The National Park Born in a Poker Game

The National Park Born in a Poker Game

Below is a bit of West Texas history from Jane Dunn Sibley’s book: Jane’s Window. Jane was a friend of Euguenia Howard Hunt. It covers the origin of Big Bend National Park and then Texas itself.

Senator Winfield’s major achievement was persuading the state to appropriate money to establish Big Bend State Park, which was a Texas state park before it became a national park. Obtaining funding to acquire the park land from a conservative legislature was not easy. It took Mary’s father many hard years of lobbying and arm-twisting to convince his colleagues to fund the Big Bend Park acquisition. Finally, he got a group of legislators to agree to take a look at the proposed park site. Sen. Winfield arranged a special train to transport them from Austin to the small town of Alpine, way out in West Texas.

Upon arrival, the state legislators would be greeted by local dignitaries and then taken by automobile to tour Big Bend. However, on their long train ride west, the legislators started drinking. They also became seriously involved playing a serious poker game. When they arrived in Alpine, the game was still going strong, so they moved it directly into the Holland Hotel. They were not about to leave that game until it was over, so local officials were left waiting outside with empty cars. Heine could not persuade a single one of them to leave that game. Finally, the legislators all agreed. “Hell, Heine, we’ll pass your bill if you’ll just leave us alone!” He did and they did. So that’s how Texas got Big Bend State Park, which was later transferred to the Department of the Interior under the supervision of the National Park Service.

Mignon Rachal Mignon is descended from Texas pioneers on both sides of her family. Her mother’s ancestors arrived in Texas in the eighteen thirties and her father was a descendant of the Peters Colony, which came to Texas under a contract from Stephen F. Austin, the charismatic entrepreneur from Missouri, who helped colonize Texas. In 1821, after Mexico broke away from Spain, they gave Austin permission to invite American settlers to Texas, thus creating a buffer between the North American Indian tribes and the people of northern Mexico. The Texans became the first line of defense against the Indians, who had frustrated two hundred years of Spanish efforts to conquer them and convert them to Catholicism.

Jeana’s Letter about her trip to Alpine 1976

Jeana – Eugenia Howard Hunt

Though I didn’t always recognize it in my youth, Eugenia Howard Hunt, my mother, was an extraordinarily funny woman. The following is a letter from her to my dad’s cousin Chan Hunt, a friend and fellow artist in Marin County, California. My parents had been there visiting us. My dad flew directly home to Austin where he was semi-retired judge. On her way back, Mom stopped to paint and rest in Alpine, a high desert town in far west Texas where my parents had a small vacation home on a hill overlooking the town of 6000. She called the house “The Gate to Heaven” for its spectacular sunsets – and because it was situated between the Cross’ and the Sohl’s homes. These bits of separation were enjoyed by both of my parents, I’m certain.
Sperry Hunt 2019

Sept. 21, 1976

Dear Chan. I am sitting here at the end of the dining room table in Alpine right smack in the middle of God’s country. He is holding me in the palm of His hand and we have been having many soul expanding conversations. I am all by myself in The Gate to Heaven with all of the memories of everyone who has come in and out of its doors.

Grainger [her son older son] had the trim painted on the outside and my bedroom and bath are done in snowy white. It makes the rest of the house seem a bit worn but perhaps later…

My trip back to Texas was first filled with writing poetry and feeling I was flying with the birds. The rest was for the birds … except that my poor old guardian angel was there pushing and pulling for me as usual. Wilmer [her husband] told me explicitly that I came down in El Paso and Midland. So all the way from San Francisco I spun the verse and took pictures of the awe inspiring clouds. The plane came down and I descended with all of my accoutrements and walked and walked through the terminal. I flew American as you know and was supposed to change to Continental at El Paso. I arrived at the Continental departure gate, noting that the plane left for Midland at four o’clock, as the ticket had said. I was writing away when I realized that a line had formed. Then the nice lady informed me that I was in Tucson. I wailed. She said that all was well. She called American whose office was a mile back through the corridors, and calmly informed them of my dilemma. Continental would hold the plane for me while I went back for revision. You know when I arrived at that airport I though that it looked very Indian in décor, but the idea blew through my happy mind without stopping. And now for the first miracle. The Continental plane was to have picked me up in El Paso had been delayed coming into Tucson, so the hour was exactly the same for departure. And the poor people in El Paso had to wait all of that time, and it was as cool as a cucumber in Tucson ——- and uncrowded, and as my baggage was checked through —- no problem.

