Historic Temple

HISTORIC TEMPLE 

An Illustrated History 

by Patricia K. Benoit 

A PUBLICATION OF THE TEMPLE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

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HISTORIC TEMPLE 

An Illustrated History 

by Patricia K. Benoit 

Commissioned by the Temple Chamber of Commerce 

Historical Publishing Network 

A division of Lammert Incorporated 

San Antonio, Texas

❖ 

A Santa Fe locomotive steams into town from the north west. Woodson Field is to the right. 

COURTESY OF THE TEMPLE PUBLIC LIBRARY. 

First Edition 

Copyright © 2009 Historical Publishing Network 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing 

from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Historical Publishing Network, 11555 Galm Road, Suite 100, San Antonio, Texas, 78254. Phone (800) 749-9790. 

ISBN: 9781893619968 

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2009922004 

Historic Temple: An Illustrated History 

author: Patricia K. Benoit 

contributing writers for “Sharing the Heritage”: Eric Dabney 

Historical Publishing Network 

president: Ron Lammert 

project manager: Joe Bowman 

administration: Donna M. Mata 

Melissa Quinn 

Evelyn Hart 

book sales: Dee Steidle 

production: Colin Hart 

Craig Mitchell 

Charles A. Newton, III, 

Joshua Johnston 

Roy Arellano 

Glenda Tarazon Krouse 

PRINTED IN SINGAPORE 

2 ✦ HISTORIC TEMPLE

CONTENTS 

4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

5 TEMPLE, TEXAS: “THE CITY WITH A FUTURE” 

62 SHARING THE HERITAGE 

126 SPONSORS 

127 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

127 ABOUT THE COVER 

❖ 

Dunbar High School football team poses in the 1930s with their panther mascot. Dunbar fielded its first gridiron team in 1924 under Coach C.C. Sampson. The school colors were 

purple and white. 

COURTESY OF THE SCOTT & WHITE ARCHIVES. 

Contents ✦ 3

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

Writing the history of Temple is like trying to chronicle a beehive—so many different individuals working simultaneously to give 

structure and meaning to the whole. Likewise, so many diverse entities worked together and individually for more than 125 years to 

create our remarkable city. As residents of Temple, we are all the sum and substance of all those countless persons who have come before 

us and who contributed, albeit even in a small way, to our quality of life here. For them, I am truly grateful. 

To be sure, Temple’s history has been sometimes triumphant, scandalous, astonishing, messy, glorious, infamous, remarkable and 

rowdy—but never boring. This work may add, expand and explain some of what has already been written, but it is certainly not the 

final word. The definitive history of Temple has yet to be written. 

The photographs come from three sources: the Temple Public Library’s historical files, the archives of the Railroad and Heritage 

Museum, and the private collection of Weldon G. Cannon and Patricia K. Benoit. 

I am grateful to all those authors whose works were used as background and documentation: Raye Virginia Allen, Bertha Atkinson, 

James A. Bethea, Norman D. Brown, Martha Bowmer, Jim Bowmer, Weldon Cannon, Margaret Chapman, Alexander Dienst, Frank 

Grimes, George Dolan, H. C. Farrell, Odie and Laura Faulk, Alva Hooker, Alan Jones, Dayton Kelley, Oscar Lewis, E.A. Limmer, 

Clinton Machann, Clyde McQueen, J. Bryant Messer, Nick Morris, Connally Neal, Kate Orgain, Robert Ozment, Victor Schulze, 

Margaret Mullins, Claire Myers Spotswood, Townsie Thompson, George Tyler, George C. Werner and the Temple Jaycees, plus more 

than 12 decades of reporters and editors from the Temple Times, the Temple Daily Telegram, the Galveston Daily News, and the Dallas 

Morning News, to name just a few. 

Likewise, this project could not have been completed without the support of many, many others: Ken Higdon and the Temple 

Chamber of Commerce; Craig Ordner of Temple’s Railroad and Heritage Museum; Temple Mayor Bill Jones; City Secretary Clydette 

Entzminger; Judy Duer and Michael Kelsey of the Temple Public Library; Penny Worley and the Scott & White Archives; the generous 

members of the Texas Jewish History Society; the Center for American History in Austin; the staff of the Bell County Museum; Visual 

Basics, eagle-eyed proof-reader Adrian Walker; supporter and dear friend Pat Ham; David Yeilding, Ph.D., who read the final 

manuscript for clarity; and my husband, Weldon G. Cannon, Ph.D., who read and edited every word. 

To all, thank you. 

Patricia K. Benoit 

❖ 

Square-dancing and other leisure time 

activities filled Temple social 

calendars in the twentieth century. 



TEMPLE, TEXAS: 

“THE CITY WITH A FUTURE” 

CREATING A CITY FROM NOTHING 

The “Queen City of the Prairie” was forged with steel rails and tempered by risk-takers’ sweat. 

Born out of the treeless waxy soil, the city of Temple emerged, as an 1895 newspaper reported, “lifted 

… from the harum-scarum new town ways into a city that had gained strength in adversity and that 

had never ceased to build and grow.” The history of the city that became the hub of Texas is the story 

of sinew and spirit—working people hammering out new visions of the future. These pioneers have 

been innovative leaders in transportation, agriculture, manufacturing and medicine. 

Some pioneers became opportunists, like Otto Karl Burwitz. A native of Germany who immigrated 

in 1867, Burwitz juggled various enterprises in rural Bell County. When Temple, Texas, began 

in 1881, he earned a peculiar distinction: he opened the first saloon to serve parched customers, 

one of the first businesses in the new railroad town called Temple, just two miles away from the 

tiny northern Bell County agricultural community of Birdsdale. The year before, he and the other 

few Birdsdale residents noticed the activity a couple of miles east on Jonathan E. Moore’s acreage. 

Tucked alongside meandering Bird’s Creek, Birdsdale was a loosely organized fusion of farmers 

centered around a school, a church, a few general stores and a post office, which had opened in 

January 1873. 

That was the same year Galveston businessmen, hungry to expand their trade, organized the Gulf, 

Colorado & Santa Fe Railway Company. The company’s ambitious plan included bypassing Houston, 

a commercial rival to the Gulf port city, to stretch rails northwestward. The projected route would 

cross the Brazos River near Columbia and run through Caldwell, Cameron and Belton on its way to 

the western boundary of Texas and its terminus at Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, where builders 

planned to connect with the Denver and Rio Grande. Two years later, construction began from 

Galveston, and the Santa Fe Railway inched closer and closer to Central Texas every day through the 

power of human brawn and sinew. Three large gangs of construction laborers completed a mile every 

twenty-four hours. 

❖ 

A bird’s-eye view of Temple shows the 

city square at the right, where the 

Temple City Hall is now located. 

COURTESY OF THE CANNON/BENOIT COLLECTION. 

“The City With a Future” ✦ 5

Established in 1850, when it was carved out of 

Milam County, Bell County was mostly “a vast 

prairie covered with tall waving grasses and 

mesquite trees, except for scattered farm homes 

here and there, and a number of small villages, 

including Belton, Salado, Mount [Vernon], 

Oenaville, Pendletonville, Old Howard and 

others,” said Lucy McGregor, speaking in October 

1921 to the Temple Woman’s Parliament, part of 

the Temple Chamber of Commerce. 

No doubt, Temple’s founding radically 

changed the entire region. According to an 1895 

Dallas Morning News article, “Previous to 

[Temple’s founding in 1881], Bell County was 

virgin to the embraces of the mighty civilizer, 

the iron horse, and her fertile black prairies 

were only here and there dotted with the 

farmers, of adventurous tillers of the soil, who 

repudiated tradition and emerged from the 

creek bottoms to tickle with the plow the broad 

bosom of the grassy prairies.” 

In June 1880, railway officials trekked to 

Belton, the Bell County seat, to garner financial 

assistance to run the line into the city center. 

Belton citizens eagerly pledged their support 

and raised earnest money to entice the railway 

to head westward into town. Belton, after all, 

was the kind of established city enterprising 

railroad companies liked: nearly 1,800 

residents, daily mail and stagecoach service, 

three newspapers, an opera house, five schools, 

steam grist and flourmills, two hotels, 13 

grocery stores and three banks. By July 1880, 

the Santa Fe’s tracks intersected with the 

International and Great Northern Railway in 

Milam County. Belton citizens knew in only a 

matter of time steaming trains would be 

chugging mightily into town. 

However, on August 13, Santa Fe Railway 

president George Sealy bought 200 wide-open 

acres of Jonathan E. Moore’s farm eight miles 

northeast of Belton and just two miles east from 

Birdsdale. Surveyors busily began laying out the 

town lots, flanking the line’s westward extension 

with a new route heading east of Birdsdale. 

Belton citizens looked on in disbelief: After the 

promises and financial inducements, the railway 

was heading up to a treeless prairie, where the 

line would branch, west to Santa Fe and north 

to Fort Worth. Birdsdale citizens, on the other 

hand, smelled opportunity. Burwitz and others 

set up temporary businesses along the periphery 

of the proposed town to peddle wares to 

construction workers. Ever enterprising, 

Burwitz opened a saloon in a canvas tent near 


❖ 

Opposite, top: A postcard of 

early Temple. 


Opposite, middle: The original Temple 

High School building, built in the 

1880s, housed all upper grades. 


Opposite, bottom: Automobiles started 

appearing more frequently with the 

city’s first street paving endeavor in 

1910. These Model A cars are parked 

along Main Street. 


the railroad tracks. A post office opened near the 

railway’s new site in January 1881. 

The Santa Fe’s Chief Engineer Bernard Moore 

Temple busily supervised construction of 359 miles 

of track from Arcola to Fort Worth and Lampasas. 

He had first joined the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe 

Railway Company as surveyor. After his 

appointment as chief engineer in 1878, Engineer 

Temple built lines to high standards and pushed 

construction rapidly. Along the route, the railway 

established towns, many named for railroad 

officials, stockholders and promoters—Buckholts, 

Pettibone, Rogers, Heidenheimer, Killeen, 

Goldthwaite, Moody, and McGregor, among others. 

Left: Horse-drawn buggies complete 

with early autos for parking spaces on 

Main Street prior to 1910. The tracks 

of the Temple-Belton Interurban run 

along the streets. 


Below: An advertising brochure 

published sometime between 1910 

and 1915 touted Temple as “the 

Coming Metropolis of Central Texas” 

with its expanding population and 

importance on the Santa Fe Railway. 



❖ 

Above: A steam locomotive crosses 

South Main in the 1890s. In the 

background are the Harvey House 

and the Santa Fe Depot, before it was 

replaced with the present building. 


Below: Temple in 1889 was a flat, 

treeless plain. Homes were hastily 

erected and the Santa Fe Railway 

donated land for congregations to 

establish churches. 

COURTESY OF THE RAILROAD AND HERITAGE 

MUSEUM, TEMPLE. 

When the line reached the International and 

Great Northern Railway, Santa Fe officials 

proposed renaming Milano, located twelve miles 

southeast of Cameron, in honor of Engineer 

Temple, but citizens protested the change and 

insisted that the name of their community, 

founded in 1874, would remain as it was. 

Temple diplomatically demurred. Railroad 

officials then decided to name the proposed 

railway junction and town north of Belton and 

east of Birdsdale in honor of its chief engineer. 

The chief engineer consented and kept pushing 

the line forward. 

Although used as a shipping point, Moore’s 

former two-hundred-acre tract by no means 

could yet be called a “town.” The railway 

company, owner of the acreage, was busily 

surveying it into streets, blocks and lots. 

Undeterred landowners on the fringes of 

the town site began selling lots. Among 

them was Moore himself, who parlayed his 

former career as farmer into a more lucrative 

vocation of developer and real estate agent. By 

April 1881, the Galveston Daily News reported 

that the new area now called Temple had several 

new buildings in its proximity—a dry goods 

store, shoemaker shop, beef market, three 

schools and six eating-places combined with 

boarding houses. “In the eating and drinking 

line, Temple is well supplied,” said the 

Galveston newspaper. 

Everyone—especially Galvestonians—was 

optimistic for this fledgling development. 

Temple became the second most favored city on 

the Santa Fe line, next to Galveston, the 

company headquarters. The Galveston Daily 


News regularly carried news from Temple. “The 

citizens of this place and its vicinity are 

thoroughly progressive, and when the town is 

laid off and lots sold by the Santa Fe authorities, 

the march onward, in the way of building will 

be brisk,” the Galveston Daily News reported. 

“Not alone is this particular community 

desirous of making Temple a place of note, but 

the surrounding country generally seems to be 

imbued with the same desire. Hence it may be 

safe in estimating that we shall ship at least ten 

thousand bales of cotton during the ensuing 

season.” Two months later, the Galveston Daily 

News followed up: “The harvesting season, 

which has just passed, having been 

uncommonly favorable, the grain is all 

harvested, and the yield will be much better 

than was expected.” 

More important was the buzz across the state 

that town lots in this new town would soon be 

up for sale. “Parties from various portions of the 

state have been prospecting here with a view to 

locating, and all go away well pleased, and 

predict Temple will be a place of considerable 

note in the near future,” reported the Galveston 

Daily News in June 1881. Prospective buyers 

flocked to town as the locals prepared for the 

onslaught. Railway officials even erected a large 

pavilion for everyone’s comfort. By the next 

week the sale started under the direction of 

railroad agent J. H. Wheeler. 

The sale managers plied everyone with free 

food and drink, just to keep the spirits and 

expectations high. A crowd of about three 

thousand gathered on June 29—some interested 

buyers, others just curious, most just hungry. At 

times, the assembly grew raucous, especially as 

the summer sun heated up. Nevertheless, those 

present deemed the sale a success. 

“A hearty appreciation was manifest by a 

hungry and thirsty crowd of men who took 

positions in the front ranks and held them 

during the entire day at the comfortable expense 

of an immense crowd more modest,” reported 

the Galveston Daily News. 

When the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway 

sold the first town lots on June 29, 1881, J.H. 

Butcher of Galveston bought the first lot for 

$620. The Santa Fe’s chief engineer Temple, after 

whom the town would be named, acquired the 

second for $375. A Confederate veteran, Mr. 

Temple completed the rail line from Galveston to 

Fort Worth and was later the resident engineer 

for the Pecos High Bridge, considered the 

highest railroad bridge in North America and the 

third highest in the world. However, despite the 

❖ 

Above: Houses along South First 

Street in 1888 all had plank fences, 

mostly to keep livestock from 

wandering where they shouldn’t. 



Below: The Harvey House, a popular 

restaurant and hotel adjacent to the 

Santa Fe Depot. Early trains had no 

dining cars, so passengers 

disembarked for about 20 to 30 

minutes to eat. The Harvey House 

also became a popular gathering place 

for townspeople. 



❖ 

Right: Cotton was king until the 

1930s, when cotton blight and 

drought devastated the crops. 

Beginning in the 1880s, Temple had 

several compresses, which processed 

and shipped cotton throughout the 

United States and Europe. 


Below: Temple’s first business was 

Otto Burwitz’ saloon. Within a few 

weeks, other purveyors of libations 

opened their establishments. 

Detractors often nicknamed the town 

“Tanglefoot,” an apt description for 

drunken railroaders who stumbled 

through saloon doors. Newspaper 

accounts called Temple “hurly-burly, 

wide-open.” 



Opposite, top: The three-story Stegall 

Hotel (left) was a downtown 

landmark at North Third and West 

Central Avenue when it was erected in 

the late 1880s. By the early 1900s, 

McKnight Grocery opened next to the 

hotel at the corner of West Adams 

and North Third. Aldrich-Thomas 

Real Estate now occupies the 

McKnight location. 



Opposite, middle: Temple was the 

second most favored city on the Santa 

Fe Railway line in Texas, next to 

Galveston, the company 

headquarters. The stately 1910 Santa 

Fe Depot (back, left) and the Harvey 

House hotel and restaurant were 

welcome stops for travelers. 


Opposite, bottom: Railroad workers in 

the early 1900s take a break in front 

of the Santa Fe roundhouse. 

honor of having the town named for him, 

neither engineer Temple (1843-1901) nor his 

family ever lived in the city that bears his name. 

In all, 157 business lots and 28 residence lots 

sold at an average of $160 each. “This is destined 

to be a good town, having every facility to make it 

such,” added the Galveston paper. “Notwithstanding 

the great crowd, the hot day and a halfdozen 

fist fights, everybody left well pleased, and 

the Santa Fe has further demonstrated its efficiency 

in entertaining multitudes as well as building 

railroads.” Sales for the day totaled $28,000. 

By the next week, on July 7, a huge building 

boom exploded on the once-desolate prairie— 


seemingly overnight. Brick, stone and woodframe 

structures popped up on the horizon like 

shirt buttons. Sales agent Wheeler was pleased 

that sales remained brisk and inquiries poured 

in from eastern states. “So great is the rush that 

several families have moved here and are living 

in tents until they can erect dwellings,” reported 

the Galveston News. “One thing which is very 

much needed is a first-class hotel, and, strange 

to say, none has yet been started, but so good an 

opportunity cannot long remain open.” 

In 1882 the Missouri-Kansas-Texas line, 

nicknamed the Katy, was built through Temple 

east of downtown, while the Santa Fe Railway 

made the town a division point and located 

machine shops, division offices and a 

roundhouse in the heart of the city. A decade 

later, the Santa Fe and the Katy had tremendous 

economic impact on the county. The Santa Fe 

had more than 55 miles of track in Bell County; 

the Katy tallied more than 42 miles, with an 

assessed value of $379,193. That meant the 

county had nearly 100 miles of steel rails, with a 

value approaching $1 million. 

Since the town grew from the orderly minds 

of railway engineers and cartographers, 

Temple’s original street layout was set in 

logically ordered blocks in right angles to each 

other. Main Street bisected the east and west; 

Central, the north and south. Street names were 

numbers and letters. In 1895 the streets were 


❖ 

Above: The Missouri-Texas-Kansas 

Railway was completed through 

Temple in 1882, making Temple an 

important junction of two major rail 

lines in the state’s center. 


Below: The 1905 trolley tracks run 

along Avenue A, looking west. 


Opposite: Temple’s original street 

layout was set in logically ordered 

blocks in right angles to each other. 

This map shows the city’s street 

numbers before 1895, when streets 

were renamed and renumbered. 


renamed and renumbered. Thus, the streets east 

of Main were even-numbered; to the west, oddnumbers. 

North of Central, the avenues were 

renamed to honor local leaders and listed in 

alphabetical order—Adams, Barton, Calhoun, 

Downs and French; to the south, the streets 

were letters, Avenue A, Avenue B, and so on. 

This configuration allowed developers to extend 

its numbering and naming system as it pushed 

out its city limits. 

Because of its central location in the state and 

the intersection of two major rail lines, Temple 

attracted more people and commerce. Temple 

was the hub of “the immense rich territory that 

stretched unbroken by towns for a distance of 

many miles in the north and south and to the 

Brazos River on the east, a body of land that is 

unsurpassed in the world for fertility and a 

section that has rapidly settled up with the very 

best classes of farmers,” according to the Dallas 

Morning News. 

A new city described as “hurly-burly, wideopen” 

was born. It quickly became the preferred 

business center in the county, and certainly the 

most populous. By 1883, the Temple officials 

attempted to move the county seat from Belton, 



❖ 

Right: From its beginning, Temple 

streets were crowded with cotton 

sellers and buyers on the weekend as 

this 1891 photo of the northeast 

corner of North Main and Avenue 

A shows. 



Below: Train wrecks always attracted 

a horde of curious gawkers, especially 

this spectacular one just south of 

downtown Temple in 1909. 


Opposite, top: By the 1890s, 

downtown Temple, with its multitude 

of merchants, attracted shoppers 

looking for everything from farm 

equipment to high fashions. In this 

hand-tinted photo, a woman and her 

children try on shoes at Bentley and 

Smith Department Store in the 

early 1900s. 


Opposite, middle: From its beginning, 

Temple was nicknamed “Mudville” 

and “Tanglefoot,” because of the 

muddy streets and raucous behavior 

of railroaders imbibing too much. This 

scene shows the intersection of North 

First Street and Avenue A. 


Opposite, bottom: A men’s 

haberdasher fits a distinguished 

customer at Bentley & Bass 

Department Store in the 1890s. 

Bentley & Bass proprietors prided 

themselves on the latest fashions and 

fabrics from New York, which were 

shipped by rail. 



established in 1850 when the county began. After 

a flurry of meetings and debates, the measure 

died. This Bell County town almost overnight 

became a rough, tough town, hip-high in mud in 

rainy seasons and coated with throat-choking 

dust in dry seasons. Detractors nicknamed it 

“Mud Town” and “Tanglefoot,” an apt description 

for drunken railroaders who stumbled through 

saloon doors. Despite the buoyant optimism of its 

promoters and land agents, Temple, carved out of 

farmland by the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe 

Railway, faced challenges. Problems arrived bag 

and baggage with the growing population. 

Certainly the town attracted its share of 

kooks. The Temple Times reported in December 

1881 that “the mantle of the sage of Monticello 

has been inherited by a man in Bell County”: 

“Last Monday there was an old crank in town 

who claimed to be Thomas Jefferson. He said he 

was a candidate for the presidency of the United 

States, and mounting a goods box, proceeded to 

edify the crowd with his wisdom and eloquence. 

He was crazy, of course, but he was apparently 

as sane as the average politician of the day.” 

THE TOWN’ S ‘ CHARACTER’ 

Early on, the new settlement forged its own 

personality, unlike its older neighboring 

communities. “Temple has a ‘character,’ an 

individuality as set apart as are the character, 

force and impetus of a man or a business,” 

opined a 1923 Temple Daily Telegram article as 

it reflected on those early days. The character, 

the article continued, was a mixture of “pioneer 

spirit,” as well as “childish ambitions and 


eagerness” coupled with sheer progressive 

optimism after Texas emerged from a devastating 

war and reconstruction of the 1860s and ’70s. 

The Dallas Morning News in 1895 was more 

specific about the town’s persona: “A godsend to 

the town was that it did not immediately attract 

capital. Those who came here were poor men 

and in order to ‘go’ at all they had to rustle. The 

farmer when he came to Temple found a plain 

man to sell him goods, and too many anxious 

for his trade that they hunted him up, offered 

him inducements and in every way paid him the 

homage due the tiller of the soil—nature’s king. 

The bleaching bones of many business wrecks 

mark the path of Temple’s climb, and the fierce 

competition swamped the unfit. But ‘it was the 

makin’ of the city.’” 

Temple also gained a reputation for “cheap 

goods, for high prices for cotton, for hospitable 

treatment and for natural advantages as 

shipping and distributing point all united in 

building up a trade,” added the Dallas 

newspaper. Thus, the railway city was “lifted … 

from the harum-scarum new town ways into a 

city that had gained strength in adversity and 

that had never ceased to build and grow.” 

Helping to build the community and 

commerce were frequent fairs and parades, 

especially the annual “birthday celebration” in 

June, marking the town lot sales in 1881. “Among 


❖ 

Above: North Main Street and Avenue 

A was the commercial and shopping 

heart of the city. At the left is the First 

National Bank building, now the site 

of Extraco Banks. The spire in the 

background is the former First 

Baptist Church. 

COURTESY OF THE TEMPLE PUBLIC LIBRARY 

Below: Memorial Baptist Church, 

frequently nicknamed Southside 

Baptist Church, began in June 1892 at 

Avenue G and South Seventh. The 

founder and first pastor was the 

Reverend John Hill Luther, retired 

president of Baylor Female College, 

now the University of Mary Hardin- 

Baylor. The church name honored the 

preacher’s son, J. H. Luther, Jr., who 

died of tuberculosis at age seventeen. 


the big attractions and especially grand to the 

frontier prairie children who had never been 

anywhere, was the music of the brass band,” 

according to later newspaper reports. Since brass 

bands were scarce, festival organizers recruited an 

African-American brass band from Brenham. 

Visitors to town “found that the new town, selling 

for cash, and eager for trade, made lower prices 

than the older credit towns and what was probably 

greater weight, the country visitors found here a 

hearty personal welcome,” reported the Temple 

Daily Telegram about that first celebration in 1882. 

As if twice in a row made a tradition, an estimated 

sixty-five hundred folks came for the free barbecue 

and music, just as they did the previous year when 

the town lots were sold. However, this time, they 

stayed for the shopping, to the delight of 

merchants and purveyors of food and spirits. 

Temple’s first anniversary was the beginning of 

annual downtown parties and street festivals, 

filled with music, parades, food and speeches to 

help solidify the new community and assimilate 

residents who had moved to Bell County from 

somewhere else. Men gathered each Thanksgiving 

from 1893 to 1922 for the Temple Stag Party, a 

raucous evening of food and foolishness. Later, 


annual roasts and homegrown minstrel shows 

replaced the Stag Party. Not to be outdone, 

women banded together to have their own soiree, 

the Every Woman’s Party, perhaps with more 

decorum but just as many laughs. The Every 

Woman’s Party continued until the early 1960s. 

Contemporary accounts report that the 

celebrations grew each year. By 1891, when 

Temple marked its tenth anniversary, more than 

fifty wagons queued up in a grand parade. At 

Freeman Heights west of downtown Temple, an 

estimated 13,000 ate from a 1,400-foot-long 

table. The evening featured fire hose races 

between visiting fire departments and baseball 

games. The annual celebration, according to 

newspaper accounts, grew bigger and better each 

June. Over the years, Temple organized flower 

expositions, circus days and baby shows. In 

1931, when Temple marked its 50th anniversary, 

“the people of Temple have voted to take a day 

off,” said the Temple Daily Telegram. The paper 

added “One whole day [would be devoted] to 

having a good time and reconstructing as far as 

may be possible the days of ’81.” 

To read accounts by land developer Jonathan 

E. Moore, Temple in the 1890s was prosperous 

and clean, populated by progressive, energetic 

citizens who maintained their attractive town 

with civic pride. Yet, according to descriptions 

by Bell County historian George Tyler, Temple 

was a muddy, violent railroad town, where only 

the bullets sailing through the town square 

outnumbered saloons and gamblers. 

Underneath Moore’s hyperbole and gloss was an 

underbelly that kept town marshals, the only 

law enforcement, busy. Fights, burglaries, 

robberies and thefts were commonplace. 

Temple also had four-footed problems: Pests 

moved in, taking advantage of a growing 

population. By 1921, when the city sponsored a 

rat “round-up,” an estimated eleven thousand 

rodents met their doom. However, they were 

not the only pests. Rabbits ran rampant through 

the streets in the 1890s and early 1900s. On one 

occasion, everyone congregated at the 

downtown park and city square (now west of 

the present City Hall), but a local band refused 

to play until the city cleaned up and eradicated 

the rabbits. 

Undeterred, capitalists, industrialists and 

opportunists soon flocked to this new town, as 

did professionals, artisans and drifters. In one 

estimate, the Galveston Daily News reported by 

1885 that Temple was growing by two hundred 

new residents per month. By 1893, Temple’s 

doctors outnumbered its lawyers and saloons. 

By Land Agent Jonathan Moore’s reckoning, at 

TEMPLE 

FIRSTS 

❖ 

The stately First National Bank 

building, located at the intersection of 

Avenue A and South Main Street, was 

later replaced with a contemporary 

skyscraper. The bank is now 

Extraco Banks. 


The Santa Fe’s first commercial railcar pulled into town on September 1, 

1881. The engineer was James L. Stanton. 


TEMPLE 

FIRSTS 

BUILDING THE 

CITY’ S INFRASTRUCTURE 

Hillcrest Cemetery, located about a mile north of City Hall, is older than 

the city of Temple with marked burials dating back to the 1870s. By the early 

1890s, everyone called it “the City Cemetery.” Now comprising 70 acres, 

Hillcrest has five state historical markers and approximately 18,000 burials. 

least 16 medical doctors had hung up their 

shingles, while there were 15 lawyers and 15 

saloons. Temple also had three banks, five 

weekly newspapers, three cottonseed oil mills, a 

plow factory and a foundry. 

By the beginning of the twentieth century, 

Temple was growing up, according to Fred 

Stroop, who arrived in Temple in 1904 to work 

as business manager for physicians Arthur Carroll 

Scott and Raleigh R. White, Jr., co-founders of 

Scott & White Memorial Hospital and Clinic. 

Stroop summed up the city in the early 1900s: 

“Aside from the occasional mud, Temple was a 

healthy, happy and prosperous place to live. 

There were not many wealthy people there; 

neither were there many uncomfortably poor 

people. For the most part, the people were 

making money and investing in real estate, and 

such investments, both in the city and the 

country, were sure of enhancement. The people 

were thrifty. There weren’t so many things to buy 

then; so the people saved their money, bought 

property and prospered.” 

By fall 1881, less than six months after the first 

lots were sold, citizens unsuccessfully attempted 

to incorporate the fledgling town. Undeterred, on 

January 18, 1882, Temple’s new citizens 

presented to county commissioners a petition 

with fifty signatures requesting an election. Only 

119 residents cast ballots at the July 8 election. 

Although Temple was chockablock with people, 

few men were registered voters. Incorporation 

passed by three votes, 61 to 58. J. W. Callaway 

was elected first mayor in a subsequent election. 

As soon as the city government formed, officials 

started levying taxes. An occupation tax, an early 

hotel/motel tax, was the first to be assessed, 

followed soon after by taxes on saloons, gambling 

houses (then legal) and what the Temple 

newspaper called “other ‘businesses’ of allied or 

shifting character.” 

Once families settled into town permanently, 

two private schools opened, but citizens 

demanded public education. On September 24, 

1883, Temple residents approved creating a public 

school district, 114 to 2. Then, on December 17, 

voters approved a bond issue to buy an existing 

private school building for $4,392. The Temple 

City Council appointed school board members, 

and the city council regularly undertook school 

business. “Unfortunately, factional controversies 

retarded the development of the schools,” reported 

❖ 

First Methodist Church organized in 

1882, one year after the city of 

Temple was founded. This photo 

shows the interior of the original 

structure, which burned in 1911. 



George Tyler in his History of Bell County, “and the 

superintendency changed hands every year until 

Mr. W. T. Hamner was elected to that position in 

1888.” Shortly after, the school district also 

opened a separate school, the “Temple Colored 

School,” for African-American children, with 

Hattie Bledsoe as its first teacher. By 1900, L. J. 

LeQuey was named principal and his wife, E. C. B. 

LeQuey, a teacher. The railway also donated land 

to churches willing to establish congregations. The 

Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists and 

Catholics were the first to take advantage of the 

free lots. 

Temple, sporting a population of about five 

thousand in 1888, billed itself as “The Home of 

the Prosperous” and “Queen City of the Prairies.” 

Land agents’ brochures heavily promoted “a 

mammoth free school system; excellent churches; 

a three-story opera house, fitting-up grandly; a 

two-story railroad passenger depot—the 

handsomest in the state; and an improved cotton 

compress with an 800 bales per day capacity.” 

Centerpiece of downtown was the 1885 

Opera House, an imposing three-story multiuse 

brick structure. On the first floor at one end 

was a meat market; on the other was a large 

meeting hall for City Council sessions and civic 

groups. Upstairs was a performance hall, 

described as “a theater not surpassed in point of 

splendor and modern arrangements by any of 

the metropolitan theaters in the state.” The City 

Hall moved to the Central Fire station when it 

opened in 1895, and the Opera House burned 

in 1897. 

Temple sported a Young Men’s Christian 

Association, first established in 1888 as a club in 

a former mercantile store. City leaders 

convinced the Santa Fe Railway to donate $3 for 

every $1 raised from the community to build a 

new YMCA building, up to $10,000. The fund 

drive was successful, and the new YMCA 

building opened in 1899 on railway property 

near the depot. The impressive three-story 

Temple Y was a stately downtown landmark 

with dorms, gymnasium, bowling alley, reading 

room and offices. The building was also 

nicknamed the “railroad Y” because its dorms 

were usually booked solid with railroad 

workers. In 1934, fire destroyed the building. 

Businesses thrived as population rose. 

