,” Hogan said. “He was certainly not up to his game today, and I was playing a little over mine. That’s the reason I won.”
1948 PGA Championship:
Defeated Mike Turnesa, 7 and 6 | $3,500 Hogan won his second PGA title, at Norwood Hills Country Club in St. Louis, charging to a 7 and 6 victory over Mike Turnesa in May. Hogan, who admitted the seven-day competition “has worn me down,” displayed ability as a short-iron player and an excellent putter while going into the final round 4 up. Hogan had a spurt of three consecutive birdies in the early round on Saturday and three more, starting at the 355-yard 13th. Hogan drove to within 30 yards and pitched to within 5 feet for a birdie 3. Two more followed to put more than an arm’s length between him and his challenger.
1948 U.S. Open:
67-72-68-69—276 (8 under) | $2,000
Hogan broke the U.S. Open scoring record by five strokes with a four-round total of 276 to defeat friend and fellow Texan Jimmy Demaret of Houston by two strokes at Riviera Country Club just south of Los Angeles, which is, in reality, golf’s first “Hogan’s Alley.” Over the course of 18 months, Hogan won three times at hallowed Riviera. His scoring record stood for 19 years, until Jack Nicklaus topped it by a stroke at Baltusrol Golf Club in New Jersey. In
winning, Hogan became the first person since Gene Sarazen in 1922 to have won the PGA Championship and U.S. Open in the same year.
1950 U.S. Open:
72-69-72-72—287 (7 over) | $4,000
The Miracle at Merion and the most iconic photo in golf history of Hogan looking down a 1-iron at No. 18. Some 16 months after his near-fatal accident in Van Horn, Hogan made his comeback complete, besting fellow Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio in an 18-hole playoff on Sunday. Hogan led Mangrum by a shot through 15 before Mangrum’s wheels came off. He was assessed a two-stroke penalty for picking up his ball while putting to remove a bug. Hogan, his damaged legs wrapped ankle to thigh over the 90 holes, cruised to a four-shot victory.
1951 Masters: 70-72-70-68—280 (8 under)| $3,000
After the 1950 U.S. Open, Hogan played one other event, the Motor City Open, where he finished 12th, and he put the clubs away. Hogan wasn’t seen again until nine months later when he stuck a tee in the ground at the Masters in April. He said in January: “Haven’t played much lately. Weather’s been too funny. You know, hot, then cold, then hot again.” (That sounds eerily familiar.) He trailed rookie Skee Riegel and Sam Snead by 1 stroke heading into the final round. Hogan, 38, played bogey free in shooting a final-round 68 and topping Riegel by two strokes, a victory one writer called a “sensational flourish to one of the great comeback sagas in sports.”
1951 U.S. Open:
76-73-71-67—287 (7 over) | $4,000
Hogan roared from back of the field after two rounds, far transcending even his low expectations. After two rounds at 9-over par, “he was dejected and pessimistic.” However, he got back into the tournament with a 1 over in the third round and fired a 3-under 67 in the final 18 at Oakland Hills Country
Club in Birmingham, Michigan, to ease past Clayton Heafner by 2 strokes. He was said to have landed shot after shot into perfect position, and when he reached the slick, undulating greens, “his putter operated as though it were magnetized.” The victory left him unchallenged as the best golfer in the world, having won the U.S. Open in his last three appearances — a feat not achieved since Willie Anderson’s string of victories through 1903-05. Neither the immortal Bobby Jones nor the great Walter Hagen ever won three consecutive attempts.”
1953 Masters:
70-69-66-69—274 (14 under) | $4,000
Hogan began his magical 1953 majors’ season by firing a finalround 69 on a wet, soggy day to break the Masters’ tournament record score by five strokes, eclipsing Ralph Guldahl’s and Claude Harmon’s 279 in 1938 and 1948. Only Ed Oliver stayed within in the same time zone as Hogan. Hogan stayed a couple of extra days in Augusta to play a round with the President. Hogan and President Dwight Eisenhower teamed up against Byron Nelson and Cliff Roberts, a retired New York investment banker. “They all said they had a very nice social game and that nobody shot very well,” the presidential press secretary said. Yeah, right. Well, actually, Nelson had been playing so poorly — for him — that he said he didn’t see any reason to play the upcoming Colonial. Ike reportedly had again failed to break 90. The investment banker … we don’t care. Hogan, we’re guessing had a nice day.
1953 U.S. Open: 67-72-73-71—283 (5 under) | $5,000 “Unshakable” Hogan blew through the field at the Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania, besting Sam Snead by six strokes to become the third man in history to win the U.S. Open four times. At the drivable No. 17, Hogan “put the kindling” on his driver. “I hit it with everything I had,” he said. He was on the green in one, left with a 35-footer. He nursed his putt to
within 6 inches, which he tapped in for birdie. Hogan led after every round, the first time that had happened since Jim Barnes in 1921. There was only one challenged left for him. Hogan, said South African Bobby Locke, “should have no trouble at Carnoustie. He is the master of every golf shot. He can meet all conditions.”