I finally set down in Midland at 5:30 and there was Vic Ward, a C.D.R.I [Chihuahua Desert Research Institute] man to meet me. The first thing he did was to ask, “Do you have a driver’s license?” He informed me that I had to drive as the hi and he hadn’t brought his license. Then he disappeared. All of the people at the baggage left and I was there in that hot spot with everything. I looked like a laburnum in full bloom with all of the carrying cases and surrounded by all of that luggage and the canvases. Here came a large Georgia man who informed me he was a taxi driver and said that he was taking me where I was going. I re-informed him that as Alpine was my destination that I thought not. He said, “Well you sure can’t carry them things to Alpine on your back.” I told him I had a friend, and he snorted that it was some friend to leave a poor helpless lady with all this luggage in all of this heat. He never stopped talking. He became so obnoxious I though he was going to kidnap me, and not a soul in sight. Finally I spied Vic down at the end of the terminal (I forgot to tell you that the man had carried everything out and put it in the hot sun by his taxi.) with two burly policemen, and Vic about as big as a peanut and the same color. I called to him and one of the policemen gave me one of those long arm gestures, you either come down here or else. Then I became furious and I yelled, “I will not leave my luggage. You come here.” With that they put Vic in his car and here he came. Oh, Lord what a vehicle! It must have come form the bottom of the small Volk’s heap from the beginning of all Volks. No paint. No nothing. Loading it was horrible. I got in to drive with the police hot on our rear bumper and when I came to a stop sign I discovered that there were no brakes. Vic told me calmly that I should have pumped them. Ahead I saw a hotel with a restaurant. I slid into it, stepped out and looked the law straight in the face and they left.

We went into a dining area where we were the only customers. I had some gin and water and began to breath.

The trip home was a nightmare. The heater was not turn-offable, and it blew on my feet for 160 miles. I didn’t drive. When we arrived here in the black of night, I reached for my camera under the seat and it wasn’t there. He had taken it in and left it in the restaurant.

The next morning I called Irene [Irene Gallego] and she took me back to Midland. I was still holding on to my guardian angel’s hand. The dear sweet 200 pound waitress swarmed toward me and grabbed both my hands and said, “I prayed all night you would remember where you left it.” And there it was. I didn’t tell her I couldn’t have called as I didn’t remember the name of the place.

My angel and I certainly slept hard that night. We were wore!

I went to the Alpine library and took out books on photography and Chinese architecture, set up my canvases and have one in a beautiful state. Grainger is still on his vacation and this is the most delightfully quiet spot. I love not having a car.

After a day of painting I took a long walk. Laurabelle called and decided that I had died so that when I came back here was Irene and Johnnie Newell waiting to hold each others hand after they broke in. Johnnie said, “You committed the cardinal sin. You walked. “I paint everyday and then take a long walk. You won’t believe it, but between rains. I rains everyday and Alpine is knee deep in long grass and yellow daises. This morning there is even a fog over the village. The black cattle are fat and sleek even in the high mountains. Sunday the Lockharts took me to Glass Mountain so that he could cut wood for his fireplace. We met a man with a pet javelina. Bill [Dr. Bill Lockhart] has muscles like a stevedore. He cuts wood and operates in the same day and Laurabelle is building muscle by helping him load the trailer.

The grapes are luscious. Everyone comes in with a bunch, munching.

