WAN 09/08/2022 Issue

Raises Funds for Free Fitness Classes at Summer Bash

n Tuesday, August 30th a passionate crowd of Power for Parkinson’s (PFP) supporters, volunteers, and participants gathered at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Northwest Austin for PFP’s Summer Bash. The Summer-themed event was part of the organization’s week-long “Ride the Waves” fundraiser.

“Our participants inspired this fundraiser and this event because of how powerfully they ride their own waves,” said PFP Program Manager Garden Strong. Power for Parkinson’s is a local nonprofit working to provide free fitness classes and social opportunities for people with Parkinson’s in Austin and beyond.

“For people with Parkinson’s, exercise is like medicine,” said PFP Executive Director and Cofounder Dr. Nina Mosier True to the organization’s mission, the PFP team included movement breaks and exercise opportunities, such as corn-hole, ring-toss, and an obstacle course in their Summer Bash festivities.

Along with the fun games and challenges, the event also featured a photo booth, drinks, and a delicious lunch courtesy of Jersey Mikes. Guests were encouraged to arrive at the event dressed in their “beachiest” attire, and with pirate hats, sunglasses, and plenty of Hawaiin shirts, guests certainly exceeded expectations.

In addition to the Summer Bash, PFP’s weeklong “Ride the Waves” fundraiser included daily summer-themed fitness and dance classes in and around Austin and online on the organization’s YouTube channel. By the end of the week, the organization had raised just over $10,000 to support its fitness and dance programs. PFP’s Ride the Waves fundraiser is still open on the organization’s website, www. powerforparkinsons.org, through September 7th.

“The contributions and support raised during our Summer Bash will help carry us through to the end of the year and support us in our mission to ensure our community lives their healthiest and most engaged lives,” said Dr. Mosier.

Eagle Scout Morgan Jones honored at Troop 1 Court of Honor

Troop 1 Eagle Scout

Morgan D. Jones’s journey as a Boy Scout culminated at his final Court of Honor last month at First Presbyterian Church, which charters Troop 1. Morgan turns 18 this month, the age that BSA requires youth Scouts to “age out.”

Morgan is the son of Drs. David and Jennifer Jones.

Morgan received the following four awards at the ceremony:

BSA James M. Stewart

Good Citizenship Award for completing a service project that honors and promotes the life of Jimmy Stewart, submitting a 500-word essay on good citizenship, creating a poster to educate the public,

and submitting a written report describing how the service project honored the life of Jimmy Stewart.

BSA National Park Service Resource Stewardship Scout

Ranger Award for completing either 10 hours of community service or 10 hours of organized education at one of our National Parks.

The BSA God and Life

Religious Emblem for completing a 9-month religious curriculum connecting reverence and a Scout’s own faith tradition.

The BSA Conservation Good Turn Award for organizing Troop 1 to work with the City of Austin’s Watershed Protection Department to personally inspect more than 1100 storm drains and installing more than 350 No Dumping emblems on the drains. Troop 1 received The BSA Conservation Good Turn Unit Award because of the conservation project that Morgan organized.

In his journey in Scouting, Morgan has earned 66 merit badges, 9 palms, 7 medals, 5

knots, and 10 BSA outdoors and environmental awards, including BSA’s most rare and prestigious conservation award—The BSA Distinguished Conservation Service Award with Silver Honors. Only 178 Scouts in BSA’s 112-year history have earned this award, which requires four researched conservation service projects from four separate environmental categories that are evaluated in a Board of Review conducted by BSA’s National Conservation Committee.

“Morgan is one of the most decorated Scouts in the history of Troop 1,” said Troop 1 Scoutmaster Paul Slutes. “Upon earning Eagle,

many Scouts leave Scouting. Not Morgan; he served as our Junior Assistant Scoutmaster to help the younger Scouts until he turned 18. What’s truly remarkable about Morgan is that he was still earning difficult awards just weeks before he aged out. Morgan has so much potential and an amazing future ahead of him.”

