Fort Bend Star 09/05/2018 Edition

Skeeters gearing up for playoff run: Page 11

The high school football season kicked off last weekend. See how Fort Bend ISD teams fared on page 5.

WEDNESDAY • SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Fort Bend / Southwest • Volume 43 • No. 3

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FBISD board evaluates Dupre, schedules bond District wants voters to pass $992 million bond Nov. 6 By Theresa D. McClellan

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After a four-hour closed session on Aug. 27 with Fort Bend Independent School District Superintendent Charles Dupre to conduct their quarterly formative evaluation, the full board left without making comment. “They meet three to four times a year to talk about how things are going, my performance, and how I’m leading the district,” Dupre said after the meeting. And how is he doing? “My evaluation is confidential which is why it’s behind closed doors,” Dupre said. He told the Star he is happy

to be in Fort Bend and part of the team. “I don’t plan to go anywhere. I am not looking for a job. I love this district. It is the best place to be,” he said. He acknowledged there has been public criticism of him. “The FBISD is the eighthlargest in the state. We have 11,000 employees, 76,000 students, several municipalities and so many schools. We are a large entity and we’re always gonna have criticism. But we are dedicated to being the most transparent and collaborative school district in the state,” he said. The board recently approved the first half of a 2018 bond that will go on the November ballot. Initially, the

board considered a $1.7 billion bond to fund its capital improvement proposal. But at their Aug. 13 board meeting, they approved pursuing the first half of the bond with a $992 million proposal in the Nov. 6 election. “We have yet to begin our community meetings to share information about the bond. We are aware of some concerns expressed and we will address facts as we go through the next several months communicating facts about the bond,” Dupre said. “We’re always gonna have criticism. We are dedicated to being the most transparent and collaborative school district in the state. We are modeling that,” he said.

The district has come under fire for last minute changes of board decisions, flip-flopping on issues and fluctuating facts on school capacity. “It doesn’t mean we won’t make mistakes. Everything won’t go perfectly. But we will work hard to get it back on track as quickly as we can and restore any withdrawals from the emotional bank account we may have taken. We restore trust we may have dented and we restore trust by doing what we say we are going to do and not make the same mistake twice,” Dupre said. In a prepared statement, the district said, “the development of the $992.6 million bond referendum follows an extensive

Facilities Master Planning process that began in January of 2018 to ensure that the district is providing the best learning environments, valuable opportunities and access to programs in accordance with the board-adopted Profile of a Graduate. This Facilities Master Planning process helped to identify construction projects and other life-cycle maintenance and adequacy needs essential for the next six years and led to the development of an updated capital plan. This capital plan also includes additional funding for safety and security, technology, and transportation needs.”

SEE BOND, PAGE 9

Those Were the Days

Volunteers from River Pointe Church gather and say a prayer before deploying to their Harvey relief assignments to help those in the community who were impacted by the storm last year. (Submitted photo)

River Pointe Church continues helping victims of Harvey By Theresa D. McClellan THERESA@FORTBENDSTAR.COM

As soon as the river started rising, Chaplain Bobby Page knew there had to be a way River Pointe Church could help. The 22-year-old church has grown into three campuses from its original spot in Richmond at the corner of the Grand Parkway and Highway 59, into Missouri City where they meet Sundays at Elkins High School, and their newest campus inside the loop on Shepherd and Washington inside Houston. “So we sprang into action to feed first responders and national guardsmen to help and encourage them. And once people could get back to their neighborhoods and the shock of the damage of five feet of water in their homes, we had to find a way to serve,” recalled the for-

mer Brigadier General. He was a chaplain in the Air Force and has pastoral care and military background and now serves as the missions and care ministry pastor at River Pointe Church. At the time of Harvey, the regular minister was on sabbatical and the pastor asked Page to lead efforts to serve the community. So they put out the call. “We were hoping for maybe 500 people on Labor Day that would put on gloves and help strangers muck out their homes. At eight that morning, more than 1,000 people gathered for Harvey. “We mobilized 3,000 volunteers who gave almost 57,000 hours and our non-profit friends tell us that is worth over a million dollars,” said Page, who was overwhelmed by the support.

SEE HARVEY, PAGE 3

Volunteers from River Pointe Church help muck out a flooded house last year after Hurricane Harvey. (Submitted photo)

Sugar Land steeped in baseball history By Joe Southern JSOUTHERN@FORTBENDSTAR.COM

Long before ground was broken on Constellation Field and the Skeeters played their first game of professional baseball, Sugar Land was home to some of the best amateur baseball teams in the region. Organized baseball has been played in Sugar Land since before the turn of the 20th century, but really got competitive in the 1940s until it faded out in the 1970s. Just as Imperial Sugar owned the old company town, it also sponsored the local baseball teams, providing jerseys, equipment and fields to play on. With names like the Imperials, the Imperial Tigers, Imperial Pirates, and the Imperial Braves, the company kept its stamp on all things related to Sugar Land. It also afforded young men the opportunity to have their moment in the sun. “We were good. We were undefeated. Everybody else wanted to play us. We used to play a team from Mexico called Piedras Negras, they were good, but they wanted to play us,” said D.C. Pickett, who at age 80 has many fond memories of his playing years. He recently gathered with Ernest Trevino, 84, and George Morales Jr., 74, at the request of Chuck Kelly of the Sugar Land Historical Foundation to talk about the Golden Age of baseball in Sugar Land. Just like Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947, baseball helped break racial barriers in Sugar Land. “Sugar Land was always unusual,” Pickett said. “It wasn’t black and white; it was never like that. Everybody worked together and the sugar company controlled everything. We worked together, we got off and we played together, so there wasn’t all that this-and-that.” The teams were usually Hispanic or black until the mid-1960s when they integrated and added a a few white players into the mix. For the athletes, race wasn’t the issue; playing and having fun is what counted. “Sunday was a special day. We wouldn’t go nowhere on Saturday night, but Sunday morning we’d be ready to go,” Pickett said. Trevino started playing in the early 1950s. “My father played baseball and I used to watch him play,” he said. “After I got into high school, that’s when I started to play baseball. I asked him, when can I start playing with y’all? He said, ya, you’re going to have to wait a little more.

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Pictured from the left are former Imperial Sugar baseball players Ernest Trevino, D.C. Pickett, and George Morales Jr. (Photo by Joe Southern)

I was 14 years old at the time.” Trevino never did play on the team with his father. “Through the years that I played baseball with our team here, he got to see me play, just like I got to see him play. When he was playing he played third base. When I started playing he went out there and started seeing me play and all of that.” He gave his son some critical advice as a player. “He told me when you hit the ball over the second baseman or the short stop, you run over to second base. So I hit the ball over the first baseman and I went over to second base and he just looked at me from the stands. After that, I fell in love with baseball,” he said. “There was nothing else to do in Sugar Land.”

In the 2017 book “Mexican American Baseball In Houston and Southeast Texas” by Richard A. Santillan, Gregory Garrett, Joseph Thompson, Mikaela Selly, and William Lange, the authors noted that Trevino was known for his speed. “A track star in school, Tevino played baseball starting in 1952. He amazed local crowds with his speed on the base paths. One of his claims to fame was stealing home successfully three times,” they wrote. Pickett was a pitcher of note. “I was a pitcher and we won almost all the games,” he said. “When I left Sugar Land I went to Prairie View and I played at Prairie View for three years on the col-

SEE BASEBALL PAGE 12

Chuck Kelly, left, of the Sugar Land Heritage Foundation and George Morales Jr. look over books and photos about baseball in Sugar Land back in the mid1900s. (Photo by Joe Southern)

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