Did you know that scorpions fluoresce? Dr. Stancke from Temp, Arizona, a poisonous animal expert came to Alpine Sunday night. We all went to the Lockhart Salon and the C.D.R.I. came and Stancke gave an informal talk and the took us out to the wood pile. He produced a black light and lo and behold there were lavender scorpions all over the wood like chorus girls dancing about. He retrieved, with long tweezers, four of them in a special container. I could have done without that.

Well, back to my canvas and my walk. Love and kisses for all your many kindnesses.

Eugenia Flewellen Howard Hunt

Jeana’s Birthday and St. Louis Blues

Jeana at 19 (circa 1929) with best friend Marie Phelps (seated)

Eugenia Howard Hunt (AKA Jeana), my mother, was a pistol. Pictured here with her friends, was a free spirit and adventurer. She was a nature girl who loved nothing better than to set up her easel on a mountain or a beach – or pack up and drive from Houston to Santa Fe, West Texas, or San Francisco on a whim. She would often stand with her hand on her heart, rapturous before a sunset. And she loved to sing. Her favorite song, as I recall, was the “St. Louis Blues” by W.C. Handy, which was a huge hit song and musical in 1929, when the photo above was likely taken. She called it “St. Louie Woman” from the lines: “Saint Louis woman with her diamond rings/Pulls that man around by her apron strings.” Click on the link below to see the song sung by Bessie Smith in a 16-minute short film directed by Dudley Murphy.

Happy Birthday, Jeana!!!!

And just for the joy of it check out this past post: https://allyall.org/2016/11/25/jeanas-conundrum-whether-to-take-a-husband-to-europe-or-not/

Dan, Chan, Wilmer & Holland Hunt

Chan, Holland and Eugenia Hunt late 1980s
Dan and Chan Hunt
Dan Hunt
Eugenia Hunt house at Muir Beach 1980s

Holland and Chan Hunt

Holland, Dan, Eugenia Hunt
Judge Wilmer and Chan Hunt 1970s
Judge Wilmer and Chan Hunt Thoughtful

Mill Valley and Richardson Bay CA from Panoramic Hwy

Judge Wilmer Hunt Reading the Paper Bay Area1979

A Memorial Day Tribute to Thomas “Jack” Helm

Jack Helm Army Air Corp Portrait

Jack Helm

Thanks to cousin Gary for contributing the photos and text below. I heard about Jack from my mother Eugenia Howard Hunt and my uncle Alfred Philo Howard. Both spoke happily to have known him and deeply saddened by his loss. Philo spoke of Jack a number of times as a close friend, as Gary points out. My other spoke of Jack solemnly in the way one does after a recent loss. ~ Sperry

Hello Extended Family,

Given that it’s Veterans Day, I thought I’d share some photos I found of Thomas “Jack” Helm, the younger brother of Eugenia “Nina” Helm Ince. He was killed in a bombing raid targeting a munitions plant over Wiener Neustadt, Austria in Nov 1943. I believe that Jack Helm & Philo Howard were the same age and quite close growing up –– much as Eugenia Helm Ince & Eugenia Howard Hunt were the same age and quite close growing up. 
It’s very sad to think that the two “Clark sisters” (Elizabeth Helm & Nancy Howard) would each lose a pilot son in Europe, not to mention that Philo spent most of the war in a POW Camp near Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea, if I recall from what he told me at Gene Hunt’s funeral in 1990. 
Attached below –– Jack’s Army Air Corps photo (he was based in North Africa); his Purple Heart & Air Medal; the War Dept Telegram declaring him MIA in Nov 1943; photo of his B-17 “Flying Fortress” plane –– all of which were among his belongings sent back to his mother, Elizabeth Clark Helm.
Best wishes,
Gary
Jack Helm Is Missing Telegram

The Fighting Judge

 

Wilmer Brady Hunt, Texas 133rd District Civil Court Judge 1947-1969

A Recollection by Sperry Hunt … with a little help from my friends. 

