Fall 2020

2020 LEADERS & LEGENDS 3RD ANNUAL PORTRAIT COLLECTION FEATURING RACHEL DALY LEX FRIEDEN ZINA GARRISON JOANNE KING HERRING

Cool Stuff Made in Houston In Praise of Front Porches Fall Fashion: 10 Photographers Seeing Red! Remembering Gerald Hines & Tony Vallone Home Design: Bachelor Father Flair

FAISAL MASUD FLOYD NEWSUM STEVE RADOM JONNY RHODES TRA’ SLAUGHTER BECCA CASON THRASH WELCOME WILSON & CHEF-ACTIVIST

JONNY RHODES

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In Memoriam

I

n the span of about two weeks in late summer, Houston lost two giants — Gerald Hines, one of the world’s most successful developers, and restaurateur Tony Vallone, whose eponymous restaurant set the standard for fine dining for more than 50 years. Hines was 95; Vallone was 75. I was lucky enough to know them both a bit.

I remember sitting down with Hines for an interview, on a scorching summer day, on the occasion of his 90th birthday.

Rather than host me indoors, in his well air-conditioned River Oaks mansion, he preferred to talk poolside. “Some people think it’s a little hot out here,” he said, daisy-fresh in his cream-colored suit, as sweat dripped off my forehead.

A champion of architecture and architects, and namesake of UH’s architecture school, Hines’ credits include Houston’s most famous buildings — and other iconic structures and skyscrapers the world over, like New York’s pinkish, oval-shaped Lipstick Building. Hines, a billionaire, developed or acquired more than 1,000 projects, as close as a few blocks from his palatial home, and as far away as Beijing.

Originally from Gary, Ind., Hines came to Houston in the ’40s because four Sigma Chi fraternity brothers from Purdue had come here first. His first H-Town residence was the YMCA. His first big success, One Shell Plaza, came in the late-1960s. Shortly thereafter, the Galleria. Hines had a famous longtime partnership with renowned architect Philip Johnson; the two teamed up in the ’70s on Houston’s Pennzoil Place, whose basic design from a bird’s-eye view — two trapezoids in counterpoint — Johnson first sketched for Hines on a napkin. “Being part of the growth of Houston, and having the freedom to build, with no zoning,” Hines recalled of those heady days. “It created great innovation.”

I asked him how he’d like to be remembered. “As innovative, quality-oriented, with integrity,” he said. “And for our contribution to the art of the city: the cityscape.”

In developing the Galleria, Hines courted a promising young chef — still in his 20s at the time — and encouraged him to open

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Tony Vallone, left, and Gerald Hines, both Houston icons, passed away over the summer.

They were photographed in 2018 as two of the honorees in CityBook’s first annual Leaders & Legends portrait series.

a restaurant in the area. That young chef was Tony Vallone.

What evolved was Tony’s. It’s well known for its appeal to the society set — any given lunchtime crowd is rife with boldface names like Lynn Wyatt, for whom a delicious salad of seafood and fruit is named — but Vallone always insisted his restaurant was, first and foremost, about well executed, constantly evolving Italianate food, served with generosity, with an exacting standard of service. “Running a fine restaurant is detail work, fine linens from Italy, fresh flowers, real crystal and silver,” Vallone once told a reporter.

Vallone’s influences ran to Naples. And he loved to shave Umbrian truffles on a plate of richly sauced house-made pasta.

His large billowy soufflés in flavors of chocolate or cinnamon or Grand Marnier elicited gasps when delivered. His wine list was large and impressive. No fewer than seven U.S. presidents sampled Vallone’s fare. I saw Donald Trump Jr. in Tony’s one night not long ago, Sen. Ted Cruz on a another evening.

Driven and passionate, Vallone created the quintessential fancy restaurant, a glamorous hall of power, appointed with art by the likes of Rauschenberg and Jesús Morales. But he was always, at the end of the day, a hard-working businessman, largely unaffected by his own status, never taking anything for granted, always striving. He and his sweet wife Donna — she sometimes bakes me red velvet cakes for my birthday — worked the floor together for decades, making sure even the non-celebs’ meals were stellar. They even made me feel like a VIP. “I’ve lost the love of my life and best friend, but I will continue Tony’s legacy,” Donna Vallone said in statement after Vallone’s death was announced. Current chef Austin Waiter will stay on board to help her.