Among the businesses were a cotton compress, 

oil mill, plow company, ice factory, two bottling 

works, planing mill, stream wood chopping 

❖ 

Above: Grace Presbyterian, organized 

in 1893, held its first service in its 

first permanent house of worship on 

March 18, 1900. 


Below: The rebuilt YMCA building 

opened in 1899 near the Santa Fe 

Depot. The impressive three-story 

Temple Y was a stately downtown 

landmark with dorms, gymnasium, 

bowling alley, reading room and 

offices. It burned in 1934. 



factory, gristmill, cigar factory, three cotton gins, 

wholesale grocer, telephone and telegraph and 

five commercial loan companies. 

By 1901, Temple women joined forces to ask 

philanthropist Andrew Carnegie for funds to 

build a library, insisting they could help the 

wealthy industrialist “to die as he wished—a poor 

man.” Calling themselves the City Federation of 

Women’s Clubs, they formed a successful nucleus 

to get the library constructed in 1902. The 

impressive Greek revival Carnegie Library opened 

on the town square with a spacious auditorium in 

its top-floor dome. Then the women’s club 

disbanded. By 1915, at the rising fervor of the 

women’s suffrage movement, the City Federation 

of Women’s Club revived to coordinate the work 

of the women’s clubs, especially for education and 

civic betterment. Members met in a variety of 

locations until a clubhouse was completed in 

1948. Over the century, the federation led efforts 

to beautify the city with landscaping; worked for 

health and safety issues; organized youth 

recreational programs; supported educational 

reforms and social service programs; and 

provided leadership for arts education. 

Marking the end of its second decade, 

Temple still had muddy streets bogging 

downtown deliveries and even hearses heading 

north up Main Street to the City Cemetery, later 

renamed Hillcrest Cemetery. Figuring there was 

strength in numbers, businessmen decided to 

grapple with problems straight on. The first big 

project: Pave the sidewalks and streets. To make 

it happen, the businessmen banded together to 

form the Temple Commercial Club in April 

1907 as an organized effort to improve the 

city while boosting their enterprises. Working 

with city and county government, the 

Commercial Club, later renamed the Temple 

Chamber of Commerce, provided leadership for 

significant improvements. Cement sidewalks 

replaced plank walkways and, by 1912, they 

were widened. 

By 1910 nearly eleven thousand residents 

called Temple their hometown, and it was still 

growing. To increase trade and mobility, the 

Belton and Temple Interurban, an electric 

streetcar line, operated from 1905 to 1925. The 

north side neighborhood was home to many of 

the town’s physicians, attorneys and politicians, 

and North Ninth was called “silk stocking row,” 

perhaps a sarcastic pejorative. Trolley cars 

zigzagged through the city, connecting 

downtown with residential neighborhoods as far 


out as French Avenue to the north, Avenue H to 

the south, North Ninth to the west and Eighth 

Street to the east. By 1925, voters approved a 

major bond issue, which allowed the city to 

pave streets properly in concrete and later 

asphalt. Thus, the trolley clangs fell silent. 

Providing water was a tremendous 

engineering problem, sometimes with tragic 

consequences. A huge standpipe, located at the 

present site of the Kyle Hotel, holding 280,000 

gallons of water ripped apart about 3 a.m. on 

October 24, 1890, causing horrific damage and 

killing one person as he slept. Even the New 

York Times took notice: “Immense sheets of 

boiler steel, hundreds of pieces of scaffoldings, 

houses, barns, fences and all the debris of the 

surrounding neighborhood went floating and 

crashing in all directions,” the paper reported. 

“Lying out toward the street were 16 sections of 

the pipe, a great hollow cylinder 20 feet in 

diameter and other heavy boiler steel. The lower 

sections of the pipe were thrown in different 

directions. They were torn, twisted and 

crumpled. Several nearby barns and sheds 

washed away. The fences of the neighborhood 

are gone, and over the streets, alley and yards 

are scattered the contents of house and barns, 

while timbers are lying around in all conceivable 

shapes. All the houses around were flooded with 

water and several seriously damaged.” 

By the early 1890s, a pump station brought 

raw Leon River water into the city from an eightinch 

cast-iron water main. The city’s population 

swelled to more than seven thousand a decade 

later, and city leaders considered a city-owned 

water company. In 1907, voters passed a 

$150,000 bond issue, which put water service 

under a city-run board. The first task was 

constructing a plant to purify the muddy Leon 

River water, laying an 18-inch main, improving 

the reservoir and building a city pump station. 

In September 1908, the city purchased a block 

in Freeman Heights for a filter plant. 

❖ 

Opposite, top: Visitors to the 

impressive 1902 Carnegie Library 

seemed to be entering a “temple of 

learning” with its Greek revival 

architecture and artworks. 


Opposite, middle: Temple women 

joined forces in 1901 to ask Andrew 

Carnegie for funds to build a library, 

constructed in 1902. The impressive 

Greek revival Temple Carnegie 

Library opened on the town square 

with a spacious auditorium in its topfloor 

dome. 


Opposite, bottom: The dome of the 

1902 Carnegie Library was a popular 

gathering place for banquets and 

parties. It was also the site of the 

annual Stag Party, a men-only affair 

with music, speeches and skits. 


Above: Hitchhiker Grady Barton sent 

this picture to a friend in New York 

City, saying he is “taking it easy in the 

sunny south” in 1907. 


Below: Work crews pave the first city 

streets in about 1910, at first with 

bricks. Concrete and asphalt came in 

later years. Paving improved city 

traffic, especially during rainy weather. 



❖ 

Top: Temple High School auditorium 

in the 1930s seemed large and 

spacious at the time. Temple public 

schools officially began on June 13, 

1883, administered by the city council 

until the 1950s. 


Middle: Between 1910 and 1917, 

Temple’s north side boomed with 

elegant showcase mansions such as 

the Woodson house (left), completed in 

1916, which straddled North Eleventh 

and North Thirteenth Streets and the 

1913 Winbourne Pierce home on 

West Monroe. When they were 

completed, the houses were outside of 

the city limits. 


Bottom: Kindergarten students gather 

for a costume party in 1912. The 

“witch” in the center is their teacher. 



WHEN TEMPLE WENT DRY 

Temperance groups, spurred by churches and women’s organizations, made enthusiastic demonstrations in favor of outlawing 

“demon rum” and other alcohol bedeviling society. 

When Texas went dry in 1915, Temple citizens staged a victory parade starting at the Santa Fe Depot. First-hand accounts of the 

parade were provided by Margaret Chapman and Townsie Thompson in 1975. 

Pretty, young women in their finery graced the lavishly decorated buggies and horse-drawn wagons as the procession headed north 

up Main Street. As they rolled through the streets, they held up signs and banners: “Old King Alcohol Must Go,” “Mother Expects 

Her Son to be a Man,” and “Down with Saloons.” 

As they rolled along, the young women sang their “battle hymn,” aptly to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”: 

When Bell County licked the likker 

All the children became safe and sure, 

For the booze is supplanted 

By water that is pure. 

Glory, glory, hallelujah, Bell County’s going dry. 

Just as the spectacle advanced to the 100 block of North Main and sidelines were cheering wholeheartedly, the skies opened up 

and buckets of rain poured down up the festive group. “They would have continued all the way home, but it took considerable energy 

to plow through the wet mud of Temple during and after the rain,” the two authors recalled. 

In 1935, when Texas repealed prohibition, Bell County and Temple voted to remain dry. 

❖ 

Temple mothers in 1915 parade 

along downtown Temple in 

brightly decorated wagons in favor 

of prohibition. 



TEMPLE 

FIRSTS 

Ragtime composer Scott Joplin lived in Temple for an undetermined time from 1895 to 1896 and published his three early 

pieces—“The Great Crush Collision March,” “Harmony Club Waltz” and “Combination March.” The Crush collision was fashioned 

after a staged disastrous train collision on M-K-T tracks on September 15, 1896. Rail agents John R. Fuller and Robert Smith were 

his publishers, but Joplin reportedly disputed the copyright royalties. By 1896, he relocated to Sedalia, Missouri, where he negotiated 

a more favorable contract with another publisher. 


CURIOUS CITY ORDINANCES 

Temple’s early city council, attempting to maintain peace and decorum, passed several ordinances. The measures give insight 

into problems some citizens were trying to solve. Early records, however, do not indicate how many were enforced. 

Among the most unusual was one ordinance aimed directly at the president of the United States: All presidential trains were 

required to stop in Temple. This ordinance, passed in 1904, specifically targeted President Theodore Roosevelt who was on a 

whistle-stop tour intended to pass through the city. Council members passed the emergency measure, and Roosevelt’s train did 

make an unscheduled stop, where he spoke for five minutes. 

The Lone Star state must have impressed the president, because he later told local historian Alexander Dienst that he wanted to 

write a history of Texas when he retired from politics. 

Among other unusual measures the city tried to enforce: 

• Women were forbidden to wear long, loose-fitting dresses called “Mother Hubbards,” although “saloon girls” were allowed to 

wear revealing slit-skirts. 

• Dogs had to be muzzled in July and August. 

• Only taxi drivers could talk to prostitutes on the streets. 

• Citizens had the right to demand that trains move if they blocked street crossings for more than five minutes. 

• Merchants were forbidden to erect barbed wire to prevent cattle from trampling their businesses. Sometimes in the 1890s, errant 

cattle managed to venture on the city streets. The city tried to pass an ordinance prohibiting livestock from running loose 

downtown, but the measure failed. 

• Whistles—train and otherwise—could blow for no more than five continuous seconds. 

• All male residents between ages 21 and 45 were required to pay $3 or work three days annually on city streets and building repairs. 

❖ 

Wooden planks were the first rudimentary sidewalks across the muddy downtown streets, as this 1890s-era photo shows. Twenty years after its beginning, Temple still had 

muddy streets Businessmen formed the Temple Commercial Club in April 1907 as an organized effort to improve the city while boosting their enterprises. Working with city 

and county government, the Commercial Club, later renamed the Temple Chamber of Commerce, provided leadership for significant improvements. Cement sidewalks 

replaced plank walkways and, by 1912, they were widened. 

COURTESY OF THE RAILROAD AND HERITAGE MUSEUM, TEMPLE. 


❖ 

Top: The shelves of Black Brothers 

Grocery, shown here in the late 1880s, 

stocked staples such as vegetable 

seeds, flour and salt as well as upscale 

food items, such as olives, molasses, 

spices and tinned meats. 



Middle: The Temple Book Concern, 20 

South Main, was chockablock with 

books, newspapers and magazines. 

Reading was a favorite leisure activity 

for many Temple residents. 


Bottom: The Belton and Temple 

Interurban, an electric streetcar line 

operating from 1905 to 1925, was the 

primary public transportation 

between Temple and Belton, especially 

when the muddy roads hindered 

motorized vehicles. 



❖ 

Above: The Santa Fe Hospital served 

all Santa Fe Railway workers along 

the line from Galveston to all points 

northward. Founded in 1891, the 

hospital soon grew and the railway 

built a new red-brick building in 1908. 

Wings were added in subsequent 

decades. Despite a shaky start, the 

hospital soon gained an outstanding 

reputation, thanks to its two chief 

surgeons, Arthur Carroll Scott, M.D., 

and Raleigh R. White, Jr., M.D. 


Below: Begun in 1891 as a hospital 

solely for Santa Fe Railway works, 

the Santa Fe Hospital touted its fireproof 

construction and advanced 

medical care when its new building 

opened in 1907. 


Opposite, top: Reynolds Drug Store, 

11 North Main, featured a soda 

fountain, notions, beauty supplies as 

well as medications. 


Opposite, middle: King’s Daughters 

Hospital, founded in 1896 in rented 

quarters, evolved into a community 

hospital on South Twenty-second 

Street. Patients mailed picture 

postcards to friends and family 

describing their operations. On this 

one, someone drew an arrow to the 

surgical floor and wrote,” Eldor was 

operated in 1916 on appendicitis.” 


Voters approved another $75,000 bond issue in 

1913 to purchase a sewerage system. The 

following years, the water board concentrated on 

increasing supply as the city grew with water and 

sewer demands. Water treatment improved as state 

health regulations enforced more purification. 

Another bond election in 1938 added a new 

filtration plant about a mile east of downtown. 

By the end of the twentieth century, the former 

city water department had been transformed into 

the Department of Public Works, responsible for a 

complex system of water distribution, water 

treatment, wastewater/sewer collection, and 

drainage. Public Works also became responsible 

for street services, traffic signal repair, engineering, 

inspections, solid waste service, fleet maintenance 

and administration of wastewater treatment. 

For the first forty years as the city grew, the 

elected city officials also served as 

administrators. However, by 1920, Temple had 

more than eleven thousand citizens. Voters 

approved a home rule form of city government 

in 1922, creating commissioners, one of whom 

would be mayor, and a professional city 

manager, the first being H. J. Graeser. 

THE “ HOSPITAL HUB” OF 

THE SOUTHWEST 

Aware that Temple occupied a central location 

in the state and was the juncture of two major rail 

lines, local business leaders began as early as 1888 

to petition the Santa Fe Railway to relocate its railroad 

hospital from Galveston to Temple. Railroad 

Opposite, bottom: The 200 block of 

North Ninth shows the stately homes 

located just a few blocks from the 

city’s main business and commercial 

area prior to 1910. 



injuries accounted for the most industrial accidents 

in the U.S., and providing medical care to sick and 

injured workers was essential to the railway’s maintaining 

friendly relationships with labor unions. 

The Santa Fe Hospital opened in 1891 in Temple, 

staffed and administered by Sisters of Charity of the 

Incarnate Word, a congregation of Roman Catholic 

nuns. The nuns worked as railroad employees, 

many eventually earning railroad pensions for their 

long-time service. 

The Santa Fe Hospital served all railroad 

workers up and down the line from Galveston, 

east to Louisiana, west to New Mexico and north 

to Oklahoma. Despite a shaky start, the hospital 

soon gained an outstanding reputation among 

railroaders, thanks to its two chief surgeons, 

Arthur Carroll Scott, M.D., and Raleigh R. White, 

Jr., M.D. The only hospital in town, the Santa Fe 

was available to railroad personnel solely, not 

their families and certainly not to anyone else in 

town. Temple had no general hospital. 

In 1896, however, an interfaith Protestant 

group opened a rudimentary hospital in a small 

house on West Elm Street. The Whatsoever 

Circle of the International Order of the King’s 

Daughters and Sons was part of a national 

missionary and Christian service group that cut 

across denominational lines to serve the poor 

and disenfranchised. Presbyterians, Baptists, 

Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans and 

Disciples of Christ—all banded together to 

operate the hospital for people who could not 

afford medical care. Spurred by the missionary 


❖ 

Above: Arthur Carroll Scott, M.D., 

and Raleigh R. White, Jr., M.D., in 

1904 established their own hospital, 

first called Temple Sanitarium. 


Below: George Valter Brindley, Sr., 

M.D., (right) examines a patient at 

Scott & White in the 1940s. 

Originally called Temple Sanitarium 

when it opened in 1904, Scott & 

White quickly garnered a respected 

reputation as an outstanding surgical 

center, thanks to the skill of its 

founders, Arthur Carroll Scott, Sr., 

M.D., and Raleigh R. White, Jr., M.D. 

Dr. Brindley joined the group practice 

in 1911. 


zeal a group of women, eight physicians— 

including Dr. Scott and Dr. White—were 

instrumental in opening Temple’s first 

community facility, King’s Daughters Hospital. 

As it built an outstanding reputation as a not-forprofit 

community hospital, John S. McCelvey, 

M.D., and George S. McReynolds, M.D., 

provided visionary leadership during its 

formative years and for several decades. The 

Roman Catholics also briefly operated a hospital, 

St. Mary’s Sanitarium, but it closed by 1899. 

After forming their medical partnership in 

1897, Dr. Scott and Dr. White opened their own 

hospital in 1904, which eventually evolved into 

Scott & White Memorial Hospital and Clinic, 

the state’s largest group medical practice. 

Building on its close ties to the Santa Fe 

Hospital, Scott & White quickly gained a 

regional reputation as a surgical center. By 

1933, Scott & White was the first Texas hospital 

accredited by the American College of Surgeons 

for cancer surgery. When a medical group 

convened its state meeting in Temple in 1924, 

Temple was nicknamed “the hospital center of 

the southwest,” based on the reputation of its 

three hospitals—King’s Daughters, Scott & 

White and the Santa Fe. Later, as Dr. Scott 

formed close friendships with Mayo Clinic in 

Minnesota, Temple was also nicknamed “the 

Mayo of the Southwest.” In 1955, Scott & White 

began the state’s first cancer registry program to 

track all cancer patients after treatment. 

Dr. C.H. Graves, respected African-American 

physician, opened the Temple Negro Hospital, 

also called the Graves Hospital, at South 20th 

and Avenue D. African-Americans had limited 

access to medical care because of statemandated 

segregation. Physicians from the three 

other hospitals in town often donated 

equipment and supplies. By 1932, the hospital 

had reorganized as the privately owned 

Memorial Colored Hospital, 918 East Avenue D, 

with three trained nurses and 21 beds. 


When the U.S. Army opened McCloskey 

General Hospital in 1942 for the war wounded, 

Temple gained an added national and 

international reputation for advanced medicine. 

Threatened with closure after World War II, the 

Veterans’ Administration officially took over 

McCloskey Army General Hospital in April 1946, 

and it became a permanent medical facility. The 

two main hospital buildings were modernized 

and dedicated in 1967. In 1979 it was renamed 

in honor of a veteran who had been treated there, 

Congressman Olin E. “Tiger” Teague. In the early 

1990s, the center was affiliated with Texas A&M 

University System Health Science Center College 

of Medicine and provided clinical training for 

students in medicine, nursing, and allied health. 

As Temple mushroomed after World War II, 

medical services expanded, largely because of 

baby booms and the trend to more specialized 

medicine. Scott & White and King’s Daughters 

each offered board-certified specialists. 

By the early 1950s, the Temple Negro 

Hospital had closed, but African-American 

citizens still needed a quality facility during the 

painful era of segregation. In February 1952, 

Senator Lyndon Johnson met with a group of 

Temple African-American leaders who wanted 

to open another hospital. By the end of the 

year, Scott & White teamed with African- 

American civic leaders, particularly Cora 

Anderson, to open a new hospital. An 

anonymous out-of-state donor gave $20,000, 

and Mrs. Anderson contributed the seed funds 

for the facility, named in her honor. The Cora 

Anderson Negro Hospital, managed by Scott & 

White, was dedicated in May 1953. Cora 

❖ 

Left: Murray L. Chapman, M.D., was 

the first radiologist in Temple. He 

learned X-ray technology soon after it 

arrived in 1896 in Galveston, when 

he was a student at the University of 

Texas Medical Branch. By 1900, 

Temple was one of the few cities in 

Texas with X-ray technology. This 

1913 photo shows him taking a 

patient’s X-ray. 


Below: The retreat parade was a daily 

observance at McCloskey General 

Hospital, which opened in 1942 for 

the for the war wounded. 



❖ 

Top: The aerial view of McCloskey 

Army General Hospital shows the 

wide expanse of the hospital grounds 

with the semi-circular parade grounds 

in the center. 


Middle: Patients and personnel from 

McCloskey Army General Hospital 

inspect a proposed site for a memorial 

to their fallen comrades. 


Bottom: McCloskey Army General 

Hospital with fifteen hundred beds 

soon grew to become one of the army's 

largest general hospitals, developing 

as an outstanding center for 

orthopedic cases, amputations and 

neurosurgery. This photo is taken in a 

surgical suite. 



❖ 

Top: Cora Anderson (center) 

contributed the seed funds the Cora 

Anderson Negro Hospital, managed 

by Scott & White. Mrs. Anderson is 

escorted through the new facility at its 

dedication in May 1953. 


Middle: Among the staff at Cora 

Anderson Hospital in the early 1950s 

were (back, from left) Marie 

Radakovich, J.A. Henderson, M.D., 

Will Oliver Hodge, Lorenzo Person, 

Allen Brown, Daniel O. Brown and 

Freddie Lee King; (front) Gertrude M. 

Shelby, Pauline Finley, Minnie Lee 

Hubbard, L. V. McGarity, Dorothy 

Jean Jones, Deloris Brown, Willie 

Marion Granville, Helen Franklin, 

Dorothy Boozer, and Mildred Holmes. 


Bottom: When Scott & White 

relocated to its present site on South 

Thirty-first Street in late 1963, the 

centerpiece of the new hospital was its 

twin circular towers. In its former 

Avenue G location, the hospital 

occupied 31 different buildings spread 

over several blocks. 



❖ 

Ling’s Restaurant was among the most 

popular restaurants in downtown in 

the early 1900s. Y.P. Ling (pictured 

far right) was a Chinese immigrant 

who arrived with Santa Fe 

construction crews in the late 1870s 

and stayed in Temple after the 

town began. 



Anderson Hospital closed in December 1963, 

when Scott & White moved to its new site on 

South Thirty-first Street and admitted all 

patients regardless of race. 

The Santa Fe Hospital became a general 

community hospital in 1966 and eventually 

merged with Scott & White in 1983 to become 

the Scott & White Santa Fe Center. Thanks to a 

community coalition of physicians, business 

leaders and government leaders, Scott &White 

and the Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center in 1979, 

became the teaching hospitals for Texas A&M 

University System Health Science College of 

Medicine. In the beginning, students completed 

two years of clinical study in Temple, and the 

entire Scott and White professional staff were 

college’s faculty members. Since 2007, medical 

students spend all four years in Temple. 

Scott & White also operates a health 

maintenance organization called the Scott & 

White Health Plan, established in 1981. By the 

TEMPLE 

FIRSTS 

The first physician to hang out his shingle in 1881 was Mabry Tucker Cox, 

M.D., who lived south of downtown on land coincidently now encompassed 

by Scott & White. 

early 1990s, medicine and medical-related 

services were among the Bell County’s largest 

employers, second only to the federal 

government. Scott & White remains the city’s 

largest employer with about 7,000 employees. 

APPRECIATION AND 

ASSIMILATION 

From its very beginning, Temple was a 

veritable stewpot of cultures and languages. 

Each group maintained its own ethnic 

identity through dozens of social clubs and 

churches, but these ethnic groups provided a 

richness and variety to the city that few other 

Central Texas towns enjoyed. Along the way, 

each nationality left indelible impressions on the 

city. For example, Y. P. Ling, a Chinese 

immigrant who had arrived with Santa Fe 

construction crews, opened one of the most 

popular restaurants in downtown. He married 

the daughter of a Temple minister, and they 

reared eight daughters, all of whom worked in 

the family restaurant. 

By 1882 one of the first churches to form was 

the German-speaking Evangelical Church, a 

congregation of mostly immigrants. The 

German Hall, a downtown club, was the social 

center for German-speaking residents. Italian 


immigrants opened grocery and produce 

businesses. Jewish merchants opened shops and 

professional offices, such as attorney Augustus 

Lewy, Temple’s third mayor. 

Among the entrepreneurs who launched 

successful businesses was Robert Wells, among 

the earliest African-American contractors who 

built many downtown buildings. Wells, a 

respected church and community leader, helped 

raise funds to build the Wayman Chapel African 

Methodist Episcopal Church. He proudly drove 

his family in their brightly decorated carriage 

during the annual Juneteenth parade 

downtown, celebrating the day Texas slaves 

learned of the Emancipation Proclamation. In 

1911, Wells keynoted the twelfth annual 

National Negro Business League meeting in 

Little Rock, Arkansas, and headed by Booker T. 

Washington. Then, the following year, 

Washington returned the favor, coming to 

Temple to speak at the Carnegie Library. 

Czech immigrants, seeking to escape political 

and religious oppression and military 

conscription in the Austrian Empire, were lured 

to Texas beginning in the 1850s. They found 

fertile, relatively inexpensive farmland in Central 

Texas, and encouraged other families to migrate. 

Texas Czechs survived the harsh Blackland 

Prairie frontier by cherishing their close-knit 

families and maintaining a spirit of cooperation 

with their self-sufficient and economical farms. 

Begun in 1897, SPJST provides social, 

cultural and financial support to Texans of 

Czech heritage. Originally chartered as the 

Slovanska Podporujici Jednota Statu Texas 

(Slavonic Benevolent Order of the State of 

Texas), the SPJST offers insurance, annuity and 

mortgage loans to its members. Temple became 

a Czech cultural center, with the relocation of 

SPJST headquarters to Temple in 1953, and the 

opening of a library, museum and archives in 

1967. In January 1971, SPJST opened a new 

headquarters in downtown Temple and 

renamed its collection of memorabilia and 

permanent historical displays the Czech 

Heritage Museum. 

Likewise, Spanish-speaking immigrants 

made a permanent impact into the city’s 

melding personality. Hispanics populated 

Temple from its very beginning, building 

❖ 

Above: A birds’-eye view of Temple’s 

south side in the early 1900s shows 

several churches clustered along 

Avenues G and H. 


Below: Jeff Hamilton was born a slave 

in 1840 was purchased as a young 

boy by U.S. Senator Sam Houston. 

Hamilton became Houston’s personal 

bodyguard and valet, forming a close 

relationship with the family. Hamilton 

later was a driver for Houston during 

his two campaigns for governor. When 

Houston was elected governor of 

Texas in 1859, he appointed Hamilton 

as his “office boy.” Married to the 

former Sarah Maxey, he was the 

father of 11. Hamilton eventually 

moved to Bell County and worked at 

Mary Hardin-Baylor College, where 

he was a much-admired custodial 

employee. Hamilton lived his later 

years in Temple. This photo shows 

him celebrating his ninety-ninth 

birthday. He died in 1941 at the 

age of 101. 




❖ 

Right: Czech immigrants, seeking to 

escape political and religious 

oppression and military conscription in 

the Austrian Empire, started arriving 

in Texas beginning in the 1850s, with 

the heaviest influx between the 1880s 

and 1920s. They found fertile, 

relatively inexpensive farmland in 

Central Texas, and encouraged other 

families to migrate. This photo shows 

leaders of an Evangelical Czech 

Moravian brotherhood, headquartered 

in Temple in 1928. 


Below: Men who worked the steel lines 

between Rogers, Temple and Belton in 

the 1940s and 1950s were (front, from 

left) Ramon Quintero, Antonio 

Matamoros, Merced Lopez, Richard 

Lopez, Alfonso Martinez and Rafael 

Esparza; (back) Jose Matamoros and 

Foreman London. 



Opposite, top: A worker hauls a tree 

into town to plant somewhere on the 

bald Blackland Prairie. Hackberry and 

other fast-growing trees were harvested 

from riverbanks and transported into 

town. In 1899, Temple banker W. 

Goodrich Jones led the statewide effort 

to observe Arbor Day. 


railroads and vital infrastructure to the town as 

carpenters, laborers and manual workers. 

During the agricultural revolution of the late 

19th and the early 20th centuries, many worked 

as farm hands. Between 1910 and 1929, spurred 

by the 1915 Mexican Revolution, migrant 

workers began what became a yearly swing into 

the county’s fertile farms. Many chose to stay 

when they could find stable work, mostly in 

railroads and factories. Like so many other 

Opposite, middle and bottom: By the 

late 1890s, citizens wanted to improve 

the scraggly city square. Temple 

banker W. Goodrich Jones led the effort 

to plant trees and erect a fountain. 

Frank M. Ball of Galveston, owner of 

Temple National Bank, donated a 

statue and watering trough for horses. 

The statue of two children remained at 

the site until 1928, when it was moved 

to Hillcrest Cemetery. The statue 

finally disappeared in the 1970s. In the 

lower photo, Terry Sloan poses next to 

the statue and trough in 1899. 




immigrants to Temple, Spanish-speaking 

entrepreneurs opened their own stores, 

botanicas, barbershops and restaurants. 

Outstanding successes sometimes grew from 

modest beginnings. For example, Jose Maria 

DeLeon Hernandez, the son of Salvador “La 

Cotorra” Hernandez and Amelia DeLeon 

Hernandez, was born in a dirt-floor garage in 

Temple on a stormy night in October 1940. The 

baby was the seventh of 13 children. The young 

boy showed early musical promise, and by 1955, 

when he was fifteen years old, he played his first 

professional music gig—a high school sock hop 

for which he earned $5. Going by his nickname, 

“Little Joe,” he enlisted his other musical friends 

and relatives. That was the beginning of a 

remarkable musical career with his extended 

family, Little Joe y La Familia. Also called the 

“King of the Brown Sound,” Hernandez has also 

helped pioneer Tejano music, a mix of traditional 

norteño music and country, blues, big band and 

rock styles. By 2008, Little Joe’s band garnered its 

third Grammy and international respect as a 

groundbreaking artist. 

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND 

THE UGLY 

No one shaped the early course of Temple 

economically and culturally more than banker 

William Goodrich Jones (1860-1950), recognized 

as the “father of Texas forestry.” Jones was not a 

wilderness advocate but rather a supporter of 

conservation for prudent use of Texas forests. He 

also knew that his program of sustained-yield 

forestry and reforestation would be successful 

only if he could convince landowners that good 

forestry was also good business. 

He promoted the multiple-use concept of the 

forests in Texas and was interested in conserving 

the soil, grasses and wildlife, as well as the trees. 

He also constantly urged the establishment of 

parks. To make every town a “green town” would, 

he believed, improve the lives of Texas citizens. 

A native of New York, son of a merchant, 

watchmaker and jeweler, Jones received his 

pivotal education in Europe, where his mother’s 

brother was French composer Jacques 

Offenbach. There the younger Jones gained a 

deep appreciation of the beauty and commercial 

advantages of well-managed forests. His abiding 


❖ 

Above: The home of Jim and Miriam 

Ferguson on North Seventh is the 

home of two Texas governors, both 

controversial. When she was elected, 

Ku Klux Klansmen rode horseback up 

the street and lobbed bricks and rocks 

though the Fergusons’ windows while 

Mrs. Ferguson and her daughters 

calmly ate supper. 


Below: The Hammersmith Building, 

erected in the 1890s, remained a 

downtown Temple landmark until the 

late 1960s. 


principle was simple: When one cuts a tree from 

the forest, he must plant another in its place. 

By 1888, he became president of a new bank 

in Temple, where he quickly established himself 

as a civic and business leader. Disheartened at 

the flat, treeless terrain of the Blackland Prairie, 

he urged townspeople to plant trees. Soon 

Temple looked like “a green oasis in a sea of 

black plowed land,” he said. To promote tree 

planting statewide, Jones advocated the 

adoption of an official Arbor Day, which first 

began in Temple. Encouraged by President 

Theodore Roosevelt, Jones helped to organize a 

conservation agency for Texas. In 1914 he 

gathered key lumbermen, conservationists, and 

public officials together for a meeting in Temple 

to found the Texas Forestry Association. With 

assistance from the United States Forest Service, 

this group drafted legislation to establish a state 

department of forestry and lobbied for its 

enactment. Later the state authorized a system 

of Texas state forests, one named in his honor. 

Probably no Temple citizens were as 

controversial or as polarizing as James Edward 

“Jim” Ferguson and his wife, Miriam Amanda 

Wallace Ferguson. The locals were split in their 

loyalties: The Fergusons were generous to their 

friends with state contracts and kickbacks. 

While their favoritism helped lift some Bell 

County citizens out of the Great Depression, 

others were embarrassed by their cronyism and 

political scandals that many believed reflected 

negatively on Temple in general. A Belton 

attorney, Jim Ferguson moved to Temple with 

his wife, the former Miriam Amanda Wallace, 

and their two daughters in 1907 into a spacious 

three-story house at 518 North Seventh Street. 

Although he had never held local political 

posts, he was elected governor in 1914. His 

electrifying speeches in support of farmers and 

his captivating personality appealed to voters. 