Morgan is a senior at Austin’s Concordia High School where he participates in the National Honor Society and varsity soccer and baseball. Upon turning 18, Morgan plans to volunteer as an Assistant Scoutmaster in Troop 1 which meets Tuesday nights at 7 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church on Mesa Drive.

VOLUME 35 ISSUE 17 - S I N C E 1 9 8 6SINCE 1986 SEPTEMBER 8, 2022WESTAUSTINNEWS.COM W E S T S I D E WESTSIDE S T O R Y STORY Ed Clements Page 2 I N S I D E INSIDE Doss readers get pink lemonade Page 4 S O C I E T Y SOCIETY Flatwater Unbreakable Night Page 3 SUBSCRIBE TODAY LIKE US! PHOTOS AND ARTICLE BY ZOE THOMPSON

Ed Clements

BY FORREST PREECE

offered him a position in his business. But Ed was adamant about wanting to find a job in radio. After months of sending out resumes to no avail, Ben Barnes and some other businesspeople found a job for Ed being a campaign aide for Marvin Leath, a banker in nearby Marlin. Leath wound up winning his Congressional race, beating the incumbent, Lyndon Olson, and Lane Denton in the primary, and then he won the general election.

Finally, Ed landed a news and sports director job in Midland at KCRS, one of Wendell Mayes’ stations. His family thought he would be back in Brownwood in six months, but he never returned. He did almost everything on-air at the station — even the playby-play for the high schools — Midland Lee, Midland High, Odessa High, and Odessa Permian — rotating games between KCRS and another station that Mayes owned.

WThis civic-minded gentleman has made quite a mark in Austin since he arrived here in August 1989 – both on the airwaves and with his nonprofit and civic work.

Some people just make you feel good about being alive — and so do some eateries. That is why it was a double treat for me to be interviewing Ed at “his table” in the far north end at Dirty Martin’s. (This spot is where he conducts some of his radio shows.) Ed is a good old West Texas boy, who grew up in Brownwood, Texas and spent much of his youth hanging out with the disk jockeys at KBWD, one of radio magnate Wendell Mayes’ first stations. He would make himself useful collecting stats for sporting events and sometimes the announcers would put him on the air to discuss games. “I never thought it would be my career,” Ed says. In college at Southwest Texas State, he was a film critic for the campus newspaper, and he loved that job so much that he was hoping he could make a career out of commenting on movies.

His dad, Poochie Clements, was a successful businessman and prominent in Brownwood. He owned a wholesale tobacco house and three Gibson’s Discount Centers (well, he did until Wal-Mart came to town) and served on the Brownwood City Council for 20 years. Ed laughs about how his dad once

ran against Wendell Mayes for Jaycees President and beat him. But the men were lifelong friends.

Ed’s mother Janie was a force in her own right. This intelligent, energetic woman made her mark on Brownwood and nationally. Her youngest child, John, was born developmentally and physically disabled and the doctors said that he probably wouldn’t live past 12 or 13. John is still alive and recently had his 60th birthday party at Dirty’s—they reserved the whole back room and family members came in from all over.

When Janie realized that there was no facility to help John in Brownwood, she took it upon herself to petition the school board to start putting aside funds to help children with special needs and she started a school of her own to help in this cause — The Big Flame School. It is now closed, and special needs children are educated in the public schools. She also founded the Janie Clements Work Center which provided a place where people like John could do constructive piece-work tasks and make money. In addition, she has been on the boards of Texas and national organizations that provide services for people with these challenges.

After graduating from Brownwood High, Ed got a BBA from Southwest Texas State in 1977 and his dad

He also did the playby-play for Midland Junior College. Basketball fans will be surprised to know that Ed was on the sidelines back in the day when Spud Webb — the 5’6” dunking phenom — was playing for the school. He says that coaches like Abe Lemons, Jim Valvano, Rick Barnes, and John Thompson all came to town to scout him and some other players like Larry Johnson at nearby Odessa Junior College. Ed remembers the 1988 Kansas vs. Oklahoma game for the NCAA title when at one point, there were five players on the court who had been on the team at Midland Junior College the previous year – four for Oklahoma and one for Kansas.