I was moved by Waiter’s Instagram tribute to Vallone. “This man is the definition of loving what you do, day in and day out,” he posted. “Pushing the people around him to achieve a goal and then continue to grow upon it. Never settling for less and always looking ahead.” —jeff gremillion, editor-in- chief

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FEEDER Essay

Porch Portraits Clockwise from left: the Lenhart boys in Braeswood, Kate Davis in West U and the Heumann family in Uptown

In Praise of Front Porches

Like long leisurely walks, loving your porch was all the rage back in the spring. Will it return for fall? We hope. By Jeff Gremillion, Photos by Kelli Durham

F

or some 42 years, Carol Adatto Nelson and her husband Eric have lived in their wonderfully rambling 1920 Craftsman-style house — the inside walls of which are laden nearly baseboard-to-ceiling with dozens, or hundreds, of family photos dating back generations — in the Winlow Place section of Montrose. Nelson knows almost everybody on the block, maybe everyone for a few blocks in either direction. She adores her home and her neighborhood and could talk for hours about her environs and her neighbors and years of memories in her beloved little corner of the country’s fourth-largest city.

And for all those years, with all the goodwill for the folks among whom she’s lived and thrived, she’s had a front porch that she never, ever used. Until 2020, and the Covid shutdown, when for the first time she discovered its joys. A lot of other Houstonians have had similar epiphanies.

Nelson’s new love of daily porch-sitting — and calling out to passersby to inquire as to their lives and circumstances, usually with chicory-laced coffee in hand, a holdover from her Big Easy upbringing — has become well known to her neighbors (of which your humble correspondent is one). She’s learned who’s between jobs,

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whose kids have been sick, who just got a promotion, who’s celebrating a milestone birthday and needs some good wishes, who’s trying to lose weight and wants encouragement. She makes easy conversation with everyone. “I’m a very social person,” she says. “I’m from New Orleans, and you know how we are. I haven’t left the house in months!

I thought, why not use the front porch.

So I did. And so this — here on my front porch — this is my social.

“Somebody’s going to call the police and say, ‘There’s a crazy lady on the 1700 block of Marshall saying hi to everybody.

You better go see if she’s OK.’” She glances down casually, her eyes widening as she finds yet more to love about her porch. “I mean, just look at this floor,” she exudes of the century-old, terracotta-colored mini-tiles intricately laid in a herringbone pattern. Truly, they don’t make them like this anymore.

Nelson hasn’t been out as much lately, with the heat. “Not like when the weather was nice in the spring, before everybody started going back to work,” she says on a balmy, overcast weekday afternoon. A thundershower is

FEEDER Essay

threatening, teasing really, in the way they do in Houston in late summer.

Windchimes tinkle once in a while, and a small American flag inserted into one of many potted plants searches for a breeze. The mature azalea bushes that front the porch rustle faintly. Nelson is looking forward to the milder fall weather, so she can come out here more regularly again — and she hopes the long walks everyone was taking also make an autumnal comeback, so she’ll have folks to talk with.

The gregarious grandma, whose five grandkids call her Nola in another nod to New Orleans, is not alone. All over Montrose, where many of the ’20s houses and bungalows have porches a few short feet from pedestrian-friendly sidewalks — and in other parts of the metro area, too, such as new suburban developments designed by devotees of what’s known as New Urbanism — Houstonians have rediscovered the wonders of a front porch. They are safe spaces, literal extensions of your own home, and yet they’re open to the world. They invite interaction, and a sense of civic spirit. You can get to know your neighbors.

Crucially important as temperate gathering places in the days before airconditioning lured everybody indoors, front porches have been regaining popularity in recent years. In fact, 65 percent of new-construction singlefamily homes included a front porch in 2018, according to the National Association of Homebuilders. The idea is even hot among younger folks, as some 34 percent of millennials considering buying a home say a front porch is essential. And it seems the coronavirus may have kicked the trend into a higher gear.