A few months before my birth, my father Wilmer Brady Hunt (1903-1982) was appointed, and later elected, judge of the 133rd Judicial District Court of Texas where he remained unopposed for 22 years. A humorist and a concise storyteller, Dad created a ludicrous tale about the occasion. The morning began, he said, with his speaking from the bench to a mass of prisoners brought before him. He asked the men if it was the birthday of any among them. Perplexed and wary, no one spoke. He said that was a shame because, in honor of his son’s birth, he would have release them had they said yes. Hands shot up.

Another humorous fabrication was the account of meeting my mother at her debutante ball in 1928. As he described it, she stepped in front of the other girls, extended her arms, and said, “Stand back, girls! This one’s mine.” My mother’s version of the story involves the tradition that the debutants were given dance cards filled with the names of young men who wished to dance with them. Upon meeting her, my father asked to see her card. When she gave it to him, he quickly switched it with one with his name written in pencil on every line. I have that card.

My father was gracious and gentle. He could be stern, but never lost his cool. (The exception was when my mechanically challenged dad had to change the license plates. There was much swearing.) His own father, my mother said, had a temper. In one reported incident, Grandpa pulled a pistol on a streetcar conductor in New York City. My grandpa’s temper likely tempered his son’s.

Dad enjoyed solitude and measured conversation. A devout Catholic, he spent a number of weekends during my childhood in silent meditation at a monastery not far from our home in Houston. I believe one of the reasons he loved the court so much was that the conversation was civil, and he was in charge of it. Many times, I waited for him in the gallery, watching how relaxed and often jovial he seemed, seated between his clerk and bailiff, elevated above everyone.

But as peaceful as my dad was, he was equally proud, patriotic and fearless. My mother said he dreamt of fighting for his country. He was born in the American South filled with aging veterans and the glory stories of the Civil War. When he was a boy, President Teddy Roosevelt, the hero of San Juan Hill, sent the Great White Fleet around the world. Dad was thirteen when America joined the first World War. A year later the United States was a global power.

Dad glorified fighting with words. His favorite retort to a challenge was, “I’m a match. Strike me and see where you light.” Raised by a lawyer to be a lawyer, my dad was heavily schooled in poetry and oratory. As treatment for a serious boyhood stammer, he memorized large blocks of poetry. His favorite was the chivalric verse of Alfred Tennyson. He could recite “Lancelot and Elaine” in its entirety, beginning with the lines “Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable, Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,” His favorite books as boy were those of Sir Walter Scott, notably the tale of the bold knight Ivanhoe. As a man, he read the Horatio Hornblower naval novels of C. S. Forester and the plays of Shakespeare his entire life. Some of my best teenage memories of him are of sitting together watching Shakespearean on television. His favorite characters were the warriors, particularly John of Gaunt and Henry V. Dad could recite the entire St. Crispin’s Day speech which ends …

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition…And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”

Mom told me a story of coming home from shopping one winter day to discover Dad’s car in the driveway. She put the groceries in the kitchen and searched the dim, still house. She opened the library doors to find him on the sofa with the curtains drawn. Sitting beside him, she asked what had happened.

“They wouldn’t take me,” he replied sobbing into his hands. It was soon after the Pearl Harbor attack, and the army had rejected for him for having three kids, flat feet, and being thirty-nine.

A story both of my parents told me took place at a restaurant across Texas Avenue from the Rice Hotel in downtown Houston. The occasion was a visit by my mother’s friend Georgia Bell Duncan, whom she described as “young and lovely.” As she was only a few years younger than my mother, I would put the date in the late 1930s.

During the meal a drunk approached the table and began making suggestive remarks to Georgia Bell. After trying to reason with the man, Dad asked the maître d’ to call the police, which he apparently did not do. The drunk persisted which prompted my dad to attempt to eject the man out himself. The result in a brawl across the restaurant. My father said he traded punches with the guy for some time. He was getting the best of the man, but he kept coming at him. Unable to knock him out with his fists, Dad grabbed the man’s tie in one hand and his hair in the other and broke his nose on the bar, ending the struggle.