Speaking of football, at one point two athletic luminaries served as the Midland coaches – Spike Dykes was at Midland Lee and former UT linebacker Pat Culpepper was at Midland High. Ed got to know Spike and says that he was a major influence on his life. Spike would invite Ed over to his house for dinner and they would hang out playing golf as well. “I learned so much about life from that man,” Ed says.   Fast forward to 1987 — the biggest news story Ed ever covered. One day at KCRS,

fallen into a well behind her house. Ed grabbed some gear and hustled over there. A TV crew was already on the scene. The police told them to go away, no story, we’ll have her out in 15 minutes. Yeah. That was Baby Jessica.

The next day, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., Ed was fielding calls coming in from broadcast stations across the country and even a few from overseas. He stayed in the station, and they had a reporter on site. Finally, 58 hours later, she was extracted, thanks to some ingenious work by a Clayton Williams drilling crew. Ed was crestfallen that he couldn’t report about her rescue because he had to call the Midland High-Abilene Cooper football game that night. But one thing that came out of this event: Mark Caesar, the news director at KLBJ-am in Austin, was one of the out-oftown news directors who had talked with Ed. That was the contact Ed had been dreaming of making. It finally led to his being hired at KLBJ-am in August 1989.

Ed says that he was greeted with open arms when he got to town, especially by his fellow KLBJ employees Cactus Pryor and his sons, Don and Paul, who were all very cordial to him. He was also fortunate

who welcomed him into their circle, asked him along for golf games, and introduced him to some long-tenured local restaurants like El Patio and Dirty Martin’s. “I was hired to do sports and it’s evolved into me doing a talk show now,” Ed says. “I’ve loved working with the Johnsons, too.” Ed says that he does enjoy talking politics and he can trace part of that back to his high school political science teacher, Ruth Spence, who is Roy’s (as in GSpenceD&M) mother.

Radio isn’t the only arena where Ed has made his mark in the Capital City. Taking a cue from his parents, Ed has immersed himself in

he is past president of the Alzheimer’s Texas Board. He was on the board of the Arc of the Capital Area and is currently on the Muny Conservancy Board, the United Heritage Charity Foundation Board, and the Neighborhood Longhorns Board.

Right now, Save Muny is one of his priorities and in fact, he had just attended a board meeting for that group before we met for lunch.

“The ball is in UT’s court,” Ed says. They are hoping that negotiations between UT and the city can progress to the point where UT will go across the street for development, where the married students’ housing is. Ed points out that the housing is sitting on one of the most valuable pieces of property in town, right on Lake Austin; and that would let the golf course stay put.

It is the busiest course in town and contrary to some opinions, 88% of the golfers who play rounds there do not live in the neighborhood.

From an environmental standpoint it is the second largest greenspace in town, and there are magnificent heritage oaks and all manner of wildlife throughout the course. “We’ve got a great coalition, with people from a variety of business and social backgrounds, and I think we’ll get the job done.”

In closing, Ed told me how happy he and his wife Betsy are to be living in West Austin. They have owned their home in Tarrytown since 2000, and they love the neighborhood. Ed says, “Sometimes I miss old Austin haunts like the Villa Capri, El Matamoros, Youngblood’s, Beans, The Stallion, and Christie’s, but our city has so much promise for the future.”

Flatwater UNBREAKABLE Night

Steve Dombek hosts event in Support of Flatwater Foundation

On Saturday, August 27th, guests gathered at the historic Scoot Inn, Austin’s oldest beer joint, for Flatwater Unbreakable Night (F.U.N.), a high-spirited party in support of the Flatwater Foundation. The event featured a delicious dinner, fantastic music, dancing, and laughter, all in support of Austinites impacted by Cancer.

Spurred by the Unbreakable Steve Dombek, F.U.N. was created out of the desire to do more for the Austin cancer community. Steve was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in 2015 and continues to battle the disease today while remaining “relentlessly positive” and inspiring thousands of others via Flatwater Foundation.

