During afternoon rush hour on a sweltering mid-June day, five cars heading east on Texas 121 in Frisco line up at a red light at the intersection with Custer Road. As the drivers wait for the light to change, a 64,000-pound cement mixer barrels down the two-lane highway. The truck…
Call it the little airline that could–if someone only would let it. Legend Airlines basically had its wings clipped before ever taking to the sky. The airline that launched a thousand lawsuits after announcing plans to fly long-haul service out of Love Field has been caught in the acrimonious, costly…
Dallas public school moms are mad as hell. Not all the mothers who send their children to DISD, mind you, and not even all the moms who serve on the PTA, those tireless saints who give their blood, sweat, tears, and baked goods to their children’s schools. No, the moms…
Like a sad old movie queen who wears her lipstick askew and smells of mothballs, the Astro, Dallas’ only remaining drive-in theater, has seen better days. Located in an industrial section of southwest Oak Cliff, the Astro sits on 21 acres of weed-choked asphalt. On the timeworn marquee, the letters…
The last thing John McLemore wanted to do was work another weekend. The Waco TV reporter had spent the entire month of February in Houston covering the grisly murder trial of serial killer Kenneth McDuff, and he was looking forward to some quiet time at home with his wife. So…
Taking a page from Investigative Reporting 101, former City Councilman Bob Stimson, who is running a heated race for the District 4 County Commissioner seat against incumbent Ken Mayfield, decided to check out rumors about the loosey-goosey way his opponent has allegedly run his office during the last four years…
On the surface, William Campbell, Ricky Dale Thomas, and Adonis Baxter have little in common. Campbell is the mayor of Atlanta; Thomas is a California short-order cook and onetime petty thief; Baxter is a Richardson High School graduate who was charged with capital murder in the shooting death of a…
Here we were, two intrepid reporters from the Dallas Observer, sitting in a small, dark library next to the chambers of state District Judge John Creuzot as the wiry jurist prepared to jab sharp needles into our ears. “All you’re gonna feel is a minor prick in your ear,” Creuzot…
Early on a mid-October day in 1991, Phyllis Glazer barreled down Highway 155 on the way to her son’s elementary school in Winona, an East Texas hamlet northeast of Tyler. Her 9-year-old son, Max, had forgotten his math textbook the previous day, and he was determined to be at school…
When Cheryl Kellis learned that plans were afoot to convert the 12,000-square-foot Baptist church across the street from her tidy frame house into a music club and restaurant, she feared the worst–loud music, traffic jams, and weak-bladdered stumblebums turning her front lawn into a latrine. Owners of The Palace and…
Torrential rains lashed the crowds that had gathered outside the state prison in Huntsville, two disparate camps that had come to noisily support and prayerfully protest the execution by lethal injection of convicted murderer David Wayne Spence in April 1997. Inside the death chamber, the 38-year-old beefy, blue-eyed Spence would…
Elected officials often project one image to the world and another to those who know them intimately. When those two images collide, the effect can be quite jarring. Just ask Dallas Morning News reporter Craig Flournoy. One can only imagine Flournoy’s shock and/or glee when he learned that his office…
Earlier this month, the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport Board awarded a $95,000 contract for an outside financial audit of its books and accounts to KPMG Peat Marwick. The accounting firm then subcontracted 25 percent of the work to two minority firms–in keeping with the airport board’s goal of trying to spread…
In the early-morning darkness, Kathy Krasniqi, a stout woman in a pretty print dress, waits on the front porch of her Richardson home. Her feet swollen like sausages from working double shifts at a hospital cafeteria, she gingerly makes her way to the car. With her hobbled gait, puffy eyes,…
Fahim Minkah doesn’t know what to tell the children. They were counting on him, believed in him, and now they don’t think he can deliver. The former Black Panther, auto mechanic, and community organizer promised the children in South Oak Cliff that he would help make their lives better. He…
In early November 1993, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport was about to take a small but important step. The board members presiding over the world’s second busiest airport were poised to approve its first direct contract with a retail business owned by a person of color. It was a significant gesture…
For the last decade, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s free Easter concert on the greensward of Lee Park in the heart of Oak Lawn traditionally has been a marriage of the ridiculous and the sublime. This year’s concert was no exception. As always, the event began with the Pooch Parade–dogs of…
The $750,000 Ross Perot-funded survey of what’s good and bad about the Dallas Independent School District has become a giant Rorschach test. Every conceivable group has found something about it that offends them. The PTA governing board and two teachers’ unions voted recently not to support the survey. Then last…
Eddie “Junior” Lovejoy’s short life and violent death are the stuff country and western songs are made of. Big dreams, cheating hearts, cold blue steel, long-suffering widows–just the type of material Lovejoy himself liked to sing while strumming his mandolin. With his pretty-boy looks, lush voice, and aim-to-please manner, Lovejoy…
With little fanfare, Ross Perot launched his plan to rescue the embattled Dallas public schools. In January and February, a team from Sirota Consulting, a New York-based firm specializing in rehabilitating Fortune 500 companies, not ragtag urban school districts, held focus groups throughout the district to find out what was…
For Charles Townsend, war, as the saying goes, was hell. Among the first troops deployed to the Middle East during Operation Desert Shield in August 1990, Townsend worked long days in blazing sun and menacing sandstorms to set up a base camp in the Saudi Arabian desert. Repeated fogging of…
More than a year has passed since 16-year-old Misty Murphy scuffled with a black schoolmate at Madison High School after he called her a “redneck peckerwood” during a class discussion on slavery. Following a trip to municipal court, where Misty was acquitted of assault charges for scratching the boy with…