1953 British Open: 73-71-70-68—282 (6 under) | $1,400
Despite what he had done in all the years previous, there were many who were unwilling to compare Hogan to the game’s greats until he crossed the Atlantic to prove that he could master the winds and the dunes of Britain’s great seaside courses. Considering the pressure he was under, to prove his place in history, conquering Carnoustie might have been Hogan’s greatest achievement. Battling a case of the flu that reared its ugly head on Saturday, Hogan shot a course-record 68 in the final round for a four-round total of 282, four strokes better than Frank Stranahan, Dai Rees, Australia’s Peter Thomson, and Antonio Cerda. By American standards, the prize winnings were slim, but the winning in Scotland was worth untold sums in prestige.
A Be Autiful friendship: hog An And Jenkins
Famously irreverent toward the media, Ben Hogan, nonetheless, struck an unlikely bond with his hometown’s most esteemed sportswriter.
BY MARK MOURER
Dan Jenkins entered the pro shop at Colonial Country Club on a mission.
“He’s on No. 6,” the pro shop staff would tell him.
Jenkins would race out to the course, fresh after filing deadline articles for the Fort Worth Press. Maybe he had been attending class at TCU that day, or perhaps he had just wrapped up practice with the Horned Frogs’ men’s golf team. This scene played out again and again throughout the 1950s when Jenkins was a young sportswriter, covering the greatest golfer on the planet.
The “He” that Colonial staffers were referring to was Ben Hogan, and he was in the midst of winning nine Major tournaments when his friendship with Jenkins began. Jenkins was starting to craft a career in the sports pages that would rival Hogan’s accomplishments on the golf course, and the foundation for so much of his golf writing success happened on the afternoons he met with Hogan at Colonial.
“Hi, fella,” Hogan would say to Jenkins. It was the warmest greeting Hogan would
reserve for the media, local or national. Hogan’s practice regimen was legendary, giving Jenkins ample opportunity to visit with him at Colonial. His grip on the golf club was one of the most famous the sport has known. But Hogan embraced the press – and the public – with noticeably less warmth.
To Hogan, Jenkins was different. On these particular afternoons, when Jenkins would breeze through the pro shop en route to Colonial’s fairways and greens, Hogan would welcome him into the practice session. Maybe they’d even complete the round together. Once, when Hogan repeatedly lobbed wedge shot after wedge shot at the green, Jenkins asked him why he was repeating the same shot.
“That shot?” Hogan said. “I’ll need that shot next week at Cherry Hills.”
Hogan and Byron Nelson were putting Fort Worth, where Jenkins grew up, on the map in the 1940s. Both were winning tournament after tournament, and Jenkins felt like he was growing up in the golf capital of the world. In 1949, Jenkins would get his first chance to be a part of it when he humbly introduced himself to Hogan on Colonial’s putting green. He had recently been hired out of Paschal High School by legendary sports editor Blackie Sherrod at the Press. Before Jenkins was a high school graduate, he was publishing articles in one of the local daily newspapers. That confidence helped him walk up to Hogan and say hello.
“I know your byline,” Hogan replied at their first conversation.
It was not the friendliest welcome, but Jenkins won over one of the most standoffish golfers of the 20th Century. Jenkins was an accomplished junior golfer in Fort Worth, which may have helped add to the
notoriety he had as a sportswriter. Jenkins competed in city tournaments, placing in many of them and winning a few before captaining TCU’s men’s golf team.
“Gee, a golf writer who plays,” Hogan told Jenkins, and the relationship grew.
“He was nothing but nice to me,” Jenkins told Heywood Yasume in 2017. “I saw a different side of Hogan than the public did.”
You may recall Yasume from his days as a radio personality at WBAP 820. He interviewed Jenkins during the ’17 Colonial, where he got some great insight. Yasume has also penned columns in this publication and may answer around town to the name Hugh Savage. When he sat down with Jenkins to talk about Colonial’s favorite son, Jenkins revealed a friendship that went back to his days covering golf for the Press.
“I saw a guy with a sense of humor,” Jenkins said. “I saw a guy who was gracious, who would give you a terrific answer to an intelligent question. And he’d call you an idiot if you asked a stupid question.”
Jenkins and Hogan, from that point in ’49, had a relationship built on the course. He was still in his twenties covering Hogan at the tournaments across the country, including the Majors. Jenkins remembered the national reporters crowding around Hogan in the dressing room. They would often publish the same quotes from the same questions, most of which were asked by reporters who did not play. For instance, at the ’59 U.S. Open, Milton Gross of the New York Post asked, “Ben, at what point today did you think you’d shoot a 69?”
“Milt,” Hogan said, “that’s the stupidest damn question anybody has ever asked me.”
But Jenkins had been out on the course with Hogan that day.
“I was the guy to whom he could turn to and say, ‘Well, you saw my lie on 5,’” Jenkins said. “And I had.” And that presence and credibility endeared Jenkins to Hogan.
“I’d been playing golf with him for about six or seven years,” Jenkins said once, “and he said, ‘Do you know what you ought to do? If you work with me for a year, and do everything I say, in time, you’ll win the National Amateur.’
Dan Jenkins and Ben Hogan
“And I asked him, ‘Why would I want to do that, Ben? I’m going to be a newspaper man.’”
Hogan looked at him with the famed stare that could cut through steel and replied with a smile, “Well, keep working at it.”
