Dulles High School in the 1960s

I got a note from Mark Schumann (DHS '76) saying the Class of '76 is having a reunion on August 6th from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM at Regal Ranch in Stafford. They've invited the classes of '75 & '77 to attend. If you want to RSVP, send me an email message or post a comment to this blog entry, and I'll get your message to Mark.

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos or memorabilia for '76, so I'll post some ancient history from the school's first decade. (My thanks to Linda Hagler Mosk for these scans.) This first clipping comes from The Fort Bend Mirror, published in May of 1962. The Dulles Band was doing good things even then.

Here are some of my classmates ('68) who were elected home room officers in our freshman year (1964/65).

Here's a program from the Powder Puff football game played in the spring of '67. You can identify the hosses -- they have asterisks by their names.

Here are some of my classmates who were in the Senior Spotlight of The Viking Shield in 1968.

Old Time Sugar Landers

These two clippings come from the quarterly bulletin of the Belknap Brookside Civic Association. (My thanks go to the Laird family for letting me scan them.) They are short interviews with old-timers living in the Brookside area of Sugar Land.

This first is a short, 2002 interview with Tillman Lewis, Sugar Land's long-time dog catcher. (He picked up our family dog once.)



This second is a short interview with the Alaminskys from 2006.

Sugar Land State Bank Burglary, 1967

I don't remember this at all. Thanks to the Laird family for providing the clipping, which comes from The Houston Post.

Assembled Panoramic Pictures

Tommy Laird stitched together the photos I posted last week. Now you can see them as a complete panorama. (I wish Google would allow better magnification, but you can go back to last week's entry to see better detail.)

I don't have an exact date, but this photo must show Sugar Land just a little after 1908, when the Kempners and Eldridge took over the sugar company from Col. Cunningham. I noticed in the last week's photos that the railroad tracks are very close to the road (which would eventually become Highway-90A). In fact you can't really see the tracks, so look closely at the bridges over Oyster Creek.

Here's a passage from Harold Hymen's, "Oleander Odessey," his book on the Kempner family. I.H. Kempner's son Harris had this to say about visiting Sugar Land around the time this photo was taken:

"Harris remembered how he and his father would board the big interurban trolley from Galveston to Houston, then 'we took a taxi cab across town to the Southern Pacific Station, and then we got on the train to Los Angeles -- the Sunset Limited. There was a railroad at Sugar Land and [it] had a gate there. When they knew we were coming, they shut the gate, the train stopped, my father and I got off, they shut the Pullman car door, raised the gate, and off they went. Mr. Eldridge was there to meet us and took us to his big country-style house right in the middle of the sugar company property.'

He also recalled being terror-stricken one night by a 'huge monster getting into the room making an awful noise' -- a passing freight train that sounded close enough to be right in the bedroom with him."

[They stayed with Eldridge in the Ellis Plantation home in front of the refinery, which you can see it in the panorama.]

DHS Class of '71 - 40th Anniversary Reunion

I got a note last night from Carl Sanders, a '71 graduate of John Foster Dulles High School. He wanted to let everyone know they are having a reunion on August 6th. Here are the details:

Date & Time: August 6, 2011 6-9PM

Location: SWINGIN DOOR in Richmond Texas

Admission: $25 per person - BBQ MUSIC BYOB

I have Carl's email address for RSVPs, but I don't want to put it on this blog & chance he'll get spammed. If you have my email address, contact me & I'll give you his email address. If not, post a comment to this blog & I'll make sure he sees your response.

To pique your interest, I've posted a few photos from the satirical edition of the Dulles student newspaper published on 4/1/1971. (Here's the complete paper - it's pretty funny.)

Viking Relay Court Candidates



Selected photos of '71's Who's Who Graduates

People of Sugar Land Over The Years

Dr. & Mrs. Leslie Wheeler with Jonellen & Buddy.



Mr. & Mrs. George Morales, Sr.



M. R. Wood.



I recognize a few people: Nan Miller, Jimmy Miller, Mrs. McFadden, Lillian Grohman, Albert Grohman, Eunice Thomas (?), & Mrs. Archie Milam. (Update) Jackie James confirmed that the woman on the far left is Nan Miller - not Mrs. Pirtle. I wondered if I'd made a mistake, but I didn't recall Mrs. Miller's hair as being that gray.



Haywood & Bertha Davis.



