Waco History Podcast

In September of 1936, much of Central Texas was enduring heavy rainstorms and flooding, with Waco especially hard-hit. Cresting at 41 feet, the Brazos River burst through a levee a mile above town, resulting in a torrent that put much of East Waco under water. Approximately two thousand residents were left homeless, and city manager W. C. Torrence ordered martial law in the flooded area. Alva Stem, former director of Waco Parks and Recreation, recalls the floodwaters in Cameron Park: "The flood was up to one of the shelter houses just below Proctor Springs, and that was as close as we could get to the playground because the water was up above our heads by the shelter house. And I can remember us kids going down there and taking our bathing suits and swimming out to this shelter house, then climbing up on top of it and diving off into the floodwaters, like crazy kids would do. But we were good swimmers back in those days." Waco native Frank Curre Jr. shares his memories of the '36 flood: "And they boxed off ou

Passenger rail travel in America enjoyed its heyday in the early 1900s, carrying at its peak in 1920 an estimated 1.2 billion passengers that year. Trains made travel possible and relatively comfortable even in inclement weather, something no other method of transportation could offer at the time. In 1911, Texas became the state with the most railroad mileage, a position it has not relinquished. Mary Sendón of Waco recalls a train ride she took around 1908: "When I was about seven, my father and my Grandmother Kemendo took me with them to Houston on a train. And that, to me, was the most wonderful experience I ever had in my life. My grandmother had relatives there. And I had never been anywhere on a train. I didn't know what a train was like even. And I remember my grandmother got train-sick. She was riding backwards; that's what did it. Well, there was a doctor on the train, and he said, ‘Well, just let her lie down on this—' It wasn't a divided seat; it was kind of a bench. And they let her lie down to res

Before television and computers monopolized our free time, chasing police calls was a popular hobby. People needed only a radio, the knowhow to tinker with it, and a car. Charles Armstrong, a lifelong radio enthusiast and Waco resident, explains how he and wife Ruth had access to police dispatches through the 1940s, 50s, and 60s: "They was on AM, but they were up high on the band. On your car radio or house radio, you could turn it far as you go plumb up to the end of the band. You could take you a screwdriver and go in the back, and you could change the frequency. You could raise it up a little bit by using what's called an antenna tuner, and you could reach the police department. You could hear them on there dispatching. So we could listen to them, and if it was anywhere close, we'd get in the car and go. "And then it didn't last very long. I guess people got to bothering the police department and maybe too many people following them, so they went to FM, frequency modulation. I run up on a ad in one of the

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson. Dr. Stanley E. Rutland served as president of Paul Quinn College from 1969 through 1976. Under his leadership the college enjoyed many improvements, among them accreditation for the first time with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in 1972. Dr. Norman G. Ashford describes the climate of Paul Quinn in 1971, when he came on board as a biology professor: "I remember well one time where we had a meeting in the evening where we were going over the accreditation procedures and the required reports, et cetera. Well, we started meeting, I believe it was at seven o'clock in the evening, and that meeting lasted till two o'clock in the morning. So it gives you an idea of the events taking place." Dr. Rowena Keatts explains she was working as a cataloger in the Paul Quinn library when Rutland enlisted her help in getting the college accredited: "He walked down there and walk

The GI Bill is a term often associated with the years immediately following World War II, but it has existed in some form or fashion since then. A revamped version approved by Congress in 2008, known as the Post-9/11 GI Bill, has given new life to the program and increased the number of veterans on college campuses throughout the country. Brandon Ewing served in the marine corps for five years and entered Baylor University in 2009 on the new GI Bill to pursue a bachelor's degree in economics and international studies. He describes his experiences as a student veteran in a 2011 interview: "I purposefully gave up my college-age years—I guess typical college-age years—to go into the military and to do that, but you still—those years are formative and they still make you who you are, and so, you know, I still went through the same kind of thing in the military. So when I come out of the military and go into college then I'm put back with people that are just going through that. So I always feel like I walked back

The clothing industry in the United States was at its peak in the mid-1900s. Reports show that by 1957, Americans were spending more than $25 billion annually on clothes, nearly twice the amount spent on automobile purchases and eight times the figure spent on private education. Waco was home to several clothing factories during this time that employed many women—companies like Hawk & Buck and J. M. Wood. Estelle Pederson, who moved to Waco in the early 1940s, worked for nearly forty-five years in the clothing industry, much of that time as an inspector. She describes the demands of the work: "They wanted you to make production, and that's for sure. And you really had to work hard to make production because if you didn't make production they would lay you off sure as the world. And, well, I was lucky all those years. I made production most of the time. But I mean it wasn't fooling around. I mean you had to work. And they inspected your work, and if they find a repair they throw it back at you. They'd get on t