And he did. Jenkins covered more Major tournaments than any sportswriter, a record that will never be broken. But the access and the reverence the players had for Jenkins stemmed from the respect that Hogan bestowed on him.
“I knew him better than any other writer. I played golf with him about 40 times, all through the 1950s, when he was at his peak,” Jenkins said at his induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2012. “I used to watch him practice, and he’d say, ‘Let’s go,’ and we’d go play.”
Read that last sentence again and imagine John Rahm saying that to Jim Nantz.
“One day in 1956,” Jenkins said, “he [Hogan] called me up at the paper and said, ‘I’m going to play an exhibition for the U.S. Olympic fund, and I want you in the foursome.’ And I said, ‘Ben, there’s got to be someone better than me.’ And he said, ‘No, we’ll have fun.’” Jenkins said he expected a couple hundred people to turn out.
“There are 3,000 people lining the first fairway at Colonial,” Jenkins said, admitting some jitters. “I somehow got off the tee without injuring myself or anyone else. And then I topped a three wood. Then I topped another three wood, then I top scraped a five iron. All I wanted to do was dig a hole and disappear. You could hear all this giggling in the gallery, and people wondering who this idiot was.
“Then I realized Ben was walking beside me as I walked up to my ball, and he gave me the greatest golf tip, at the time, under those conditions, that I ever received. This proves he had a sense of humor. He said, ‘You can probably swing faster if you try hard enough.’”
“Everything I remember about golf goes back to Hogan,” Jenkins said.
Hogan died on July 25, 1997. Between Jenkins’ rounds with him and his passing, Hogan may have been reverently elevated to “Mr. Hogan” around Fort Worth. But Jenkins knew him, as few others did, as “Ben.”
The hawk aT Colonial
You can call it home-field advantage, but no golfer in the history of the sport has so dominated a single course.
BY JOHN HENRY
No player has so dominated the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club like the great Ben Hogan. It’s called “Hogan’s Alley” for a reason, after all.
Hogan is the only player to win the tournament, called the Colonial National Invitation Tournament in his days, five times. In addition, at one time or another, he held practically every record at the historic layout, including low tournament round (65) and low front nine (31).
Fittingly, his last PGA Tour victory was at Colonial in 1959. After the age of 50, Hogan made four appearances in consecutive years between 1964-67 and registered finishes of fourth, 10th, fifth, and third. His last appearance at Colonial was in 1970 at age 58.
A look at the Hawk’s five wins at the Charles Schwab Challenge.
1946: 73-72-69-65—279 |
Winnings: $3,000
Hogan won the inaugural Colonial National Invitation Tournament with a tournament-low 65 in the final round, a score that would hold as the event record until Dale Douglass’ 63 in 1970. Hogan needed every stroke to win by one shot in overcoming a three-stroke deficit to Dallasite Harry Todd, the low amateur at the U.S. Open at Colonial in 1941. The triumph at Colonial was one of 13 that season for Hogan, an achievement that ranks second only to Byron Nelson’s 18 the year before. Moreover, in the 32 events Hogan played in 1946, he finished first or second in 20.
1947: 68-72-70-69—279 |
Winnings: $3,000
Hogan backed up his victory in ’46 with another in 1947 with a 1-under 72-hole total, holding off Toney Penna by
a shot. The two were tied after 61 holes. On eight in the final round, Penna bogeyed, while Hogan, playing behind him, dropped an 18-footer on the same hole. On 12, Hogan rolled in a 40-foot birdie, essentially the game winner. Among those finishing four back was South African Bobby Locke, who made history as the first foreign player in the Invitational.
1952: 74-67-71-67—279 |
Winnings: $4,000
Hogan, dealing with an aching body, only played in three 72-hole tournaments in 1952. One of them was the seventh Colonial National Invitation Tournament, which fell to Hogan, who scratched and clawed his way to a onestroke victory by way of poor Raymond Gafford’s collapse on Sunday. Gafford, a Fort Worth resident, gave away a six-shot lead on Hogan by stumbling to an 80 in the final round after 18 holes that morning. “If he’d played his normal game, I couldn’t have beaten him,” Hogan said. “That 67 wouldn’t have done it.” Said one reporter: “All agreed, regardless of the outcome, that nothing so disastrous should happen to such a nice guy as Gafford.”
1953: 73-71-71-67—282 |
Winnings: $5,000
“Ben Hogan did it again Sunday,” read a newspaper
report, firing a sublime 67 on Sunday in 32 mph gusts to back up his Masters victory by taming a difficult Colonial, winning with a 2-over total. That was five strokes better than Doug Ford and Cary Middlecoff. “Maybe one of these days Ben will be too old to play in this tournament, and the rest of us will have a chance,” Middlecoff said. Hogan wasn’t done, either. In June, he added a U.S. Open title, and in July he corralled Carnoustie to win in his only British Open appearance.
1959: 69-67-77-72—285 | Winnings: $5,000 Hogan, playing what he called the best golf of his life in gusty conditions, captured the last victory of his career by defeating Fred Hawkins in Colonial’s first playoff, topping the adopted Texan by four shots over 18 holes. Hawkins took the lead with two early birdies, but Hogan took over after four holes and never trailed from there. Ironically, Hogan had recently given his friend Hawkins a set of Hogan clubs to play the tournament. Afterward, Marvin Leonard gifted the Leonard Trophy to Hogan in honor of the achievement.
