It was a hot, humid night in Atlantic City two years ago, the kind of evening that grafts damp fabric to skin. Ralph “Pete” Hunter was working at Trump Plaza as a valet. This was the summer before his senior year at Virginia Union University, a long while before the…
Harold Holigan and his son Michael, who have ridden a nationally televised home-improvement show to minor Dallas celebrity, are being accused by their equally well-known investors of diverting proceeds from the show and using them to build a huge Preston Hollow mansion. Olympus Real Estate Partners, which was founded by…
I am not–repeat, not–a band-aid. Little Grizzly and I are just friends. Really, really good friends, because somehow we survived 72 hours in a van with no air conditioning, playing two packed shows and mostly sleeping on floors. Little Grizzly wasn’t even almost Almost Famous when it left Denton for…
Choking on AsbestosCourthouse parade: Our country’s economic recovery is being shaken by yet another generation of asbestos litigation (“Enough to Make You Sick,” September 26). Over the years, dozens of companies have been forced to file for bankruptcy, erasing thousands of jobs. Yet the courthouse parade shows no signs of…
Coming up with the Best of Dallas issue you hold in your hands is not an easy task. Using vigorous testing and complex statistical analysis, our highly paid team of expert critics combs the city, carefully computing myriad factors that determine which nominees deserve the coveted title “best.” OK, so…
Little did Ronald Bailey know that his handiness and inquisitive mind would one day kill him. The Fort Worth native had a knack for understanding mechanical things. So as an engineering student at the University of Oklahoma in the early 1960s, he took what he thought was a great work-study…
CEDAR HILL–On ordinary days as the arrival of autumn begins its faint whisper through south Dallas County, they go about their lives like most in this slow-moving suburban community of 30,000. Dr. Paula Brumit welcomes patients who arrive at her small strip-mall dental clinic with a smile and first-name greeting,…
The cell phone crackles some as he drives down the highway, and there’s a foreign beeping noise muddling the conversation at times, but that doesn’t stop him from merrily rolling through an account of his post-career résumé. After a few unfortunate years away from the Mavs, Derek Harper has finally…
“You can’t put a dollar value…on keeping our regular teachers in the classroom,” said Dallas school board President Ken Zornes in a Dallas Morning News story about efforts to reduce growing absenteeism among teachers. Laugh, cry or cuss–what exactly are we supposed to do when we’re told that teachers in…
StoopidGangstas, yours and mine: First off, thank you, Jeff Liles, for telling me what I, as an African-American, thought of N.W.A. (“Straight Outta Left Field,” September 12). I know you guys at the Dallas Observer don’t like The Dallas Morning News, but don’t use one of their articles as an…
Goofy Golf Most writers long to golf or have a cushy TV job for a living. David Feherty, who lives in Dallas, went the opposite route: After golf, he became a CBS Sports commentator, columnist for Golf magazine and now, with A Nasty Bit of Rough, a novelist. Feherty, unlike…
Inside offices at the 60-year-old Dallas Naval Air Station, insulation and tiles dangle from holes in the ceilings of buildings ruined from years of neglect. Books, old manuals, papers, overturned desks and obsolete equipment clutter unused offices. Yellowed directives from the 1990s are tacked to fallen bulletin boards. From the…
One August morning last year, a woman heading out to fish along the banks of the Trinity River stumbled upon a partially buried human skull. Dallas police and a representative from the medical examiner’s office soon were at the scene, looking at the skull. The medical examiner dug up the…
I am not a business reporter, I know nothing of your “high finance” and I have only 38 minutes to write this column–yet I am going to tell you more about why Tom Hicks is selling the Dallas Stars than The Dallas Morning News has to date. So buckle up…
The laugh was his first sign of emotion. He wasn’t rude before, and he didn’t come off as disinterested, but he wasn’t flailing around with his hands, leaning forward or nodding, either. No, Herbert Perry was just sitting back in one of those comfortable black leather chairs that dot the…
We once heard a boxing commentator suggest doing away with fight judges and replacing them with 10-year-old boys. Where a panel of adults can watch two guys slug it out for 12 rounds and still not agree who won, your basic fourth-grader–having presumably more firsthand experience with the action–tends to…
New, Improved Michael IrvinMoving: I thought your treatment of Mr. Michael Irvin’s life and struggles was excellent (“Back in Bounds,” September 5). Straightforward, moving and void of the sort of clichés such a story often breeds. Neither condemning nor glorifying, the facts were objectively presented, and a strong, compelling article…
Race StoryDirty and ashamed: I know exactly how Jim Schutze felt as a child (“Crossing Division Street,” August 22). I grew up in rural Michigan, and one day I asked my mother if I could have a friend over. When I told my mother my friend’s name, she replied, “No…
On a recent August evening, 16-year-old T.J. Davis retreated to his room, stretched his 6-foot frame across his bed and stared silently at the greeting card that lay on a nearby end table. Finally, he picked it up, propped it against one of his textbooks and began to write. The…
The more David Spence spoke, the deeper the hole he dug himself before the Dallas Ethics Advisory Commission. When he was finally finished, the dirt he’d kicked up had soiled his neat suit. On September 6, Spence appeared before the six-member commission to answer charges that he violated the city’s…
He doesn’t look like a troublemaker. Doesn’t really talk like one, either. Not at first. The morning workout took a lot from him, maybe, and so he’s preoccupied with hydrating himself, quickly slugging back a cup of dirt-colored sports drink. Shirtless, wide receiver Antonio Bryant sits at his corner locker…
WWJD? One in an occasional series (meaning we’ll do it when we get around to it) in which we ask important Dallas questions of Jeff Liles, a local guy who’s been in bands and stuff and is sort of semifamous. Jeff, what do we do with Reunion Arena? How about…