My dad told me a story which, though it isn’t about him, seems significant to his character because he repeated the tale several times. In the story, a white farmer married a black woman. The farm, as I remember, was near Brenham. The couple had several sons and did well for many years. One day the farmer received an anonymous letter from the KKK directing him to leave town or die. (My father hated the Klan for their bigotry and despised them as cowards, for their masks.) Without hesitation, my dad said, the man drove into town and walked into the office of a prominent attorney, who everyone knew to be the local Klan leader. He grabbed the lawyer by his lapels and stood him up. “If you kill me,” the farmer told the lawyer, “you’d better kill all of my sons too. If one of us is left alive, you’ll be the first to die.” The farmer was never bothered again. My dad believed in the direct, manly approach in some situations, which is not necessarily what one would expect of a judge. The following story exemplifies that attitude:

I have a vague memory of what happened in the house that night. But I must have been young. On reflection I think it was the vivid way Mom told the story that makes me believe I witnessed it.

The court system was simpler in the 1950s. There was no family court. A civil state judge handled pretty much everything non-criminal including civil suits, adoption, divorce and child custody. The most contentious were the latter two. In one case, a man called our house at night angry about Dad’s decision to grant his wife a divorce. The man said he wanted to fight him over it.

“Where are you?” my dad said. “I’ll be right there.”

The man paused, then said he was at a diner on Telephone Road, a wide commercial street that runs behind Hobby Airport.

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” Dad said and hung up the phone.

An extremely emotional woman, Mom pleaded desperately that he not go. Bear in mind that Dad was in his fifties and had already had a heart attack. He had been a local tennis champion as a young man, but he had done little physically since except to hunt, fish and swim laps.

“Call the sheriff,” Mom said.
“No, and don’t you either,” he said. “I’ll take care of this.”
Dad dressed and left. My mother immediately called Sheriff Clairville “Buster” Kern whom they knew as a friend. Kern was an institution, serving from 1949 to 1975. Mom pleaded with him to help, but not to let Dad know that she had called him. Sheriff Kern assured her he would send plain clothes officers who would not reveal themselves if possible.

My dad returned later to say he had waited for some time, but the man didn’t appear, and that was the end of it.

My mother became the owner of a Smith & Wesson .38 Special pistol. She told me the sheriff gave it to her for protection. She kept it around the house and in the glove compartment when she travelled alone. (As a cautionary tale, I will tell you that on a visit to my parents’ house, my three-year-old son discovered it, loaded, and brought it downstairs and into the living room where I gently took it from him.)

My brother Grainger has what he believes is an account of this, though I think it was a different event. Here is his recollection:

The man was a foul-mouthed lawyer that lost a case in Dad’s court and was calling the house every half-hour or so. Dad remained calm and borrowed a little baseball bat from me and stuck it under his coat before leaving. He’d been gone about ten minutes when the man called the house. I told him Dad was on his way. When Dad got there, the guy was not home. 

I only saw my father touch the pistol once. We were at our little summer house high on a dry, stony hill overlooking Alpine, Texas in the Chihuahua Desert five hundred miles west of Houston. I was eleven. Grainger was target shooting in the dusty driveway. He had just shot four or five rounds unsuccessfully at a bottle cap hanging from a clothespin on the line..

My dad strolled by, and said, “Let me show you how it’s done.” He took one shot and blew bottlecap off the line.

My brother and I were stunned. “I’ll bet you can’t do that with your next shot,” Grainger said.

“You first,” Dad said walking away. 

My dad retired in 1969 and my folks moved to Austin where my brother and I were in college. By the mid-70s, my mother’s mother’s health failed. Nanny Mine, as my cousins and I called her, was in her late eighties. My folks rented an apartment in Houston near her home in the old Montrose.

One weekend in the early 1970s, my dad decided to pay Nannie Mine a visit. As he walked from the apartment to her house, two men appeared from behind, punched Dad, knocking him down. They took his watch and wallet and left him there.  “They were experts,” he said anxiously when I saw him soon after. “They could have killed me.”  