Hogan following one of his five wins at Colonial.
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Chicago Meets Paris in Fort Worth
FROM A CORNER IN RIVERCREST
Kelly Wilson, of Bowen Wilson Development, transforms a Fort Worth home into a Parisian-inspired flat.
by Kelly Wilson photography by Michael Hunter
The Chicago brick home seemed like an office building when we bought it, so we decided to put brick pavers around the facade and paint the exterior a clean white to createa harmonious exterior.
The entryway combines Carrera marble floors with a custom iron staircase. The two paired with the natural light and openness of the foyer.
The tall ceilings in the master bedroom called for only one wall of wallpaper at the head of the bed, giving the room some pattern in neutral tones.
We decided to keep the woodwork in the original living room but added a glossy paint the same color as the walls to offset the finishes. We removed the bookshelves on either side of the fireplace and replaced them with one-of-a-kind case pieces from Simple Things, which now hold a wonderful collection of pottery.
The large floor-to-ceiling window was added to bring more natural light to the kitchen sitting area, which serves as a great spot for conversations. The Spanishinspired archway subtly separates this area from the rest of the house.
The contrast between the original wood flooring and the marble, along with the interesting archways, provides separation between a dining area and an open space that's great for entertaining.
We painted the walls and ceiling the same color for our son's room. It provides a warm, masculine feel.
The octogonal Careera marble in the master bathroom provides flow from the master bedroom, which has the same tile only in a different shape.
The hub of the house, the kitchen, has white oak cabinets against Carerra marble floors and soapstone countertops. This is a play on a European modern look, creating a space that is fun but classic.
A mix of Ann Saks tile around the vent perfectly juxtaposes the Carrara marble countertops and gives the home a clean and modern Parisian-flat ambience.
:dream street
Dream Street 2023:
A Chat with Interior Designers
Marlene Small and Carole Harston, both of Heritage Interiors, talk Dream Street and design trends.
BY FWTX STAFF
The upcoming Fort Worth Magazine Dream Street is set to feature three stunning, multi-million-dollar homes in the new Colleyville residential community, Oak Alley. The homes, which will open for touring beginning this October, and will benefit local charity a Wish with Wings will showcase the latest in home building technology and interior design.
Marlene Small and Carole Harston, two members of the Heritage Interiors team, are working on the home, dubbed English Arts and Crafts, being built by John Webb and Heritage Homes. The pair took some time to talk to Fort Worth Magazine about their process, their vision for Dream Street, and where they see interior design headed.
FW: Tell me a little bit about your process at Heritage Interiors?
Marlene Small: We’re not just there to pick out paint colors and pretty lighting and say, “Oh, let’s go get some tile.” We are aligned with the architecture
team (Heritage Design Studio) often from the beginning. Often from bubble diagrams or the first meeting with the client. That, I believe, is one of the beauties and what sets Heritage Interiors apart because we’re there from the beginning.
Carole Harston: Typically, also, interior designers are involved in all the furnishings and furniture placement, furniture selection, custom pieces in the way of upholstery or case goods. The art, the rugs, the accessories. And that’s probably what’s more typically thought of in interior design. And we certainly do that part as well, but we’re kind of above and beyond that service. MS: Carol and I both have so many years of experience in this industry and have worked with multiple clients and multiple areas of the country and different builders. We’ve seen a lot. We’ve learned a lot. And I think our alignment with the American Society of Interior Designers and our active enrollment and engagement with that organization makes us lifelong learners.
FW: So what can you tell us about your upcoming home on Fort Worth Magazine’s Dream Street?
CH: Well, the architecture team (Heritage Design Studio) was very instrumental in determining that this would be an English Arts and Craftsinspired residence. So that truly set the tone and we kind of took it from there. And the exterior design is really a reflection of that, even though it’s a more transitional style. But you see the English influence and the arts and crafts movement in it.
FW: So what makes something English Arts and Crafts?
MS: My impression of it is that it has more florals, botanicals, and animals. There are more curves to it than American Arts and Crafts, which is very geometric straight lines. There’s always, within English Arts and Crafts and within English architecture, unexpected nuance within the home. ‘Cause there’s always a window that’s not quite where you expected it to be or a door that’s at a different height because there’s a story with the homes.
FW: What do you see as current design trends? Where do you see things going as far as interior design is concerned?
CH: Well, from my viewpoint, design has been walking that line between traditional and contemporary. I’m starting to see a bit of a pendulum swing back towards some traditional avenues.
MS: We are seeing less geometric shapes, and we’re starting see more curls, swirls, and curves. Color is certainly back, and pattern is coming back. People who bought the house that’s black and white and gray are now saying, “This is boring.” There’s nothing interesting about it. I think, particularly since COVID, people are wanting a place that’s a respite. They’re wanting a place that has some color back.
Dream Street 2023 Project Partners
FortWorthMagazine’sDream Street wouldn’t be possible without the partnerships of local home industry professionals. Our project partners bring talent, passion, and experience to the project and are an integral part in bringing the homes to life.