Ferguson has a “corn-pone, country-boy” style, 

backslapping farmers and deftly buttonholing 

constituents. He kept his promises to help the 

disenfranchised by enacting state aid to rural 

schools, mandating compulsory school 

attendance, generous state assistance to fund 


THE BIRTH OF TEXAS AVIATION 

The city that had built its reputation on railroads almost became an important aviation center. As early as 1910, Temple citizens 

heard strange buzzing skyward as birds scattered. Cutting through the clouds were Temple-manufactured airplanes, products of the 

first aircraft factory in Texas. Engineering genius George W. collaborated with his newspaperman brother, E.K. Williams, to launch 

rudimentary aircraft as early as 1908. Other partners were George Carroll and Roy Sanderford. 

By 1910 they had successfully taken flight over Temple. Their factory, located at the former Woodlawn airport in what is now near 

the intersection of Interstate 35 and Loop 363 in southwest Temple. Their landing strip became a popular halfway stop for pilots 

flying between San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth. The Temple Daily Telegram regularly reported the comings and goings of such 

aviation luminaries as Charles Lindbergh, Wiley Post and Amelia Earhart as they soared through Texas. 

The entrepreneurs parlayed easily maneuverable craft into Texas Aero Corporation to become leaders in airmail and newspaper 

carriers by air. Lauded as one of the safest air mail carriers in the nation, Texas Aero was significant because it was equipped for night 

flight—an innovation in that era. Despite successes, the plant closed after the 1929 Wall Street crash and George Williams’ death in 

August 1930 in a student training disaster. 

At the same time, a young boy, Vincent Justus Burnelli born in Temple in 1895, grew up seeing the Williams brothers and their 

incredible flying machines. An aeronautics engineer instrumental in furthering the flying wing concept, Burnelli went on to earn 

degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He pioneered the world's first air freighter that could carry large, heavy loads. 

Temple resident Retha McCulloch Crittenden in 1929 was a charter member of the “Ninety-Nines,” the first women to become 

licensed airplane pilots. Another charter member was Amelia Earhart. 

❖ 

The dedication of Draughon-Miller 

Airport in 1941, located on seven 

hundred acres off Highway 36 West, 

was considered essential to the city’s 

civil defense during World War II. 

However, Temple was the location of 

early aviation pioneers, E. K. and 

George Williams. 


university building programs and providing 

funding for schools for the mentally retarded. 

Ferguson was narrowly reelected in 1916, but 

rumors of his questionable policies and his 

staunch anti-prohibition position created unrest 

among voters and fellow politicians. 

In his second term, he created the State 

Highway Department, now the Texas 

Department of Transportation, and expanded 

the state prison system. However, amid his 

progressive changes, ad valorem taxes more 

than doubled. In July 1917, a Travis County 


❖ 

Above: As Temple grew, more 

groceries popped up in surrounding 

neighborhoods. The Brady Grocery, 

pictured in the early 1920s, remained 

a popular downtown market, with 

heavily stocked shelves. 



Below: The J. C. Dallas home, 417 

North Ninth, is typical of Temple’s 

north side homes, an eclectic mix of 

Victorian, craftsman and post-World 

War II structures. 


grand jury indicted him on charges of 

misapplication of public funds, embezzlement 

and diversion of special funds. He impeached 

on ten charges and permanently barred from 

holding public office. His successor was 

Lieutenant Governor William A. Hobby, married 

to the former Oveta Culp, a Killeen native who 

grew up in Temple. 

The disgraced Ferguson ran his wife’s 

campaign for the governorship in 1924 against a 

candidate endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. 

Klansmen rode horseback up North Seventh and 

lobbed bricks and rocks though the Fergusons’ 

windows while Mrs. Ferguson and her daughters 

calmly ate supper. Because Jim was often called 

“Pa” and because of Mrs. Ferguson’s first and 

middle initials, she was frequently referred to as 

“Ma” Ferguson, although she did not like the 

nickname. She assured Texans that, once in office, 

she would follow the advice of her husband and 

that Texas thus would gain “two governors for the 

price of one.” The irony in her successful 

campaign is that Mrs. Ferguson had opposed 

women’s suffrage a decade earlier, believing “a 

woman’s place was in the home.” Nevertheless, 

women’s votes were partially responsible for 

returning her to the Governor’s Mansion in 1924. 

However, controversy followed her, 

especially criticism on her granting pardons and 

paroles, and in the letting of state road 

contracts. She pardoned an average of 100 

convicts a month. Detractors accused them of 

accepting bribes and granting road contracts— 

including several in Bell County—to cronies in 

return for lucrative kickbacks. She lost her reelection 

bid in 1926. 

After a few failed attempts to reenter politics, 

Mrs. Ferguson ran successfully in 1932 for 

another term as governor. She opened her 

Temple home on North Seventh Street to a 

community reception to celebrate her return to 

the State Capitol. Texas was hard-hit by the 

Great Depression, and she promised to lower 

taxes and cut state spending. President Franklin 

Roosevelt’s recovery measures overshadowed 

her first few attempts at stabilizing the economy. 

However, capitalizing on New Deal largesse, she 

and her husband appointed friends to 

commissions and boards controlling lucrative 

federal monies. 

During her second term, Mrs. Ferguson fired 

Texas Rangers who had supported her political 

opponent. She then replaced them with new 

Rangers who, in the words of one historian, “were 

a contemptible lot.” Crime, corruption and 

political patronage were rampant, and the Rangers 

were disgraced. For example, the outlaws Clyde 

Barrow and Bonnie Parker and their gang swerved 

through Bell and Milam counties on a robbing 

spree, killing a Temple man on Christmas Day 

1932 in front of his house. 

Miriam chose to retire from office in 1934, 

rather than to run again, and the couple moved 

permanently to Austin. However, at her husband’s 

insistence in 1940, the sixty-five-year-old former 

governor announced her candidacy one more 

time, but voters thought otherwise. The Ferguson 

era—the good, bad and ugly—was over. 


BRING ON THE 

BOOM TIMES 

When the United States entered World War I 

in April 1917, eager young men signed up for 

military service. Young women, too, were 

recruited for service in the Army Nurse Corps 

and Red Cross. Temple citizens rallied to 

support the troops by knitting socks and scarves 

and staging tobacco drives to collect cigarettes 

to send overseas. The Temple Daily Telegram ran 

regular front-page updates on “Send Sammie a 

Smoke” collections. “You ask me what we need 

to win this war? I answer tobacco as much as 

bullets,” said General John “Black Jack” 

Pershing, commander of U.S. troops in Europe. 

Temple did not just boom into the 1920s; it 

roared and whistled through the decade like a 

redballing freight train speeding through the 

countryside. Temple residents enjoyed a diverse 

economy—balanced with jobs from rails, 

manufacturing and agriculture. An expansive 

bond issue fueled the paving of streets, laying of 

sidewalks and creation of more schools. Banker 

Charles Campbell organized the Temple County 

Club in 1920, two miles west of Temple, along 

the Santa Fe-created Lake Polk (later renamed 

Lake Jim Thornton). Golf, tennis, fishing and 

duck hunting were the favorite activities. In the 

late 1980s, the County Club, deeded to the city 

from the Santa Fe Railway, was renovated and 

renamed the Sammons Community Center. 

By the 1920s, the city with its impressive 

growth, now reaching 15,333 inhabitants, was 

the youngest city in the state of its size and 

importance. Another successful bond issue 

meant that additional street paving and water 

and sewer improvements could be completed by 

1927. Some authorities estimate that by the late 

1920s, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas and the Gulf, 

Colorado & Santa Fe railways provided jobs for 

twenty percent of residents. 

The Blackland Experiment Station opened in 

1913 as the fifth substation of the Texas 

Agricultural Experiment Station and is now one 

of 12 regional stations. The 547-acre station 

operates cooperatively with the Research 

Division of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service 

and has done major research on soil erosion, 

terracing, and contour farming, as well as 

Blackland soils chemistry and physical structure. 

All this added to Temple’s reputation for 

outstanding hospitals. Gone was its unseemly 

nineteenth-century moniker of “Mudtown”; 

❖ 

In 1920, a group of Temple High 

School boys formed the “Fifteen Jolly 

Good Fellows,” a social club 

proclaiming “One for All and All for 

One.” They rented second-floor rooms 

of a downtown business at Avenue A 

and 2nd Street, which plenty of room 

for a pool table, lounge and dance 

floor. The early members included 

Harvey Smith, Maxwell Campbell, 

Lee Quillen, John Perry, Theodore 

Floca, Charles Cox, Barton Cox, Ben 

Adrian, Gator Johnson, Willie Casey, 

Jack Jones and Clifford Jones. By 

1926, when this photo was taken, the 

membership had grown. They are 

wearing a distinctive skull-andcrossbones 

vests with the club’s initials 

FJGF. In the photo are (seated, from 

left) Jack Childress, Olin Sullivan, 

Roland Fuller, Ollie Foreman, Henry 

Easterling, Paul Echols, Ike 

Alexander, John Lowrey, Lynn 

Gardenhire, Dick Watts, Frank 

Horton, E. C. Johnson, Charles Cox, 

Gator Johnson, Theodore Floca, Lynn 

Zarr, Bernard Barrett, John Hopkins, 

and A. S. Fouts. Standing (from left to 

right): George Wisennand, Edward 

Jarrell, Boots Temple, Son Childress, 

Budgie Denison, Nelson Russell, Lee 

Thomas, Cap McElroy, Robert 

McBurney, Glenn McKenzie, Pig 

Grimes, Jim Ed Russell, Philip 

Griffith, G. F. Peck, Morton Goldburg, 

Bob Gresham, Buster Brown, and 

Hayward Shull. 



BASEBALL DIAMONDS GLEAMED IN THE SUMMER 

Newspapers were abuzz in 1906 with the latest epidemic—baseball. As the Galveston Daily News reported, “Temple is a ball 

town.” Temple’s Woodson Field became the center of pop flies and roaring crowds. Baseball came to town in 1905 with a 

professional ball club, the Temple Boll Weevils (1905-1907), part of the Texas League. Despite a rough start, semi-pro ball became 

a regular feature in town. 

The Texas Gum Company of Temple produced sets of full-color baseball cards inserted in gum and distributed them throughout 

the state. The city planned a new park in 1933 on school district land on what was nicknamed the “Cotton Yards,” East Adams 

Avenue acreage near the Santa Fe tracks. The Temple Lions Club sold shares in a private corporation to pay for the construction. 

Local contractor Guy Baker donated most of his time and expertise to the park, which was later named “Baker Field.” The new park 

became the home field to the Temple Surgeons. 

For six decades, Temple had other professional ball clubs, including the Governors, the Tigers and the Surgeons before the Texas 

League folded just before World War II. Neighbors flocked to the bleachers to see the action, or merely listened to the crowds' 

roars from their opened windows at home. After the war, baseball hit another homer. In 1947, Temple became Eagles territory 

with the relocation of Texas-based franchise of Class B Big State League. 

A band of Temple citizens bought fifty-one percent of the team. Although it finished in the cellar in that initial 1949 season, 

the partners purchased the remaining forty-nine percent. Gradually improving, the Eagles won the Big State Championship in 

1952. In 1957 the Redlegs, another Big State team, arrived in town. The Big State League finally closed that same year, and Temple’s 

baseball fields held only fond memories of pro ball. 

However, that did not mean baseball fever had been quelled. Temple businessman Drayton McLane bought the Houston Astros 

ball club in 1993, further encouraging the dreams of fields and fly balls. With McLane piloting the Astros, the team racked up the 

fourth best Major League record. McLane also has an interest in Nolan Ryan’s minor league team, the Round Rock Express, an 

Astros minor league affiliate, first in the AA Texas League and eventually in the AAA Pacific Coast League. 

Both teams come to Temple regularly to pump up community enthusiasm and to visit fans in local hospitals. 

❖ 

Temple was a “ball town,” with a pro 

team as early as 1905. “Diamond 

fever” even spilled over to Temple 

High School, where the baseball 

team in 1910-1911 enjoyed a 

successful season. 



❖ 

Top: Brady and Black Hardware in the 

early 1920s touted the latest in farm 

equipment and horseless carriages. 



The Temple Daily Telegram, 

established in 1907, opened on the 

site of the Opera House, which burned 

down. In the background is the 

Temple Central Fire Station, which 

housed city offices. 


Bottom: The “Rotary Anns,” the 

women’s auxiliary of the Rotary Club, 

held a district convention in Temple 

in March 1930. Members gathered 

for a lavish garden party on the 

grounds of the North Eleventh Street 

home of Dr. and Mrs. J. M. Woodson, 

nicknamed the “Chinese Mansion,” 

completed with music 

and lavish tableau. 



❖ 

Above: Beginning with Temple’s first 

birthday in June 1882, the city held 

annual flower parades and 

celebrations. The downtown parades 

featured elaborately decorated 

wagons, buggies and carriages, 

marching bands and “most beautiful 

baby contests.” Highlight of the 1897 

procession were Mrs. W.E. Hall (front) 

and (back) Mrs. George Pendleton 

and her daughter, Mrs. N.A. Sayer. 


Below: The first Temple public school 

contained all grades. In September 

1883, Temple residents approved 

creating a public school district. In 

December, voters approved a bond 

issue to buy an existing private school 

building for $4,392. The Temple City 

Council appointed school board 

members, and the city council 

regularly undertook school business. 


Temple now appreciated a more dignified 

slogan: “Hospital Center of the South,” so 

nicknamed after a large medical convention, 

and “Progressive Temple.” Temple’s three 

hospitals—Temple Sanitarium (renamed Scott 

& White), King’s Daughters and the Santa Fe 

Employees hospitals had all expanded their 

facilities and staff during the 1920s. 

Temple in four decades seemed to have it all: 

four movie houses, five bakeries, eight hotels 

and 22 churches. The city even boasted a 

championship professional baseball club, aptly 

named “The Temple Surgeons.” Confidence 

reigned. In October 1929, new owners, Ward 

Mayborn and his sons Frank, Don and Ted, took 

over the Temple Daily Telegram, begun in 1907. 

“It’s not the hospitals or the railroads or the new 

hotels which make for this town an impression 

which sticks,” announced the new editor. “It’s 

the people who welcome you and immediately 

become your friends and neighbors. As long as 

that spirit prevails in Temple, the town will grow 

and prosper.” 

Even the weather cooperated. The Chamber 

of Commerce touted the area’s mild climate as a 

draw for newcomers. Refreshing Gulf breezes 

prevailed throughout the year, except during 

summer’s peak. The winters were mild and “cold 

enough to add zest and pep to life,” said the 

Chamber’s promotional material. Pure water, 

geographically central location, two large 

railway trunk lines—Temple seemed blessed. 

Temple citizens during the 1920s continually 

looked for new community enhancements. A 

Lutheran church delegation visited Temple in 

1924, investigating future sites for a college. To 

lure the college to Temple, citizens pledged to 

raise $20,000 and donate 20 acres. The fund 

drive foundered, and the Lutherans opened 

Concordia College in Austin in 1926. Still 

hopeful they could get a college in Temple, 

business and community leaders—spurred by 

John S. McCelvey, M.D., and sparked by Temple 

Independent School District superintendent L. 

C. Procter—pledged to continue their efforts. 

Temple College, then called Temple Junior 

College, opened in the fall 1926, thanks to 

cooperative efforts from the Temple Chamber of 

Commerce with the assistance of the University 


of Texas and the board of trustees of Temple 

Public Schools. The college used Temple public 

school buildings rent-free. The next year, the 

State Department of Education and the 

Association of Texas Colleges recognized the 

Temple campus as a first-class junior college. 

Voters turned down a bond proposal in 1928 

to construct facilities separate from the public 

schools. Forced with closure, the college 

consolidated with the Temple Public Schools. The 

public schools shared their administration and 

faculty, and the consolidation ensured the survival 

of the college. Thus, the school superintendent 

also served as the college president. 

For some, agriculture held fewer promises 

than manufacturing. For example, A. P. Brashear, 

Sr., left farming and ranching to set up a business 

reselling school furniture under the name “the 

Texas School Supply Company.” In 1927, he 

began manufacturing his own merchandise. 

Renamed American Desk, the company found a 

lucrative niche in the post-World War II babyboom 

years. Eventually American Desk became 

among the state’s largest industries and a major 

supplier of classroom seating products. Seven 

decades later, Artco-Bell acquired American 

Desk. Brashear and his company lured Ralph 

Wilson and his laminate manufacturing company 

from California to Temple. 

Another distinctive homegrown industry also 

became a successful Temple industry. The Floca 

family began in the grocery business, but in 

1924 son Theodore Floca, Sr., bought a bottling 

company, which eventually became the popular 

Temple Bottling Company, producing Dr Pepper 

and many other varieties of bottled drinks. By 

the opening of the twenty-first century, Temple 

Bottling remained a major Texas bottler. 

Temple was in a record building boom in late 

1929. St. Mary’s Catholic Church opened its new 

school, rectory, convent and church. A new 

Municipal Building was dedicated, and its block 

was renamed “The City Square.” Building 

❖ 

Left: The Roman Catholics established 

a mission in Temple soon after the 

town began in 1881. St. Mary’s 

Catholic Church building was 

completed in 1895, a year after the 

rectory was finished. The property 

was sold to Scott & White, and the 

church relocated to its present site on 

South Ninth Street. 


Bottom, left: Shortly after its founding 

in 1881, Temple became a popular 

shipping point for cotton and other 

agricultural products. In the 

foreground are pedestrians’ 

stepping stones used before the 

wooden planks and eventually 

sidewalks were installed. 


Below: Beginning in 1924, Temple 

Bottling Company manufactured Dr 

Pepper and other bottled drinks. 




❖ 

Right: The Kyle Hotel was the city’s 

tallest building when it opened in 

1929. This 1930s photo shows the 

1911 Post Office and First Methodist 

Church, completed in 1913. 


Below: When it opened in 1928, 

the Doering Hotel, later renamed the 

Hawn, featured rooms for $1.50 

and “the best food” and “service with 

a smile.” 


permits for the city were more than $1.4 million. 

In 1929, about 1,000 railway employees worked 

in the 30-stall roundhouse, yards, shops, 

warehouses, repair gangs, road crews and 

business offices. Newcomers to downtown 

Temple were awed by the city’s skyscrapers: the 

Doering Hotel, opening in 1928, and the Kyle 

Hotel, welcoming guests the next year because 

Temple was the “tallest city” between Waco and 

Austin. Earlier multi-story structures were the 

Temple National Bank and the Professional 

Building. The 1929 City Directory described 

Temple as “a truly American City” with 62 

industrial plants, five hospitals, burgeoning 

railroads as well as cotton, poultry and livestock 

production. “Temple can really be termed a wellbalanced 

city,” reported the directory. 

However, as high as business and industry 

surged, it thundered to a smashing collapse. The 

stock market crash of October 1929 at first 

seemed not to affect most livelihoods. Gradually 

economic hard times crept into town like a catfooted 

burglar. By September 1930, cotton 

prices plummeted to pennies per pounds and 

land sold for as little as $25 per acre. Troubles 

deepened with a drought and cotton disease. 


❖ 

Left: This block with the Elks building 

and Temple Trust Company now is 

the site of the Temple Federal Building 

on Avenue A. 


Below: The 1930s economic 

depression created hardships 

throughout the city and the county. 

Three of the town’s four movie houses 

closed. Despite the tight money, 

citizens created plenty of 

entertainment. Temple High School 

band played at the 1931 movie 

opening at the Arcadia Theater. The 

movie, “Skippy,” starring Jackie 

Cooper, garnered an Oscar for its 

young star and hundreds of 

enthusiastic ticket-buyers, even during 

the Depression. 



The miserable harvest created shock waves that 

jarred all facets of Temple’s economic health. 

Businesses failed and incomes plunged. 

To make matters worse, four of Temple’s five 

banks closed between 1931 and 1933, railroads 

cut salaries drastically and laid off workers, and 

farmers faced rock-bottom crop prices. Although 

King’s Daughters and Scott & White each had 

nurse training schools, neither school admitted 

classes for 1933 because of financial difficulties. 

The Santa Fe Hospital, the railroaders’ hospital, 

laid off workers and closed one wing. Physicians 

were frequently “paid” with live chickens, 

slaughtered pigs, home-canned foods and fresh 

produce. Bell County lost about ten percent of its 

population between 1930 and 1940. Temple, 

which had enjoyed double-digit growth since its 

beginning, remained stagnant. The city’s 


❖ 

Right: Temple citizens were 

imaginative in their entertainment, 

including this 1890s costume party. 


Below: The Knob Creek Masonic 

Lodge conducted a foundation-laying 

ceremony at the new Post Office 

building in 1910. The Post Office, 

located at North Main and Adams, 

served the city until the 1960s, when 

a new Main Post Office was 

constructed. The distinctive building 

became the Temple Public Library 

and is now part of Temple College’s 

Downtown Center. 



population declined by only one resident—from 

15,345 to 15,344. 

Three of the town’s four movie houses closed. 

No matter, because few could spare the dimes 

for tickets. Despite the financial hardships, 

Temple residents attempted to create their 

entertainment. The Temple Civic Orchestra gave 

its first concert at First Baptist church in March 

1930. The Temple Little Theater also organized 

at the same time. Social and civic clubs staged 

their annual productions featuring comedy skits 

and music. Despite the hard times, Temple High 

basketball coach George W. “Red” Forehand led 

the Wildcats to a state title in 1932. The 

stunning wins of the varsity basketball, baseball 

and football teams buoyed spirits and helped 

reinforce community pride. 

Temple merchants attempted to increase 

trade, often by unusual means. To encourage 

more shoppers downtown, the city started 

enforcing one-hour parking in 1931. Besides 

lowering prices and issuing chits, coins and 

coupons for goods, they installed slot machines 

and sold liquor “under the table.” The 

Temple Daily Telegram in 1932 launched its 

annual Pioneer Day festivities to honor 

longtime settlers. 

The myriad efforts eventually yielded 

success. By 1936 business profits rose 40 to 

50 percent, equaling 1928’s profits. Public 

works projects got under way including 

water system improvements, a $67,000 

gymnasium and vocational agricultural 

building for Temple schools. However, the 

increased trade brought another peril. By 1938, 

traffic accidents and fatalities increased in 

record numbers. 

Some Temple citizens tried to perk up the 

local economy with creative ventures. The 1936 

Texas Centennial provided an opportunity to 

welcome more visitors in conjunction with the 

annual Central Texas Pecan Show. The Dienst 

Museum opened on June 8, 1936, at 804 

North Third Street, the first such museum in 

Temple. Local dentist-turned-respectedhistorian 

Alexander Dienst worked with the 

Temple Chamber of Commerce, City Federation 

of Women’s Clubs, Arno Art League, Temple 

Board of Development and the city government 

to create it. On display were Dienst’s collection 

of five thousand Native American arrowheads, 

fossils, guns, pipes and other artifacts. In 

its first two weeks, more than 2,500 visitors from 

25 states walked through the museum. 

❖ 

Temple staunchly supported troops 

during World War II as this early 

1940s military parade shows. With 

the creation of Camp Hood in Killeen 

and the opening of McCloskey Army 

General Hospital, citizens opened 

their hearts, their homes and their 

wallets to support the war effort. 



TEMPLE 

FIRSTS 

The first Temple High School graduates in 1890 were Katharine Sloan, Ray 

Wilcox and Alice Robbins. 

Learning tough lessons from the drought and 

dust bowl of the 1930s, the Texas legislature 

created the State Soil and Water Conservation 

Board in 1939 to enforce state conservation laws 

and organize soil conservation districts. Temple 

was selected as the state headquarters. By 1949 

the agency oversaw sixteen soil-conservation 

districts, and in 1965, the agency’s name changed 

to State Soil and Water Conservation Board. 

RETHINKING THE FUTURE 

Other men’s passions across vast oceans 

fueled tremendous transformations in Temple 

and Bell County for the next half century. 

Between 1940 and December 7, 1941, Temple 

and Bell County experienced a great 

transformation. Army green rapidly took over 

the dusty gray countryside as construction 

crews started building Camp Hood in west Bell 

County. The Army installation would eventually 

straddle 218,000 acres of western Bell and 

Coryell counties. In all, three hundred farming 

and ranching families gave up their land for the 

camp. The first major military unit arrived at the 

new installation in April 1942, but the camp 

officially opened in September 1942. 

This area was not the Army’s first choice. 

Military planners preferred nearby sites about 50 

miles away in McLennan and Bosque counties, but 

Temple Daily Telegram editor and publisher Frank 

W. Mayborn, heading the Temple Chamber of 

Commerce’s Industrial Development Committee, 

vigorously urged Washington politicians and the 

Department of the Army to consider Bell County. 

In a dramatic, 11th-hour switch in plans, the 

Eighth Corps Area in January 1942 announced 

that the anti-tank training camp would be located 

within mortar shot of Killeen and Copperas Cove. 

Bell County would never be the same again. 

Meanwhile, Templeites of all ages pitched in 

for the war effort. Scrap metal drives promoted 

by American Desk Manufacturing collected 

nearly 68,000 pounds in 90 days, while Temple 

schoolchildren brought nearly 2,000 pounds to 

the Temple police department for the city drive. 

Temple voters in 1941 approved a $50,000 

bond issue for the city’s first civil defense 

project, a $350,000 airport, now called 

Draughon-Miller Airport, located on 700 acres 

off Highway 36 West. 

Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Davis Bruce, Tank 

Destroyer Training and Firing Center, moved to 

Temple in January 1942 and set up his command 

post in rented offices in the First National Bank 

❖ 

The Gothic revival Christ Episcopal 

Church building was completed in 

1905. The congregation, founded in 

1883, was among the first in the city. 



uilding, 18 South Main Street. His family moved 

into a north Temple home. The next month he 

wore the star of a brigadier general. 

As Camp Hood started to swell with soldiers, 

Temple prepared for the onslaught of visitors as 

Temple became the city of choice on soldiers’ 

paydays. By February 1942, about thirty officers 

and civilian employees staffed temporary 

headquarters of the Tank Destroyer Training and 

Firing Center in Temple. The Temple Chamber of 

Commerce served as a clearinghouse for property 

owners and prospective military tenants. All those 

new people strained the city’s infrastructure— 

water, sewage, schools, stores and recreational 

facilities. The Temple USO, opened in 1943, was a 

favorite way station near the downtown Santa Fe 

Depot. The only USO in Texas with a swimming 

pool, it also featured a bowling alley, billiards, 

badminton court and snack hall. Many businesses 

chartered buses between Camp Hood and 

downtown Temple to shuttle soldiers to the stores. 

With Camp Hood thirty miles away, the 

Army activated McCloskey General Hospital in 

June 1942 in an open field along South First 

Street. The hospital was named for Major James 

A. McCloskey, who was killed on Bataan on 

March 26, 1942, the first regular Army doctor to 

lose his life in World War II. Selected to head 

the hospital was General James A. Bethea, M.D., 

a career Army physician who first served during 

World War I. The chief of Surgical Service at 

Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, he was at the 

top of his career and approaching retirement. 

However, Pearl Harbor changed his plans. 

His experience in Temple was among his 

best. “It is certainly not right to say that you 

enjoyed your war service. There is nothing 

about war that is enjoyable. However, at 

McCloskey, I had a sense of satisfaction in 

knowing that I was doing more for suffering 

humanity than I had ever done before.” 

When Bethea arrived in Temple, he was the 

only person assigned to the hospital, still under 

construction. “I didn’t even have a postage 

stamp, much less an office or typewriters, or a 

nickel to spend,” he recalled. Under his expert 

guidance, however, McCloskey, with fifteen 

hundred beds, soon grew to become one of the 

army’s largest general hospitals, developing as 

an outstanding center for orthopedic cases, 

amputations and neurosurgery. It provided 

expert care and treatment for all military 

personnel and had many medical specialists on 

its staff. The reconditioning of sick and injured 

soldiers who did not need further hospital care 

was carried on at the hospital annex in Waco, 

about thirty-five miles away. As patients poured 

TEMPLE 

FIRSTS 

❖ 

The telephone center at McCloskey 

General Army Hospital was one of 

the busiest and most popular desks for 

patients and families. 


The Texas Telephone Company stretched the first phone lines in 1886 to 

serve twelve customers. 


❖ 

Right: Temple High School study hall 

was a spacious auditorium. To ensure 

stability in its new town, the Santa Fe 

Railway in 1881 quickly dedicated 

town lots for schools and churches. 


Below: Temple College, formerly 

Temple Junior College, relocated from 

the Temple Independent School 

buildings to a new campus in 1957. 


into the hospital, construction crews continued 

working around them. Work began immediately 

on another fifteen hundred beds. McCloskey 

was, according to Bethea, “the biggest business 

[in Temple]. Our payroll at McCloskey was over 

a million dollars a month at its height.” The 

bruising economic depression of the 1930s was 

officially over. 

McCloskey patients were gratified especially 

by the generosity of Texans, particularly Temple 

citizens, who donated time and millions of 

dollars in money, equipment and services to help 

the soldiers’ recovery. For example, Fort Worth 

schoolchildren raised $10,000 to buy an 

adjoining tract for a lake and park, named 

Tarrant Park in their honor. Numerous celebrities 

and movie stars came to visit and entertain. 

Joining the list of esteemed visitors were senators, 

future presidents, European royalty, governors 

and even author Helen Keller. Local musicians 


and music teachers volunteered to play and teach 

hospitalized patients, considered the first formal 

use of music therapy in rehabilitation. However, 

McCloskey’s staff measured true success in 

transforming shattered soldiers’ lives. 

Across South First Street from the hospital was 

a World War II prisoner-of-war camp, located on 

what is now the Temple College campus. Each 

morning, prisoners wearing dark blue fatigues 

and large white letters “POW” were marched to 

McCloskey, where they worked on the grounds 

under guards. The exact number of prisoners is 

unknown, although some estimates say up to 250 

men. During the years of their incarceration, the 

prisoners constructed a nine-hole golf course and 

planted 30,000 permanent shrubs and 1,000 

trees on hospital grounds. For their labor, the 

prisoners got three meals daily, medical care and 

rigid supervision. As they worked, American 

wounded arrived by trains, carried on stretchers 

or wheeled in chairs. The contrast was stark: 

German POWs were robust and tanned; the 

wounded soldiers, often thin and gaunt from 

their combat experiences. By 1946, the prisonerof-war 

camp with its tar-papered wood-frame 

buildings closed. Its 32 acres of land, valued at 

$18,742, was sold to the City of Temple. 

After the war, the former POW grounds found 

a new life as the permanent home of Temple Junior 

College. In fall 1953, the city government and the 

public school system, including Temple Junior 

College, formally separated. Temple Junior College 

officially separated itself from the Temple 

Independent School District two years later. The 

former prisoner-of-war grounds and buildings 

were deeded to Temple Junior College. When the 

❖ 

Downtown Temple in the 1950s was 

the business and shopping center of 

the city. 



LAW ENFORCEMENT: TAMING THE IMPOSSIBLE 

Law enforcement was an issue in Temple from day one. “It was at a time when the town was as much of a night operation as 

of day,” reported the Temple Daily Telegram in 1923, “when the gambling houses, the saloon and the accompanying auxiliaries of 

these were in the saddle; when the railroad construction forces still came back to Temple to blow in their money and when men 

quick on the trigger made this their stamping ground.” 

The first murder was a transient painter named McDonald, who was shot in Bigham’s Saloon. Someone else murdered another 

man by hanging him on the Eighth Street Bridge over Knob Creek in 1884. His death remains unsolved. 

Unfortunately, passing trains and vulnerable passengers were easy prey for outlaws. Robberies and hold-ups were frequent, 

especially in the outlying rural areas. The Temple Times reported that Angus McKenzie, a night-train engineer, thwarted a holdup 

as the train speeded at full-steam. McKenzie opened the firebox as the gunman approached, and the firebox flames blasted the 

crook’s face. Then McKenzie pushed him off the train at full throttle. For his bravery, the railroad company awarded the engineer 

a gold watch for risking his life to save the train. 

Taming a city took peace officers with a rare combination of tact and force. As city marshal from 1885 to 1897, Marshal 

William Taylor was credited with piloting Temple during its transition from “wild and wooly” to “a semblance of control by the 

elements which frowned on the wide-open features of the town,” according to the Daily Telegram. 