Several months later my parents visited my sister Robin and their house on 13th Street. near the Bowery in New York City. The neighborhood was  frequented by prostitutes and drug dealers. When Dad took Robin’s Weimaraner dog Eva for a walk, he was confronted by a much younger man. Dad told him something like, “If I don’t get you, this dog will.” The man walked away.

A few days ago I sent a draft of this post to my dear friend Andy Wilhoit in Houston.  He replied with an account of an event I had forgotten. I put it at 1969-70 when Andy and I lived near each other in Austin. To my dad’s actions displayed how bold he still was, despite his age and vulnerability. This story also speaks to my mother’s respect for his pride.

Your father was quite a man[, Andy wrote]. I think we spoke of this before but I don’t know if you remember the incident. We were together one day where you were living and if I remember right your mother called and said your father had his briefcase taken from [my] yellow mustang. She said some guy had called and said he had “found” it and wanted a reward for returning it. Your father had agreed to meet by the [University] COOP on Guadalupe to exchange. She was alarmed so you and I quickly drove down to support him and step in if needed. We stood a way off( I remember us taking off our shoes and prepping to step in if needed). We watched from about two stores away. We saw your dad walk up and a young guy approached him and the exchange went fine. Your dad went back to his car and left never seeing us or knowing about your mother’s call. We were glad it was just a shake down and not a stick up.

My dad spent his last decade with my mother in a beautiful home at the summit of Red Bud Trail in Austin. The house had a long lawn leading to a pool perched on a bluff that offered a fine view of the Colorado River and the Capitol. He and Mom travelled to Europe and California. They formed lasting friendships with good people and often visited by their many grandchildren. My last memory of the fighting judge was in in the rearview mirror of the U-Haul truck that Springer, Chris and I would take to Vermont to build a new home. Dressed in slippers and a burgundy robe, his silver hair freshly combed, he waved to us with a smile. I miss him every day.

 

A Memorial Day Letter from Cousin Ryland Howard about his father

Lieutenant Alfred Ryland Howard
Lieutenant Alfred Ryland Howard II

I received this touching email from cousin Ryland Howard some time ago. With his permission I am posting it on the family website today, Memorial Day 2018, to celebrate Uncle Ryland’s life and to honor his sacrifice.

For the younger generations who may not be familiar with the history Alfred Ryland Howard II, here is an article by his grand-niece Eugenia Kiesling: Uncle Ryland’s military service

Love to all and thanks to Ryland,
Sperry

Dear Sperry –

This means so much, not only to me, but to the children. They grew up with “Alfred” as they called him. Their way to differentiate him from me. My mother kept his memory in the forefront of my life throughout. As I have said before, I said the Lord’s Prayer, “My Father who art in heaven…” Well, he was. So I did my best to keep Ryland’s memory for his grandchildren. I never had a problem with having two fathers. It all made sense. One died for his country and the other lived serving his country. One was in heaven and one was on earth. I knew I was the child of the first and not the second, but that I was blessed to have them both. Ford treated me as his son. The children were in a way too young to really know Ford and appreciate his great sense of humor, but I have done my best to let the kids know what he meant to me and why.

These children really understand the warmth and connection among the Howards. I know it was not all warm and fuzzy, but they did a pretty good job. Each of Aunt Jean, Aunt Georgia, and Uncle Philo became special friends and soulmates to me over the years, and so for Uncle Wilmer, Aunt Mary, and Uncle Brother. I cannot think of a time where there was an awkward silence in my conversations with any of them. We just talked with mutual respect and shared feelings; communication came naturally.