John Nugent, Everett Schrum, Wayne Landin, Matthew Hall, Sam McJunkin. Bottom row: Mitchell Hall & Tom Hamlin. (1961, or '62?)



Jackie James & Leon Anhaiser. (Update) Jackie said the picture was taken at her family's home in 1956.

A Multi-Photo Panorama of Early Sugar Land

I think these photos are segments of a continuous panoramic photo. (Notice the damaged area in the tree on the left-hand side of the 1st photo & the right-hand side of the 2nd.) The Ellis Plantation Home is in front of the refinery, so these pictures date no earlier than 1908.

The camera is located roughly where Bayview Street is now located -- the eastern bank of Oyster Creek south of Highway 90A. (The latter is an unpaved road.)

Notice the Sealy Mattress factory in the 2nd picture. Also notice the water towers located on the refinery site in the 3rd photo. The last photo shows the west bank of Oyster Creek where the beginning of Venice Street is located. (Between Highway 90A & Guenther Street it's just a side walk; the street begins south of Guenther along the creek bank.)

I understand that Colonel Cunningham's plantation home stood somewhere in that area -- out of view on the left of the last photo. Maybe the white shed & fence along Brooks Street were part of his home site?

Interior of The Char House

I found these photos in the Seitz-Plokuda archive. (My thanks to that family.) I think the first photo shows Frank Seitz on an upper floor of the Char House feeding melted sugar into the filter column, which will remove the impurities in the liquid raw sugar. I've visited the Char House several times recently, and I'm pretty sure that's what he's doing.

In the old days, the column would contain bone char. (I don't have a date for these photos.) In later years the column contained diatomaceous earth. Regardless, the liquid sugar would flow down the tall column and the char/earth would remove the impurites.

The filter process relied on gravity drawing the liquid sugar through the filter. I've read somewhere that gravity-flow filtering was obsolete when the Char House was competed in 1925. Refining technology had incorporated infusion techniques by then, which forced the liquid down the column and (I assume) sped up the process. Maybe Leon Anhaiser, or someone else can help me out here.

I think the second photo was taken on the 1st (or a lower) floor of the Char House. Those look like pumps, so maybe they forced the liquid sugar to the upper floors where Mr. Seitz was shown feeding it into the top of the filter column?

(Update) I got this note from Leon Anhaiser explaining the 1st photo: "The picture on the top of the Char filter is a mixer filling device used to wet the bone char with sugar liquor as the filter is being filled with bone char. The char had to be wet before it entered the char filter to avoid dry spots and allow even proper flow. Filter aid was never put in a char filter since it would stop the flow of sugar liquor. Leon"

(Update) I got this note from Leon Anhaiser explaining the 2nd photo: "The second picture is of the granulators. This is where the sugar is tumbled dried as wet sugar entered one end and came out the other end dried. Steam heated air was forced through the drier and evaporated the water from the tumbling sugar crystals. The picture you see is of the sugar feed end. Notice the steam gauge which controlled the heating of the air. Leon"

Sugar Land Volunteer Fire Department

I found these photos of the Sugar Land Volunteer Fire Department in the Anhaiser archive. The first picture was taken in 1948, as indicated by the label. I recognize several faces, but not all of them. I never went in the old fire house, which stood just east of the first Eldridge home by the Char House. The second photo may date from the '50s or '60s. Again, more faces I recognize, but not all of them.



These next photos show the old fire truck ridden by EVERY child in Sugar Land at Christmas time. You see Soapy Borowski and Johnny Plokuda in the first picture. I assume the rides started in 1952, when the 'new' shopping center opened. Maybe the last photo dates from '51 or '52 when they started the tradition.

Visco News, April, 1956

I'm sorry I don't have a higher resolution scan of these clips. If you're interested in reading them, you may have to get a magnifying glass.

They come from the Visco (Nalco) employee newsletter of April, 1956. It included a history of the company. I've scanned just a few paragraphs of the history in the first image. It says that Visco had a lot of problems in its early years with patents and legal issues. They had a plant in Houston, but the City objected to the sulphuric odors produced by their operation, so they moved out to Sugar Land. Old-timers know all about that.

The issue included a photo of Visco as it looked in 1956, which you see in the second scan. There were articles about John McCord and Albert Henry, long-time employees at the Sugar Land plant. By the way, Visco had another plant in California. Company headquarters were in Houston. (Visco was a division of Nalco.)