Since 2019, Steve has raised over $80,000 for Flatwater, an Austin-based nonprofit that provides therapy for people affected by cancer. This year, Steve and a group of his closest friends hoped to take their fundraising to the next level with F.U.N. Funds are still coming in, but so far the party has raised over $18K in support of Flatwater Foundation’s services.

PHOTOS AND ARTICLE BY ZOE THOMPSON

By Alana Moehring Mallard

After winning the state championship in Belton, Texas, in their category this spring, a team of 42 archers from Lamar Middle School headed to Salt Lake City, Utah, for national competition where they captured second place for the team and second place individual honors for Lamar archer Maria Sirbu.

Lamar archers competing at nationals were Aernen Danenfelzer, Aidan Luther, Althea Bradbury-Flores, Amelia McRoberts, Arya Ivatury, Brooke Zarnikau, Carley Lardizabal, Caroline Bosquez, Cienna Patel, Cole Powers, Danie Rodriguez, Enzo Zelsnack, Ethan LeungLieu, Evan Kim, Evan Meyer, Fiona Kennedy, Grant Bolton, Jude Carroll, Liam Friede, Lily Blottie, Luca Ivan, Luke Boulette, Lyd Shub, Maria Sirbu, Merrill Schumacher, Molly Bradfield, Nicholas Ray, Nico Volluz, Niko Vega, Oliver Nelson, Olivia Tilghman, Parker Gould, Penelope Conner, Piper Lynch, Sam Archer, Sean Sander, Sebastian Chaniotis, Sydney Flowers, Ty Camp, Veer Matai, and Wren Griffis.

Five parent coaches went to Salt Lake City with the team as did Lamar archer coach Jim DeLine: Lee Zarnikau, Rich Schumacher, Jason Boulette, Kat Davis of Central Texas Archery, and Aaron Luther.

And Lamar is ramping up again for another archery season, said DeLine. “Lamar has 65 brand new archers this year,” said DeLine, “and my number one core philosophy is that we don’t cut kids. So we’ll have a state team and a development team.”

Lamar archery is open to sixth, seventh, and eighth grades.

“Eighteen of our state team archers showed up at a Saturday practice to mentor our new archers,” said DeLine. “It was wonderful to see them give up a

Saturday to help.”

That big trophy the kids won at nationals did a tour of Salt Lake City touristy spots before coming home to Austin and visiting a few local spots as well. “It was great,” said DeLine, “kids would call up to borrow the trophy and take it to Mount Bonnell and Barton Springs and some other places. One kid was worried because he dinged it while he had it. ‘Hey, it’s your trophy,’ I told him. It’s OK.”

DeLine is aiming his Lamar archers at another trip to Salt Lake City in the spring. His number two core philosophy is we’ll find a way to finance kids who need it, he said.

“All of this is a reflection of what happens when the community comes together,” DeLine said. “Greatness can happen. This sport is about equity and inclusion. You don’t have to be the biggest or the fastest.”

PHOTOS COURTESY LAMAR ARCHERS

Doss readers trade summer lists for lemonade

By Alana Moehring Mallard Doss Elementary

librarians Bonnie Lang and Celeste Pustka spent one day last month handing out pink lemonade to kids outside the cafeteria as they filed out to recess.

“We made summer reading really easy to do,” said Lang. “They could choose the AISD Summer Reading Program called 5 Book Dive, or the Austin library’s program, Austin Completely Booked. The library’s Beanstack app even keeps track of hours of reading.”

Lang said the kids could also read off their shelves at home or in their rooms or off of MackinVia, which lets students download e-books to read on road trips with no Internet access.

The pink lemonade payoff came for students who filled out the Doss library survey of number of books read or hours spent reading, and Lang said 222 students had turned in the surveys.

As fourth grade readers Josephine, Addison, and Madeline came by for their lemonade, Lang said to each of them, “Thank you so much for reading over the summer.”

“I read all the time, but I

just forgot to do the form,” one student called out, and Lang promised him hot cocoa after winter break if he got those reading forms turned in.