During Taylor’s twelve years, bandits twice attempted rob the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway passenger train within the city 

limits. In the 1880s up until the 1920s, marshals dealt with fugitive monkeys, dancing bears, escaped circus animals, and the 

usual bunch of hooligans—pickpockets, gamblers, streetwalkers, and over-imbibing revelers. To solve his problem, Taylor put 

many tramps on boxcars headed to Galveston, but the port city’s chief of police later wrote and asked the city to cease and desist. 

Early in his career, Taylor and his deputies nabbed a gang of Temple-based train robbers who had plagued several M-K-T trains, 

randomly shooting victims as they looted passengers and cargos. The Temple Times reported the desperados “had been promiscuous 

in their shooting.” After a six-month investigation, Taylor arrested five suspects, and one of them, “Dead-Eye” Buckhanan, 

turned state’s evidence against his cronies. 

At first, town marshals handled police duties. Revenues from fines covered their salaries. Training was almost non-existent. 

Crimes and misdemeanors kept marshals busy. In 1891 alone, deputies investigated 793 complaints and only 13 scofflaws 

escaped before they could be prosecuted. 

Taylor had had a varied, adventuresome career, which probably gave him skills to deal with undesirable characters. Before he 

took the marshal’s job, he worked as a cowboy and a butcher. After he left law enforcement, he spent two years gold prospecting 

in Klondike, Alaska. Returning home, he operated a funeral home, which was probably a good career choice, considering the lawlessness 

of the early days. 

❖ 

A steam locomotive pulls into the 

former Santa Fe Depot, which was 

torn down to make way for the 

present depot, constructed in 1910. 

The back of this postcard reads: “This 

is the 438 that killed Jim Sealy.” 438 

refers to the locomotive. 



Enforcement was a continuous challenge. For example, everyone considered City Marshal Sherman B. Williams a “quietly efficient” 

law-and-order man who tried to quell the raucous citizenry. On June 2, 1899, after public pressure, he closed all gambling 

houses. However, when he left on vacation two weeks later, the cards, dice and wagering returned with full vigor. Deputy Tom 

Hart tried to enforce Williams’ edict. Hart told the Temple Times: “Just say that they may stay open, but they won’t find it very 

profitable. I cannot compel a man to close his house, but I can compel them not to carry on games in that house. I’ll prosecute 

anyone who does.” In the 1930s, Temple’s first “motorcycle cop” was Nimrod “Beans” Ham, who chased down speeders at 30 to 

35 mph. 

The Temple Police Department organized into a professional force in 1922. Wiley Fisher, the last man to serve as marshal, 

became the first police chief. The department came under State Civil Service in 1949. One of the earliest comprehensive police 

schools opened in Temple in January 1950. Sponsored by the FBI, the Texas Department of Public Safety and others, the school 

covered almost every phase of law enforcement. 

W. I. McMahon was the first city marshall in 1881. Other marshals serving prior to 1922 were Green Pattison, Sam Walker, 

William Taylor, Cap Lightfoot, Sherman B. Williams, Dave Osburn, George Gamble, Pat Hunt, John L. Irvin, and Wiley Fisher. 

A list of Temple police chiefs: 

Wiley Fisher, 1922-1926 

Lee Saulsbury, 1926-1930 

Sam Hall, 1930-1934 

B. G. Duncan, 1934-1936 

Will I. Cooper, 1937 

Frank Bouldin, 1937-1947 

W. M. McDonald, 1947-1956 

A. C. Berry, 1956-1957 

T. R. B. Ellis, 1957-1958 

A. C. Berry, 1959-1971 

Leonard M. Hancock, 1971-1983 

Thomas Vannoy, 1983-1995 

Ralph M. Evangelous, 1995-2004 

Gary O. Smith, 2004-Present 

college moved from TISD buildings, a new campus 

opened up on these grounds in 1957. In 1996, 

officials dropped the “Junior” from the college’s 

name to reflect its role as a comprehensive college, 

offering transfer programs, technical education, 

continuing education, career and workforce 

training and cultural activities. 

THE SECOND 

HALF- CENTURY 

After World War II, the military installation 

in Killeen and military hospital in Temple had 

proved to be an economic blessing to the 

county. Newspaper publisher Frank W. 

Mayborn, banker Guy Draper, attorney Byron 

Skelton and other civic leaders teamed up as 

Temple’s War Projects Committee to make 

sure these remained in the county with their 

fullest resources. Their goal was to make Camp 

Hood a permanent military installation. That 

occurred in 1950, further solidifying and 

diversifying Temple’s economy. Camp Hood, 

renamed Fort Hood, grew to become the 

county’s largest employer. 

Between 1940 and 1960, Temple again 

boomed, with its population nearly doubling, 

rising from 15,344 to 30,419 within two 

decades. The Temple area became a convenient 

place for military personnel to settle after 

discharge. Temple was poised to redefine and 

reestablish itself for the second half of the 

twentieth century. For example, the community 

boldly anticipated growth by building three new 

public schools in 1950. 

Perhaps no two men had impact that is more 

lasting on the last half of the twentieth century 

than Frank W. Mayborn and Judge Byron Skelton. 

Mayborn was editor and publisher of the Temple 

Daily Telegram and Killeen Daily Herald and owner 

of KCEN-TV; Skelton was a Temple attorney who 

later became U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge 

and the only federal judge from Bell County. 

Keenly attuned to the vicissitudes of the 

economy and politics, Mayborn foresaw the next 

opportunities for growth, all the while staunchly 

boosting Temple and Bell County through his 

newspaper and later his radio and television 

stations. Skelton was a Democratic Party leader in 

Texas, often considered by his more conservative 


❖ 

Right: After World War II, Temple 

citizens returned to business as usual, 

which included celebrations and 

parades now that the conflict 

was over. 


Below: The Temple Book Concern sold 

books, newspapers and musical 

instruments. The store was located 

just south of Temple National Bank on 

South Main Street. The block was 

cleared in the 1970s to erect the 

Temple Federal Building. 


colleagues as a “liberal.” Nevertheless, with his 

remarkable legal mind and solid friendships with 

President Lyndon B. Johnson and Speaker of the 

House Sam Rayburn, Skelton skillfully provided 

the legal expertise for many of the advancements 

Temple and Bell County experienced. The two 

served on several taskforces and committees over 

the next forty years that would hammer out the 

city’s new directions. 

After World War II, Scott & White was 

rapidly expanding, thanks to the expansion of 

medical sub-specialties and rapidly advancing 

technology. The hospital buildings, many of 

which had been constructed in the late 

nineteenth century, were antiquated and 

facilities were cramped. Since the physicians’ 

partnership began in 1897, Scott & White had 

been privately owned by a few physicians. in 

1949, they called on Skelton’s legal expertise to 

help draft a new charter, in light of the changing 

non-profit tax laws. Skelton completed the legal 

footwork in 1950 required to reorganize Scott & 

White as a non-profit benevolent, educational 

and research facility to allow donors to make taxdeductible 

gifts. 

In addition, by the late 1940s, a taskforce 

composed of Mayborn, Draper, Skelton, U.S. 

Rep. Bob Poage, Scott & White surgeon A. C. 

Scott Jr., M.D., and businessman Roy Sanderford 

spearheaded a drive to convince Congress to 

appropriate funds for a Leon River dam that 

would provide enough water resources for the 

growth expected in Temple and Bell County. 

Some Washington lawmakers and local 

politicians disapproved of their plan, but the 

taskforce endured criticism. Their intense 

lobbying paid off when formal groundbreaking 

ceremonies were held on December 10, 1948, 

for Belton Dam and Lake Belton. The Daily 

Telegram headlined Temple as “The City with a 

Future.” The new dam was only half of the 

committee’s vision. After disastrous 1957 floods, 

the Temple delegation renewed its push to create 

Stillhouse Hollow Lake, which opened in 1968. 


Essential to the campaign was the city of 

Temple’s insistence that it would have access to 

as much water as it needed at anytime. Skelton 

as city attorney carefully negotiated the legal 

and financial discussions with the Brazos River 

Authority, while Mayborn published supportive 

articles and Poage handled the political 

negotiations with the State Water Board. 

Working with another committee, Mayborn 

and Skelton again joined forces to enhance 

Temple’s well-established reputation as “the 

medical center of the southwest.” Temple was the 

home to Scott & White, a renowned surgical and 

diagnostic medical center begun in 1904; King’s 

Daughters Hospital, founded in 1896 and among 

the first hospitals in Texas; and the Veterans’ 

Administration Hospital, formerly McCloskey 

Army General Hospital opening in 1942. 

Building on the strength of Temple’s excellent 

medical institutions, Skelton made presentations 

to the University of Texas regents in July 1949, 

attempting to persuade regents to locate a medical 

school in Temple. However, Dallas won the 

medical school. In 1972, after decades of dreams 

and discussions, Texas A&M University agreed to 

open its newly created medical school to Temple. 

The Temple Daily Telegram at the time of 

Skelton’s 1966 federal judicial appointment paid 

tribute as he left for Washington, D.C., 

commending him “for his contributions to water 

projects, to the development of industry and other 

facets of our economy, to the many other activities 

which have made Central Texas prosperous and 

growing, have been outstanding.” He retired from 

active practice in 1977 and returned to Temple. 

He still maintained his law office and was 

available to anyone seeking is advice. He died in 

2004 at age ninety-eight. 

Likewise, Mayborn’s influence is still felt more 

than two decades after his death, particularly in 

❖ 

Above:Downtown Temple stores in the 

1950s attracted shoppers from 

throughout Bell County and the 

surrounding counties. This picture 

shows Main Street looking south to 

Avenue A. 


Below: Temple Daily Telegram editor 

Frank W. Mayborn (left) welcomes 

Lieutenant General Ralph E. Haines, 

Jr., to a Military Appreciation 

Luncheon sponsored by the Temple 

Chamber of Commerce. Haines was 

Fort Hood commander from March 

1965 to April 1967. 



❖ 

Temple, with its railroad roundhouse 

and shops, grew to be the second 

most-favored city on the Santa Fe 

Railway, next to Galveston, the 

company’s headquarters. 


economic development, education and links 

with the military and medical institutions. Even 

two decades after his death in 1987 at age 

eighty-three, he continues to be “the man who 

made a difference” in his community. 

STANDING ON SHOULDERS 

OF GIANTS 

By the close of the century and with many of 

the early leaders passing on, a younger 

generation took hold with fresh ideas and 

courage to expand on its foundations. Although 

the railways’ influence declined over the century, 

Temple could still capitalize on its central 

location and the completion of the interstate 

highway system. Thanks to the innovative 

leadership of a group of local business leaders in 

the 1950s, Temple’s economy strengthened. 

With the completion of Interstate 35, nicknamed 

“the spine of Texas,” Temple emerged as a major 

transportation center. 

Business leaders pushed a grassroots privatesector 

effort, later formally chartered as the 

Temple Industrial Foundation, to attract new 

businesses that would diversify the local economy. 

The foundation helped the development of an 

industrial park, now more than three thousand 


acres with easy access to Interstate 35 and Santa 

Fe rail spurs. 

The Industrial Park was an attractive lure for 

new companies. Wilson Plastics (now Wilsonart 

International) relocated to Temple from California, 

among the first to move into town. Once 

transplanted to Temple, Wilsonart’s founder Ralph 

Wilson, Sr., and later his son, Ralph Jr., became 

community leaders and noted for their charitable 

works and leadership in building community 

services such as the Ralph Wilson Youth Clubs. 

Wilson Plastics supplied laminated desktops to 

the former American Desk Company (now owned 

by Artco-Bell), a company that started up in 

Temple in the 1920s. Over the years, Wilsonart, 

now the nation’s largest laminate manufacturer, 

expanded eventually to four major sites in the 

industrial park. McLane Company moved to the 

park in 1966 and quickly expanded. McLane, a 

subsidiary of Wal-Mart Stores after 1990 but now 

a part of Berkshire Hathaway since 2002, is a 

nationwide wholesaler to convenience stores, 

mass merchants, quick-service restaurants and 

movie theaters. It also has international 

operations. Another transportation corporation, 

Materials Transportation Company moved from 

Chicago to Temple in 1977. MTC, the world’s 

largest manufacturer of industrial battery 

changing equipment, also makes food-processing 

equipment. Also capitalizing on the city’s prime 

location, Wal-Mart in 1993 opened a major 

distribution center. 

Temple’s industrial park has more than 70 

companies representing major distributions 

operations and manufacturing as well as service 

businesses, such as the 108,000-square-foot 

Sprint/Nextel Call Center that opened in 2001. 

The Southeast Industrial Park, a 400-acre site 

on the east Loop 363, opened with its first 

occupant, Best Rite Manufacturing, in 2000. 

As the railroads’ influence waned, other economic 

sectors boomed. By the 1970s, Temple 

manufacturers included furniture, shoes, insulation, 

cottonseed products, electronic products, 

plastics, clothing, optical supplies, woodwork, and 

livestock and poultry feed. In addition, Temple 

had a substation of the agricultural experiment station 

system and was the site for the state offices of 

the U.S. Soil Conservation Service. 

By the late 1970s, Texas Instruments located a 

massive 500,000-square-foot facility on 500 acres, 

just southwest of the main industrial park area. TI 

eventually sold the computer division to Acer in 

1997. The city bought the TI building in January 

2002, and Scott & White purchased the site in 

January 2005. 

Besides housing Scott & White’s medical 

services and research center, the site is now the 

heart of the Temple Bioscience District. By the 

beginning of the twenty-first century, Temple 

❖ 

Above: King’s Daughters Hospital 

moved from South 22nd Street to its 

new location on Loop 363 in the 

mid-1970s. King’s Daughters, 

founded in 1896, is the city’s oldest 

community hospital. 


Below: South Main and Avenue A was 

the heart of Temple’s downtown 

shopping and business center up until 

the 1970s. The skyscraper (left) was 

First National Bank, renamed Extraco 

Banks. At the right was the former 

Temple National Bank. This block was 

later cleared to build the Temple 

Federal Building. 



❖ 

With the completion of the interstate 

highway system, Temple could still 

capitalize on its central location to 

emerge as a major trucking and 

transportation center. This photo 

shows Interstate 35 in the late 1960s 

approaching from the north. 


capitalized on its solid reputation for medicine, 

medical education and agricultural research. With 

the authorization of the state legislature in 2003, 

Temple voters created the Temple Health and 

Bioscience District. The first such district 

established in Texas, the district is devoted to the 

development and creation of health and 

bioscience/biotechnology opportunities by 

forming partnerships with government and 

private-sector researchers. The net result has been 

a dramatic increase in research funds flowing to 

the city and creation of an attractive area to draw 

biomedical researchers to Central Texas. 

Population trends reflected the city’s prosperity. 

The city’s population had risen to 42,483 by 1980 

and to 49,851 by 1990, then to 54,514 by 2000. 

The Killeen-Temple metropolitan statistical area 

reported a population of 255,301 in 1990. That 

figure had grown to 312,952 by 2000. 

By September 2000, Temple shared the 

fourth lowest unemployment rate of 3.3 percent 

with the Dallas area, behind Bryan-College 

Station, Austin and Lubbock. Just as geography 

TEMPLE 

FIRSTS 

Raleigh R. White, Jr., M.D., co-founder of Scott & White, bought the first 

automobile, a 1906 Cadillac, so he could make faster house calls. However, 

since Temple’s first streets were rough, muddy thoroughfares until they were 

paved in 1910, the car often stood idle waiting for the streets to be drivable. 

played a major role in the city’s early 

development in the 1880s, the city has again 

benefited from its central location in the state. 

The opening of the twenty-first century opened 

new opportunities for Temple from the south. 

Austin, Texas, the state capital 70 miles away, 

was white-hot with growth spurred by high-tech 

companies. More than 80 percent of the state’s 

population lives within 200 miles of Temple. 

Temple has benefited from Austin’s overflow. City 

leaders launched a campaign to sell Temple’s 

location, low cost of living and small-town charms. 

Originally called “the Wildflower Capital of Texas” 

since the early 1980s, Temple looked back to its 

historical roots—literally and figuratively— 

acquired a new designation in early 2000s, “Tree 

City U.S.A.” W. Goodrich Jones, father of Arbor 

Day, would be pleased that his nineteenth-century 

vision has endured. 

Enduring, too, is Temple’s ability to change and 

grow over the decades, despite internal and 

external challenges. Temple was born at the 

dawning period of remarkable optimism, when 

Texans sensed they had a destiny to fill. In the 

midst of Reconstruction after the War Between the 

States, John Milton McCoy, a young Indianan who 

had settled in Dallas and who later became a 

prominent civic leader, wrote home: “My idea is 

that the time will come when Texas society will be 

the most refined of any in America. It will be 

simply the polished steel. It is now steel in the rust 

and rough. Send on your teachers, your preachers, 


TEMPLE’ S FIRST NEWSPAPER 

Partners J. S. Thompson and W. D. Cox arrived in town with “a shirt tail full of type” to begin publishing the Weekly Times in 

November 21, 1881. 

The editors kept the copy newsy, oftentimes criticizing the newly organized city commission for inaction, such as failing to 

meet for three months as the city fell deeply into debt. Thompson and Cox also lambasted the younger generation—“going to the 

dogs” they called it—because they frequented pool halls. The advertisers in the Times’ first edition showed that Temple, barely 

six months old, had attracted a variety of businesses and professionals. 

Included in the first issue were ads by the following: 

T. P. Early, M. D. 

Mabry T. Cox, M. D. (One mile out) 

Wm. Fallahaye, barber 

J. S. Wheeler, agent town lots 

E. H. Kamien & Co., restaurant 

Nichols Gidley, meat market 

H. J. Murphy, restaurant 

Charles Corbe, meat market 

J. E. Moore, grain and land 

Sam Joiner, painter 

George Lovick, blacksmith 

R. S. Brown, jeweler 

P. J. Bowers, M. D. 

Gates & Garrison, livery 

D. C. Hamrick, meat market 

J. E. Penry, insurance 

A. Jahnke, groceries 

J. T. Cook, drugs 

Wright & Moore, livery 

L. R. Wade & Co., general merchandise 

R. B. Godley, lumber 

S. Doche, city hotel 

Otto K. Burwitz, saloon 

Gray & Black, groceries and post office 

W. Fuller, general merchandise 

J. Levine & Co., general merchandise 

Wallace & Northrup, saloon 

J. Simon, saloon 

John LaPrelle, (H. L. Sherrill, manager) dry goods 

and groceries 

J. M. Ashley, furniture 

James & McLean, drugs 

Wallace & Northrup, general merchandise 

J. Allard, saddlery 

R. Gerber, saloon 

P. J. Bowers, M. D. 

R. T. Hawthorne, drugs (Purchased by T. E. Smith & 

Bro. in December) 

W. R. Branch (Located before sale of lots), 

general merchandise 

John D. Brannon, general merchandise 

J. W. Pistole, groceries 

C. T. Simpson, M. D. 

J. R. Irvin, confectioneries 

W. M. Branch, school supplies 

Stansell & Griffith, dentists 

Isaac Jalonick, insurance 

Henry Clegg, groceries 

your churches and schools along with your 

railroads and the great Lone Star State will be the 

particular bright evening star of the first 

magnitude in the western horizon of that galaxy of 

stars known and read of by all men in the United 

States. But there is work to be done.” 

His words seem almost prophetic because 

Temple became a bright star in the center of that 

galaxy. From the early 1880s, when bullets and 

bordellos were more popular than Bibles, through 

to the 1930s, when Temple foundered under the 

weight of a devastating depression, Temple 

citizens have managed to overcome and conquer. 

The 1895 Dallas Morning News was indeed 

prophetic: Temple has been “lifted…from the 

harum-scarum new town ways into a city that had 

gained strength in adversity and that had never 

ceased to build and grow.” 

“Temple is sort of this gem in the rough,” former 

City Councilwoman Sally Myers, co-owner of a 

downtown business, told the Dallas Morning News 

in November 2000. “A lot of people don’t know that 

Temple even exists. They just know what they see 

driving on I-35. If a [person’s] looking for a place to 

put down roots and raise their children and have a 

good quality of life, this is that kind of community.” 


TEMPLE MAYORS: CREATING ORDER OUT OF CHAOS 

Early Temple mayors were a motley crew, coming from all backgrounds and interests. 

The first mayor, J.W. Callaway showed his gratitude to voters who put him in office by donating a city block for the town’s first 

park—the downtown area west of the current city hall now used as the Temple Visitors’ Center and city parking lot. He is credited 

with planting the city’s first tree, a fast-growing catalpa with broad, shading leaves, in front of his house on Central Avenue. 

When Augustus Lewy assumed the mayor’s chair in October 1886, he inherited a boisterous young city with deep financial problems. 

An attorney, Lewy was a Montgomery, Alabama, native whose parents were prominent merchants in the Jewish community. 

He apparently found a new home in Temple, because when his third daughter was born in 1886, he named her “Amy Temple Lewy.” 

Once in office, Lewy moved quickly to establish economic stability. However, he was no fool. The mayor liked to play poker 

all day every Sunday and, as a court magistrate, tried other poker players during the week. On one occasion, a man charged with 

gambling came before Lewy and pleaded "not guilty." Lewy called him a liar, saying that he had played with him the day before. 

The mayor fined the defendant $16.70. 

In 1888, he ran for state representative but was defeated when his opponent maintained that voters did not want to elect “a 

Hebrew.” Disappointed, he moved to San Antonio in 1889, where he maintained a prominent law practice and served as San 

Antonio’s city attorney and a city councilman. 

Lewy’s influence and managerial skills had long-term benefits, especially his efforts to dig the city out of a financial crisis. By 

March 1892, the city’s financial worries had eased. Mayor William Carton detailed the progress in his annual report: “…Only a 

short time ago the financial condition of the city was most deplorable … Our treasury warrants were floating around promiscuously 

and we had no money in the treasury with which to take them up. This condition of affairs, I am proud to say to you, owing 

to your prudent and judicious management, does not now exist.” 

Administering an upstart railroad town was challenging. The City Council minutes reveal how sordid some businesses could 

be. In February 1892, the Temple City Commission authorized the town marshal to close down gambling houses and brothels. 

Temple’s growing pains also created tensions around the council table. During the 1890s, Mayor L. R. Wade was so prone to pick fights 

at city council meetings that both Marshal William Taylor and Deputy Gene Dice had to stand between him and council members. 

Some mayors found themselves thrust into national and international headlines. When Temple resident and cotton trader 

Thomas J. Silva died in the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915, by a German submarine, the entire city waited for weeks as 

teams recovered the 1,198 passengers lost. But Silva was not among those identified. 

Mayor J.B. Watters personally appealed to fellow Templeite Governor James Ferguson to help. “All telegrams and cablegrams 

from [Mr. Silva’s] firm, friends and family have brought no information as to his safety or loss. Cablegrams to Cunard Steamship 

Company, Liverpool and Queenstown, are unanswered,” Watters wrote. “Mr. Silva’s wife, children and friends are deeply grieved 

and I appeal to you as our chief executive to confer with Secretary William J. Bryan and ask him to demand all information possible 

be furnished without delay. Answer.” 

Silva’s family learned on June 28 that he was lost at sea. The entire city went into mourning. 

❖ 

Lake Polk, created by the Santa Fe 

Railway shortly after the city was 

founded, was a popular recreation 

area with parks, golf and picnic areas. 

The gazebo and falls were popular for 

young courting couples. 



The complete list of Temple mayors: 

J. W. Callaway, July 1882-1884 

W. H. Craine, 1884-1886 

J. W. Callaway, April 1886-October 1886 

J. W. Smith (acting), October 1886 

Augustus Lewy, October 1886-August 1889 

William Carton, August 1889-April 1894 

L. R. Wade, 1894-1896 

Wade Marshall Taylor, 1896-1897 

J. H. Dougherty, 1897-1898 

J. B. Watters, 1898-1904 

F. B. Hamill, 1904-1908 

William Ginnuth, 1908-1910 

Fred P. Hammil, 1910-1912 

J. B. Watters, 1912-1916 

J. K. Campbell, April 1916-July 1922 

C. L. Walker, 1922-April 1926 

Fred P. Stroop, 1926-1928 

Lem Burr, 1928-1930 

W. W. Sellers, 1930-1934 

W. S. Sealy, 1934-1938 

Martin Sullivan, 1938-1940 

H. B. Mason, 1940-1944 

Guy Draper, 1944-1948 

Dan Perry, 1948-1950 

C. L. Walker, Jr., 1950-1952 

Roy Strasburger, 1952-1956 

Charles Wheeler, Jr., 1956-1960 

Henry Taylor, Jr., 1960-1964 

Wilford B. Pitts, 1964-1965 

Truett Tomlinson, 1965-1968 

Henry Taylor, Jr., 1968-1970 

Jamie Clements, 1970-1974 

D. M. Bandy, 1974-1976 

William R. Courtney, 1976-1980 

John F. Sammons, Jr., 1980-1988 

W. A. “Buck” Prewitt III, 1988-1990 

Dennis D. Hobbs, 1990-1992 

J. W. Perry, 1992-1998 

Keifer Marshall, Jr., 1998-2002 

William A. Jones, III, 2002-present 

❖ 

Weddings were important social 

events, as this 1910 wedding portrait 

shows, with 17 attendants and four 

flower girls. 



SPECIAL 

THANKS TO 

SHARING THE HERITAGE 

Historic profiles of businesses, 

organizations, and families that have 

contributed to the development and 

DanHil Containers II, Ltd. 

economic base of Temple 

Gidden Distributing, Inc. 

❖ 


Aldrich-Thomas Group, Realtors .......................................................64 

Strasburger Enterprises, Inc. ............................................................68 

Scott & White Memorial Hospital ......................................................72 

Wilsonart International, Inc. ............................................................76 

McLane Group, L.P..........................................................................80 

Wendland’s Farm Products and the Wendland Family ............................84 

Cultural Activities Center ................................................................88 

Temple Chamber of Commerce...........................................................89 

Aladdin Car Wash...........................................................................90 

SPJST ...........................................................................................92 

University of Mary Hardin-Baylor .....................................................94 

Johnnie’s Office Systems, Inc. ...........................................................96 

Central Texas Housing Consortium ....................................................98 

In the Mood Ballroom ....................................................................100 

King’s Daughters Hospital and King’s Daughters Clinic .......................102 

Ralph Wilson Youth Clubs of Temple, Inc. .........................................104 

Blackland and Grassland Research ...................................................106 

Sunbelt Transformer, Ltd. ...............................................................108 

Temple Machine Shop ....................................................................110 

Drews Hunt Builders .....................................................................112 

City of Temple..............................................................................113 

iZone ..........................................................................................114 

Temple Iron & Metal .....................................................................115 

Jack Hilliard Distributing Company, Inc. ..........................................116 

Holy Trinity Catholic High School/St. Mary’s School ...........................117 

Temple Civic Theatre, Inc...............................................................118 

Scott & White Health Plan .............................................................119 

Immanuel Lutheran Church.............................................................120 

Precious Memories Florist & Gift Shop .............................................121 

Temple Independent School District..................................................122 

Grace Presbyterian Church .............................................................123 

Temple Economic Development Corporation .......................................124 

Temple College .............................................................................125 

RVOS Farm Mutual Insurance .........................................................126 

First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) ......................................127 

SPECIAL 

THANKS TO 

Jancer Group 

Materials Transportation 

Company 

Sharing the Heritage ✦ 63

❖ 

ALDRICH- 

THOMAS 

GROUP, 

REALTORS 

Above: The Hudson Building. 

Below: Bird Creek Crossing. 

Completed in 2008, it is a forty-six 

acre retail development with Target, 

Home Depot, Best Buy, and Bank of 

America as its major tenants, 

assembled from eight properties by 

Aldrich-Thomas Group for Primus 

Real Estate Services. Aldrich-Thomas 

Group also negotiated with Temple 

Economic Development Corporation 

and the city of Temple for the 

economic incentives package and 

with the Texas Department of 

Transportation for the rights of 

ingress and egress and exit and 

entrance ramps. 

In 1923, Elbert Aldrich was 

born in the small farming 

community of Rosebud, Texas. 

He attended school in Temple 

during the Depression and 

graduated from Rosebud High, 

just as World War II was 

beginning. A year following Pearl 

Harbor, nineteen year old Aldrich 

enlisted in the United States 

Navy. After taking part in nearly 

ninety-five combat missions, 

Aldrich returned home with a 

Distinguished Flying Cross and 

other decorations for valor. 

Upon his return home, Aldrich formed a 

partnership with his father as owners of the 

Hudson automotive dealership in Temple, Texas. 

Later, they operated an automotive repair business, 

M. C. Aldrich and Son, for nineteen years. 

In 1965, Aldrich entered the real estate 

business with his father-in-law, P. R. Cox, who 

was in the process of founding the town of 

Harker Heights. A couple of years later, Aldrich 

set up office in Temple with his wife, Dorothy 

Ann Cox Aldrich, incorporating the business in 

1976 as Elbert Aldrich Realtors, Inc. Dorothy 

Ann played a key role in growing the business 

and still does today. She ran the office 

operations of the business, including the 

commercial property management, accounting, 

and, even answering the phones. Their 

daughters, Ann and Amy, also worked at the 

office when not attending school. They were 

taught to answer the phone, make bank 

deposits, make copies, read abstracts, and get 

contracts signed. 

In 1972, Aldrich made his first industrial sale 

of land on the west side of Interstate 35 and the 

Burlington, Northern and Santa Fe Railroad to 

Western Auto. Soon after, he began his long 

association with the Temple Industrial 

Foundation by assembling tracts of land, 

including the Easterwood Tract that is now 

home to McLane Company Southwest, for 

development as part of the Temple Industrial 

Park in the northern part of Temple. 

In 1976, at the request of Dr. Ralph Wilson of 

the Ralph Wilson Plastics Company, later 

renamed Wilsonart International, to create 

housing close to the Temple Industrial Park for 

industrial workers, Aldrich formed Milestone 

Corporation with several other community 

leaders and began developing a residential and 

commercial subdivision on the north side of 

State Highway 36 known as Northwest Hills. 

Also in 1976, Aldrich assembled the Bassell 

and Greenway farms, along with several out 

parcels, located on the western edge of Temple 

for Texas Instruments. The signing of the 

contracts by Texas Instruments occurred on the 

morning of the day his younger daughter, Amy, 

married Aaron Lloyd Thomas. The ultimate 

closing of the sale entrenched Aldrich as one of 

Texas Instruments’ primary industrial brokers. 

For over two decades, the Aldrich company, 

acquired and disposed of properties for Texas 

Instruments, including sites in College Station, 


Lubbock, and Waco, Texas; Raleigh and Ashville, 

North Carolina; and Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

Aldrich incorporated his business in 1976 as 

Elbert Aldrich Realtors, Inc., later changing the 

name to Elbert Aldrich, Inc., REALTORS. In 

1977, daughter Amy’s husband Lloyd joined 

the firm. 

In 1978, Elbert Aldrich, Inc., began working 

in partnership with the Mélange Corporation, 

the family corporation of W. Glenn Morgan, Jr., 

the president of First Federal Savings and Loan, 

in the assemblage of land on the west side of 

South Thirty-first Street and north side of 

Glendale Lane, now part of Loop 363, for the 

Glendale Park and Temple Commercial Park 

developments. Over the next few years, 

Aldrich’s company located numerous businesses 

within the development, including RVOS 

Farmers Mutual, Mazzio’s Pizza, Applebee’s 

Neighborhood Bar and Grill, and Olive Garden. 

During the early 1980s, in 

an effort to spur the retail 

development along the then new 

Loop 363, Elbert Aldrich, Inc., 

acquired land, named Loop 363 

Commercial, located west of the 

Glendale Park development and 

extended streets and utilities 

and built numerous retail and 

office buildings within the 

acquired property. 