“As more of us stay in our homes and neighborhoods amid Covid-19,” explains Melody Warnick, an expert on “placemaking” and proponent of loving where you live, writing recently for the real estate website Curbed, “we’re also more willing to take the opportunity presented by a front porch to reengage with the people who live physically closest to us.”

Turns out the trend curiously dovetailed with an intriguing professional opportunity for local photographers, like family-portrait artist Kelli Durham Oster, who found her phone unexpectedly ringing in the pandemic’s early days. “Suddenly all

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Coffee Talk Like many of her Montrose neighbors, Carol Adatto Nelson has discovered a love of porch-sitting.

these people were home and had the time to take portraits,” she says. “Family became so important, and I started getting inquiries about family sessions. It wasn’t just me. It became kind of this movement in the portrait industry.”

But where to shoot? And how to do it with safety and distancing in mind? Isn’t it obvious: Do it on the porch!

For Oster, who donated proceeds from her front-porch portraits to the Houston Food Bank, as did others of her lensman and lenswoman peers, the location wasn’t just a convenience in a time of limited options; it actually made the picture better. “I think photographing people at their home brings out a comfortability and vulnerability that you wouldn’t have elsewhere,” she says. “Especially with kids. It helps them put their guard down and open up. I’ll get a playfulness and realness that some random public setting wouldn’t allow.

“It also helps document another big part of their life — their homes,” Oster adds.

“There are memories and nostalgia attached to their homes, and what an amazing time in history to document and remember where you spent most of your time during this pandemic.”

For her part, Nelson is quite happy to also preach the good gospel of the front porch. “People should sit on the porch,” she insists. “You can enjoy the beauty of the outdoors — the beauty of your own yard. And you know what’s going on in your neighborhood. And you meet new people. Well, you do if you’re me.” 

LEADERS & LEGENDS ENVOY MORTGAGE presents

In an extraordinary year of challenge, the icons and bright stars featured in this third annual photo series are luminaries from all walks of life. Their talents and grit have helped make Houston — and far beyond — a better place.

Portraits by GITTINGS PHOTOGRAPHY

GLOBAL GOODWILL Legend

JOANNE KING HERRING About 10 years ago, Joanne King Herring (at left) — the famously diamond-bedecked diplomat, glam society hostess and persistent international activist portrayed by Julia Roberts in Charlie Wilson’s War — crowned her life’s work, founding a nonprofit providing infrastructure to remote Afghan villages.

The organization, newly known as Help Them Where They Are, brings together nonprofits in various fields of expertise (clean water, medical care, education, job training) to efficiently affect sustainable results, in Afghanistan and beyond. “Can we feed the whole world? No. The world has to learn to feed itself,” says Herring, 91. “But it’s possible, with a little help. And by using their own traditions. They’re not dependent on us, they’re dependent on themselves.” Herring recently met with Ivanka Trump about the initiative, and with Texas First Lady Abbott about attacking human trafficking in Houston.

Leader

BECCA CASON THRASH For 15 years, Becca Cason Thrash has been raising money for the Louvre; tickets to her Liaisons au Louvre galas with main events like Duran Duran concerts under the museum’s famous glass pyramid cost $10,000. When the Notre Dame suffered a devastating fire in 2019, Thrash, who was knighted by the French government in 2011, was asked to help raise funds for its restoration. In February, patrons from the world over, including many Houstonians, attended a three-day Notre Dame benefit hosted by Thrash in Mexico City, and raising more than $1.5 mil during 2020’s final days of carefree travel. The sassy couture queen, who’s also raised millions for the Houston Ballet, told an interviewer a few years ago she believes in spectacles and going over-the-top — for a cause.

“If it’s not sexy, fashionable and fun, I’m not doing it. That might sound superficial, but I’ve made peace with it.”