Madison Cooper is a legendary figure in Waco. He put the city in the national spotlight in 1952 when his novel Sironia landed on the New York Times' Best Seller List and was known about town as an eccentric bachelor. But Cooper's greatest contribution to Waco was his philanthropic spirit, from sponsoring civic programs to establishing the Cooper Foundation in 1943 for the purpose of bettering Waco. Martha Lacy Howe, great-niece of Madison Cooper, visited as a child the Cooper home on Austin Avenue, now home of the Cooper Foundation. She recalls the housekeeper: "Bertha was there. After Mrs. Cooper passed away, Madison asked Bertha if she would stay and do laundry and serve him meals. And she was thrilled to do that. She lived in the garage—up at the top of the garage. And she was a wonderful cook and a lovely person. And she would call my mom—we lived on the other side of the lake—and she said, ‘Next time you come in town, come to the house, and I've made some cookies,' and—or one time a big cake. I mean, you

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé. Merriam-Webster defines philanthropy as "goodwill to fellowmen; especially : active effort to promote human welfare." The word is by no means new. The ancient Greeks called it philanthropia and thought the idea was the key to civilization. Waco is fortunate to claim several philanthropists as its own. Jim Hawkins, founder of J-Hawk Funding Corporation, reflects on why he gives: "The only difference in our community and any other community is the people in it. And those people can make the difference. And if you share with the community to build a better community, it's going to pay off. You're going to—you're going to get gratification many times over. That's what makes it so, for me—to—when I go through town now and see the projects that they said that we couldn't do, that we've done. You know, I never will forget in 1965 when I was president of the chamber of commerce—junior cha

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé. For most families during the Great Depression, Christmas was not a time for extravagance. Money and jobs were difficult to come by, and it was all some families could do to keep food on the table. Retired Baylor physics professor Robert Packard remembers how hard times called for creativity. He describes a plan he came up with while visiting his cousins in the Temple area one Christmas during the Great Depression. Children looking forward to Santa's visit this year should not listen to the following: "They lived in the country. And so Christmas, when it came, we got no presents. We might get a bag of—an apple or something. So I told my cousin, I said, 'Why don't we kidnap Santa Claus? He's got all these gifts, and he bypasses us, but he brings us something.' So we went to bed on Christmas Eve early. The bedroom I was in—and I was the only boy, and my sister and then my cousins wer

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson. In Tennessee in 1866, a year after the Civil War ended, six Confederate veterans formed an organization called the Ku Klux Klan for amusement. Shortly after, local Klan groups began popping up all over the South and quickly became synonymous with hate and terror. Klan activity began to taper off in the late 1800s, but shortly after World War I began, a new Klan emerged and flourished nationwide, boasting around five million members at its height in the early 1920s. Avery Downing, former superintendent of Waco ISD, recalls the prominence of the Klan in Northeast Texas in the early 1900s: "The Ku Klux Klan problem was an extremely sensitive and explosive issue in my county, very muchly so. And my family was anti-Ku Klux Klan from the word go, absolutely. And you have to understand that that meant considerable criticism from many, many, many others in the community because Ku Klux

Dr. Slaon talks with Rev. Dr. Malcolm Foley about the barbarism of lynching and Jesse Washington in Waco Texas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé. Everyone loves a good ghost story, especially when it involves their neck of the woods. Around the summer of 1915, South Waco found itself with a resident ghost. Mary Kemendo Sendón, who was in high school at the time, recalls when her aunt first spotted the other-worldly figure: "She had been sitting by the window that night. And the next morning she told my mother, she said, ‘You know, I saw something down the street last night. I think I saw a ghost. I was looking out the window,' and says, ‘I was half asleep, and all of a sudden I saw this figure in a long, flowing, white robe coming down the street.' And she said, ‘I got up to get a better look, and by the time I got up, that figure disappeared.' Well, my mother thought maybe it was a dream that she had, you know, and no more was said. Well, and another night or two passed, and the same thing happened." News of the mysterious

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson. For more than a century, the majority of American women were denied the right to vote. Scores of determined suffragettes who wanted to reverse this injustice spoke out through publications, lectures, rallies, and appearances before legislators. Finally, these efforts paid off with the ratification in August 1920 of the Nineteenth Amendment, which states, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." Anna Gladys Jenkins Casimir was a student at Baylor in 1920 and recalls events surrounding the ratification: "I remember parades they had in Waco, and there were a lot of women dressed in white on a float, and they were carrying banners or saying, ‘We want the right to vote,' or something like that. I remember how thrilled my mother was that she got to vote in the 1920 election. She was