While pursuing its own 

development projects of residential, 

retail, commercial and 

industrial, Elbert Aldrich, Inc. 

began acquiring land along 

Interstate 35 for Frank Mayborn 

and developing it for retail use, 

forming a close bond with Frank 

Mayborn and his company, Frank 

Mayborn Enterprises, Inc., which 

still exists today. Nearly all of 

the retail businesses situated 

along Interstate 35, such as 

La Quinta Inn, Wendy’s, Long 

John Silvers, Johnson Brothers 

Ford, Best Western, Temple 

Lincoln-Mercury-Jeep Chrysler, 

and Texas Road House, are a 

result of the close relationship of 

Elbert Aldrich, Inc., and Frank 

Mayborn Enterprises. 

In 1985 the city of Temple leadership came 

to Aldrich and his company seeking a new 

location for the Temple Country Club, so that 

the existing club property could be turned into 

a municipal golf course. The Aldrich company 

had the right property for the request, selling to 

Robert Dedman’s Club Corporation of America 

the land for a new golf course, clubhouse and 

residential and office development. This 

transaction required the negotiation of new 

district boundary lines between the Belton and 

Temple Independent School Districts, placing 

the residential lots and office land in Temple ISD 

and placing the golf course and clubhouse in 

Belton ISD. 

In the mid-1980s, Elbert Aldrich, Inc., 

obtained the listing of the A. J. Hall Estate 

properties in Killeen, Texas, which were being 

handled by the trust department of Interfirst 


❖ 

Wal-Mart Distribution Center. 

Aldrich-Thomas Group negotiated the 

sale purchase of 211 acres of land by 

McLane Company and Wal-Mart as 

part of the merger of McLane 

Company and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. 

Bank, N.A. This land stretched along both sides 

of Central Texas Expressway from east of W. S. 

Young to west of Trimmier Road. Much of the 

land was rough and in the hundred-year flood 

plain, so over the course of a year and a half, the 

Aldrich company worked with the trust 

department and a local engineer to overcome the 

problem and was successful in having FEMA 

accept the reshaping and regrading of the 

property to allow for its development. This land 

is now the site of numerous retail businesses, 

such as Toys-R-Us, Circuit City, Lowe’s, Wal- 

Mart Super Center, Country Dodge, Holiday Inn 

Express, Red Lobster, Ryan’s Family Steakhouse, 

Days Inn, and H-E-B. This retail expansion in 

Killeen helped spur the more recent 

developments of Trammell Crow Company and 

others, bringing to the area Hollywood Theaters, 

Home Depot and a host of new restaurants. 

It was also during this time that the company 

assisted Drayton McLane, Jr., in the expansion of 

his family’s business by handling the site selection 

of the majority of McLane Company’s distribution 

centers across the country, including those in 

Temple and Lubbock, Texas; Goodyear, Arizona; 

Longmont, Colorado; and Kissimmee, Florida. 

The Aldrich company was instrumental in 

assembling the more than 450 acres in Temple for 

the headquarters of McLane Company and, in 

1990, sold 211 acres to McLane Company at the 

time of its merger with Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. This 

tract of land in the northwest section of Temple is 

now home to a large Wal-Mart Distribution Center. 

For over fifteen years, Elbert Aldrich, Inc., has 

handled the clinic and hospital site selections for 

Scott & White Memorial Hospital, including 

those in the Waco and College Station areas. 

In 2000, Elbert Aldrich, Inc., assembled for 

redevelopment of much of the Loop 363 

Commercial subdivision for Temple Towne 

Center, a Seitz Group retail development 

consisting of Staples, Ross, Marshall’s, Hobby 

Lobby, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Fazoli’s, 

McAlister’s Deli, and Chase Bank. 

In 2003, Elbert Aldrich, Inc., working with 

Jon Spelman in Waco and Robert McCollum in 

Dallas, brokered the 210-acre multi-use 

development know as Central Marketplace 

located at the northwest corner of Loop 340 and 

Interstate 35 in Waco. Elbert Aldrich, Inc., 

represented Scott & White Hospital and 

retained for Scott & White thirty acres fully 

developed for a future hospital site. 

In 2006, Elbert Aldrich, Inc., completed the 

assemblage and sale of eight parcels of land 

totaling approximately forty-six acres to Primus 

Real Estate Services for the Bird Creek Crossing 

retail development at the north corner of Loop 

363 and Interstate 35 in Temple, which will be 

the home to Target, Home Depot, Best Buy, and 

Bank of America. This development is changing 

the appearance of the city of Temple along 

the Interstate for the better by demolishing 

worn-out buildings and cleaning up several 

unsightly properties at the major retail hub of 

Temple. The transaction took the company 

considerable time in negotiating an economic 

incentives package with the city of Temple and 

rights-of-way issues with the Texas Department 

of Transportation. 

With the passing of Elbert Aldrich in May 

2005, the company experienced a generational 

change of operation and Amy and Lloyd 

Thomas are positioning the company to 

maximize the strategic opportunities that lay 

ahead. Now that the transitioning stage is 

underway, the company has changed its name to 

Aldrich-Thomas Group, Realtors ® . 

Lloyd is the current president of the company. 

His extensive work in commercial real estate has 

earned him much recognition as an expert in the 

field. Thomas’ professional designations include 

the Accredited Land Consultant (ALC) of the 

Realtors ® Land Institute, Certified Commercial 


Investment Member (CCIM) of the CCIM 

Institute, and the Specialist, Industrial and 

Office Realtor ® (SIOR) of the Society of 

Industrial and Office Realtors. 

Dorothy Ann and Elbert Aldrich’s younger of 

their two daughters, Amy Thomas, has become 

a vital part of the organization and is now in 

charge of the office management. She is 

currently Secretary/Treasurer of the corporation. 

Their older daughter, Ann Barkemeyer, is a 

residential appraiser and operates her separate 

business out of the same office. Amy and Lloyd’s 

two daughters, Lauren Maggard and Meg 

Thomas, have been brought in as directors of 

the company. They maintain a close relationship 

with the operations of the company and its 

affiliated investment entities, which are 

currently adding to their portfolio of properties. 

Currently, the Thomas family and Aldrich- 

Thomas Group are working on three new 

retail development transactions and developing 

several Alzheimer’s patient assisted care 

living centers. 

In response to client demand, Aldrich-Thomas 

Group has systematically extended both its range 

of services and its geographic reach, now serving 

clients throughout Texas. To enhance the 

company’s services and assure its continued 

expansion, Aldrich-Thomas Group’s agents are 

encouraged to pursue prestigious professional 

designations, such as the SIOR, CCIM, and ALC, 

memberships in the organizations that support 

these designations provide a nationwide network 

of key industry contacts. 

Combining expert service with an 

unwavering commitment to integrity and vision, 

Aldrich-Thomas Group’s professional staff 

enjoys the respect of Temple’s commercial, 

industrial and financial communities, as well as 

that of both the Temple Economic Development 

Corporation and the Economic Development 

Corporation of Belton. 

❖ 

Below: Aldrich-Thomas Group 

negotiated the sale of 40.35 acres for 

the Super Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club, 

in two phases, south of the Temple 

Mall and near the northeast corner of 

South Thirty-first Street and 

Marlandwood Road in Temple, as well 

as the development and sale of the 

surrounding area, including the site 

for Academy Sports at the southwest 

corner of Marlandwood Road and 

Raleigh Drive. 


❖ 

STRASBURGER 

ENTERPRISES, 

INC. 

Above: Henry Strasburger in the 

early 1900s. 

Below: Strasburger Meat Market 

in 1926. 

For more than 125 years, four generations of 

the Strasburger family have started businesses, 

adapted them to changing market conditions, 

and carefully nurtured their growth. From a 

nineteenth century saloon in early Temple, to a 

dynamic international conglomerate of retailrelated 

services, the Strasburger retail legend 

continues to unfold. 

The Strasburger business empire began in the 

late 1800s when Henry Strasburger arrived in 

Temple from the Württemberg region of 

Germany by way of Galveston and Waco. 

Within just a few years, Henry managed to have 

an ownership interest in several bars and at least 

one grocery store. He and a partner opened the 

Moss Rose Saloon at the intersection of what is 

now South Main Street and Avenue A in the 

new, booming railroad town of Temple that was 

sometimes disparagingly referred to as 

Tanglefoot or Mudville. 

The precursor publication to Dun & Bradstreet, 

the Bradstreet Business Directory, listed Henry’s 

grocery store in its 1884 edition, thus making the 

current Strasburger conglomerate the longestrunning 

family-owned business in Temple. 

The saloon operated successfully until local 

temperance forces eventually led Henry to adapt 

the gentleman’s bar to a cafe that was “suitable 

for ladies.” He managed to keep a saloon in the 

back of the cafe until Prohibition forced him to 

close it almost ten years later. In the best 

traditions of great entrepreneurs, Henry had 

morphed his bar (“a first-class orderly house” 

according to the Temple newspaper) into a cafe 

with a saloon “in the back” into a cafe that sold 

everything from Sunday dinner to medicines to 

groceries. Undaunted by Prohibition, he simply 

substituted meat for spirits, and continued to 

operate the meat market in the same location. 

Henry’s son, Roy Strasburger, born in 1900, 

eventually converted the market into the 

Strasburger Grocery Store, and grew the new 

grocery store business to five stores in Temple 

by the time that “the noble experiment” known 

as Prohibition ended in 1933—the same year 

that H. T. “Tommy” Strasburger was born. Like 

his father, Roy adapted the stores and their 

product offers to changing tastes and times. 

As the third generation of Strasburgers grew, 

the children worked the stores and learned the 

business from the ground up. Of Roy’s three 

children, only Tommy would eventually become 

a merchant, following in the footsteps of his 

father and grandfather. Tommy graduated from 

Baylor University in 1954, having distinguished 

himself as a star basketball player. While at 

Baylor, Tommy did an internship with one of 

“the big eight” accounting firms. After service in 

military intelligence, the entrepreneur in his 

DNA took over. With the discipline of an 

accountant and the innovative spirit of his 

grandfather and father, the son was almost 

destined to stand out in the world of retail. He 

bought the chain of grocery stores from his 

father in 1958 and became a father, himself, for 

the first time that same year. Tommy and his 

wife, the former Shirley Myers, opened a dozen 


supermarkets between Dallas and Austin over 

the next ten years. They also made sure that a 

fourth generation of Strasburgers would have an 

opportunity to step into the family business. 

Roy, Gregg, Sharon and Susan were all born to 

Tommy and Shirley over an eight-year period. 

Other businesses evolved at this time to support 

the supermarkets: The Dough Shop, Big Tex 

Stamp Company, Bell Produce, Employee 

Consultant Company and EconODose Systems 

were all started within an amazingly short 

period of time. 

The mid- to late sixties was a seminal period 

for the clan. Tommy correctly anticipated the 

synergy between food and fuel sales that a new 

retail format—the convenience store—would 

afford. He bought his first chain of the smallerthan-supermarket 

stores in 1967. He soon 

added the Milky Way chain of stores in Waco to 

that Minit Mart group in Austin. By the end of 

the 1970s, Strasburger renamed and reimaged 

all the retail sites he had bought or built. Zippy 

Food Stores and Pay-Less Gas locations dotted 

the landscape along Interstate 35 between San 

Antonio and Dallas. His operations ranked him 

as one of the leaders in the convenience store 

industry in Texas and the nation, and he served 

on the Board of Directors of the National 

Association of Convenience Stores. 

Strasburger Enterprises, Inc., the parent 

company, was formed in 1979. While it has 

always been referred to as SEI throughout the 

industry, in Temple, the company would always 

be known simply as Strasburger. 

The company’s growth was breathtaking in 

the late ’70s and early ’80s. The concept of 

vertical integration was taken to its limits by 

Tommy and his team of SEI executives. Because 

so many stores were being built, Southwest 

Construction Company was formed. With fuel 

playing such an important role in the 

profitability of the stores, Fuel Distributors, 

Inc., was formed to ensure a high level of 

professionalism. The new company represented 

a number of major oil brands, including Citgo, 

Diamond Shamrock, Shell, Mobil, and Chevron. 

Like his grandfather and father before him, 

Tommy was just adding a product line that fit 

well with the existing offer and made life a little 

more convenient for the customer. 

When national and state regulations called 

for more environmental awareness on the part 

of fuel handlers, a new company, PetroTech, was 

formed to provide construction, maintenance, 

repair, sales and service for fuel related 

equipment such as pumps, dispensers, tanks, 

and canopies. 

Fidelity Bank of Texas became a Strasburger 

entity when Robinson State Bank, based in 

Robinson, Texas, was bought. A second Waco, 

Texas, bank named Waco State Bank was 

developed. When banking regulations allowed, 

the two were merged as Fidelity Bank of Texas. 

This led company executives to develop the 

concept of the “insert bank,” an additional profit 

center for the convenience store, once again 

expanding the offer to the convenience store 

consumer. Typically occupying anywhere from 

150 to 500 square feet, an insert bank in a 

supermarket or convenience store will often 

generate as many loans and accounts as a fullsize 

branch bank and the operating costs 

are lower. 

As the Strasburger real estate portfolio grew 

with more and more store locations, and as the 

Strasburger payroll grew commensurately, 

Tommy decided that the expenses associated 

with insurance and benefits could be kept “inhouse” 

and an offshore captive insurance 

company and local insurance agencies were 

❖ 

Roy Strasburger during his tenure 

as mayor. 


❖ 

Thomas Strasburger in 2008. 

started or purchased. Vertical integration was 

being taken to a whole new level. 

While spending time in the Caribbean 

because of the insurance company’s business, 

Tommy realized that this world-renowned 

paradise for divers and snorkelers was 

underdeveloped and offered great opportunity. 

A hotel was built in the Turks and Caicos 

Islands. An airline company was started and 

began regularly scheduled flights to the islands. 

Strasburger even operated the duty-free shop at 

the airport. 

With so many company executives traveling 

extensively, the next logical business venture 

was a travel agency. Megatravel, a full service 

travel agency, joined the growing list of 

Strasburger companies. Today, Megatravel 

serves Central Texas travelers, specializing in 

group sales and corporate accounts. 

Following a tradition dating all the way back 

to Henry and his saloons, Tommy listened 

closely to his customers—and he always 

responded to their needs. When travelers who 

visited the islands wished out loud that they had 

the diving skills needed to truly appreciate 

the experience, Tom’s Dive and Ski Shops 

were born. 

By 1990, you could book a trip with 

Strasburger’s travel agency to an island in the 

Caribbean, then sign up for diving lessons and 

buy all your gear at Strasburger’s shop. After 

flying to your destination on Strasburger’s 

airliner, you could check into a hotel built by 

Strasburger and eat in a restaurant designed by 

Strasburger. Upon leaving the island, you could 

stock up on duty-free goods at Strasburger’s 

shop at the airport. And, of course, you could 

pay for all this with a check written on your 

account at Strasburger’s bank. 

It was vertical integration that was nothing 

short of dizzying. And it was almost completely 

unrelated to the family’s core business—the 

convenience stores. 

By the mid-1980s, it was clear to Tommy and 

his team that the United States convenience 

store industry was becoming saturated and that 

most other countries had yet to experience true 

convenience stores. Thus, in 1986, a 

Strasburger subsidiary opened its first 

convenience store in Australia to rave reviews 

and instant success. A new concept for that 

country, this quintessentially American retail 

format quickly grew into Australia’s chain of 

Express Food and Motor Marts, which was later 

rebranded to Quix Food Stores. 

Recognizing the chain’s success with the 

convenience store format and appreciating the 

company’s expertise in day-to-day management, 

a subsidiary of Mobil Oil Australia entered 

into a joint venture with Strasburger, buying 

half the Quix chain. A team of retail experts on 

the ground in Australia—all Strasburger 

employees—moved expeditiously to convert 

existing Mobil gas stations to true convenience 

stores, applying the Quix name and business 

system quickly and flawlessly. Within just a few 

years, the new venture was named one of the 

fastest growing companies in Australia. 

Quix Systems, Inc., another subsidiary of SEI, 

was then formed to enter into long-term 

convenience store licensing programs and 

consulting engagements outside the United States. 

Shell UK Oil approached Strasburger to help 

them with their large network of gas stations in 

the United Kingdom. A licensing agreement led 

to a Strasburger team rapidly converting some 

eight hundred Shell petrol stations in England, 

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to 

convenience stores—at a rate of one per 

business day. A Strasburger executive also 

managed the marketing function for Shell’s retail 

network of over sixteen hundred sites; yet 


another Strasburger team developed the 

prototype store design for Shell that was 

eventually adopted for worldwide use. 

Other multinational oil companies sought 

Strasburger’s services, and the company 

expanded its scope, eventually doing work 

in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, Africa, and 

Latin America. 

Due to the high demand for ongoing 

consulting services, a consulting and research 

subsidiary, Cambridge-Myers, conducts market 

studies, business analysis, and evaluation of real 

estate, management information systems and 

distribution logistics. The group also conducts 

feasibility studies, customer behavior research, 

network planning services, infrastructure 

analysis, consumer surveys, efficiency studies 

and food service set up. Many of the world’s 

largest retail companies in more than fifty 

countries have taken advantage of the expertise 

offered by Cambridge-Myers. 

During the century and a quarter that 

the family has started and operated one 

successful and highly visible business after 

another, Strasburger Farms has almost gone 

unnoticed to the general public. The family 

business, covering some six thousand acres of 

Blackland Prairie, has included farming, 

ranching, and grain distribution during its fourgeneration 

lifespan. 

As the company enters the new millennium, 

the fourth generation of the Strasburger family 

plays a vital role in setting strategy and directing 

day-to-day company operations. The sons, Roy 

and Gregg, head up various divisions within the 

family’s diverse enterprise, while daughters 

Sharon and Susan are active and vocal directors 

of SEI. Shirley has provided over a half-century 

of guidance to the family and has been an active 

player in the development of many of the 

subsidiary and affiliated companies that have 

made it all so exciting and successful. 

The ability to attract the very best talent in 

the convenience store industry, retention of top 

employees, and Tommy’s vision and 

management style have contributed to the 

company’s success. The Strasburger legend is 

well known in the convenience store industry. 

As a result, many talented professionals 

representing diverse fields such as distribution, 

advertising, broadcasting, manufacturing, real 

estate, finance, information services, and 

academia have joined the company’s upper 

management team. 

For over a hundred years, the patriarchal 

vision of Henry, Roy and Tommy have turned 

the dreams of a young German immigrant into 

one of the most successful and respected 

companies in Central Texas. As the world 

changed, each successive generation changed 

the family’s business to adapt to it. When the 

world appeared settled and staid, each of them 

looked past the sure and the certain and 

developed new businesses that answered 

needs that were not yet clear to even the 

most insightful. 

Reinventing the company, charting new 

frontiers and defining best practices for 

established industries domestically and 

internationally have been Strasburger hallmarks. 

The early twenty-first century looks remarkably 

similar, in that respect, to the early twentieth 

century, when it all began. 

The new generation of Strasburger 

entrepreneurs continues to develop better systems 

within the realm of their mature businesses while 

envisioning new business models and growth 

opportunities on a global scale. 

❖ 

Quix Store. 


SCOTT & 

WHITE 

MEMORIAL 

HOSPITAL 

❖ 

Above: The Scott & White Operating 

Room, c. the 1960s. 

On December 29, 1897, Drs. Arthur C. 

Scott, Sr., and Raleigh White, Jr., established 

a medical partnership that would 

become the Scott & White Clinic, and one 

of the early models for multi-specialty 

group practices in the United States. 

Just five years earlier, in 1892, Dr. 

Scott had come to Temple, Texas, as the 

twenty-seven year old chief surgeon of 

the Santa Fe Hospital, which served the 

Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway 

organization. Dr. White arrived in 

Temple five years later to become the 

Santa Fe House Surgeon. 

The two railroad surgeons opened 

their own hospital in 1904 by converting 

a convent into a permanent hospital. The 

hospital became the nucleus of a clinic 

complex that would eventually consist of 

thirty-one buildings scattered over five 

city blocks. Following the untimely death of Dr. 

White, the hospital was named Scott & White 

Memorial Hospital in 1922. 

Over the years that followed, specialties and 

departments have been added. Included in the 

long list of physicians at Scott & White is Dr. 

Claudia Potter. Hired in 1906, Dr. Potter would 

become the first female anesthesiologist in both 

Texas and the United States. 

In 1933 the American College of Surgeons 

approved the institution as the first cancer 

diagnostic and treatment center in Texas. 

Known across the region simply as Scott & 

White, the physician group practice grew and took 

form, and the operation of the hospital evolved. In 

1950 the name changed for a third time to the 

Scott & White Memorial Hospital and Scott, 

Sherwood and Brindley Foundation and the Scott 

& White Clinic. In 1963 the clinic and hospital 

moved to its current location in Temple. 

Scott & White collaborated with the Temple 

Veterans’ Administration Center in 1977 to 

become the clinical training location for the 

recently created Texas A&M College of 


Medicine. Additional research and education 

facilities were completed in 2000 and 2002, 

establishing Temple and Scott & White as an 

academic medical center. In 2007 this Temple 

partnership became a full four-year campus for 

the medical school. 

In 1978 the first of a regional network 

of primary care clinics was 

established. Also that year, a health 

maintenance organization was created. 

The health plan now has more 

than 220,000 members. 

In 2005 the Scott & White 

Cancer Research Institute was 

established with internationally 

recognized physician-scientist Dr. 

Arthur Frankel as the director. Dr. 

Frankel’s research and development 

work features genetically altered 

toxins such as anthrax and 

diphtheria, changed into cancer 

cell-targeted therapeutics. 

With the opening in 2007 of an acute care 

hospital just north of Austin in Round Rock, 

Texas, and a long-term acute care hospital in 

Temple, Scott & White has evolved into a ninehospital 

system. 

❖ 

Above: Scott & White Memorial 

Hospital, c. 1963. 

Left: The Scott & White Operating 

Room, c. the 1950s. 


❖ 

Top, right: Individual care is given to 

each patient, c. the 1950s. 

Below: The Hightower staff. 

Scott & White Memorial Hospital is located 

at 2401 South Thirty-First Street and offers a 

variety of clinics and specialty clinics. 

Scott & White Continuing Care Hospital 

located at 546 North Kegley Road, is a 

continuing care facility and not a nursing home 

or facility. Scott & White Continuing Care 

Hospital offers long-term acute care and nonchronic 

care, with an average stay of twenty-five 


days. Patients cared for are critically ill with 

complex conditions and depend on the 

expertise of specially trained personnel for their 

recovery time. 

The Scott & White Clinic system includes 

thirty regional primary care clinics, and another 

twenty regional specialty and urgent care 

clinics. Using a team approach, healthcare is 

provided in more than fifty specialties and 

subspecialties. More than seven hundred 

physicians and researchers are now part of this 

group practice. 

For directions, location, hours, primary care 

and specialty clinics contact information or to 

just review all that is offered by Scott & White, 

please visit www.sw.org. 

❖ 

Above: Scott & White Memorial 

Hospital. c. 1967. 

Bottom, right: Surgical room. 

Bottom, left: A rendering of Scott & 

White's expansion, c. 1969. 


WILSONART 

INTERNATIONAL, 

INC. 

❖ 

Above: Sedona Spirit Wilsonart ® 

HDTM. 

Below: Wilsonart ® Solid Surface. 

The founding of Wilsonart actually began in 

the 1950s when a Los Angeles laminate company 

executive, Ralph Wilson, had a heart attack. His 

doctors and family members encouraged him to 

retire. But like many retirees, he just did not 

know what to do with himself. At a friend’s 

encouragement, Wilson moved to Texas and 

began looking for a place to settle down. 

Arthur P. Brashear, Sr., the owner of 

American Desk, joined other business associates 

in suggesting to Ralph that he open a small 

laminate company right next to their school 

desk factory in Temple, Texas. In 1956, “Mr. 

Ralph” (as he would be known to employees) 

founded Ralph Wilson Plastics Company. 

In 1956 there were no less than sixteen 

manufacturers of decorative plastic laminate 

and Ralph Wilson Plastics (the early name for 

Wilsonart International) was the last to enter the 

market. Immediately, Mr. Ralph set out to find 

new uses and new customers for his product, 

which he brand-named “Wilsonart.” Mr. 

Ralph was resourceful, and above all, he 

believed in relationships. These factors 

contributed to a strategy that would make Ralph 

Wilson Plastics, later Wilsonart International, a 

leader in the industry. 

Above all, Mr. Ralph believed in customer 

service. The company was determined to deliver 

the product to customers in the shortest time, 

and they promised “10-day delivery anywhere 

in the country”—unheard of in those days. They 

developed the special-sized sheets and special 

grades that the market wanted. They also sought 

to match the breadth and range of the 

competitor lines, this being no small task for a 

small company. These innovations would 

separate Ralph Wilson Plastics quickly from 

the competition. 

As Ralph Wilson Plastics became more 

successful, it also began to attract attention from 

investors. In 1966, Wilson and the company 

leadership agreed to join the Dart Industries 

group (formerly Rexall). Dart let the founding 

ideals of the company continue, while giving 

Ralph Wilson Plastics a solid source of growth 

capital. A leased truck fleet was purchased 

shortly thereafter, along with fifty-eight 

thousand square feet of building space and a 

fourth laminate press in Temple, while 

distribution centers were added. 

Through four decades, the parent company, 

Dart, merged with Kraft to become Dart & 

Kraft, then later spun off to form Premark 

International. In 1999, Premark was acquired 

by Illinois Tool Works, Inc. (ITW). Today, the 

Wilsonart business is one of over seven hundred 

companies in the ITW portfolio. These key 

business operating units comprise the 

Wilsonart/ITW family: Wilsonart ® Laminate, 

Wilsonart ® Adhesives, Wilsonart ® Solid Surface, 

Wilsonart ® Flooring, and Wilsonart ® Sinks. 

The hallmark of Wilsonart has always been 

efficient distribution of its product. A 

warehouse distribution system, now totaling 

twenty-three facilities in North America, was 

developed to maintain a vast inventory of 

products near customers throughout the U.S. To 

this day, this business practice serves as the 

company’s foundation and is also carried out by 


the one-hundred-plus distributors throughout 

North America. 

Ralph Wilson Plastics opened its first 

metropolitan distribution center (Metro) in 

Atlanta in 1970 to better serve fabricators and 

installers in one of the fastest growing markets 

in the country. Others subsequently opened in 

Dallas, Houston, Miami, Phoenix, Toronto, and 

Minneapolis. A number of Metros were acquired 

and several more were greenfielded from 2000 

to 2006. There are currently nineteen markets 

with company-owned distribution. 

A key component to making the ten day 

delivery promise a reality was fleet ownership. 

Ralph Wilson Plastics was the first in the 

industry to take this financially daunting step. 

The trailers today grace the freeway as rolling 

billboards with inviting product photography 

and brand name graphics. There are forty-six 

trucks based in Temple and another sixteen 

trucks based in Fletcher, North Carolina, 

logging over fourteen million miles a year with 

one of the country’s most outstanding safety 

records. Wilsonart drivers act as the company’s 

goodwill ambassadors on the road. 

Ralph Wilson, Sr., was a classic entrepreneur, 

talented in organizing and running businesses 

and surrounding himself with talented people. 

He had a strong, can-do attitude that both 

inspired and challenged his team. A legendary 

motivator, Wilson empowered his people to 

“make it happen,” and expected them to do so. 

And they did. By weaving the threads of 

uncompromising customer service into the 

fabric of his newly founded company, Wilson set 

it apart from competitors. 

Having been well-schooled in the 

management style of Mr. Ralph, Dr. Ralph 

Wilson, Jr., his son, was a natural successor to 

the family business. After Mr. Ralph’s heart 

attack in 1960, Dr. Ralph gave up his dental 

practice to join his father’s new company in 

Texas. After four years of “boot camp”— 

absorbing all there was to know about the 

business—Dr. Ralph, along with another future 

leader George Hester, was assigned the 

monumental task of developing a synchronized 

order system. 

It was Hester who made a now infamous 

laminate delivery to customers in the back seat 

of a 1953 Buick. This was out in California 

where he led the sales effort through the 

company’s first regional warehouse. In addition 

to the synchronized order system he developed 

with Dr. Ralph, Hester was also instrumental in 

development of the Fletcher and Temple North 

plants. He served as vice president of 

production from 1966 until 1977 when he 

became vice president of facilities planning. 

A Southwest Conference All-American and 

All-Pro four consecutive years with the Green 

Bay Packers, Bobby Dillon was naturally 

competitive. He helped build the sales 

department and later broadened it into a total 

sales and marketing operation. Under the 

direction of Dillon, Ralph Wilson Plastics 

❖ 

Above: Nouveau Walnut Wilsonart ® 

Flooring. 

Below: Ralph Wilson, Sr., 1960. 


❖ 

Above: Ingalls ® Hospital. 

Below: Wilsonart’s ® first trade 

show booth. 

became firmly established as the laminate 

market leader in North America. The time was 

right for new product lines and Dillon oversaw 

the launch of Wilsonart Solid Surface, Custom 

Edge, and Custom Laminates. 

Bill Reeb, who served as president of the 

company from 1995 to 2005, had a natural skill 

for understanding markets, channels, customers 

and human nature. With his tremendous 

strategic planning capabilities and deft 

implementation skills, he made Wilsonart a 

recognizable and marketable brand. Reeb’s first 

major initiative as president came in 1995 with 

Vision 2000. The company doubled its size and 

sales in terms of revenues and increased units to 

a billion square feet by the year 2000. An 

implementer at heart, he put the right people in 

the right places to “get things done,” gave his 

management team flexibility, and encouraged 

them to think differently and work together. He 

also formalized the mission of the company and 

put it into simple terms that everyone could 

embrace—”Serve the Customer. Serve the 

Enterprise. Serve the People.” 

The company’s current president, Bill 

DiGaetano, is a twenty-six year veteran of 

Wilsonart, and began his career in Pennsauken, 

New Jersey as a sales representative. He has 

served as sales manager in Chicago, regional 

manager in Detroit, director of sales and vice 


president of sales and marketing. Truly a 

company legacy, DiGaetano leads the company 

into the new century with the enthusiasm and 

fortitude of his predecessors. 

Perhaps the most common thread running 

throughout the history of Wilsonart 

International, Inc., is people and processes on 

the cutting edge of industry. Whether it be in 

the manufacturing of the product, the design 

and development of new products, the approach 

to sales, marketing, and international 

operations, Wilsonart International, Inc., is 

focused on leadership in the area of laminate, 

solid surface, flooring, and adhesives. 

Perhaps Mr. Ralph’s most enduring 

contribution to design was his own home. His 

private residence from 1959 until his death in 

1972 served as the model home for his laminate 

company and as a location where he could 

personally test the quality and durability of the 

products his company manufactured. Called the 

Wilson House, Mr. Ralph’s home was purchased 

by the company and restored in 1997. The 

house is recognized by the National Trust for its 

extraordinary interior design and the 

employment of cutting-edge laminate 

technology. In 1998 the Wilson House was 

awarded National Landmark status by the Texas 

Historical Commission and is listed on the 

National Register of Historic Places as a 

significant architectural structure. The Wilson 

House is the first twentieth-century vernacular 

structure less than fifty years old to have ever 

been nominated. 

Mr. Ralph was not just committed to his 

company; he was committed to his company 

becoming part of the community. Both Mr. 

Ralph and Dr. Ralph personally helped many a 

young person get the college education that he 

or she deserved. The Ralph Wilson Scholarship 

Foundation continues to provide scholarship 

awards to the children of employees. 

The Ralph Wilson Youth Clubs evolved 

from the Temple Boys Club, which was 

organized through the effort of several Temple 

citizens in 1965. The current boys club building 

was built and donated by Ralph Wilson, Sr., 

in 1970. The girls club building was added 

in 1977 and the organization became the 

Ralph Wilson Youth Clubs of Temple, Inc. The 

Wilson Family and Wilsonart remain strong 

supporters of the Youth Clubs along with other 

community programs. 