Legend

CHRIS SHEPHERD “Our industry [already] had some pretty serious cracks, and now because of Covid-19, it’s crumbling,” says James Beard-winning chefrestaurateur Chris Shepherd, who can now add “Activist” with a capital A to his resume. His Southern Smoke nonprofit supports hospitality professionals in times of need through emergency grants, and there’s never been a need like the one felt today. Since March, it’s distributed more than $3.1 million to 1,700 individuals — but estimates it would take another $47 million to fund its current 28,000 applications. Instead of losing hope, Shepherd remains committed to the cause, in recent months drafting a statement urging Congress to take action to save restaurants, and launching a program offering free mental health care to hospitality workers and their children.

“I want Southern Smoke to become the catalyst for serious change in our industry,” says Shepherd, who takes comfort in his loyal, hardworking employees and — where else? — the “perfect” smoked ribs.

FOOD SERVICE

Leader

JONNY RHODES Since opening in 2018, Jonny Rhodes’ 13-seat Indigo has quietly become Houston’s most successful restaurant, serving a tasting menu of neo-soul-food with a side of African American history, presented by Rhodes himself at two seatings per night. The approach earned Rhodes, who turns 30 in October, nods from the James Beard Foundation, Food & Wine and Time, which included Indigo in its list of World’s Greatest Places. At the start of the pandemic, Rhodes — and his wife, Chana, who served with him in the Marines in Afghanistan — pivoted to sell groceries like yam-skin molasses.

In July, Rhodes will close Indigo and open Broham grocery and Food Fight Farms to address “food apartheid,” a concept Rhodes defines as “the notion of withholding high quality food” from specific areas and people. He hopes to empower “Black people who do not have access to sustainable food.”

Leader

TRA’ SLAUGHTER One of the more uplifting choruses of 2020 goes something like this: “In our darkest times, we turn to the arts.” For mixed-media artist Tra’ (pronounced “Trey”) Slaughter, that statement is doubly true. “Due to Covid-19, 62 percent of arts workers report they are fully unemployed, and 94 percent report significant income loss,” says Slaughter, who founded the nonprofit Artists for Artists with his wife, Amber, in 2017. It has since grown from a grassroots organization offering one-time emergency grants into one actively assisting hundreds of artists around the country, to the tune of more than $600,000 so far this year. The nonprofit will soon launch two community-based mental health and wellness programs. Slaughter has continued producing his found-object paintings and sculptures throughout the pandemic, and even created a silkscreen poster of Frida Kahlo a wearing face-covering, the proceeds from which benefited his org. “Art has been the one thing we can rely on to get us through this,” he says. “It has the power to save us all.”

THE ARTS

Legend

FLOYD NEWSUM Few Houston artists are more prolific than Floyd Newsum, a painter, printmaker and UH professor whose career spans nearly 50 years and whose work has been displayed far and wide, from the CAMH to the Smithsonian.

And while Covid has derailed the productivity of many creatives, Newsum says, “For me, it has isolated me from distractions, and I have had my most productive season of painting.” His work centers on cultural and political climates and world events — and in 2020, there is a lot of that to unpack. “I have always enjoyed being a servant in society with the intention of changing the conditions of poor and marginalized people,” says Newsum, who’s currently working with oil, acrylics and gouache out of his home studio. Newsum’s legacy also includes co-founding the transformative Project Row Houses in the Sixth Ward.

Legend

ZINA GARRISON There’s been lots of buzz about Simone Biles during this wouldbe Olympic year. But before Biles, another African American beauty brought Olympic glory to H-Town.

The tennis star, now 56, boasts three Grand Slam titles and two medals — a gold for doubles, a bronze for singles — from Seoul in ’88.

She later coached the U.S. team in Beijing. Back in Houston, Garrison’s nonprofit has its own legacy. Just as she was introduced to the sport via a free program led by John Wilkerson in MacGregor Park, Garrison wished to afford others the same opportunity.

The Zina Garrison Academy, founded in ’93 with her prize money from the Family Circle Cup and help from Wilkerson, offers tennis lessons, nutrition resources and even collegeprep counseling — all at no cost in MacGregor Park. And her generosity runs deep. After losing nearly everything during Harvey herself, Garrison set up tennis nets at shelters and watched the kids play.

“Tennis,” she told a reporter at the time, “let them be kids in a traumatic situation.”