HERITAGE HOMES
Appliances: The Jarrell Company
Architectural Design: Arch House Collaborative
Artificial Grass: WinterGreen Synthetic Grass
Cabinetry (Kitchen): The Kitchen Source
Cabinetry (Master): Closet Factory
Countertop (Fabrication): Absolute Stone & Tile, Inc.
Countertop (Materials): KLZ Stone Supply, Inc.
Drywall and Texture: Alliance Drywall Inc.
Electrician: Powered Solutions
Fireplaces: Fireside Hearth & Home
Flooring Labor: Premier Designs Flooring
Flooring Material (Wood and Carpet): Premier Designs Flooring
Flooring Material (Tile): Daltile
Framing: Lone Star Framing & Construction LLC
Garage Doors and Openers: Open Up Garage Doors
Garage Epoxy Coating: Firehouse Garage
Glass: Galactic Glass
Gutters: Loveless Gutters
Hardware: Rick’s Hardware & Decorative Plumbing
HVAC: Interior Climate Experts
Insulation: Texas Insulation
Interior Design: Susan Semmelmann Interiors
Landscape and Irrigation: Guardado Landscaping
Lighting Fixtures: Passion Lighting
Low Voltage, AV, and Security: Multimedia Solutions
Outdoor Furniture: Yard Art Patio & Fireplace
Paint (Labor): J&V Painting
Plumbing (Fixtures): Expressions
Plumbing (Labor and Supplies): Pro Serve Plumbing
Pool: Leschber Designs
Roofing: Tarrant Roofing
KENSINGTON CUSTOM HOMES
Appliances: The Jarrell Company
Architectural Design: Heritage Design Studio
Cabinetry (Kitchen): The Kitchen Source
Countertop (Fabrication): Absolute Stone & Tile, Inc.
Countertop (Materials): KLZ Stone Supply, Inc.
Drywall and Texture: Alliance Drywall Inc.
Electrician: Prewitt Electrical Services
Fireplaces: Overhead Door Company of Fort Worth
Flooring Labor: Vintage Floors
Flooring Material (Wood and Carpet): Vintage Floors
Flooring Material (Tile): Daltile
Front Doors: Silverado Custom Door & Window
Garage Doors and Openers: Overhead Door Company of Fort Worth
Garage Epoxy Coating: Premier Custom Floors
Glass: Galactic Glass
Gutters: Loveless Gutters
Insulation: Texas Insulation
Interior Design: Heritage Interiors
Landscape and Irrigation: Guardado Landscaping
Lighting Fixtures: Passion Lighting
Low Voltage, AV, and Security: H Customs
Outdoor Furniture: Yard Art Patio & Fireplace
Motorized Patio Screens: Blinds Brothers
Plumbing (Fixtures): The Jarrell Company
Pool: Claffey Pools
Roofing: Texas Tile Roofing
Stairs and Railings: Aaron Ornamental Iron Works
BRIAN MICHAEL DISTINCTIVE HOMES
Appliances: Expressions
Architectural Design: C.A. Nelson Architects
Cabinetry (Kitchen): The Kitchen Source
Countertop (Materials): Levantina
Drywall and Texture: Alliance Drywall
Electrician: MPT Electric
Fireplaces: Fireside Hearth & Home
Flooring Labor: Galvan Floors
Flooring Material (Wood and Carpet): Galvan Floors
Flooring Material (Tile): Daltile
Garage Doors and Openers: Open Up Garage Doors
Glass: Galactic Glass
Insulation: Texas Insulation
Interior Design: Elements of Design
Landscape and Irrigation: Guardado Landscaping
Lighting Fixtures: Passion Lighting
Plumbing (Fixtures): Expressions
Plumbing (Labor and Supplies): Pro Serve Plumbing
Pool: Blue Water Pools
Roofing: Texas Tile Roofing
Project Profile
AJ Designs
Glitz, Glamour, and Gold
This project was a fun and meaningful task for AJ Designs. What better way to spend the day than in a space that lightens your spirit. The space is an amazing open floor plan that captures you as soon as you enter — lots of crystal, gold, and light, including fun pops of pink to create a playful mood. What makes this space unique, besides all the sparkle, is the amazing textures. The fabric on the drapes is an embroidered pattern with metallic thread, the wallpaper is a thick, layered cork with silver and golds, and the ceiling is hand-painted gold
leaf. The design team also worked with the client to bring dramatic new life to the sofa and chairs without replacing them. The appreciation of all things bright, shiny, and glamorous was the task to achieve. With a classic neutral palette, timeless elegance is reached. For the fun, trendy aspect, just a swap of the pops of pink, and this whole room can be transformed — the perfect way to showcase a certain trend. AJ Designs prides itself on listening to the clients wants and creating a space they feel delighted to call home.
Project Profile
Adooring Designs 1200
adooringdesigns.com
larry@adooringdesigns.com
Adooring Designs
Waterford Classic Home
Striking curb appeal with a focal on beautiful doors and windows is why Adooring Designs appreciated the opportunity to partner with Greg Reid at Waterford Classic Homes on this grand estate in Colleyville. Attention to every detail is evident as you walk through this one-of-a-kind home. Not a single stone is unturned from design to build. “Windows and doors galore” are an understatement, and as you approach the entryway, you begin to notice grandiose double, French doors full of clean, transitional lines and massive glass. This luxury home affords rich, black Sierra Pacific windows and doors installed seamlessly by Adooring Designs in a white stone veneer, making a perfect contrast. Allow Adooring Designs to help with your new project and start living the dream!