The Howards were so special to my mother. She revered Nanny Mine and looked to her for counsel over the years. She respected the wisdom and skill of Dr. Howard. And she so appreciated the warmth of having this family as hers. She had grown up without a permanent home, with her father gone at age 5, living across Europe, in and out of schools and hotels, with her grandparents and aunt gone by her teens. You can imagine what this warm Southern family meant to her. When she married Ford and was going to Houston to introduce him to the Howards, she was very concerned about their reception of the person who was taking the place of their revered lost son. She called Georgia to ask how to handle it. Well, as Aunt Georgia told me, the Howard family swept Ford up. They loved him from the get go and he fell in with Philo, Wilmer, and Brother each on their own. That is just the way they were.
So, as another family half-orphan (I never thought of myself as such; just had two fathers), how could I have been better blessed.

I did not have to endure the loss of my father. He was always there; but not there. I did not dwell on it. But Mother endured it and the tragic loss to Daddy Philo and Nanny Mine must have been brutal. Timing. The last letter from Ryland to his parents, dated June 30, 1944, was cheering for everyone just learning that Uncle Philo was alive, and relatively safe in prison camp. So, almost up until Ryland’s death, they did not know that Philo was alive. He must have been MIA until then. From the date that he was shot down over Germany until then, he could have been dead. And so soon after the good news came the really bad news. No hope there. Just faith, and the comfort that a son was on the way, to be some solace in this time of sadness.

If you saw the movie saving Private Ryan, the opening scene after the Omaha Cemetery and the landing is the house on the prairie and the car driving up and the officers getting out of the car and the mother, who looked and dressed rather like our grandmother, realizing why the officers were there and collapsing on the porch. That was pretty strong you are there stuff. It was too close to home, that home on 3608 Audubon, JA44961. We can only imagine how that hit. Uncle Dwight Hunter said that people told him later that Dr Howard was in shock after that and would just look at people and say “My son is gone.” There is a description in the biography of Joe Kennedy of when he learned that his eldest son Joseph was killed in the war. The same thing happened to Mr. Kennedy. Total loss for a time. Something gone that will never come back, no matter how strong one’s faith in God. We can only imagine.

So much for my train of thought. I will stop here, and thank you for bringing so much of this family back to all of us.

My regards, Ryland

Hedy Lamarr Meets Judge Hunt

Here Come Da Judge

In April of 1959 famed actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr found herself in Judge Hunt’s court suing her husband Houston oilman W. Howard Lee for divorce.

This from the Houston Chronicle April 15, 1959:

Miss Lamarr’s three appearances in Judge (Wilmer) Hunt’s courtroom Tuesday constituted an impromptu fashion show that was dictated in part by climatic conditions.
When she first came to the courtroom at 9 a.m. for the docket call, Miss Lamarr wore a bright red wool suit, thong sandals and a black scarf tied under the chin and worn like a babushka.
Returning shortly before 11 a.m. for the actual start of the hearing, she wore a tailored black suit with white beads and a yellow coolie straw hat over the babushka.
After the noon recess of court, she returned with an orange-red sweater under the suit coat and a salmon scarf in place of the coolie hat and black babushka.
The next day, Hunt awarded Lamarr $3,000 a month in temporary support, far less than she had originally sought.

The Houston Post reported
Within minutes after Judge Hunt announced his decision in the packed courtroom, Miss Lamarr walked over, smiled and chatted with Lee.
Asked by bystanders if she did not think a handshake was in order, she replied: “Why not? No hard feelings!”
Lee, apparently abashed, smiled and shook her gloved hand gingerly.
The niceties didn’t really end their legal squabbles, which continued off and on for at least the next 10 years.

Note: Here’s the source blog:

When Hedy Lamarr called Houston home

Jeana’s day in divorce court

[I found this in one of my mother’s steno books from around 1951. The photo is from the 1940’s  ~ Sperry Hunt]

Judge Hunt and Jeana 40sRestaurant

My husband is a judge. I was waiting to have lunch with him. He was trying a divorce case. He denied the divorce, and added, looking straight at me, “Young man you have had nothing worse happen to you than any of the rest of us.” The whole court room howled.

[Click below to open the image.]

Jeana’s Day in Court