SPORTS

Leader

RACHEL DALY In July in Salt Lake City, women’s soccer was the first pro sport to resume play, laying the blueprint for what’s now known as a “bubble tournament.” The winner of that historic event? The Houston Dash, led by captain and tourney MVP Rachel Daly. “It’s been such a difficult and testing year, so to have something to celebrate and moments to cherish is something that we will take with us forever,” says the England-born soccer star, who’s been with the Dash since 2016 (though she’s currently on loan to her home country’s West Ham United team through the end of the year). Another reason to celebrate: Daly, 28, recently renewed her Dash contract for another three years.

“I have developed a love for the city and the community.”

Alexandre Vauthier dress and accessories from Tootsies; styled by Todd Ramos; hair and makeup by Edward Sanchez

Legend

WELCOME WILSON Welcome Wilson’s resume is impressive: He developed Jamaica Beach and Tiki Island and several Houston master-planned communities, and serves as landlord to 5,000,000 square feet of manufacturing space. But the tidbit he likes to lead with is that he met his wife, Joanne, at UH’s 1947 Sadie Hawkins Dance, and married her on the day he graduated in 1948. Also the longtime chairman of UH’s Board of Regents, Wilson takes his greatest pride in his family. “We have five children, 16 grandchildren, and 16 great-grandchildren. I have a personal relationship with each one of them,” says Wilson, 92, who built a ranch in Waller County specifically for gatherings of all 50 family members.

“When I can sit at the ranch, in my fireplace chair, and hear conversations and the noise of children, I feel very happy and thank God.”

DEVELOPMENT

Leader

STEVE RADOM Steve Radom, 42, knows something about the importance of community: He and his wife, Holly, and their 4-year-old twins live in Briargrove, on a street that has 30-plus kids under the age of 10. Radom is responsible for delivering that same sense of warmth and community in his projects, like the transformative Heights Mercantile complex. “We care,” says Radom of his team’s commitment to enhancing existing aspects of the neighborhoods in which they work. “We work hard to bring together the best design teams, tenants and partners, and ensure that we all do our part to activate our neighborhoods and better our city.” In 2021, his Radom Capital will deliver the Mercantile-esque Montrose Collective in the 800 block of Westheimer, as well as the Mkt mixed-use project in the Heights, and a unique development in the former Stages building at 3201 Allen Parkway. “I’m excited about being able to enjoy our projects’ greenspace and biophilia — in a hopefully postCovid environment.”

Leader

FAISAL MASUD “This will be known as the Year of Critical Care,” says Faisal Masud, the director of critical care at Houston Methodist Hospital.

“People from all over the world got to know what we actually do, and how many lives we save on a daily basis. Ventilators, life support, ICU, PPE — these have become household words.” Masud, 55, came to the U.S. from Pakistan 31 years ago, arriving in Houston by way of the DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center. The dad of three (and soonto-be granddad!) has spent many weeks this year caring for Covid-19 patients and speaking on behalf of frontline workers to national news outlets during the surge in July, which flooded Masud’s ICU with 750 critically ill patients. Through it all, Masud keeps humanity at the forefront of what he does, finding hope in “my family and my team members, who work miracles every day.”

MEDICAL ADVOCACY

Legend

LEX FRIEDEN Thirty years ago this summer, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law. Among its chief architects was Lex Frieden, who broke his neck in a car accident as a college freshman. He underwent rehabilitation at TIRR Memorial Hermann, and went on to serve on Congressional task forces on disability-related research and lead what’s now known as the National Council on Disability. Today, Frieden is a UTHealth professor; director of TIRR’s Independent Living Research Utilization program, where he advocates for those with disabilities to live a normal life; and serves on METRO’s board, helping to ensure inclusive transportation options. Frieden, 71, has been married to his wife Joyce, who also uses a wheelchair, for more than 40 years. He says while attitudes regarding inclusivity have evolved over the decades, America has work to do. “Racism, sexism, ageism and ableism result from our elitist attitudes, archaic beliefs and ethically compromised values. To heal our society, we must first heal ourselves.”