Elements of Design
A Transitional Hill Country in the Heart of Colleyville
This project is truly a reflection of the family who lives here. The Elements of Design team worked with the builder to source some unique features that set this project apart. Use of natural woods and stone keeps this modern design warm and inviting while still being open and bright. From the ceiling treatments throughout to a truly unique trim design for the study, no short cuts were taken to achieve the clients wishes in their new home. The aesthetic behind this project’s design is warm wood, clean lines mixed with worn finishes, neutral bases with bright accents, and texture. Live edge wood slabs were used in the wine room and then backlit to keep it bright and modern — so many things here were a first, and that’s what Elements of Design’s style is all about, firsts that become timeless.
2208 Thomas Place is a contemporary home on a 50-by-160-foot interior in-town lot in the historical Arlington Heights neighborhood, but nothing is typical about the home’s distinctive architecture. The design proves that you can create a sense of privacy while situated between close neighbors. The exterior building form and composition of materials with expansive glass are a fresh interpretation of the period architecture in the neighborhood. The home has an open floor plan flooded with light from numerous windows and skylights, punctuated by an impressive sculptural staircase at the heart. Thoughtful and unique details are peppered throughout, utilizing every space to maximum potential, showcasing David C. Fowler’s innovative approach to design and architecture.
Heritage Interiors
Four Seasons Room
Transforming an open-air patio into a beautiful year-round space created an opportunity for Marlene Small at Heritage Interiors to collaborate with the homeowner by providing guidance and resources. This new temperaturecontrolled area allows the family to enjoy their home with large sliding doors which open to views of the beautifully landscaped lawn, outdoor kitchen, and pool. Design details make all the difference — from custom faux finishes to whimsical artwork and lighting. The chandelier is the wow factor that centers the room beautifully. The Heritage team goal is to showcase the homeowners’ design style while creating a relaxing environment to entertain and take pride in for decades.
Heritage Interiors
Marlene
817.988.9680
heritagedesignstudio.com @heritageinteriorsslk
Project Profile
HGC Residential Development
4624
John Giordano: 817.991.1862
Rick Wegman: 817.584.7033
hgcdevelopment.com
Casa Bella Vista is a masterpiece of design and craftsmanship, featuring breathtaking views overlooking a private 20-acre park in Montrachet. Designed and built by HGC Residential Development, the home boasts over 5,000 square feet of living space. The home is perfect for entertaining with multiple living areas, soaring ceilings with beams, real wood floors, and custom windows. The gourmet kitchen is a chef’s dream. Casa Bella Vista is the perfect showcase of HGC Residential Developments' expertise in creating elegant homes that blend traditional beauty with modern functionality, built to the highest standards of quality, craftsmanship, and attention to detail. Casa Bella Vista is truly a one-of-a-kind home of distinction. Available now, contact John Giordano or Rick Wegman for a private tour.
HGC Residential Development
Casa Bella Vista
Rios Interiors
Hotel Drover
Hotel Drover is one of Rios Interiors’ many commercial projects, but the hotel in particular stands out because it is such a legendary inspiration. The hotel revolves around Western luxury and genuine hospitality, and that is why the collaboration with Rios Interiors worked so well. Originality and craftsmanship are at the core of Rios Interiors, a leader in authentic rustic furniture. It’s all about detail and the finer things in life, and that is the essence of Hotel Drover. The design aesthetic of Hotel Drover is Western Chic with each room at the hotel having its own unique flare — the Rios Interiors style played a huge part in that. Nothing but the best and the highest quality pieces furnished Hotel Drover, the jewel of the Fort Worth Stockyards.
Rios Interiors
817.626.8600
riosinteriors.com
sales@riosinteriors.com
Project Profile
Golden Glam
The feel in every room is set through a contemporary lens for this project. We’ve conceptualized a beautifully spacious master bedroom that allows for ample dresser space, along with a gorgeous view overlooking blue skies. To create the perfect living room, we upholstered the seating with cowhide leather that brings the look and feel of your local ranch to the comfort of home. In envisioning a bathroom that relieves the pressures of the day, we stole an all-white color palette and focused on implementing perfect symmetry in the safe space. With generous countertop space available to customize the dream kitchen, we’ll add a decorative touch that’s sure to amaze your houseguests. For the freshest take on contemporary home creation, trust Susan Semmelmann and her 23 years of Interior Design experience to bring your dreams to life.
Susan Semmelmann Interiors
Susan Semmelmann Interiors
Jewel Charity Ball
Cook Children’s
The 68th Jewel Charity Ball was held March 4 at Amon G. Carter Jr. Exhibits Hall. Guests were greeted with sounds from Dallas Kiyari Daiko drummers to set the scene, then transported to a traditional Japanese garden. Steeplechase debutantes were on hand to model exquisite jewelry selected by JCB official jeweler, Collections Fine Jewelry. Following the cocktail hour, guests moved into the ballroom for a stunning Asianinspired buffet dinner by Wolfgang Puck. After dinner, Motown legends Kool & The Gang brought down the house with their hits “Ladies Night” and “Celebration.” Jewel Charity Ball has raised more than $81 million for the patients and families at Cook Children’s.