Wilsonart is also active in the local 

school system, giving to school programs, 

sports programs, the fine arts and other 

extracurricular activities. Wilsonart employees 

are outstanding supporters of the United Way 

and Wilsonart holds memberships in local 

chambers of commerce and many other 

worthwhile organizations. 

For more information about Wilsonart 

International, Inc. please visit www.wilsonart.com. 

❖ 

Above: Dr. Ralph Wilson, Jr. 

Below: The application of adhesive. 


❖ 

MCLANE 

GROUP, L.P. 

Right: Drayton McLane, Sr., with his 

children JoAnn, Drayton, Jr., and Kate 

in Cameron, Texas, c. 1937. 

Below: The McLane family at their 

home in Temple, 1993. 

A great historian once said that history is not 

about places and events; it is about people…real 

people with dreams, courage, and vision. It is 

about people who can look back over their lives, 

know that they have made a difference and 

value the experiences along the way. It is about 

the heart of the McLane Group and its chairman, 

Drayton McLane, Jr., and the companies of 

people who are proud of their roots and grateful 

for their successes. 

The McLane Group is the holding company 

for nearly a dozen businesses based in the 

United States and around the world. The majority 

of the companies are involved in the logistics 

and food industry, providing services for retail 

markets, fast food restaurants and convenience 

stores. The two exceptions are McLane 

Advanced Technologies (MAT) and the Houston 

Astros. MAT was founded in December 2003, 

and utilizes its logistics experience and modern 

commercial Information Technology to support 

our troops all over the world. They also provide 

technical support, network installation and 

maintenance, Web design and application 

development, and software design and development 

to the commercial industry. MAT is based 

in Temple and has approximately 300 employees. 

The Houston Astros baseball club was purchased 

in November 1992, and adds some extra 

excitement to the mix. In the last fourteen years 

with Drayton at the helm as Chairman, the 

Astros have achieved the fourth best record in 

Major League Baseball. Another company headquartered 

in Temple is Leading Edge Brands, a 

beverage company that markets and distributes 

all the flavors of Frostie and Kist brands. 

The foundation to all this was the McLane 

Company, which was started by Drayton’s 

grandfather Robert McLane in 1894. The 

success of the company is an inspiring 

testament to free enterprise in America and 

visionary leadership. Drayton McLane, Sr., and 

his wife, Gladys, raised their family and 

continued to grow the business in the small 

community of Cameron. Drayton and his two 

sisters, Kate McLane Dimmitt and Jo Ann 

McLane McClaren were blessed with two strong 

Christian parents who taught their children the 

importance of integrity, ethics, responsibility, 

and hard work. After completing undergraduate 

school at Baylor University and then graduate 

school at Michigan State University, Drayton 

came home in 1959 to join the family business. 

After six years in college his father put him on 

third shift loading trucks. Learning the business 


from the ground up, Drayton soon realized that 

the company would need a more modern 

facility and systems to make the leap to the 

next level. 

One day he approached his father and 

suggested they move the business to Austin, 

Waco, or Temple. Moving the company to a 

larger city would not only make it a more 

financially sound investment, it would also allow 

the company to be closer to the interstate system 

and provide a larger and more diverse workforce. 

Although his father was not thrilled with the 

prospect of relocating the largest employer in 

Cameron, he ultimately agreed with his son. One 

of the main reasons for choosing Temple was its 

close proximity to Cameron. At the age of sixtyfive, 

Drayton, Sr., began driving from Cameron to 

Temple, every day, six days a week, allowing the 

family to keep their home in Cameron. 

In 1965 construction on a new McLane 

Company distribution center began on Center 

Street in Temple. Less than a year later, in March 

1966, McLane Company was seen as a bold 

venture and opened as one of the first 

businesses in the Temple’s Industrial Park. The 

move was obviously a good decision since the 

company has grown thirty percent or more each 

year for the last thirty-two years. They started 

with one distribution center in Temple and have 

grown to eighteen throughout the country, 

providing weekly grocery distribution services 

to over seventy thousand supermarkets, 

convenience stores, and fast food restaurants in 

the United States. Because of its success in 

grocery distribution, McLane Company merged 

with Wal-Mart in December 1990 and the 

expansion continued. Wal-Mart ultimately sold 

the company to Berkshire Hathaway, whose 

chairman and CEO is Warren Buffett. 

The move to Temple allowed Drayton a front 

row seat to watch the community grow and 

develop. When he moved here, Temple had 

about 27,000 people; today the city has grown 

❖ 

Above: Drayton McLane, Jr., with 

several players from the Houston 

Astros. Shown are (left to right) Jeff 

Kent, Jeff Bagwell, McLane, Craig 

Biggio, and Lance Berkman. 

Bottom, left: Drayton McLane, Jr., at 

Minute Maid Park, home of the 

Houston Astros. 

Bottom, right: Drayton McLane, Jr., 

speaks at the dedication of the Texas 

A&M Medical Research Building on 

the Scott & White campus in Temple, 

March 24, 2000. 


❖ 

Right: Drayton McLane, Jr., speaks at 

the McLane Advanced Technologies’ 

building dedication. 

Below: Three generations of McLanes 

have been active supporters of Boy 

Scouts of America with both Drayton 

III and Denton achieving the rank of 

Eagle Scout. 

to nearly 60,000. As one of the town’s biggest 

fans, he says, “The people, quality of life, the 

school system, and overall economy are second 

to none. Institutions such as Temple College, 

Scott & White as well as a number of other very 

successful industries in town have attracted very 

talented and able people. We have also seen the 

retail, restaurant, and entertainment markets 

flourish. Temple is a great place to live and 

work. We’ve got it all without some of the 

challenges that you might find in a larger city.” 

Drayton’s love for the community is evident 

in his civic and philanthropic activities in 

Central Texas. He has been the President and 

Chairman of the United Way program locally 

and his involvement with the Astros helped 

Houston’s United Way program raise over $70 

million per year, making it one of the largest 

donations in the nation. He has also been 

involved with the Children’s Miracle Network 

(CMN) since his friend and mentor Sam Walton 

encouraged him to look into it in the 1980s. 

Drayton has also been Chairman of Temple 

Chamber of Commerce, serves on Temple’s 

Industrial Foundation, and has been active in 

Scouting since he was a Cub Scout, currently 

serving on the Executive Council with the 

National Boy Scouts of America. 

When asked about his favorite things, 

Drayton lists faith and family at the top of his 

priorities. Drayton met his wife, Elizabeth, in 

the fall of 1966. Elizabeth was raised outside of 

Temple on land now covered by Lake Belton. 

Her family sold the land in the 1950s to make 

way for the lake and they moved to a farm in 

Salado where Elizabeth graduated from high 

school. When construction of I-35 eventually 

worked its way across their farm, the family 

moved to Belton. 

Elizabeth and Drayton were married in 1973 

and built a house on Dakota Street where they 

lived for seventeen years before moving to their 

current home in 1990. They have two sons, 

Drayton III and Denton, both of whom 

graduated from Temple High School and then 

Baylor University and have joined their father in 


different businesses within the McLane Group. 

Drayton III lives in Salado with his wife, Amy, 

and their two sons, Drayton IV and Brooks. 

Denton and his wife, Amy, live in Birmingham, 

Alabama, and also have two sons, Jeff and Jake. 

Just like the generations before them, Drayton’s 

family remains very close. 

Drayton and Elizabeth have been members of 

the First Baptist Church since moving to Temple 

and stay active there. Drayton has been a deacon 

for almost thirty years and also served as 

Chairman of the Board of Deacons. 

Drayton best sums up the legacy of his family 

and his exciting and always changing life in 

Central Texas in these words: “Faith, family, 

leadership, friendship, and teamwork; I still 

enjoy the thrill of seeing people succeed and 

grow in both their personal and professional 

lives. McLane Company now has 16,000 

employees and many of them are the same 

people that I hired thirty plus years ago. Just as 

my parents taught me, I believe that you should 

always surround yourself with good people that 

you can count on. That’s why the McLane Group 

of companies has forward-thinking leaders and 

employees who are committed to providing the 

best service and quality products to their 

customers and friends. Whatever we do, where 

ever we go, with integrity and dedication, the 

people that follow us will keep charging!” 

❖ 

Above: McLane Company 

Distribution Center employees: (left 

to right) R.C. Franklin, Laurie 

Wilson, Lee Hirsch. Drayton McLane, 

Jr., Thomas Kristinek and Ray 

Mercado as pictured on the cover of 

Convenience Store People in 1992. 

Left: Drayton Sr. and Drayton Jr., 

1966 at McLane Company on 

Industrial Boulevard, after moving 

from Cameron to Temple. 


WENDLAND’S 

FARM PRODUCTS 

AND THE 

WENDLAND 

FAMILY 

❖ 

Above: Mattie and Herman Wendland 

with their children (clockwise from 

left) Cloetide, Georgia, Herman, Jr., 

Jessie, Sadie, Willie (later Bill), and 

Marguerite, c. 1898. Robert (Bob) 

would be born in 1900. 

Below: Robert and Will Wendland, 

c. 1916. 

Throughout the years in which agriculture 

was the dominant industry in central Texas, 

Wendland’s Farm Products served farmers and 

ranchers across the state and beyond. As the 

company grew from a small family produce 

store into an extensive feed manufacturing and 

grain handling facility, the Wendland family also 

laid the foundations for a strong ethic of service 

to the entire Temple community. 

The company was founded by Herman 

Wendland, who had emigrated from 

Germany with his family as a child. 

After moving from Arkansas to Texas in 

the 1890s with his wife Mattie and their 

growing family, Herman eventually saved 

enough to open a tin shop in Killeen, Texas, 

using the craft he had learned from his father, 

Ernst Wendland. 

By 1896 the business included a produce 

store, the first in the area to pay cash for goods 

such as milk, eggs, cream, and chickens. Cash 

earnings gave farmers the freedom not just to 

trade in barter but to buy at other stores, thus 

supporting the local economy. 

After Herman’s death in 1914 and Mattie’s in 

1915, their unmarried children continued the 

business under the name Wendland Produce 

Co. Teenagers Will (Bill) and Robert (Bob), the 

youngest of the eight, worked in the store in 

Killeen all day. They also sold and delivered 

water in barrels, charging fifteen cents or two 

for a quarter. At night they hauled produce in an 

old Ford Model T to Temple buyers. 

When the boys served in the army late in 

World War I, siblings Cloetide and Sadie 

Wendland, and Molton and Jessie Wendland 

Allen carried on the business. After the war, they 

bought grain from farmers and shipped it by rail 

to Fort Worth, then the largest grain market in 

Texas. They installed the area’s first mechanical 

corn sheller in the family barn and began selling 

feed at the store. 

In 1924, Bob married Nora Lee Mayhew, a 

Methodist minister’s daughter who was working 

as a schoolteacher in Killeen. In Temple the 

Wendland brothers and their elder sister 

Cloetide bought the Childress Grain Company, 

a small grain elevator at South Fourth and 

Avenue D, renaming it Wendland Grain 

Company. In 1928, Bob and Nora Lee moved to 

Temple with their young daughter, Bobbye Lee, 

to enter the grain business. 

Although the produce store in Killeen 

remained, managed by Cloetide, emphasis 

gradually shifted to the grain company. In the 

1930s, Bill, Bob, and Cloetide bought the J. C. 

Crouch Grain Company elevator at South 

Second and Avenue D, enabling Bill to move to 

Temple with his wife Kathaleen and children 

Weldon and Bonnie. 

The Killeen business declined with the 

advent of World War II, when much local farm 

and ranch land was appropriated to form what 

is now Fort Hood. But the grain business 

flourished, with “Miss Cloetide” remaining a 

financial partner and eventually moving to 

Temple. By 1940 the company boasted two 


traveling salesmen, several area dealers, its 

first semi-trailer truck, and new feed and 

pellet mills. 

During World War II, public service came to 

the fore. Bob traveled to Washington to serve on 

the three-man national agricultural board of the 

Office of Price Administration (OPA). Through 

the American Legion, where he eventually 

became a post and division commander, Bill 

worked to secure better treatment of wounded 

soldiers at McCloskey General Hospital (now 

the Temple VA Hospital). 

At the same hospital, Nora Lee, a classically 

trained violinist and violin teacher, volunteered 

as a Gray Lady, playing for shell-shocked 

veterans in locked wards and helping pioneer 

music therapy for mental illness. Bob, Nora Lee, 

Bobbye Lee and Erroll also entertained many 

soldiers at their house, providing a touch of 

family life far from home. 

Ever since Herman Wendland’s children 

invited friends to sing with mandolins and 

guitars, the Wendlands have promoted not just 

family but community music-making. In the 

1930s, Nora Lee conceived and led a campaign 

to establish a string-instrument program in 

Temple schools. At the time, Dallas was the only 

other school district in Texas with an orchestral 

music program. In 1958, with Raye Virginia 

Allen, Nora Lee was a co-founder of the Cultural 

Activities Center (CAC) in Temple, which 

grew to sponsor community orchestras and 

choruses as well as concerts by nationally 

known visiting artists. 

On the business side, after a fire destroyed 

the old wooden mill, the Wendlands opened a 

new concrete-and-steel feed plant in 1946, 

increasing production to three shifts in busy 

winter months. In the 1950s, warehouses were 

added for commercial grain storage, making the 

company the first in Bell County to issue 

bonded receipts, which enabled farmers to 

participate in government loan programs. 

Bob’s son, Erroll, joined the business in 

1951 after earning an MBA from SMU. 

He served in the Air Force as a supply 

officer during the Korean conflict and returned 

in 1954 to oversee production and feed 

nutrition formulation. In 1959, he married 

Barbara Jean Cook of Houston, a college 

friend of his cousin Bonnie’s. She had studied 

math at SMU and had worked as a 

mathematician for Humble Oil programming 

early mainframe computers, then an unusual 

path for a woman. 

The company incorporated in 1957 as 

Wendland’s Farm Products, Inc., with Bob 

as president, Bill as vice president, and Erroll 

as secretary/treasurer. By 1959, the firm had 

250 dealers in 75 Texas counties, served by 

a fleet of 14 trucks and selling over 200 

different feeds. 

A new office building was constructed in 1964 

at 405 South Second followed by a new feed mill 

in 1966-67. By the time Bill, who had managed 

the seed trade, died in 1967, seed distribution 

had declined and feed manufacturing was 

expanding, due to technological advances and 

new trade patterns. 

❖ 

Above: Guest artist Zino Francescatti 

(front right) delights his hosts with 

an impromptu home concert in the 

mid-1940s. Also shown in this 

photograph are (clockwise from top, 

left) Bobbye Lee, Cloetide, Bob, and 

Nora Lee Wendland. 

Below: Foreground (from left to right): 

Bill, Cloetide, and Bob Wendland at a 

groundbreaking in 1955. The new 

grain elevator would offer the first 

commercial grain storage in Bell 

County. Erroll Wendland is second 

from right in the back. 


❖ 

Above: Larry Alley. 

Below: Glenn Cathey, Erroll 

Wendland, and Richard Schneider 

with patented One ‘N Only TM 

horse feed. 

From the 1960s onward, the plant was 

modernized and expanded by new feed lines, 

automatic bagging, increased ingredient storage, 

larger pellet mills, a feed block press, and 

computer-controlled manufacturing. By the 

mid-1980s, capacity had reached 250 tons per 

shift, with dealers throughout central and south 

Texas and Louisiana. 

W. Larnce (Larry) Alley joined the company 

as vice president in 1973, moving to Temple 

with his wife Thelma, and bringing over forty 

years’ experience in the grain and feed industry. 

He became the first non-family stockholder and 

eventually general manager. 

Over the years, company leaders showed 

strong commitment to civic service through 

membership in professional organizations. Bill 

served on the board of the Southern Seedsmen’s 

Association. Bob and Erroll Wendland and Larry 

Alley all three served at various times as president 

of the Texas Grain and Feed Association and were 

active participants and officers in several regional 

and national associations, an unusual level of 

industry-wide commitment from a single 

relatively small company. 

After the death of Bob in 1981, Erroll became 

president of the company. A new grain elevator 

was added after a 1984 fire. Continuing 

innovations in production techniques included 

new machinery to meet the growing demand for 

pet and fish food. 

In 1990, thanks to groundbreaking research 

by company nutritionists under the leadership 

of Larry Alley, the company patented its new 

high-fiber horse feed One ’N Only, a 

complete self-fed diet that can be put out in a 

trough, relieving the burden of twice-daily 

feedings especially for recreational horse owners 

and those in cold climates. The new feed was 

tested at the company’s research farm north of 

Temple under the supervision of farm manager 

Glenn Cathey. It found buyers in places where 

roughage for horses had previously been 

shipped in long-distance, such as Hawaii, 

Guam, and a naval base in Norfolk, Virginia, for 

onward shipment to Guantánamo. 

As the company’s management began to 

reach retirement age, Erroll, Larry, and family 

stockholders considered offers from 

multinational agribusiness corporations, but 

chose to pass the company on to another familyowned 

business, with the aim of ensuring that 

the long tradition of quality local service would 

continue unbroken. Wendland’s Farm Products, 

with its popular trademark Wendland’s Feeds, 

was sold in 1995 to Dennis Jupe, becoming 

a division of Jupe Feeds. The Jupe family 

now manages the Temple plant as well as the 

original Jupe feed mill in San Antonio, formerly 

Louis Feed. 

Dennis and Rose Jupe moved to Temple with 

their son Darren and his wife Claudia, and both 

Rose and Claudia worked in the business for 

several years. Dennis and Darren have 

continued their membership in the Chamber of 

Commerce and remain committed to local 

ownership and operation. Civic service has also 

continued, with longtime accounting manager 

Richard Schneider serving as president of the 

Temple Civic Theatre. 

The company still manufactures Wendland’s 

Feeds and has added Jupe Feeds to its list of 

available livestock, pet, and poultry foods, with 

customers remaining loyal to both labels for 

generations. Central Texas farmers, ranchers, 

and pet and livestock owners still benefit from 

the company’s traditional values of personal 

integrity, fair dealing, freshly manufactured 

feeds, and local involvement. 

The Wendland commitment to serving the 

community has remained strong for decades. 

Bob and Erroll Wendland and Larry Alley all 

served as president of the Temple Rotary Club; 

Erroll also served as Rotary district governor 

and led scholarship campaigns. Under Bill’s 


leadership, the company supported groups such 

as 4-H and FFA through the annual Bell County 

Junior Fair and Livestock Show. 

Family members have also donated time and 

money to many other causes. The entire 

Wendland family have been active volunteers, 

leaders, and supporters of the Cultural Activities 

Center and of First United Methodist Church. 

Erroll has also served on the boards of other 

nonprofits including the Temple United Fund, 

Chamber of Commerce, Hillcrest Cemetery 

Association, Cen-Tex Alcohol Rehabilitation 

Center, Temple Community Concert 

Association, Central Texas Orchestral Society, 

and the foundation of the national United 

Methodist Reporter. 

In retirement, Erroll’s volunteer work has 

focused especially on education and healthcare. 

In 1996 he was honored by the Temple 

Daily Telegram with the Mayborn Humanitarian 

Award in recognition of his fundraising 

work that enabled the Temple Public Library to 

move to a new location. In 2008 he is 

still active on the boards of King’s Daughter’s 

Hospital, the Temple College foundation, 

and the Wesleyan Homes, a 

Methodist-affiliated retirement center 

in Georgetown, Texas. 

Erroll’s wife, Barbara, has been 

an active community volunteer, 

including serving as the president of 

the CAC. She is also a lay theologian 

who has served in many volunteer 

capacities at all levels of the United 

Methodist Church, from teaching 

Sunday school to serving on the 

executive board of Perkins School of 

Theology at SMU and as a delegate to 

the quadrennial General Conference, 

the church’s worldwide governing 

body. In 2007 she received the 

Seals national laity award from 

Perkins for outstanding church and 

community service. She has coauthored 

two books and since 1992 

has written a monthly newsletter on 

church change and growth, Connections 

(www.connectionsonline.org). Her 

third book is scheduled for 2009. 

Erroll and Barbara have supported 

Temple institutions including Temple 

College and Scott and White and King’s 

Daughters hospitals. In 2007, they endowed a 

chair for constructive theology at Perkins at 

SMU, as a further effort to serve the broader 

community and the world. 

❖ 

Above: New feed mill in the traditional 

Wendland's green and white. 

Below: Barbara Cook Wendland and 

Erroll Wendland. 


CULTURAL 

ACTIVITIES 

CENTER 

❖ 

Above: Raye Virginia Allen and Nora 

Lee Wendland. 

Below: Children at Hands On. 

The Cultural Activities Center (CAC) was the 

brainchild of two women who dreamed that 

Temple could be an exemplary home for 

community-based performing and visual arts. 

After Nora Lee Wendland served as president 

of the City Federation of Women’s Clubs in 

1957, she and 1958 arts festival committee 

chair Raye Virginia Allen were determined to 

build on the resounding success of the 

Federation’s three-day city arts festivals. 

They consulted national arts associations, 

hoping not only to create a center for 

local artists and performers but also to 

attract examples of the highest professional 

standard nationwide. 

The CAC was incorporated in 1958, 

becoming the first multidisciplinary arts council 

in the U.S. to be combined with a center for the 

performing and visual arts. In the early years, 

art, drama, music, and literature groups met in 

borrowed spaces. Azalee Marshall, the CAC’s 

first paid director, planned concerts and art 

classes, washed windows, and served tea. Her 

husband, Keifer, chauffeured guests, hung 

exhibits, and repaired leaks. 

In 1962, Azalee’s friend George R. Brown 

made the CAC a $15,000 gift from the Brown 

Foundation. Matching funds raised in a drive 

led by H. K. Allen enabled the CAC to buy and 

convert a church building on Avenue G. Yet as 

the center came to include a boys’ choir, piano 

ensemble, orchestra, chorus, ethnic-culture 

groups, and more, space was still tight. 

Brown offered to help match funds for a 

completely new building, “if you people are 

really serious.” On Christmas Day 1970, Azalee 

died unexpectedly. Brown gave nearly half a 

million dollars, asking only that the facility be 

named for his late friend. 

In 1978 the new Azalee Marshall Building 

opened at the CAC’s present location on North 

Third near I-35, on land donated to the city by 

Frank Mayborn. It featured a 489-seat concert 

hall, a wood-floored rehearsal hall with mirrors 

and barres for ballet, and a semicircular glasswalled 

studio wing. Later phases added the 

striking winged sculpture in the front courtyard, 

Orpheus by African-American sculptor Richard 

Hunt, as well as another art gallery and an 

elegant large-capacity room with professional 

kitchen that makes the CAC an ideal venue for 

receptions and meetings. 

Today, the CAC’s galleries host visiting art 

exhibits, its art studios offer classes and 

workshops, and fifteen affiliate and member 

groups meet regularly. Touring artists lead 

master classes; ongoing programs range from 

family activities to yoga, ballet, Broadway and 

ballroom dance. More than fourteen thousand 

area students take part in CAC arts-in-education 

programs such as Hands On, which involves 

third- and fourth-graders in art, movement, 

and drama, focusing each year on a different 

world culture. 

The CAC women’s support group, the 

Contemporaries, was organized in 1969 with 

Mary Steele as the first president. Members have 

donated countless hours of volunteer service. 

Founding member Lajuana Carabasi still helps 

with everything from planning to craft projects. 

An annual gala has raised millions in CAC 

operating funds, helping ensure that the arts 

will continue to thrive in Temple at a level more 

often found in larger metropolitan areas. 


Throughout its one-hundred-year 

existence, the Temple Chamber of 

Commerce has worked on thousands of 

projects and programs that have made a 

positive impact on the community. Many 

of these programs are still part of the 

everyday operation of the Chamber. 

Organized in 1907, the Chamber 

operated under the name Temple 

Commercial Club until 1912, when the 

charter was amended and it was renamed 

Temple Chamber of Commerce. On 

September 22, 1936, it was renamed Temple 

Chamber of Commerce and Board of 

Development. On February 2, 1940, the name was 

once again changed to Temple Chamber of 

Commerce and has remained that way ever since. 

Many of the Chamber’s successes have 

had long-lasting benefits to our community. 

Among them: 

• In 1926 the Chamber Education Committee 

formed a corporation that founded Temple 

Junior College. 

• The Brazos River Committee was the leader 

in the development of Lake Belton and 

Stillhouse Hollow Lake. 

• Chamber leadership directed the 

establishment of the Blackland Research 

Center. 

• The Chamber has played a role in the 

expansion of medical services and facilities in 

the community. 

• Economic development has been integral to 

the Chamber’s mission and message, including 

securing Fort Hood as a permanent 

military installation, establishment of 

McCloskey Army General Hospital, which 

evolved into the Central Texas Veteran Health 

Care System to Temple and the expansions 

and building programs of Scott & White and 

King’s Daughters Hospitals. 

• Interstate 35 was originally projected to be 

built away from Temple until the Chamber 

Highway Committee arranged land donations 

for its construction through Temple. 

• The Temple Downtown Commercial Historic 

District was established to preserve our 

important business and commerce heritage. 

• The Temple Business Incubator was 

developed and implemented to encourage 

new business. 

• Keep Temple Beautiful, an independent 

organization designed to beautify the Temple 

area, was developed. 

Today, the Chamber consists of nine officers, 

six directors, eight staff and about 1,230 

members. Committees within the Chamber focus 

on five sectors of the community: business growth 

and development, community development, 

government affairs, member services, and 

workforce development. The Chamber is much 

more than committees, projects and programs. 

The office receives thousands of calls each year 

from visitors and locals looking for a specific 

business, a place to stay and eat, a telephone 

number, directions, or simply to reminisce. 

Information available at the Chamber includes, 

upcoming events, visitor information, relocation 

information, community information membership, 

employment, health services, economic 

development, and a searchable business directory, 

which is also available online at www.templetx.org. 

With continued support from our members 

and volunteers, the Chamber looks forward to 

positively impacting the community for another 

hundred years. 

TEMPLE 

CHAMBER OF 

COMMERCE 


ALADDIN 

CAR WASH 

❖ 

Above: Dr. William B. Long and his 

son Dr. William F. Long, 1994. 

Below: Riad Chtay, 1996. 

Early in 1983, Kamal Chtay and his uncle, 

Frank Chtay, bought the Aladdin Car Wash. 

Kamal and Frank already owned Zip Car Wash 

in Killeen, Texas, so the decision was made for 

Kamal to operate the Aladdin Car Wash while 

Frank operated Zip Car Wash. 

The Aladdin actually originated with Dr. 

William F. Long, a doctor specializing in allergy 

and immunology at Kings Daughters Clinic in 

Temple, who consulted with his father, Dr. 

William B. Long, about the possibility of building 

a full-service car wash in Temple. After scouting 

several locations, Dr. William F. Long worked with 

Elbert Aldrich to purchase the property at 1616 

South Fifty-Seventh Street and, with financing 

from Peoples National Bank Belton, the Aladdin 

Car Wash opened in 1979. 

A partnership was created of W. B. Long, W. F. 

Long, and Charley Haferkamp, who worked at 

the Genie Car Wash in Waco, called Longkamp, 

Inc. After Dr. W. F. Long went on active duty with 

the Army Medical Corps in San Antonio, it fell to 

Dr. W. B. Long to serve as sole senior manager 

while Charley worked as the on-site manager. 

The Aladdin operated in this manner for 

nearly two years until Charley decided to leave 

the business. Another on-site manager was 

hired, and the Aladdin was eventually sold to 

Kamal and his uncle Frank. 

Kamal and his family moved to Temple to be 

closer to the car wash because he was dedicated 

in his efforts to make the Aladdin a first-class 

operation. Kamal nearly ran the business on his 

own with the professional help of a business 

manager, Mike El Sedek, a young man who gave 

devotion and hard work to the Aladdin for six 

years. Mike left the Aladdin to pursue a degree 

in banking in the United Arab Emirates, where 

he is now the president of a prestigious bank in 

the region. 

In 1991, Kamal’s cousin Riad Chtay, who had 

managed Zip Car Wash for their uncle, Frank 

Chtay, from 1987 to 1991, became manager of the 

Aladdin. Riad stayed with the Aladdin for four 

years. It was during that time that Kamal was in 

his homeland of Syria. In 1995, Kamal returned to 

the Aladdin to take over complete operation of the 

business, and Riad moved to Killeen to take over 

management of Zip Car Wash. 

After Kamal became ill in 1997, his son 

Sammer and son-in-law Alex Jarbough began 

helping him with the business. Kamal then sold 

the business to Riad Chtay early in 2002, before 

he passed away. 

Riad immediately began a renovation of the 

entire business and the building itself, with the help 

of his brother and manager Ammar Chtay; Larry 

Harris, a former and present-day manager with Zip 

Car Wash; and his best friend, Greg Payne. Greg 

has been a friend of the family and a key component 

in the car wash business with Riad, Greg, his 

Uncle Frank, and cousin Kamal since 1979. 

Riad, Greg, Larry, and Ammar spent nearly a 

year and countless hours reshaping the Aladdin 

Car Wash into a much better, clean, and 


prosperous business. When Kamal became ill, the 

car wash had taken a back seat to his health and 

several areas were not as strong as they once were. 

It was Riad’s vision to continue the historic 

tradition of great service at a great price just as 

Kamal had always done. He also wanted to offer 

a much better automotive detail service because 

he believed that the city of Temple did not have 

such a service in the area. 

In January 2005, Riad began working on 

converting a section of the car wash business 

into a lube center and fulfill his ultimate dream 

of making the Aladdin a “full-service auto 

center.” Riad invested the money, and the time, 

and Aladdin Oil and Lube was born. 

Today, Aladdin Car Wash offers quality 

auto service with the old fashioned hands-on 

approach that Riad, his cousin Kamal, and 

Uncle Frank always envisioned for the 

business—a place of unbeatable prices and 

the feeling that your friends are always taken 

care of. 

❖ 

Above: Kamal and Frank 

Chtay, 1996. 

Below: Riad Chtay and the Aladdin 

Car Wash Staff in June 2008. 


❖ 

SPJST 

2007-2008 SPJST State King Colby 

Havemann and Macy Narro of Lodge 

17, New Tabor, lend their fraternal 

support at a Join Hands Day 

activity. Observed on the first 

Saturday in May, Join Hands Day 

brings together people of all ages for 

the sake of "doing good" for their 

local communities. 

Fraternalism and fraternal life insurance are 

founded upon the principle that every 

individual is his “brother’s keeper.” It was this 

idea of “doing good for each other” that inspired 

the idea of the earliest fraternal societies. 

The SPJST was founded in this spirit by 

Czech pioneers in Texas in 1897. Throughout 

its existence, the SPJST has fulfilled its financial 

obligations to its members and kept pace with 

the life insurance industry. Further, the SPJST 

was organized for installing fraternalism and 

patriotism into the hearts of its members. 

The SPJST’s mottoes are Benevolence, 

Humanity and Brotherhood. It was always an 

American institution from its inception. It was 

founded in the Czech language because its 

founders knew that language best. The Society 

continues to emphasize the importance of the 

Czech heritage and culture. 

Throughout its history, SPJST lodges and 

members have worked hard to establish the 

Society’s reputation as a proactive, nonsectarian 

fraternal organization. Local lodges sponsor a 

wide range of family-oriented activities, 

including community service projects, dances, 

picnics, choral and dance groups. The SPJST’s 

youth program provides boys and girls with a 

wealth of opportunities to achieve personal 

growth, fun and scholarships. 

None of this “just happened.” Between 1834 

and 1900, approximately two hundred thousand 

people of Czech descent immigrated to America. 

Many of them settled in Texas. The Texas Czechs 

settled in approximately 250 communities dotting 

the Blackland Prairie and Texas Coastal Plains. 

