Jim Cleamons, head coach of the Dallas Mavericks, is quick to answer. His voice is soft and reflective; his phrasing, slow and measured. It’s a question he’s thought about often, ever since he began playing basketball as a young man in Lincolnton, North Carolina–“down South,” he says of his birthplace–and…
Among Dallas schools administrators these days, it seems no one is beyond reproach. Now even the DISD internal police are under investigation. Wesley Owens, the chief internal auditor at the Dallas Independent School District, confirmed that he expects to initiate a preliminary investigation this week into allegations that some $10,000…
Dallas Observer staff writer Thomas Korosec is this year’s winner of the Philbin Award for newspaper coverage of legal issues in Dallas. Korosec won the $500 award for his January 9, 1997, cover story about plaintiff’s attorney Brian Loncar, “Smash ’em and smile”. The brash lawyer is well known in…
No black-velvet Elvis? Yvonne Gonzalez, the jailhouse-bound former Dallas school superintendent, showed up attired entirely in black–a la Johnny Cash–for her arraignment last week at the federal courthouse. Unfortunately, such understated styling was not her way in January when she did all that furniture shopping for her home and office…
Councilman Don Hicks is between a dump and a hard place. Pleasant Grove homeowners are furious with Hicks because for the last several months he has been meeting with T.E. Frossard Jr., a Highland Park developer whose family owns 40 acres of arid, hole-filled land in Pleasant Grove next to…
Barry bad deal After reading an advance copy of the Observer this week, I must comment that the Switzer article [“Losing it,” October 16] seemed spineless, comfortably floating pro/con reasons why he can’t motivate the Dallas Cowboys. This analysis of the Cowboys’ losing streak may be comforting to all the…
It takes a lot to shock Jerry Bartos, but what the former city council member and foe of government waste, special interests, and dirty politics heard this day was alarming even by Dallas standards. A cranky fiscal conservative who had become the city’s most vocal opponent of the Wright Amendment,…
For a moment before dawn last January 18, Heath Green toyed with the idea of playing hooky from work. Green, a 25-year-old pipefitter apprentice, considered not showing up at his job installing pipe for a subcontractor hired to help Texas Instruments, Inc. expand its semiconductor manufacturing facilities in North Dallas…
Robert Gessel and his family made some carefully calculated choices in buying a home in east Plano in 1991. They wanted a neighborhood with hills and trees. They wanted minimal noise and traffic. And they wanted as much green space as possible, which they found in Bob Woodruff Park, a…
Go down Moses Paul Fielding, the former Dallas City Council member headed to the federal pen on charges of fraud and extortion, persuaded a judge last week to postpone his scheduled prison-entrance date. His excuse for delaying his trip to the pokey? Fielding wanted to be a free man to…
Not content to let Dallas school trustees corner the market on racial skirmishing, Dallas City Hall seems ready to reclaim a bit of its old territory, even if it needs a largely symbolic issue to do it. The subject: a proposal to rename Oakland Avenue, which runs from Deep Ellum…
Dr. Death As the proud owner of a cat, I was deeply upset to read of Dr. Lucas’ abusive and unethical violations of health, safety, and trust [“Dr. Lucas’ little shop of horrors,” October 9]. My heart goes out to everybody whose beloved pets were injured by this monster. Dr…
Just off Sylvan Avenue along Muncie Avenue is the West Dallas neighborhood of used-to-be. Looking at it today gives some glimpses of its very recent past. There was a time when the neighborhood had the trappings of community. Houses were fixed up, painted in the bright colors of the African-American…
C’mon, this is bullshit!” goalkeeper Hank Henry is screaming, his voice resounding through the empty arena. “There need to be two guys against the wall.” He steps out of the goal and literally grabs two young players, shoving them in their proper positions. “Like this! Here!” These young acquisitions seem…
Paul Skendrovic cannot forget that smell–the thick stench of death and rot that met him as he entered the eerily quiet house. The Arlington police detective had been dispatched around 10 a.m. on February 2 shortly after a neighbor called to complain of a “bad odor.” What he saw as…
Neener, neener, neener Long before Dallas public schools superintendent Yvonne Gonzalez began being measured for a prison jumpsuit (size not-petite), Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price was going about town dishing out servings of crow. (The phrase “I told you so” tastes so sweet rolling off the tongue.) Price, in…
The star chamber Your article on Judge McBryde in the October 2, 1997, issue of the Observer [“Temper, temper”] has been read, thoroughly. Thank you for an extremely well-written report on a complex and arcane subject. The statistical disclosures of the efforts of the U.S. Department of Justice to make…
Sitting around a table in the back room of the Charco Broiler in Pleasant Grove, the three men and one woman fidget a bit, aware of the tape recorder’s little red light. All four are members of LULAC–the League of United Latin American Citizens–and they are a little uncomfortable talking…
Soothing the savage beast Finally, something harmonious, melodic–hell, downright soothing–is emanating from 3700 Ross Ave., Dallas Independent School District’s central office–not to be confused with the set of The (Not So) Young and the Restless. What accounts for the sweet tunes? Well, it’s not that school board members have suddenly…
Race and powerlust Thank you for the quality of your coverage on the DISD-Dr. Gonzalez story [“Hunter or prey?” and “City of ignorance,” September 25]. You appear to be searching for facts and truth, as opposed to generating rhetoric and instigating inflammatory race-baiting and conflict–unlike The Dallas Morning News and…
In some ways, John Henry McBryde, federal district judge for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, seems destined to spawn a constitutional crisis. Though he was born in Jackson, Mississippi, McBryde grew up in Fort Worth and in many ways personifies the mythical Texan: He is tall, dark,…
It has to be one of the oddest moments in the annals of modern medical diplomacy. Standing over platters of cheese cubes and bowls of guacamole in the refined quarters of the faculty club at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Kern Wildenthal, the center’s distinguished but…