Doug & Hillary Jennings
Samson & Clara Cantu
Alex & Cortney Pelley
Michael & Nancy Gaffney, Dan & Michelle Miles
Tiffany & Greg Blackmon
Charlotte & John Robinson, Pamela & Stephen Gilchrist, Ashley & Marshall Robinson
Bill & Peggy Sims, Kelley & Bill Royer
It takes a lasting strategy to transform lives. Generational self sufficiency requires a safe place to live, affordable childcare and emotional support through counseling. Over the last 115 years, Center for Transforming Lives has been focused on exactly that - helping women and children in Tarrant County on the path to success.
To learn more about our efforts, visit transforminglives.org/115
Top Doctors
Fort Worth Magazine
Fort Worth Magazine’s annual Top Doctors list honors the topnotch medical professionals of Fort Worth, chosen by peers in the industry. To celebrate these deserving medical professionals, Fort Worth Magazine held a cocktail reception on March 30 at 5th & Carroll. Musician Bryan Lucas serenaded the honorees and their guests while they snacked on delicious hors d’oeuvres and sipped on curated cocktails. Special thanks to our Platinum Sponsor, Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center, and Gold Sponsor, International Esperanza Project.
Daniel & Jessica Richey, Sarina & Daniel Clearfield
Aaleya Koreishi, Jawad Qureshi, Shaam Mahasneh, Mo Al-Obaidi
FOCUS
Family Lawyers to Know
They stand by you through the hard times. They guide and support you from the beginning to the end of the divorce process. They are some of Greater Fort Worth’s brightest, most sought-after family law and collaborative law professionals, and they have purchased space to show you how working with them in your time of need will benefit you.
The information in this section is provided by the advertisers and has not been independently verified by Fort Worth Magazine.
Goranson Bain Ausley
SPECIALTY: Family Law. MISSION: To make family law better in every community where the firm has offices and throughout the state. GBA pursues a strategy of growing in strengths, not just in numbers. In March 2023, GBA welcomed to the team the Law Office of Gary Nickelson, a highly respected law firm in the Fort Worth area for more than 40 years. The combination will provide even higher levels of service to Fort Worth clients. In addition to Gary Nickelson and Chris Nickelson, GBA welcomed Cindy Tisdale, Clayton Bryant, and Cassidy Pearson to the roster, expanding the firm’s ability to serve more people with more resources to protect families and secure futures.
WHAT SETS THE FIRM APART:
GBA’s family lawyers are among the most respected and accomplished family attorneys in Texas. They are known for their strategic and constructive approach to resolving complex family law issues. Driven by shared core values, the firm maintains a client-centered mindset, prioritizing clients’ interests and serving each client with integrity and empathy. With 41 lawyers across five locations in Fort Worth, Granbury, Plano, Dallas, and Austin, Fort Worth clients have the support of one of Texas’ largest family law firms. CERTIFICATIONS: Twenty-eight lawyers Board Certified in Family Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization; one lawyer double board certified in both Family Law and Appellate Law; one partner who is President-Elect of the State Bar of Texas; 14 lawyers who are fellows of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers; six Past Chairs of the Family Law Section of the State Bar of Texas. HONORS: Four GBA lawyers have been given the distinguished Sam Emison Award from the Texas Academy of Family Law Specialists, one of the most coveted awards in Texas family law; four recipients of the Dan Price Award from the Family Law Section awarded to the person with the most significant impact on family law for the preceding year. In 2023, U.S. News & World Report named GBA a Best Law Firm in its U.S. News – Best Lawyers ® for family law and family law mediation. FREE ADVICE: Divorce is a transition, not a transaction. Hire the family lawyers who can best protect your family’s interests for the long term and secure your future. PICTURED: (left to right) Clayton Bryant, Cindy Tisdale, Gary Nickelson, Chris Nickelson, and Cassidy Pearson.
Goranson Bain Ausley
5201 W. Freeway, Ste. 100 Fort Worth, Texas 76107
817.670.2484
GBAfamilylaw.com
McClure Law Group
Kelly McClure, Francesca Blackard, Brandon Joseph, Kate Mataya, Adam Mundt
SPECIALTY: 100% Family Law. WHAT SETS THEM APART: McClure Law Group’s financial acumen, tax law proficiency, state-of-the-art forensic accounting, trial skills, and appellate experience is unmatched by any other family law firm in the area. From the simplest divorce to the most complex business and property cases, these seasoned attorneys help minimize the financial and emotional toll a divorce can have on a family and guide them through what is unarguably one of the most difficult chapters of their lives. PROFESSIONAL APPROACH: McClure Law Group provides a white glove concierge level of service to its clients. This firm is the gold-standard for complex divorces and contested custody cases in Texas. HONORS: McClure, Blackard, Joseph, Mataya and Mundt have previously been recognized as Top Attorneys in Fort Worth. McClure has repeatedly been named a Texas Super Lawyer, while Blackard, Joseph, Mataya, and Mundt have all been named Texas Super Lawyers Rising Stars. GREATEST PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT: Repeatedly recognized by U.S. News & World Report as Best Law Firm in America over the past decade. CERTIFICATIONS: McClure Law Group’s Founder and CEO, Kelly McClure, and Partner Brandon Joseph, are Board Certified in Family Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Partner Adam Mundt is a CPA. PICTURED: (left to right) Kate Mataya, Brandon Joseph, Kelly McClure, Francesca Blackard, and Adam Mundt.