“We will have so much hot cocoa after winter break,” Lang said, “with the sprinkles and the marshmallows.”

Even an ex-student of

Lang’s came by, Jack Zamer, as his sister Morgan Zamer brought her fourth grade class for lemonade.

“We just wanted to celebrate reading and we wanted to have fun,” Lang said as another group of readers claimed their pink lemonade.

Peterson—McLendon wedding

AUDREY ELIZABETH PETERSON of Austin and BLAKE PATRICK MCLENDON of Arlington married at Tarrytown Methodist Church on March 5, 2022.

Daughter of Hal and Dinny Peterson, Audrey graduated from Texas Christian University where she majored in economics and was a member of Tridelt.

Son of Brent and Lori McLendon, Blake graduated from the University of Texas where he majored in economics and communications and was a member of Sigma Chi and the Texas Cowboys.

The two met while summer interning in Austin. Today Audrey is working in commercial property management and Blake is working in oil and gas.

In attendance were the bride and groom’s grandmothers, Lena Peterson, Judy Barrow

and Shirley McLendon.

The bridal party included maid of honor and bride’s sister Danielle Starry, cousin Emily McGee, Ally Sherwood, Laney Howard, Sydney Tyler, Maria Alzaga and Lauren LaDuke.

Best Man and groom’s brother Shane McLendon, Austin Summerhill, Jared Cole, Ignacio Bustamante, Drake Plunkett, Jack Barker, Keaton Perry and Sloan Turrentine were groomsman.

Flower girls, and cousins of Audrey and Blake, were Madison Carr and Olivia McGee.

Reception dinner and dance followed at Westwood Country Club.

After honeymooning in St Lucia, Mr. and Mrs. McLendon are working and living in Austin.

61st Anniversary Coronation Presentation and Ball

The celebrations began at Tarry House on Friday, July 29th, with a Mother-Daughter luncheon honoring our Austin Royalty and Visiting Duchesses. While the ladies dined at Tarry House, the fathers and escorts enjoyed lunch from the Gimme Burger food truck at Butler Park Pitch & Putt, followed by a friendly round of golf on the Par 3 course. The evening festivities kicked off with the annual Friday night cocktail party at The Bob Bullock Museum, where our guests enjoyed delicious food and cocktails and danced to jazz music by the Vintage 15.

Fleet Admiral Corby Jastrow welcomed all the guests and introduced the 2022 Royalty Court. Miss Mason Claire Gillingwater, Miss Corley Holland, Miss Ainsley Merritt, Miss Annabel Merritt and Miss Helena Putman were announced as the 2022 Princesses. The high point of the evening was the announcement of Miss Ellen Reed McCartt, daughter of Admiral and Mrs. Joseph

WRobert McCartt, Jr. as our 2022 Queen.

The young ladies and escorts continued to celebrate the evening on the Lone Star Riverboat with a moonlit cruise on Lady Bird Lake with cool sounds provided by DJ David Garza. Parents and guests returned to the JW Marriott for more merriment in the Hospitality Suite.

The celebratory events continued Saturday morning with the Queen's luncheon honoring her Court at the Headliners Club of Austin, followed by an afternoon of rehearsals for the evening’s presentation and ball.

On Saturday evening, the Admirals Club membership and invited guests enjoyed a cocktail reception in the foyer of the Grand Ballroom of the JW Marriott before being seated for a threecourse dinner. Guests enjoyed the musical entertainment provided by The Little Texas Big Band. As the announcement trumpets blew

and grand doors opened, the presentation of our twentythree young ladies and escorts commenced.

Upon conclusion of the presentation, revelers partook in dancing to the music of Limelight Band from Dallas. For those who wished to continue the festivities, the celebration moved to the Hospitality Suite where stories were shared, and memories were made as the sun set on another successful Admirals Club Coronation Presentation and Ball.

On Sunday morning, guests spoke of the fun memories made the previous nights while the Staff Command and Fleet Admirals bid farewell during a casual brunch.

Cheers to a great year, and we look forward to seeing all of you soon!