Vernon Johnson is leaving his $125,000-a-year gig as superintendent of the Richardson Independent School District at the end of March to become the chief executive officer at Voyager Expanded Learning Inc. To hear him describe it, leaving the school district to take a job in the public sector–working for a…
On his birth certificate, Dwight Martinek uses his legal name, the one that reflects his grandparents’ Czech roots. But on the streets of the East Texas town of Canton, Martinek–a large, ponytailed, sculptor-turned-theme-park promoter–introduces himself as “Wild Willie.” Sure, the handle’s hokey. Martinek borrowed it from a now-defunct Western-style department…
Driving west on Highway 67, Victor Morales has the sun at his back and a St. Patrick’s Day parade on the horizon. Early this Saturday morning, the grandson of Mexican immigrants stuck a shamrock in his lapel, slipped a toothbrush in his pocket and set out in a 4-year-old Nissan…
Four years ago, Greg Vaughn’s 13-year-old daughter, Holley, came to him with an age-old problem: the-night- before-the-term-paper’s-due blues. “You’ve got to help me,” a panicked Holley said to her dad, after apologizing for waiting until the last minute. Her assignment was to write about Sam Houston, the colorful, controversial president…
School for scandal As a guest-substitute language-arts and college-prep teacher at Townview Magnet Center [“The truth about Townview,” March 14] for an extended assignment shortly after the school opened last September, I got a bird’s-eye view of the excitement, concerns, and challenges the students and teachers experienced as they embarked…
Looking at him, standing in front of a roomful of college kids, there is absolutely no question that this is the Pied Piper of local higher education. “Everyone with us?” he says, eyeing his students as he rocks back and forth on his brown loafers, shirt sleeves rolled up in…
Short fuse Columbia Pictures publicists for Dallas’ hometown-to-Tinseltown success story, Bottle Rocket, recently ran afoul of People magazine critic Leah Rozen. Rozen called Rocket a movie of “raffish charm,” and compared its feel to that of The Brothers McMullen. She added, in print, “There’s a note at the bottom of…
While I sat through a four-hour, Friday-night meeting of the Christian Coalition earlier this month, I searched hard for the sinister folks who have infiltrated Texas’ Republican Party. I scanned the fellowship hall of Northwest Bible Church, eyeing the faces in each row of those $20 padded “stacker” chairs that…
The jerry curl is dead. Once the royal crown of black hair styles, coveted by men and women alike, the curl is now a dinosaur, found mostly in rural outposts of the South. A combination of chemicals in a clear gel base, the curl was an innovative perm that transformed…
Scrappy, self-assured, and quick with a quip, Dallas defense attorney Tom Mills has spent the better part of his 23-year career defending people charged with wire fraud, money laundering, bankruptcy and insurance fraud, and other white-collar federal crimes. Generally, the guy likes the thrill of a good courtroom fight. On…
Bill Palen, a local P.R. executive with Fleishman Hillard, offered this counsel to Southwestern Bell Telephone general manager Tom Morgan, on the date of the Observer’s publication of a cover story by Miriam Rozen about “Project X”–a set of billing practices that former company employees allege were racist. Those making…
Dailies brace for Arlington war The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has made its first major move to meet The Dallas Morning News’ impending invasion of Arlington. Gary Hardee, the well-regarded deputy executive editor of the Star-Telegram, will replace Mike Blackman, who took over the large Arlington bureau less than a year…
The enigma of John Wiley Price Re: your notice on the Rev. Zan Holmes’ appearance at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal church [“Buzz,” March 14]. in which you implied an Anglo fixation with the enigma of John Wiley Price. In fact, the prominent clergyman, who happens to be African-American,…
So has the illusion of a big, prosperous, and happy family. The jurors who assembled in U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeff Kaplan’s federal court in Dallas on January 9, 1996, were in for a bizarre spectacle. Before them sat well-known Dallas businessman Comer Cottrell and his wife Isabell, defendants in a…
It was a cold, bleak 7:45 in the morning–the second Monday in January, the first day of school after the winter break–and Townview Center, the most expensive, most eagerly awaited school ever built in Dallas, was being picketed for allegedly grave racial injustices being perpetrated inside. Newspaper, TV, and radio…
By the beginning of December, with pressure on Watson mounting, a new and much more formidable ally stepped onto center stage on her behalf: County Commissioner John Wiley Price. It is no accident that Price’s two biggest racial battles this past year have involved Ora Lee Watson–at Parkland Memorial Hospital,…
Don’t even think about it, mayor Sometimes Buzz marvels at what life in Dallas has done to its citizens. Last week, a seemingly bright, articulate woman called with a question. “I’ve called everywhere–city and county–and no one seems to be able to give me an answer,” she said. “So, I…
The city of Dallas’ overwhelming problem with false burglar alarms became abundantly apparent this past January when Ivey Head’s 77-Drive-In Cafe on South Industrial Boulevard burned to the ground. A controversy ensued because a police dispatcher had refused to respond to Head’s alarm company’s call for help because the city…
A document the A.H. Belo Corp. recently filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission flatly contradicts a key Dallas Morning News executive’s published explanation for the demise of the paper’s Sunday magazine. On November 15, 1994, The Dallas Morning News published a story on page 10D of the business…
Get up offa that thing I just read the article, “Single with children” [February 22], the story of Linda Koop and the two boys she took in. I could say a lot of negative things about some of the players in that piece–but my hat still goes off to her…
Neighbors think the old man who lives at the corner of Cortez and Thornberry might be a little crazy. His house is falling down, its paint is fading away, and plastic tarps cover holes in its crumbling wood-shingle roof. The old man’s yard, jammed with lumber, pipes, bricks, scaffolding, and…
Editor’s note: This is the final week Molly Ivins’ column will appear in the Dallas Observer. We are forced to discontinue her column because the management of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has ordered her syndicate to yank it from our pages. The Star-Telegram took the action after the Observer published…