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé. At one time, the approach of cold weather signaled for many rural Americans in the South the time to begin planning for the annual hog-killing. It wasn't pretty but provided food for the coming winter months. Louise Murphy, who grew up in Falls County in the twenties and thirties, describes some of the preparations involved in a hog-killing: "We would have to get the old pot full of hot water and get us a barrel and get us a place to hang this hog. We had to have a cold day to get it so we could get our meat cold." Thomas Wayne Harvey recalls what his father did before killing a hog in October of '44 in Waco: "He had to dig a pit. And what he did, he went and got a fifty-five gallon drum and he dug a pit and he put the drum in there at a forty-five degree angle. And at the bottom end of the barrel, he built a fire pit that would heat that drum, and he'd fill it full of water until

Dr. Sloan talks with Dr. Bracy Hill about Waco Hunting History Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson. Pirate radio stations in the U.S. were born when President Taft initiated federal regulation of the airwaves in 1912. Navy ships had been complaining that unlicensed broadcasters were interfering with their transmissions. Even with the new laws in place, pirate stations continued to pop up all over the country, for radio was still relatively new and full of magic and possibilities, and equipment was easy to build. Charles Armstrong recalls the influence of his after-school stops by a local radio store in Waco in the thirties: "There was a little shop down on the corner of Thirteenth and Clay, and I'd just go by there on the way home from school and go and talk to him. I was real interested in it. And when they'd have the boxing matches they had, you know, way back there, well, a lot of people was interested in them, and I despised them. And so I made me an old device I could kn

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé. The origins of Americans riding the rails in search of work trace back to shortly after the Civil War, when ex-soldiers and others sought work on the frontier. Their numbers rose sharply during the Great Depression, when jobs and money were scarce. These hobos became common sights in transportation hubs like Waco. Charles and Ruth Armstrong, both longtime Waco residents, explain their impressions of hobos during the thirties: C. Armstrong: "Most of them was good people. They was kind of like the homeless. They wasn't out to hurt anybody." R. Armstrong: "At that time, see, it wasn't anything unusual. I mean, everybody was in about the same boat because everybody was having a hard time." C. Armstrong: "And, see, they called them ‘hobos' regardless. Some of them was hobos all they wanted to be, kind of like the homeless. There's some of them that want to be. And some of them was trav

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson. White lightning, hooch, mountain dew, firewater—all names for moonshine, or distilled spirits made in an unlicensed still. Although moonshine is most often associated with Prohibition in the U.S., the practice as we know it began shortly after the formation of the country, when people were attempting to avoid the new federal tax on alcohol. CBF missionary Earl Martin recalls his encounter with a moonshine still in the late forties, when he was teaching in eastern Tennessee: "I was traipsing in the mountain trails in an area that wasn't too well-known to me, and I suddenly came on a moonshine still. And it was—it was—the fire was going, and it was smoking. But I didn't see anybody because they heard a stranger coming, and I suddenly realized the danger of the situation because to discover a moonshine still back in those years—and since I was from Washington, DC, I could have bee

Prior to the days of refrigeration, people the world over relied on ice to keep perishables fresh as long as possible. The ice business was certainly alive and well in the American South, especially in summer months. Waco native Helen Geltemeyer recalls the trips she and her sister would take in the twenties and thirties to keep their house outfitted with the frozen substance: "What Allene and I did, went up Seventeenth to Ross, and they had a man who sold ice. And he had these little two-wheeler things that he would let you take home if you brought back. So Allene and I would go get that little old piece of ice and take it home, and we'd fight all the way there and fight all the way back. But that's the way we got our ice." Geltemeyer remembers the event leading up to a new contraption in their kitchen: "Then when I was fourteen or maybe—yeah, I'd say I was fourteen and going to South Junior, my daddy said, "We're buying an icebox because I'm tired of wanting a cold drink.' And he'd been working in the yard

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Maze. When KWTX-TV first went on the air in 1955, it was without a network affiliation, a situation no one in the industry envied. But being an independent station was in some ways a blessing in disguise, as it forced KWTX to focus on local creative talent for programming. One of the resulting series was The Harley Berg Show, a wildlife program that became a staple for many Central Texans during its twenty-four-year run. Former KWTX-TV news director Win Frankel describes the show: "Everyone in Central Texas knew Harley Berg. He was on for many, many years. It may have been about snakes or raccoons or whatever it was, and there was always one there. Whatever he was talking about, was a live one there. He explained all about the snakes and all the wildlife that ever came around here. It was very well done." One particular episode of The Harley Berg Show stands out in Frankel's memory: "An