The Czech immigrants and their families 

stayed close. During the 1880s and 1890s, 

many of them joined a nationwide fraternal 

organization called the C.S.P.S.—the Cesko- 

Slovanska Podporujici Spolecnost. In spite of 

the rapid growth of the C.S.P.S. in Texas, there 

was discontent among the members from Texas 

and the Midwest. Their concern was that 

C.S.P.S. life insurance premium guidelines 

favored the industrial workers in the eastern 

part of the United States. 

After the 1896 C.S.P.S. convention, Texas 

Czechs met in La Grange, Texas to organize a 

new fraternal organization. In March of 1897, a 

constitution was submitted to the Texas C.S.P.S. 

lodges for their consideration and subsequent 

approval. The SPJST—Slovanska Podporujici 

Jednota Statu Texas—started operations on July 

1, 1897, with 866 members and twenty-five 

charter lodges. 

Home base for the SPJST was Fayetteville, 

Texas. The central figure in administering the 

affairs of the Society, Secretary J.R. Kubena, 

operated his business located in Fayetteville. 

Until his death in 1938, Kubena administered 

the affairs of the SPJST out of a single room in 

his general store. 

From the outset, SPJST made a positive 

difference in the lives of its members, providing 

them with the security of fraternal life 

insurance, mortgage loans and the value-added 

benefit of belonging to a progressive social 

organization. During the SPJST’s first half 

century, American society and lifestyles changed 

dramatically. The United States became more 

industrialized and sons and daughters of firstgeneration 

SPJST members moved into the 

towns and cities. It was during this period that 

many of SPJST’s urban lodges were chartered. It 

was also during this time, in 1953, that the 

SPJST moved its home office to Temple. 

During the latter half of the twentieth 

century, the SPJST continued to provide 

its members with the security of fraternal 

life insurance and to reinforce a sense of 

Czech cultural identity. Further, SPJST 

lodges established the Society’s reputation 

as a proactive fraternal organization, sponsoring 


a wide range of family-oriented activities, 

including sports teams, dances, picnics, plays, 

orchestras, choral and dance groups. 

In 2008 there are more than 50,000 SPJST 

members in 117 lodges throughout Texas. They 

are taking the best that the SPJST has to 

offer, a tradition of helping people to care for 

their families, and are extending these 

values to their communities. SPJST’s fraternal 

venue has expanded to include a range of 

adult- and youth-oriented activities as well as 

opportunities for community service. Numerous 

SPJST projects and members have been 

recognized statewide by the Texas Fraternal 

Congress and nationwide by the National 

Fraternal Congress of America (NFCA). NFCA 

unites seventy-four not-for-profit fraternal 

benefit societies operating in all fifty states, the 

District of Columbia and Canada. The 

association represents almost 10 million people 

in 37,000 local lodges, making it one of 

America’s largest member networks. 

❖ 

Above: Located at 520 North Main 

Street, the SPJST Home Office was 

dedicated on January 31, 1971. The 

south wing addition was dedicated on 

June 8, 2008, in conjunction with the 

Society's 30th quadrennial convention. 

Below: The SPJST's youth program 

offers a well-rounded mix of 

educational, patriotic and social 

activities. Summer camp is provided 

on the basis of active participation. In 

addition, the SPJST strongly 

encourages its outstanding young 

members to continue their educational 

development. Since its inception, the 

SPJST Scholarship Program has 

awarded more than $1 million to 

deserving, college-bound youth. 


UNIVERSITY OF 

MARY HARDIN- 

BAYLOR 

❖ 

University of Mary Hardin-Baylor 

students gather on the steps of Luther 

Memorial, a landmark at the 

university. The memorial, dedicated 

in May 1955, incorporates the 

original limestone blocks and arches 

of Luther Hall. Since its dedication, 

Luther Memorial has served as an 

important reminder of the 

university’s rich traditions and its 

historic commitment to quality 

Christian education. 

The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in 

Belton traces its history to the days before Texas 

adopted statehood, when Baptist missionary 

work was just beginning. In 1839 

representatives of churches in Washington 

County issued an appeal to inaugurate a 

missionary movement in Texas, and Reverend 

James Huckins, Reverend William M. Tryon, 

and Judge R. E. B. Baylor responded to the call. 

These leaders inspired desire for Christian 

education. In 1841 they recommended forming 

an education society. War prevented action until 

1843, when the Texas Baptist Education Society 

was organized. On February 1, 1845, the longawaited 

Baptist University became a reality. 

The school initially included coeducational 

classes for students. However, in 1851 a Female 

Department and a Male Department were 

created, ending coeducation. In 1866 the 

Female Department obtained a separate charter 

and its own board of trustees and became Baylor 

Female College. 

In 1886, due to changing economics, it was 

necessary to move both schools. The Male 


Department consolidated with Waco University 

in Waco, Texas, retaining the name Baylor 

University. The Female Department, Baylor 

Female College, moved to Belton, Texas. 

Since moving to Belton, the school has 

undergone several name changes: in 1925, Baylor 

College for Women; in 1934, Mary Hardin-Baylor 

College (named in honor of a benefactor); and in 

1978, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. In 1971, 

the college became coeducational. 

UMHB’s history includes notable milestones 

such as starting the first work-study program for 

women in a college west of the Mississippi 

(1893); serving as the campus model for the 

Baptist Student Union (1920); establishing the 

first school of journalism in a college for 

women in America and being the second 

institution in Texas to offer a degree in 

journalism (1921); and being recognized as the 

first Texas Baptist college accepted into full 

membership in the Southern Association of 

Colleges and Schools (1926). 

Today, UMHB continues to make history in 

the fields of education, business, nursing, and 

church leadership; in athletics through 

conference and national championships; and in 

other areas of campus life. Presently, UMHB 

enjoys an enrollment of 2,700 students and 

employs more than 320 full-time faculty and 

staff committed to Christian higher education. 

University of Mary Hardin-Baylor is located 

at 900 College Street in Belton, Texas, and 

at www.umhb.edu. 

❖ 

Left: University of Mary Hardin- 

Baylor art students designing and 

painting the mural on the Belton Dam 

in 1978 as commissioned by the 

Corps of Engineers. The Belton Dam 

is considered the largest outdoor 

mural in the state of Texas. 

Below: When Crusader football began 

its first season in 1998 at UMHB, the 

Couch Cru immediately formed as a 

student-led spirit group. Whether the 

game is at home or away, UMHB 

students set up couches and noise 

makers in the end zone to cheer for 

the team. 


❖ 

JOHNNIE’S 

OFFICE 

SYSTEMS, INC. 

Johnnie’s Office Systems was awarded 

the Toshiba copier dealership for Bell 

and McLellan Counties in 1993. 

As one of the oldest office technology 

companies in Central Texas, Johnnie’s 

Office Systems offers over fifty years of 

experience in the office technology 

business. The company is locally owned 

and managed and is operated under the 

guidance of its premier goal—satisfying 

each and every customer every time. 

The company was founded in 

November 3, 1958, after John Guillen, 

an Army veteran of the Korean War, 

purchased Townsend’s Office Machines, 

where he was working as a salesman at 

the time. It was his twenty-ninth birthday and 

the company was renamed Johnnie’s Office 

Machines. His wife of two years, Linda, was 

eight months pregnant with their first child. 

Soon after the baby was born, Linda joined John 

in the business. 

Johnnie’s Office Systems actually began its 

operations behind a print shop in John’s 

hometown of Corsicana, Texas, before it was 

moved to Temple. The company soon began 

to flourish and John would make sales calls 

by day and repair office equipment at night 

while Linda ran the office. The Vietnam War 

propelled Johnnie’s into new growth with 

several contracts that were awarded by Fort 

Hood, and John and his brothers were 

delivering large supplies of manual typewriters 

to be shipped to Vietnam. 

Truly a family business, John’s brother 

Chancy joined the company in 1959 after 

completing IBM school and continued to work 

until his retirement in 2003. John’s brother Fred 

also worked with John throughout the 1970s 

and ’80s. 

John’s son Adam joined the company in 1986 

and his daughter Carrie joined in 1994 after 

both graduated from college. John, Adam, and 

John’s brothers were always the sales people for 

Johnnies until Adam decided in the late 1980s 

that the company needed to hire a larger sales 

force to have better growth. Adam began 

training his first sales person and, after many 

weeks of training, the eager new employee set 

off to make his first sale. 

Adam told him if he closed the deal to 

remember that this customer’s old machine used 

liquid toner and that he must be careful to not 

pick it up until a technician arrived. The excited 

sales person successfully closed the deal and 

decided to remove the copier himself…and 

liquid purple toner ended up all over his brand 

new suit. Adam knew then that training 

salespeople would always be a challenge and 

one that continues even today. 

Hard work and a strong dedication to 

customer service began to payoff as John was 

awarded the Remington, Olympia, and RC Allen 

typewriter and adding machine dealerships. In 

1993, John was awarded the Toshiba copier 

dealership for Bell and McLennan Counties. 

At one time just limited to Temple, Killeen 

and small surrounding towns, Johnnie’s Office 

Systems now covers Temple, Killeen, Waco, 

Bryan, Austin, and most proudly in John’s 

hometown of Corsicana. 

Today, Johnnie’s Office Systems has grown in 

to one of the premiere Toshiba document 

solutions dealerships in the country, providing 

leading edge hardware and software solutions 


tailor made for any size business. The company 

also provides Toshiba, Kyocera Mita, and 

Docuware document management solutions. 

Adam and Carrie have had the privilege of 

witnessing the office industry change from 

yesteryear, but more importantly have watched 

the hard work and great dedication of their 

parents. They will continue to operate Johnnie’s 

with that same gusto and that same integrity in 

honor of their father’s legacy of adapting and 

evolving the company into an historic 

community staple. 


CENTRAL 

TEXAS 

HOUSING 

CONSORTIUM 

❖ 

Above: The Kyle, an historic building 

in downtown Temple built in 1928 as 

a luxury hotel; converted to 

apartments for elderly and disabled 

residents in 1991. 

Below: Kaleidoscope, an early 

childhood discovery center. It has been 

accredited through the National 

Association for the Education of Young 

Children since 2003. 

Among the city of Temple’s outstanding 

government agencies is the Central Texas 

Housing Consortium, which includes Temple 

Housing Authority (THA) and Belton Housing 

Authority (BHA). In 2002 a management 

agreement between the THA and BHA was 

approved by both Boards of Commissioners. 

Three years later on January 1, 2005, the 

authorities agreed to create the Central Texas 

Housing Consortium and soon after the BHA 

board voted to become dormant. Today, the 

Consortium has eighty-one employees, manages 

nearly $72 million in assets, has an annual 

budget of approximately $8 million and 

serves more than 2,000 residents who reside in 

1,165 units. 

Temple Housing Authority, the seventh Texas 

Authority, was created January 25, 1938. The 

City Commission named E. E. Nettles as the first 

board chairman, and R. O. Culp, Frank 

Mayborn, H. F. Blum, and R. M. Newton served 

as board members. The Board was not active 

until 1944 when they began planning seventyfive 

units of war housing. In 1952 the first 126 

public housing units were constructed. From 

1963 through 1979, an additional 200 public 

housing units were constructed as well as a 100- 

unit Section 8 high rise. 

Under the leadership of Executive Director 

Hal Rose (1985-2005), THA dramatically 

expanded the quantity and quality of its 

apartments and services. Beginning in 1985 a 

replacement program was initiated for the war 

housing units and construction/renovation was 

completed by late 1999. The first scattered 

site unit was purchased October 9, 1990 

at 1602 South Third Street and twenty-nine 

more scattered site units have been purchased 

or built. 

Between October 1993 and September 1994, 

two open market complexes with 320 units, 

Raintree Apartments and Adams Bend 

Apartments, were acquired. Construction of the 

twenty-six unit Temple College Apartments 

complex was completed in December 1998. In 

February 2000 the Temple Housing Authority 

purchased the twenty-two unit Chateau 

Apartments. 

On November 13, 2000, the Kaleidoscope 

Early Childhood Discovery Center renovation 

was completed. Full enrollment of 130 children 

was achieved within five weeks. The center 

earned accreditation from the National 

Association for the Education of Young Children 

in January 2003 and has maintained this status. 

It is the only accredited center in Temple. 

The Friendship House, an eastside 

resident/community center, was remodeled and 

an addition was finished in November of 2001 

and purchase and renovation of a second 

resident center near downtown, Rose Hall, was 

completed in November of 2007. An award 

winning Homeownership Program to build new 

single family homes for low-income families 

started in July 1997. To date, more than 365 


families have become homeowners. The Kyle, 

an historic property converted from a hotel into 

sixty-four residential units, was purchased in 

January 2006 and updates/renovations are ongoing 

that will improve unit quality and the 

community space areas of the building. 

The Belton Housing Authority Board’s 

organizational meeting was held June 12, 1962, 

and its first Executive Director, George B. 

Dulany was appointed. The first public housing 

complex was constructed in 1963. Between 

1980 and 1982 more complexes were built for a 

total of 196 public housing units. In 1986 a 

forty unit Rural Development Housing complex 

was constructed. This complex had a 

community center that was completely 

renovated in 2004 and renamed Belton Housing 

Authority Resident Center. In 2006 a pavilion 

was added to the facility as part of an Eagle 

Scout project. 

For most of their histories, both Authorities 

focused on providing safe, sanitary, decent, 

affordable housing to low-income families 

until August 1990 when THA’s Social Service 

Department was established. Today, both 

Authorities also provide services to residents 

such as employment skills training, computer 

classes, youth leadership development 

activities, and others that are designed to 

promote educational attainment and economic 

self-sufficiency. 

Numerous awards for program innovation 

and best practices, two of which were at the 

national level, have been received as a result of 

provision of resident services. Other 

achievements include: 

• Awards of more than $17 million in grants 

since 1990; 

• THA has earned HUD High Performer status 

for the past eight consecutive years; 

• BHA earned HUD High Performer status for 

the past three consecutive years; and 

• Four homeownership program awards. 

Temple Housing Authority is located at 700 

West Calhoun in Temple. For more information, 

please visit www.centexhousing.org. 

❖ 

Above: Temple Public Housing. 

Jonathan Moore Homes, a family 

housing complex, was built in 1952 

and named after Jonathan E. Moore, 

an early pioneer, landowner and 

businessman who was instrumental in 

establishing Temple. 

Below: Belton Housing Units. The 

duplex pictured is part of the rural 

development complex built in 1986. 


IN THE MOOD 

BALLROOM 

❖ 

Above: This historic photo of 

downtown Temple shows the building 

that would become In the Mood 

Ballroom, indicated by the arrow. 

In The Mood Ballroom was introduced to the 

city of Temple by Rudy and Karen Gonzales in 

1999. Nearly a decade later, it is the place for 

individuals, couples and groups to come 

together to experience the world of the dance. 

The vision for such a ballroom actually 

began in 1996 when Rudy was attending a 

dance in Austin at the Senior Activity Center 

with one of his students. Karen was also at the 

dance with her mother asking her, “Is that 

dance teacher guy is here tonight? I want to 

dance with him.” 

So Karen’s mother asked Rudy if he would 

dance with her daughter…and he did! 

Serendipity also ensured that the song that was 

playing was an old Glenn Miller favorite—”In 

The Mood.” And that was the beginning of 

dream that is alive and well today in the heart 

of Temple. 

Rudy has been teaching dance for thirty plus 

years. He returned to Austin in 1992 to teach 

and expanded into the Copperas Cove and 

Temple area in 1996. The couple decided to 

research prospects for a building to rent in 

Temple in order to have a dance once a month 

just as they were doing in Austin. 

As Rudy and Karen walked around 

downtown Temple they found one building 

with a “For Sale by Owner” sign in the window. 

Intrigued, they walked in to have a look and 

were thrilled when they realized it included 

sixty-six hundred square feet of open space! 

They were told the floor, hidden under 

avocado green shag carpet, was all hardwood. 

After touring the second floor, which included 

another sixty-six hundred square feet, it was 

quickly decided that this would make a great 


allroom on the first floor and living quarters at 

the second…and the building was theirs. 

After all the paperwork was completed, the 

hard work of renovating the space began in 

April 1999. 

Historic research on the building itself revealed 

that in 1885 it was a one story wooden structure 

only half as large as the structure today. However, 

by 1888 it was a two story all brick building 

occupying both 11 and 13 South Main Street. 

McLellans occupied one side of the building 

from 1927 and then expanded into the other 

side in the mid-1940s and closed in the early 

1970s. Through the years a variety of businesses 

have occupied the building such as: a General 

Mercantile, a Fair & Racket Store, Perry 

Brothers, shoe stores, a pharmacy and a tin 

shop, in the back of the building, around 1905. 

Upstairs there have been offices of doctors, 

dentists, lawyers, photographers and more. 

Rudy and Karen have found many items from 

McLellans, including perfumes, a wooden top, 

toy boats, jacks, marbles and more. They 

even stumbled upon a treasure trove of old 

bottles while they were adding plumbing under 

the building. 

Working seven days a week for seven months 

straight, the Gonzales opened their dream, In 

the Mood Ballroom, on November 20, 1999. 

Today, In the Mood Ballroom continues to 

provide guests a one-of-a-kind dance experience 

in a beautiful setting. 

❖ 

Bottom, left: Rudy and 

Karen Gonzales. 


KING’S 

DAUGHTERS 

HOSPITAL AND 

KING’S 

DAUGHTERS 

CLINIC 

King’s Daughters Hospital was 

founded in March of 1896 when 

one kind individual, Annie 

Sullivan, a devout Presbyterian 

woman and a member of the nondenominational 

International Order 

of the Whatsoever Circle of the 

King’s Daughters and Sons, 

provided a clean, warm room and a 

doctor for a sick man who could 

not afford medical care. 

This was consistent with the 

motto of the King’s Daughters and 

Sons, “Look up and not down, Look 

forward and not back, Look out and 

not in, and lend a hand,” and word soon spread 

that the King’s Daughters and Sons were caring 

for the sick at their own expense. Soon after a 

few prominent Temple businessmen offered to 

pay for the care of a paralyzed man if the 

Whatsoever Circle would care for him and, with 

just three patients, “King’s Daughters Hospital” 

was formed. 

The first site of the hospital was located 

at North Ninth Street between Elm and 

French Avenues. In 1897 the Circle paid $10 a 

month rent and moved the hospital to the 

former St. Mary’s Catholic Church, located 

on Avenue F between South Third and South 

Fifth Streets. 

In 1900 the growing hospital relocated to the 

Walker Home on Bentley Hill on the east side of 

Temple, where Avenue C and South Twenty- 

Second crossed at the corner of the acreage of the 

home. The hospital flourished with five major 

building programs in its first three decades. 

There were two pivotal events by the fall of 

1898. The drawing up of a hospital charter in 

September of 1898 was the first. An official 

association was organized and the first board of 

trustees was elected: President George E. 

Wilcox, W. E. Hall, J. T. Smither, Cornelia 

Parsons, Maud Sherwood Scott, and Carrie 

Reid. The second pivotal event was the appeal to 

the International Order of the King’s Daughters 

and Sons for financial support, which gave 

stability to the hospital’s efforts. 

In March 1928, King’s Daughters Clinic was 

officially organized as a medical partnership of 

physicians. Located on the third floor of the 

north wing of the former hospital on Bentley 

Hill, the clinic and hospital worked closely 

together. In 1973 the Clinic purchased 4.7 acres 

of land from the hospital and began its present 

day building, located at 1905 Southwest H. K. 

Dodgen Loop. A Nursing School was also 

opened in 1902. 

Key individuals in the hospital’s early days 

included Carrie Reid, president of the Whatsoever 

Circle, and the first staff physicians: Dr. Robert 

Wilson Barton, Dr. John S. McCelvey, Dr. Robert 

W. Noble, Dr. John Morris McCutchan, Dr. Arthur 

C. Scott, Dr. Raleigh E. White, Jr., and Dr. Joel 

Mathis Gooch. Joining them was an eye, ear, nose 

and throat specialist, Dr. James Madison 

Woodson, and Dr. Tyler, a dentist. 


Richard Epperson served as the hospital’s 

administrator from 1959 to 1987, while Tucker 

Bonner has served as president and CEO 

since 1987. 

Today, King’s Daughters Hospital is a 

full-service hospital with approximately 

375 employees providing 24-hour emergency 

care, inpatient and outpatient surgical 

services, sleep lab, reference lab serving twentysix 

counties, The Dr. Ralph Wilson, Jr., Heart and 

Vascular Center, MRI, CT scan, The Imaging 

Center, cardiac rehab, physical therapy, 

respiratory therapy, The Center for Women’s 

Health (obstetrics and gynecology care), and 

Volunteer program. King’s Daughters Clinic 

employs 275 and is a multi-specialty medical 

clinic furnishing medical services in internal 

medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, 

orthopedics, family practice, pediatrics, 

pathology, radiology, urology, gastroenterology, 

otolaryngology, physical therapy, neurology, 

allergy and asthma, rheumatology, anesthesiology, 

podiatry, and First Med Urgent Care. 

Future plans include the addition of an 

Ambulatory Surgery Center and a Wound 

Healing Center in 2008-2009. More than $4 

million are spent annually on charity care and 

community benefit. 

More information about the historic legacy of 

King’s Daughters Hospital and Clinic can be 

found in the book To Lend a Hand: The History 

of King’s Daughters Hospital by Patricia Benoit 

and Weldon Cannon, or by visiting the hospital 

online at www.kdhosp.org. 


RALPH 

WILSON 

YOUTH 

CLUBS OF 

TEMPLE, INC. 

The Ralph Wilson Youth Clubs of Temple, 

Inc., (RWYC) is a home owned, independent 

boys and girls club catering to children ages five 

through fourteen, made up of three programs— 

an after school program, summer program, and 

basketball program. Its primary mission is to 

provide an organized and supervised 

environment, which offers boys and girls of 

Temple and the surrounding areas the 

opportunity to share social, educational, and 

recreational experiences regardless of race, 

color, or creed as they develop their capacity to 

be self-sufficient and responsible members of 

the community. 

The original Board of Directors applied to 

the State of Texas for a corporation charter 

for the Temple Boys Club, and received the 

charter on February 9, 1965. The one year 

birthday party was held in 1966 and Ralph 

Wilson, Sr., and A. P. Brasher, Jr., were honored 

for their support of the club. In 1967, A. P. 

Brasher, Jr., offered a resolution to change the 

name of the club to honor Ralph Wilson, Sr., 

because of his “advice, counsel, and moral and 

financial support.” The motion passed and the 

Temple Boys Club became the Ralph Wilson 

Boys Club. 

In the early days of the Temple Boys Club, 

maintenance of the aged buildings was a 

perpetual nuisance and this lead to a move in 

November 1970. A new structure was built 

specifically for the Boys Club. At a cost of 

$250,000, the building and most of its 

furnishings were donated by the Wilson Family. 

Ralph was known to gather up a pocket full of 

dimes and come to the Club and buy everyone 

a Coke, and sit and talk with the kids. Ralph 

died in 1972 at the age of seventy, but before 

his death he planted a seed—the need for a 

girls club. 

Ralph had spoken to Betty Mundell Prescott 

shortly before he died about his dream for a 

Girls Club for the girls of the Temple area. In 

1977 that dream became a reality with the help 

of Betty Mundell Prescott, Faye Brinker, Eva 

Johnston, Sunny Wilson, and Jean Wilson. The 

Girls Club opened March 15, 1977, with a small 

ceremony involving Dr. Ralph Wilson, Jr., From 

that point on, Dr. Wilson took up where his dad 

left off. 

With the help of Frank and Sue Mayborn, a 

pavilion was erected in 1984 for the clubs. The 

pavilion helped handle the increase of members 

by providing a place out of the sun for outdoor 

games and also a place in the summer for the 

children to have their lunch. In 1993 the 

pavilion was enlarged with a donation from 

Sue Mayborn. 

In the late 1980s, Dr. Wilson (aka “Doc”) 

purchased three new buses for the youth clubs’ 

after school program. The children named the 


uses “Doc,” “Happy Days,” and “Good Times,” 

and because of the generosity of the Wilson 

Family there were many “happy days” and 

“good times.” These buses were retired in 2006 

and three new ones were added to the RWYC 

fleet thanks to the generosity of Dr. Ralph and 

Sharon Wilson, Sue Mayborn, and Drayton and 

Elizabeth McLane. 

Dr. Ralph (“Doc”) and Sharon Wilson and 

the Wilson Family—Janice Wilson, Jim and 

Maria Wilson, and Terri Wilson, along with 

Bill Reeb, helped provide funding for allnew 

game room equipment in 2006. Doc 

was excited to have his children involved with 

this undertaking. 

Dr. Wilson was proud of the Ralph Wilson 

Youth Club community partners—Wilsonart 

International/ITW Foundation, the Ralph 

Wilson Public Trust, United Way of Central 

Texas, Temple College, and Temple 

Independent School District to name a few, 

along with hundreds of financial supporters 

from the Temple area. Though Dr. Wilson 

passed away in December of 2007, his memory 

and his legacy will carry on through the Ralph 

Wilson Youth Clubs of Temple, Inc. 

For more information, please visit the web at 

www.rwyckids.org. 

This page made possible by Charlie and 

Kathy Kimmey. 


BLACKLAND 

AND 

GRASSLAND 

RESEARCH 

❖ 

Texas AgriLife Research-Blackland 

Research and Extension Center, 2000 

to present. 

Created in 1909, Blackland Research & 

Extension Center is a part of Texas AgriLife 

Research (formerly Texas Agricultural 

Experiment Station), a state agricultural 

research agency affiliated with the Texas A&M 

System. Originally located between Temple and 

Belton, the center was moved to its present 

location two miles south of Temple in 1928. The 

property is one of thirteen off-campus research 

and extension centers that, along with faculty 

from Texas A&M University, perform research 

and deliver education programs for the citizens 

of Texas to ensure a safe and affordable food 

supply, save and restore the environment, and 

strengthen the economy. 

At the heart of the program are a group of 

scientists working to improve the region’s water 

and soil quality by conducting research and 

developing new technologies facilitating farmers 

and ranchers to make improved decisions 

regarding land and water management 

practices. Scientists today use state-of-the art 

computer simulation models, remote sensing 

and satellite information to solve the complex 

water, environmental, natural resource issues in 

Texas and our nation. 

Blackland Research & Extension Center 

shares research facilities with the Grassland, 

Soil, and Water Research Laboratory of the 

USDA/Agricultural Research Service. Texas 

AgriLife Research and Agricultural Research 

Service scientists have worked cooperatively at 

Temple for over eighty years, and also work 

with scientists from the National Resources 

Conservation Service and the U.S. 

Environmental Protection Agency, who are 

co-located at the lab. The synergism between 

Blackland and Grassland scientists is a 

principal reason for the success of the Temple 

laboratory. Research programs from both 

agencies are closely linked and scientists 

are able to capitalize on the strengths of each 

other. Resources (i.e. equipment, personnel, 

financial) are shared and joint research is 

planned and conducted. 

People learn by seeing and the great number 

of visitors, often a couple of hundred in a single 

day, is evidence of an interest in the work being 

done at Blackland/Grassland Research & 

Extension Center. Many of the visitors go back 

to their individual communities as missionaries 

of better farming as a result of what they learn. 


Grassland, Soil and Water Research 

Laboratory (GSWRL) is located near the center 

of the 12.5 million acre Texas Blackland Prairie. 

GSWRL was established by the USDA 

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) after it 

began conducting agricultural research in the 

Temple area in 1927. 

The prairie’s clay soils have possessed unique 

crop production and hydrologic characteristics 

that have informed research regarding soil 

erosion, soil and crop management, fertility and 

plant nutrient management, hydrology and 

water management, water quality, rangeland 

brush and weed control, rangeland revegetation, 

and agricultural systems analysis and modeling. 

Nearly a century of research has now been 

conducted in partnership with the TexasAgriLife 

Research, Blackland Research and Extension 

Center (BREC). The USDA Natural Resources 

Conservation Service (NRSC) has assigned 

personnel to the GSWRL to integrate research 

findings of the BRC and GSWRL into practice 

for conserving and managing the nation’s 

natural resources. 

The mission of the GSWRL is to develop new 

technology for maximizing forage and crop 

production; reducing uncertainty regarding the 

effects of global change on agriculture, 

controlling invasive brush and weeds on 

rangelands; and solving problems related to 

efficient use of soil and water, crop production, 

soil fertility, erosion, hydrology, and water quality. 

The mission is achieved through laboratory 

and field experimental research and simulation 

modeling by a multidisciplinary staff of scientists, 

engineers, and technical support personnel. 

GSWRL research is organized into two 

units—the Natural Resources System Research 

Unit (NRSRU) and the Grassland Protection 

Research Unit (GPRU). 

The group’s research is conducted on a 550- 

acre tract of land in southeast Temple and 

includes a 25,000-square-foot office/laboratory 

building and other research support buildings. 

The land also includes facilities for conducting a 

variety of field experiments. An additional 840 

acres of land near Riesel, Texas, is used for a 

watershed research program. 

❖ 

USDA, Agricultural Research Service 

Grassland, Soil and Water Research 

Laboratory, 1975 to present. 


SUNBELT 

TRANSFORMER, 

LTD. 

❖ 

The Temple location of Sunbelt 

Transformer, Ltd. 

Sunbelt Transformer, Ltd., strives to be 

its customer’s “1st Choice" for all transformer 

needs worldwide. With a ready-to-ship 

inventory available to view online, the customer 

can create real-time quotes and retrieve 

complete information, drawings, and test 

results of Sunbelt Transformer, Ltd.’s stock 

of thousands of new and reconditioned 

padmount, substation, dry-type, and cast 

coil transformers. 

Sunbelt Transformer, Ltd., was originally 

founded in Temple in late 1981. The company 

started at a green field site with four employees. 

Randall Maddox, Dave Sorge, Gary Lockhart, 

Robert Collins, and Paul Maddox were the 

original founders. Sunbelt brought in revenues 

of over $490,000 its first year in business. 

A combination of factors is responsible for 

the success of Sunbelt Transformer, Ltd. The 

downturn of the oil business in the 1980s left 

Sunbelt to expand its geographic market. 

Sunbelt also discovered it could buy surplus 

transformers, remanufacture them, and sell 

them at lower prices with quicker delivery than 

the competitors. In 1986, after five years of 

hyper-growth, Sunbelt was named to Inc. 

magazine’s “500 Fastest Growing Company” list 

and honored at the annual conference in 

Cleveland, Ohio. 

As time passed, Sunbelt Transformer, Ltd., 

grew to be known as a high-quality provider of 

remanufactured transformers and transformer 

repair services. In addition, the company also 

earned a reputation for fast delivery, valueadded 

services, and the handling of emergency 

situations. Always realizing customer need was 

the driving force. 

Business grew steadily through the 1980s 

and 1990s, while Sunbelt continued to 

provide additional services such as adding a 

mobile substation and a mobile GSU to the 

rental line, transformer components, 

switchgear, unit substations, and rental, repair, 

and testing of transformers. 

Today, Sunbelt Transformer, Ltd. is led by 

Kyle McQueen, Jim Landino, and Randall 


Maddox. Beverly Sawyer, a local resident of 

Temple and a previous owner retired from 

Sunbelt in February 2008. The company and its 

leaders are also dedicated to community service 

and charitable involvement. President and CEO 

McQueen is a past board member of the Temple 

Chamber of Commerce and the Temple 

Economic Development Corporation, and is 

currently a member of the Temple Airport 

Advisory Board and serves on the Board of 

Directors of King’s Daughter Hospital. Maddox 

has served as the president of the Temple 

Chamber of Commerce. Sawyer was a member 

of the Reinvestment Zone, Temple Economic 

Development Corporation, Brazos River 

Authority, Bell County Tax Appraisal District 

Board, the Planning and Zoning Commission, 

Temple Chamber of Commerce Board, Keep 

Temple Beautiful Board, and is a graduate of 

Leadership Temple. 