Football Record May Be Challenged Again This Year

Every year when football season rolls around there seems to be a challenger to Kenneth Hall's records. Here's an article about the latest challenger.

Link to CBS Sports Article

The Imperial Inn

I spoke recently with Dorothy Topolanek Humphreys (SLHS '48), & she said she'd never seen good pictures of The Imperial Inn. I thought I had several pictures of it, but I found just one. It came from T. C. Rozelle, Jr.'s archive. He also had a photo of the same area after The Inn was destroyed by fire in 1947. (It shows the gravel road that would become Oyster Creek Drive. The photo's date is sometime in the late '40s, I think.)

The Inn was the Thatcher Plantation home that stood in the Grand Central area southeast of town. I don't know details, but sometime in the early part of the 20th century it was moved to the east bank of Oyster Creek near the current intersection of Bayview & Highway 90A. It served as a boarding house & community center. Imperial & Sugarland Industries relied on rooming houses to accommodate employees through the years, especially before 1920 when they built permanent housing to attract families & a reliable workforce.

I'm certain I have a picture Mr. R. M. Laperouse took of The Inn as it burned in 1947. I haven't found it, so I've included a similar (or maybe the same) picture from the book, Sugar Land: A Pictorial Tribute, published in 1986 for the sesquicentennial celebration. The book has other good pictures of The Inn, in particular one which shows it's early configuration. (Apparently, The Inn was remodeled at least once.)

I know The Inn served as a venue for dances & dinners over the years. The following article comes from the Sugar Land school newspaper, Campus Chatter, published in December, 1928. It recounts SLHS's football banquet after their 2nd football season. Unfortunately, someone clipped a paragraph from the article, but what remains is pretty interesting in my opinion. I wish I knew who won the watch.

August Chernosky's Garden

Earlier pictures of Oyster Creek Drive spurred interest in the gardens that lined the east bank of the Creek near the intersection with Highway 90A. This is the area where Bayview now intersects the Highway, roughly where The Imperial Inn once stood. As I recall, the garden plots began just south of Buddy Wheeler's former offices & stretched farther south over land that's now occupied by houses. These weren't small gardens; they were fairly large, as you'll see.

I wish I could remember all the people who grew vegetables there, but I know one of the Binford brothers had a garden, as did August Chernosky & the Wheeler family.

(Update) I received this note from Mark Schumann. Many thanks for the info: "Another person who had a big garden on Oyster Creek Drive was Louis Mutina. The Mutinas lived across the street from us on Sixth Street, and whenever it was harvest time and they had a bumper crop, some of his kids would carry vegetables in a wagon and sell them to the neighbors."


Terrell Smith sent me the following photo which appeared in the Fort Bend Mirror published on June 20, 1968. August Chernosky had quite a potato crop. Terrell said August told him the ground there was very loose & fertile, which is not surprising since silt dredged out of the Creek was pumped on that spot on at least one occasion, I think.

Sugar Land High Reunion - June 24, 2011

(Update) This article on the reunion appeared in the July 7th issue of The Sugar Land Sun.

Friends & alumni of Sugar Land High School met at The River Bend Country Club on June 24th for a 'mini reunion'. It was a sort of a spontaneous event because planning began in the first week of June. Several out-of-towners attended: B. I. Webb, Ray Barton, Ron & Trinka Miller, Tim Husbands, Kenneth & Gloria Ross Hall, Thomas Fonville, Barbara Burns McKinney, Betty Parker Prasatik, Jon & BJ Binford Pitts, and Frank Rogers. I hope I didn't leave anyone out. B.I. & his wife Charlotte drove from South Carolina, so they won a prize for traveling the farthest. (Leon Anhaiser kindly contributed the prize.)

Oral historians from the Fort Bend County Historical Commission attended & recorded interviews. The following pictures (contributed by Diane Ware) show a few interviews & interviewees.

The 1st shows Tim Husbands, Hal Husbands, & Darryl Couvillion talking with JoAnn Cangelosi Hargroves. The 2nd shows Thomas Fonville & John Frierson. The 3rd is of Billie & Buddy Blair talking to Pat Pollicoff. Trinka Helmcamp Miller is in the final picture. I haven't talked with the historians, but I've heard they recorded 26 informative interviews.

This is a video album of still photos shown at the reunion.