McClure Law Group 8115 Preston Road, Ste. 270 Dallas, Texas 75225
214.692.8200 mcclure-lawgroup.com
SPECIALTY: Family Law. EDUCATION/ CERTIFICATIONS: Texas A&M School of Law, Adjunct Professor of Law, Certified Mediator.
AWARDS/HONORS: Fort Worth Magazine
Top Attorney, Super Lawyers Rising Star, Texas Monthly Top Attorney, 10 Best Attorneys –American Institute of Family Law Attorneys.
MEMBERSHIPS/AFFILIATIONS: Texas Bar Association, Tarrant County Bar Association, Tarrant County Family Bar Association (former Director). GREATEST PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS: Helping our clients in their greatest time of need to achieve a sense of direction and favorable results. FIRM’S PROFESSIONAL APPROACH: We figure out how to get what we want. We focus on the war, not individual battles. WHAT SETS THEM APART: Our people. FREE ADVICE: Don’t confuse your Google search with my law degree. PICTURED: J. Spencer Nilsson, Renee Quintanilla, and Erin Mayes.
Nilsson Legal Group, PLLC
930 West First St., Ste. 200 Fort Worth, Texas 76102
817.953.6688
Fax 682.224.0483 ftwlegal.com
SPECIALTY: Family Law and Child Welfare Law. EDUCATION/CERTIFICATIONS: B.A., Texas Tech; J.D., Texas Wesleyan. Board Certified in Child Welfare Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. AWARDS/HONORS: Texas Rising Star, Super Lawyers (2019-2023); Top Attorney in Family Law, Fort Worth Magazine (20152022); AV Preeminent Peer Rated Attorney, Martindale-Hubbell (2023). MEMBERSHIPS/ AFFILIATIONS: Tarrant County Bar Association and Family Law Bar Association, Tarrant County Bar Foundation, Life Fellow. Barrister Member of the Mahon Inn of Court. Admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.
PROFESSIONAL MISSION/APPROACH: To provide excellent representation through a powerful and calculated approach to each case using a strategic vision, clear communication, and implementing more efficient and effective processes and procedures. WHAT SETS THEM APART: We take the time to understand your unique situation and explain the law so you can make the most informed decision possible. We know that sometimes family law matters require aggressive action in order to deliver results, and we aren’t afraid to take action when necessary in order to protect your rights. FREE ADVICE: Don’t take family law advice from your friends or family. Lean on them for emotional support but get legal advice from an experienced attorney.
There’s nothing more rewarding than giving back and making a difference in the lives of people in this great community. As the city’s magazine — which has the eyes and ears of some of Fort Worth’s most affluent and philanthropic citizens — we feel a responsibility to give back to the people of the city that is our namesake, which is why Philanthropy is one of our core values.
Every year, Fort Worth Magazine sponsors more than 100 charity events, which range from luncheons to black-tie galas. The following promotional section is devoted to these charities and their fundraisers. We invite you to consciously peruse and consider lending a helping hand by either making a donation or attending these events.
May 3
Cigar Smoker
Fort Worth Public Library Foundation
May 5
Cookoff for Kids
Double Eagle Charities, Inc.
May 10
Women of Distinction
Girl Scouts Texas Oklahoma Plains
May 11
Know Your Genes Luncheon
Baylor Scott & White All Saints Health Foundation
May 22
Charles Schwab Golf Tournament
Colonial Country Club
May TBD
Man and Woman of the Year
Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
JEWELCHARITY INVITATIONAL
Successful entrepreneurs of the Greater Fort Worth area are invited to apply for Fort Worth Inc.’s Entrepreneur of Excellence. This prestigious awards program is the perfect way to gain exposure for your business and brand. Winners will walk away with a handsome trophy and a pair of custom-made ostrich boots from Fort Worthbased Justin Boots. Hurry, it’s your last chance to apply! Submit your application by June 2.
Screens on screens on screens. The recent exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” examined the cultural, social, and psychological impact of the habit-forming technology over the past several decades. The exhibit featured more than 60 works by 50 artists and became a prime location for photo opportunities, leading to an inundation of such photos on Instagram feeds. On a recent visit, photographer Kate Branning snapped this pic of a museum guest, ironically enough, with her iPhone — itself an alluring screen. “I was taken immediately by what I saw,” Branning says. “At the top of the stairs was this large, colorful work contrasting with the museum’s architecture of concrete walls and one solo museum patron taking it all in.”
Get your photo on this page and win a $100 gift card to Fort Worth Camera. Just tag Fort Worth Magazine (@fwtxmag) and Fort Worth Camera (@fwcamera) and use the hashtags #fwtxmag and #fwcamera on all your amazing Cowtown images. main line 817.560.6111 | subscriptions 817.766.5550 | website fwtx.com