With locations in Temple, Texas; Bakersfield, 

California; Sharon, Pennsylvania; Simpsonville, 

South Carolina; and Springfield, Illinois; 

Sunbelt Transformer, Ltd. offers the fastest 

cycle-time on product delivery in the world, as 

well as twenty-four hour, seven-day-a-week 

emergency availability, and is focused on 

“Transforming the World” by establishing its 

position as the single source for all transformer 

needs worldwide. 


TEMPLE 

MACHINE 

SHOP 

Manufacturing precision hydraulic cylinders, 

accumulators, hydraulic manifolds, valve 

blocks, and hydraulic components for two 

decades, Temple Machine Shop, Inc., and TMS 

Hydraulics have long been in the business of 

providing world-class products at competitive 

prices with world-class customer service. 

In the 1950s the family of Manzie Sawberger 

founded Temple Machine Shop at 507 South 

Fourth Street. Sawberger operated the shop and 

established it as the place to take any style gun 

in need of repairing or refurbishing. He also 

completed machine shop/job shop projects for 

local companies and farmers. 

In 1979, two friends, Caswell Forest and Art 

Tice, the brother of local golf pro Carly Tice, 

bought the shop. In February of the following year, 

Stewart Fettig became its general manager and, by 

August, the three men signed an agreement to sell 

the stock and business to Stewart. 

At the time of the agreement in 1980, TMS was 

located on South Fourth Street and consisted of a 

forty-eight-hundred-square-foot building with a 

dirt floor, a few lathes, milling machines—many 

of which were manufactured pre-World War II— 

and presses. One milling machine was actually 

hand built using a Ford Model “A” differential as 

a gear box. These antiquated machines made it 

very challenging to make precision parts. 

Local farmers, contractors and small factories 

had always made up the shop’s strong customer 

base, and by 1980 the oil drilling business was 

still booming so TMS began working for local 

companies to make “pump jack parts” for the oil 

field industry. 

Many times during this era there was work 

brought in that most would say could not be 

done, however, because of the strong 

convictions and “can-do” attitude of Stewart, 

work was accomplished and done well. This 

type of positive attitude continues today in the 

day-to-day operations at TMS. 

When the oil field industry began to suffer, 

work was geared toward anything to make a 

dollar. Local industries often needed repair work 

completed on their equipment, so everything 

from welding, machining, repairing beauty salon 

chairs, working on car doors, building go-cart 

frames, and even working on a local funeral 

home’s cadaver table kept the shop going. 

By 1986 the plant had doubled in size as a 

result of over five hundred percent growth in 

sales. The business continued to grow and in 

1993 a twenty-eight-thousand-square-foot plant 


was purchased and the business moved to 1401 

North Fourteenth Street in Temple. This 

existing building had been operated under the 

name of Hoover Brothers, and later became The 

Teachers Store. Prior to TMS buying the 

building, it was owned by a computer company, 

Vestra Sub-Company. In 2000, additional space 

was added to bring the plant size to forty-six 

thousand square feet. 

Today, the company includes 90 employees, 

$10 million in revenue, and is directed by the 

Fettig Family—Stewart, Lester, and Michelle. 

TMS earnings are continuously reinvested in 

state-of-the-art machinery and equipment to 

improve manufacturing capacity, while at the 

same time improving pay, benefits and working 

conditions in order to attract and retain skilled 

and dedicated people. 

The company continues to develop 

its successful customer base and capacity 

for continued growth and prosperity. Its 

precision hydraulic cylinders are marketed 

by national distributors to major corporations 

throughout the United States and international 

markets. 

Temple Machine Shop is located at 1401 

North Fourteenth Street. For more information, 

please visit www.tmshydraulics.com. 


DREWS HUNT 

BUILDERS 

❖ 

Above: The HomePlace is a settlement 

of historic cottages created to reflect 

the village lifestyle of Salado. 

Below: Derrick Hunt with Sherry and 

Gerald Drews at the office of Drews 

Hunt Builders. 

Drews Hunt Builders started as the 

father and son partnership of Martin M. 

Drews and Gerald W. Drews in July 

1973. The seeds were planted when 

A.O. Drews, a Marlin contractor, taught 

his sons Martin, Sam and Ben the 

carpentry trade upon their return from 

World War II. 

By the time Martin and Gerald 

founded the company called Drews 

Construction Company, the pair 

combined over forty years of construction 

experience between them. While in 

high school, Gerald learned the carpentry 

trade from his dad and worked in the 

construction field through college. After 

graduation, he became an estimator for a large 

commercial contractor in Houston. Two years 

later, Sherry and Gerald moved to Temple to form 

the company. 

The first office was a home office and the 

first company truck was a short bed 1957 

Chevy. As the business grew, key employees 

and subcontractors contributed to its success. 

Many of their clients became some of their 

closest friends. Although the company has 

been blessed with many good people over 

the years, three key employees, Tommy 

Millender, Joe Millender, and Roy Schlickeisen 

are still associated and are approaching thirty 

years of dedication. 

The name changed to Drews Custom Homes 

because that was the focus. The company built 

mid size homes in the 1970s and 1980s. From 

the 1990s until the present the company 

focused on upscale luxury custom homes 

ranging up to $1 million. In 1998, Derrick Hunt 

moved his family from Redding, California, to 

become a partner and add remodeling and 

expansion capabilities to the company. With the 

expanded capabilities came a new name, Drews 

Hunt Builders. 

First National Bank, now Extraco, has been 

the company’s bank for the duration. Those 

familiar to Texas real estate in the 1980s know 

how important it was to have bankers like Dale 

Yates and Mac Burrough. 

Drews Construction Company was an early 

founding member of the Temple Area Builders 

Association, and participated in over thirty-five 

Parades of Homes. In January 1992, BUILDER, 

the magazine of the National Association of 

Home Builders, recognized Drews Custom 

Homes in its Builder Spotlight Award as “one of 

the top twelve best builders in the nation.” 

One of the company’s most unique 

projects was a small residential development 

in historic Salado, Texas. Today, the 

HomePlace is a small lane with individual 

homes built on pier and beam foundation 

to replicate homes built in the late 1800s. 

These homes feature antiques, reproductions, 

and reclaimed materials. 

From 1977 to 2005, Drews Custom Homes 

was located at 1113 South Thirty-Third Street. 

In the year 2006 the company relocated to 1023 

Canyon Creek Drive and changed its name to 

Drews Hunt Builders. For more information, 

please visit www.drewshuntbuilders.com. 


CITY OF 

TEMPLE 

The city of Temple began as a railroad town 

on June 29, 1881, when Temple Junction was 

created as the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe 

Railway pushed north from Galveston. On this 

day, trains brought prospective buyers from five 

cities in for a party, barbecue, and the auction of 

town lots. Twenty-eight residential lots and 157 

business lots were sold and the railroad even 

refunded passenger ticket prices for those who 

bought land. The new settlement was named in 

honor of Bernard Moore Temple, the Santa Fe’s 

chief engineer. 

Today, the city of Temple remains proud of its 

historic legacy in Texas history and continues to 

serve as a major connection among the 

international markets of Mexico via Laredo and 

three of the largest metro areas in Texas: San 

Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth. It is 

also one of the leading medical centers in the 

Southwest and includes Scott & White Hospital 

and Clinic, King’s Daughters Hospital, and the 

Olin E. Teague Veterans Center. 

The city of Temple is governed under the 

council-manager form of local government.The 

mayor is elected at large, while the four-member 

council is elected by district. The Council is 

tasked with formulating public policy to meet 

community needs. The city manager is the chief 

executive officer for the city and is charged with 

directing the day-to-day operations of the city. 

The city is home to numerous manufacturing, 

technology, and bioscience companies, as well as 

several distribution service firms. Also within the 

city are five award-winning school districts, 

historic museums, the Azalee Marshall Cultural 

Activities Center, Temple Symphony Orchestra, 

Temple Civic Theatre, and the Frank W. 

Mayborn Civic and Convention Center. 

Temple’s historic district is located north of 

the downtown district, and offers residents and 

visitors alike a unique collection of fine, historic 

mansions and middle class bungalows. 

Throughout its history, the city of Temple has 

grown steadily because of its diverse economy— 

agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, and 

medicine—and continues to shine as one of 

Texas’ brightest stars. 

For more information, visit the city of 

Temple website at www.ci.temple.tx.us. For 

visitor information on Temple, please visit 

www.discovertemple.com. 

❖ 

Above: A bird’s-eye view of downtown 

Temple looking north. This mid- 

1950's photograph shows a 

progressive Temple looking much like 

downtown Temple of today. 

Below: Today, even with the passage 

of a half-century, the Municipal 

Building remains the hub of activity in 

the downtown area. 


IZONE 

❖ 

Above: Railroad and Heritage 

Museum, Temple, Texas. The steam 

locomotive (shown at left in the 

display) served the central Texas line 

through Temple until 1952. She was 

kept at the ready for several years 

just in case the newfangled diesel 

engine (right) was not up to the job. 

Design: iZone 

Below: Falkirk Wheel, Scotland. 

The panel series explains, along with 

the history of the canals, that 330 

tons of water and boat can be raised 

from one canal to the other in less 

than fifteen minutes, using only 

enough electricity to power two 

steam kettles. 

Design: Arron Lawton Associates, 

Pitlochery, Scotland. 

iZone was founded by the late Scott 

McCallum and Mike MacEachern, who 

began in the late 1990s in Montreal, 

Quebec, with a predecessor to iZone, 

producing digital graphics embedded in 

High Pressure Laminate. In 1999, 

Wilsonart International acquired their 

embryonic business and both relocated 

to Temple in July of that year. 

Scott and Mike, joined by Scott's wife 

Terri, worked around the clock to 

develop the new business. Scott 

attended tradeshows and called on 

everyone he knew in the graphics 

industry. Mike managed artwork and 

project management until all hours of 

the night. By 2001, iZone had grown to 

five employees and had recovered their 

startup budget. 

In 2002, Scott and Mike approached 

Wilsonart with a plan to buy the 

company back. Negotiations went on 

until September 2003 when iZone 

became independent, but still located 

in the Wilsonart R&D building. They 

began to invest in technology with a 

CNC router and state-of-the-art, wide-format 

digital printers. 

The big move to iZone’s own facility came in 

May 2005 along with the installation of a used 

two-hundred-ton laminate press acquired from 

Wilsonart’s Temple South Plant. Movement of 

the press and its installation took months to 

accomplish, and the first products were 

produced at Christmastime, 2005. 

In 2006 the company produced an 

industry first: consolidated, double-sided 

panels with registered, back-to-back graphics 

and no seams. 

In 2007, iZone began fabricating entire 

graphic installations, beginning with a large 

amusement park attraction for a well-known 

international client. 

This innovative company's commitment 

to research and development of imaging 

technology and graphics fabrication 

assure products that exceed the highest 

quality standards. In addition to producing 

interpretive panels for national and state 

parks, zoos, aquariums and amusement 

parks, iZone also manufactures architectural 

signage as well as products for industrial 

applications, all using their Digital High 

Pressure Laminate (DHPL), entirely produced in 

Temple, Texas. 

For more information about iZone, please visit 

www.izoneimaging.com or call 254-778-0722. 


TEMPLE IRON 

& METAL 

Temple Iron & Metal was founded in 

1934 by the Neman family, who owned 

and operated the business before Billy and 

Jessica Bachmayer purchased the company in 

January 2003. 

Temple Iron & Metal is a family-owned 

business with a strong Christian influence, 

striving to serve God and the community. The 

Bachmayer family remains a strong supporter of 

local schools and is part of the adopt-a-school 

program in Belton. They are also active 

supporters of the FFA and 4-H clubs of Bell 

County through the purchase of several items at 

the Bell County Livestock show each year. 

Temple Iron & Metal buys all kinds of 

recyclables, including aluminum cans, white 

office paper, computer paper, newsprint, mixed 

paper, plastic, cardboard, ferrous metals—short 

iron, long iron, tin, tin white goods; non-ferrous 

metals—aluminum, brass, copper, stainless; car 

batteries, automobiles, refrigerators, and air 

conditioning units. 

For more information about Temple Iron & 

Metal, please visit www.templeiron.com. 

❖ 

Temple Iron & Metal, then and now! 


JACK HILLIARD 

DISTRIBUTING 

COMPANY, INC. 

❖ 

Above: With offices located in 

Temple, Texas; Jack P., Sr., and Jack P. 

Hilliard, Jr., have worked side by side 

to build the company into a great 

success story. 

Below: Beginning with determination 

and a pickup truck, Jack P. Hilliard, 

Sr., set a record in January 1949, 

selling 348 cases of Budweiser from 

the back of his truck. Jack P. Hilliard, 

Jr., sits atop the cases waiting to help 

deliver the product. 

In 1948, Jack Hilliard, Sr., began working 

Temple and Bell County under the 

distributorship of Turner Coffield, located in 

Waco. Hilliard was required to furnish all his 

own equipment and warehousing. In 1958, he 

was appointed the distributorship for Bell and 

Milam Counties and in 1971 purchased the 

distributorship in Bryan-College Station. 

In the early days, Anheuser-Busch products 

were shipped by rail and all beer came out of St. 

Louis, Missouri. The company owned its own 

rail cars, which were solid white with SLRX 

printed on the sides of the cars. That made it 

easy to spot a shipment of Budweiser going 

down the track. 

Budweiser was not as popular during this 

period of time due to the cost. A bottle of 

Budweiser, considered a premium beer, cost 

$.25 where the other beers, considered popular 

beers, were 2 for $.25. In 1966, Anheuser-Busch 

put a brewery in Houston, Texas, and this 

helped the price of Budweiser because the 

freight cost was much lower and the time of 

shipment was faster. In the later years the 

growth of Fort Hood made a tremendous 

difference in sales and growth for Jack Hilliard 

Distributing Company, Inc. 

Hilliard’s first warehouse was 25 by 50 

square feet. In 1952 the company moved to 

one section of the Old Katy Depot and by 1964 

the company was renting the entire freight 

depot, which was fifty feet wide and a block 

long. In 1969 the company moved again to the 

old Gulf Coast Paper Company, Inc., building 

on Twelfth Street. In 1977 the company built 

the complex they inhabit currently at 217 North 

Twelfth Street. In 1987 the old Gulf Coast 

Building was demolished and the company 

added on to their existing building, with one 

final addition made in 2006. 


Holy Trinity Catholic High School, 

www.holytrinitychs.org, is a private collegepreparatory 

school devoted to the fulfillment of 

the educational ministry of the Catholic Church. 

In 1995 a steadfast group of individuals 

dedicated themselves to the idea of forming a 

Catholic high school for the young adults of the 

area. Key individuals included Bishop Emeritus 

John McCarthy, Father Charles Davis, Pete Gaa, 

Donna Reilly, Bruce and Geri Koehler, Kim Iglesia, 

Jim Lindley, Guy Shields, Moni Bittenbinder, Al 

Castillo, and Sam and Patti Snyder. 

The school opened its doors in the fall of 

1997 at St. Luke Catholic Church’s Education 

Building and later settled at its current location 

at 418 North 11th in 2002. 

There were four principals in three years 

before Susan Terry came to bring stability to the 

school, attracting excellent teachers and 

building an outstanding academic curriculum. 

Today, the school includes 103 students 

and a staff and faculty of thirty. In 2007 

alone, students performed over twenty-six 

hundred hours of community service in an 

effort to extend the mission of the school 

outward. The 2007-2008 school year included 

four National Merit Commended Students and 

recognition by the College Board’s 

National Hispanic Program. 

St. Mary’s School, www.stmarystemple.org, 

was founded in 1897 by 

Father P.A. Heckmann, then pastor of 

St. Mary’s Church. Under his 

direction, with the active support of a 

dedicated group of parishioners, 

Divine Providence Sisters guided the 

pupils until 1912. In 1919, Sisters of 

the Congregation of the Incarnate 

Word and Blessed Sacrament from 

Houston, Texas, began their mission 

at St. Mary’s School and continued 

until 1995. Lay principals and faculty 

have continued to guide students in 

achieving outstanding academic goals. 

The Diocese of Austin purchased 

the former TISD Reagan Elementary 

School, and, after considerable 

remodeling and landscaping, St. 

Mary’s School opened classes in that 

building in the fall of 2002. 

The current enrollment is 265 

students in pre-kindergarten and third 

through eighth grades. Challenging curriculum, 

a fine arts program, professional certified 

teachers, small class sizes and an affordable 

tuition places St. Mary’s Catholic School as 

one of the best in Central Texas. St. Mary’s 

Catholic School students participate in 

PSIA (Private School Interscholastic 

Association) and MathCounts each year and a 

competitive sports program is offered to 

students in junior high. 

HOLY TRINITY 

CATHOLIC HIGH 

SCHOOL/ 

ST. MARY’S 

SCHOOL 

❖ 

Above: St. Mary’s Catholic School. 

Below: Seniors at Holy Trinity 

celebrate the groundbreaking of the 

school’s new campus at FM 2305 west 

of Temple in 2007. The successful 

capital campaign—Faith and 

Dreams—was launched in 2007 in 

preparation for this exciting new era 

in the life of Holy Trinity. 


TEMPLE CIVIC 

THEATRE, INC. 

❖ 

Above: The Music Man. 

Below: On Golden Pond. 

Temple Civic Theatre, Inc., a 501(c) (3) 

nonprofit corporation, was formed by a group of 

interested citizens in 1965. An earlier group, 

called Old Central Players, had become inactive, 

so a new name was chosen. The first play 

produced was You Can’t Take It With You. 

Temple Civic Theatre, operating with its own 

board of governors and incorporated as a 

nonprofit arts organization in November 1968, 

worked under the Cultural Activities Center as a 

member organization. In 1974, because of its 

growth and success, the group had to “leave 

home and find a place of its own.” Today, the 

theatre and the Cultural Activities Center 

operate cooperatively from separate spaces, 

both built in 1977. 

The building is an 11,000-square-foot plant 

containing a 228-seat thrust stage auditorium, 

two large dressing rooms, offices, classrooms, a 

kitchen, restrooms, a large scene shop, and a 

costume shop. It was surrounded in 1989 by 

paved, curbed, lighted parking, with landscaping 

and improved signage. The facility, valued at over 

$400,000, was paid for completely through local 

donations in support of the theatre. 

In 1992, additional renovation work was 

performed to help bring the building into 

compliance with the Americans with Disabilities 

Act (ADA). 

The average number of season ticket holders 

is 1,300, with over 300 volunteers working 

regularly each season. Operations are 

coordinated through the managing director with 

a twelve-member Board of Governors and 

volunteer committee chairmen. 

Main-series shows are cast from open 

auditions with a loosely-held goal of fifty 

percent experienced actors and fifty percent 

new participants, in an effort to stabilize quality 

while encouraging growth. 

Today, six shows are performed on the main 

series, which features musicals, classics, and 

recently-released titles. Special productions are 

designed for smaller interest groups in shorter 

run than the more commercial main series. They 

include original plays, one-man shows, concerts 

by local musicians, and plays of a more serious 

or intellectual theme. 

Children’s activities have always been of 

prime importance, with the theatre’s philosophy 

on youth participation being the integration of 

children and young people into the overall 

program. Formal classes in creative drama, two 

youth theatre productions, and a youth 

workshop in the summer have been included in 

recent years. 


A unique and very special idea was born over 

twenty-five years ago to combine a respected 

Central Texas healthcare institution with a 

practical, efficient system of prepaid healthcare. 

From this vision came Scott & White Health 

Plan, a health-maintenance organization 

delivering comprehensive healthcare at a 

predictable cost. In return for a monthly fee, 

Scott & White Health Plan’s members can visit a 

doctor, have lab tests, be hospitalized and incur 

other medical expenses and know they are 

covered, with nominal co-payments. 

First called the Centroplex Health Plan and 

centralized in Bell and Coryell Counties, the 

Scott & White Health Plan would evolve over 

time into a vast healthcare network, which 

today encompasses over thirty-four counties in 

the Central Texas Area. 

The idea first took shape after Temple was 

founded by the Santa Fe Railway in 1881. 

Throughout the decade, the Railway, working 

through the Santa Fe Employment Association, 

offered a system wide prepaid hospitalization 

and pension plan. Spurred by the Railway’s 

proposal, workers voluntarily contributed to the 

association’s health plan every month. These 

employees lived with the assurance that, if they 

became sick or injured, they would receive the 

best in medical care at no additional cost. 

The Santa Fe Railway hired its own medical 

staff and founded its own hospital in 1891, 

Temple’s Santa Fe Hospital. Dr. Arthur Carroll 

Scott and Dr. Raleigh R. White, Jr., came to 

Temple in the late 1890s to work as chief 

surgeons for the hospital before forming a 

partnership in 1897 independent from their 

railroad service. Over the years, other 

physicians from a wide variety of medical 

specialties joined Dr. Scott and Dr. White in 

their private practice, and this partnership 

eventually evolved into Scott & White Memorial 

Hospital and Clinic. 

Changes in the healthcare horizon in the 

1970s caused resurgence in the interest of prepaid 

health plans, now termed health 

maintenance organizations (HMO). By October 

1981, the State Board of Insurance granted a 

certificate of authority and the Health Plan 

officially began on January 1, 1982. Within the 

first year, more than 10,000 workers in Bell and 

Coryell Counties were members of Centroplex 

and the number has continued to grow steadily 

to well over 200,000 members today. 

Scott & White Health Plan now has Regional 

Offices in Temple, Georgetown, Waco, and 

Bryan-College Station, Texas. The Health Plan 

has garnered many national awards including 

the top statewide ranking by U.S. News and 

World Report, excellent accreditation from the 

National Committee for Quality Assurance, and 

the highest rating of any Central Texas HMO by 

the Office of Public Insurance Council (2007). 

Today, Scott & White Health Plan continues 

to introduce new insurance plans to meet the 

needs of individual members and employers, 

including a child-only plan (Young Texan), a 

statewide self-insured plan, a Medicare 

enhancement plan (SeniorCare) and Medicare 

prescription drug plans (Texas Rx), and has 

received numerous awards for its financial 

strength and quality of service. 

Additional information is available at 

www.swhp.org. 

SCOTT & 

WHITE 

HEALTH 

PLAN 


IMMANUEL 

LUTHERAN 

CHURCH 

The arrival of several resident families to the 

Temple area prompted Pastor Frederick W. 

Behrmann, of the Grove Lutheran Church to 

suggest conducting services in a home. Services 

began in the home of Mr. and Mrs. C. H. Falke 

on August 20, 1924. Faithful study of the Word 

of God allowed this tiny group to grow and 

organize Immanuel Lutheran Church on March 

24, 1926. 

Upon signing the Charter, members began to 

meet in the old YMCA. On March 4, 1927, a 

resolution was passed to build a chapel and 

parsonage on the corner of Twenty-fifth Street 

and Avenue M. The dedication took place on 

May 20, 1928. Although the congregation had 

stated in Article VI of its first constitution, “We 

obligate ourselves at all times to the maintenance 

and furtherance of a Christian Day School” it was 

not until 1946 that concrete preparations were 

made for the opening of such a school. 

In December 1949 the congregation 

purchased a new site at West Avenue H between 

Forty-first and Forty-third Streets. A new tworoom 

school unit was dedicated to the Glory of 

God on November 12, 1950. 

The groundbreaking of the current building 

took place on February 26, 1956, with the 

cornerstone being laid in place on October 21, 

1956, and the dedication occurring on 

November 25, 1956. With continuing expansion 

of membership the need to increase the space 

prompted the building of a new education 

building which was dedicated June 9, 1974. 

With membership increasing, Immanuel 

undertook the building of additional 

educational facilities, including Sunday School 

and Day School rooms, a gymnasium, cafeteria 

and kitchen. The dedication to the Glory of God 

was on June 28, 1987. 

As community leaders, Immanuel members 

are participating through many ministry 

opportunities, such as operating a food pantry 

serving needy members of the community; 

Project “We Care” providing relief, support, and 

supplies to a community ravaged by Hurricane 

Andrew; Habitat for Humanity building homes 

along with other Lutheran churches in the area; 

Family Promise, as well as operating a large 

print center which produces easy to read bound 

books of the Bible in large print format. These 

books are shared with the visually impaired. 

By the Grace of God both locally and beyond, 

members seek to bring “Christ Alive in Every 

Heart.” From the earliest age, Immanuel’s 

Sunday School and week day Early Childhood 

Center serve area preschoolers and Kindergarten 

age children and their families. This concept 

builds through active youth programs and 

blossoms into various dynamic youth and adult 

mission opportunities. 

More information about Immanuel Lutheran 

Church is available at www.ilctemple.org. 


PRECIOUS 

MEMORIES 

FLORIST & 

GIFT SHOP 

Precious Memories Florist & Gift Shop 

celebrates nearly thirty years of service across 

the Central Texas area offering in excess of 

147 years of design experience to its customers. 

The shop’s original owners Malissa and 

Rex Baugh began Precious Memories as a 

home-based business before moving to locations 

on Fifty-Seventh Street, Avenue M and Thirty- 

First Street. 

Temple native Seleese Thompson purchased 

the business from the Baughs in 2003 

and, although she had never assembled a 

bouquet, her experience in sales and 

management with Texas Instruments served 

her well as she watched the success of her 

company bloom. 

Enlisting the help of longtime floral artist 

and design-room manager Norman Northen 

to handle the florals, Thompson focused 

on expanding her new shop’s services and 

sales. Just four and a half years later she 

has picked up a thing or two in the realm 

of floral knowledge and the shop has continued 

to thrive, and, as of 2006, had been voted 

Temple’s best florist for five consecutive years, 

starting one year prior to its sale to Thompson. 

This accomplishment got her noticed and 

named as the 2007 National Retail Florist by 

Florist Review Magazine. Precious Memories is 

the first florist in Texas and the first singlelocation 

florist to be honored with the 

prestigious award. 

In May 2006, Precious Memories relocated to 

the historic Beimers Fine Jewelry location at 

1404 South Thirty-First Street, remodeling the 

building to showcase a broad line of gift 

merchandise and featuring the talented 

designers in view of browsing customers. 

Thompson is the proud mother of two and 

an active volunteer for several service and 

community organizations, including the 

Chamber of Commerce. She knows that being 

involved in the growth of the Temple 

community is critical to the success of its 

children and businesses. 

For more information, please visit Precious 

Memories at www.preciousmemoriesflorist.com. 

❖ 

Above: Vibrant scarlet red is a 

signature hue at Precious Memories 

Florist & Gift Shop, as is 

demonstrated in the shop's red-clad 

exterior. Gorgeous eye catching 

window displays create vignettes of 

color and theme for the interest of the 

passing community. 

Below: Seleese Thompson with 

daughter Faith, a junior at Temple 

High School, and son Grant, a 

sixth-grader attending Bonham 

Middle School. 


TEMPLE 

INDEPENDENT 

SCHOOL 

DISTRICT 

❖ 

Above: Temple High School as it 

appears today. 

Celebrating 125 years of outstanding 

academic progress, Temple Independent School 

District is unwaveringly committed to helping 

students achieve their highest potential and 

become meaningful contributors to their 

community and society. 

Led by a talented and dedicated staff that 

today includes over thirteen hundred employees 

across the District, Temple Public Schools was 

originally established on June 13, 1883, when a 

stock company was organized to construct 

Temple Academy. At the same time, a strong 

movement was under way to create a public 

school system. By the end of the year, the city 

voted to form an independent school district 

and take over the Academy. 

In 1889 the original frame building of the 

former Academy became too small and a twostory 

wing was added before the Third Ward 

school building was finally completed in 1890. 

That same year, Temple congratulated its first 

three school graduates—Alice Robbins, Kate 

Sloan, and Ray Wilcox. 

As Temple grew and the city welcomed new 

homes and businesses to the area, Temple ISD 

and citizens rallied together to create an 

outstanding educational outlet for the 

community through large bond issues and 

expansive construction. By the mid-1930s, a 

number of structures were being added along 

with a new cafeteria and a large gymnasium. 

Temple High School was rebuilt at a cost of 

nearly $3 million in 1965 and more classrooms 

were added throughout the 1970s. In April 

1996, voters approved a $38 million bond for 

renovations across the District. 

Today, Temple Independent School District 

is the city’s fourth largest employer and is a 

5A district with one early childhood center, 

nine elementary schools, three middle 

schools, and one high school, serving over 

8,000 students. 

Early childhood and elementary schools in 

the district include Bethune Early Childhood 

Center, Cater Elementary, Hector P. Garcia 

Elementary, Jefferson Elementary, Kennedy- 

Powell Elementary, Meridith-Dunbar 

Elementary, Raye-Allen Elementary, Scott 

Elementary, Thornton Elementary, and Western 

Hills Elementary. Middle Schools include 

Bonham, Lamar and Travis, while historic 

Temple High School has remained the only high 

school in the community since 1968. 

For more information about Temple 

Independent School District, visit www.tisd.org. 

Right: Old Temple High 

School, 1923. 


GRACE 

PRESBYTERIAN 

CHURCH 

Grace Presbyterian Church is a church whose 

mission statement declares our intention of 

continuing to serve God and humankind. The 

church was born as Cumberland Presbyterian 

Church on December 17, 1893, by the efforts of 

J. J. Grant and Dr. A. C. Scott of Scott & White. 

Dr. Scott was the only clerk of the session until 

his death in 1940. After a denominational merger 

in 1906 and another in 1983, Grace became a 

member of The Presbyterian Church (USA). 

The church met in Wagner Hall at First Street 

and Avenue A for the first seven years of its life. 

They used a tabernacle at Eighth Street and 

Avenue A during the summer. A new church 

was built on the corner of Barton and Third, and 

was occupied on March 18, 1900. In the 1920s, 

Grace Presbyterian had the first Vacation Bible 

School in Temple. It was citywide, lasting three 

weeks, and had 160 enrollees. In 1942 a Sunday 

School room was designated as a writing room 

for soldiers at Camp Hood. 

The church moved to its present location at 

Avenue Z and Fifty-Seventh Street in 1965. The 

fellowship hall and classrooms were enlarged in 

1991. In 2007 the sanctuary was modified to 

make it possible to magnify the Lord with a 

variety of worship styles. 

An outdoor pavilion and recreation area 

was built on the south end of the property in 

1998. In 2001 the house on Avenue Z was 

purchased and remodeled to accommodate 

meetings and classrooms. 

Grace Presbyterian Church continues the 

tradition of making disciples and meeting human 

need within and outside the congregation with a 

variety of community programs like a 

community-wide basketball camp each summer; 

LOGOS, a four-part children's ministry where 

Christian relationships are modeled and 

practiced; Meals on Wheels, a program to prepare 

and deliver meals to the homebound; and Prime 

Time Ministry, a program providing worship 

service to nursing home and assisted-living 

residents. In addition, we contribute time and 

money to Churches Touching Lives for Christ, 

and to other local programs. 

Grace Presbyterian Church is located at 

2401 South Fifty-Seventh Street in Temple. 

An event calendar, worship service times and a 

host of information is available to you at 

www.gpctemple.org. 

❖ 

By the grace of God in Jesus Christ, 

the Spirit is upon us to: Magnify the 

Lord, make disciples and meet human 

need. May you find here a place to 

worship God. 


TEMPLE 

ECONOMIC 

DEVELOPMENT 

CORPORATION 

Founded for the sole 

purpose of providing effective, 

dynamic leadership to 

accomplish comprehensive 

economic growth for 

the Temple community 

resulting in superior 

quality of life, Temple 

Economic Development 

Corporation has become a 

landmark among the city’s 

business, growth, and economic 

development since 

its inception. 

It began in the mid- 

1950s when a group of 

Temple business leaders 

started the Temple 

Industrial Foundation to attract new business to 

the area. They bought land in northwest Temple 

and offered a legendary vision for the city’s 

future—make the land available to prospective 

new companies. 

Companies from across the United States 

began to take notice and Temple was soon 

welcoming such groups as Wilsonart 

International, Artco-Bell, McLane Company and 

Texas Instruments. 

In 1988 the Temple Economic Development 

Corporation was formed to carry out the 

mission of the Temple Industrial Foundation. 

The founding Board of Directors included W. A. 

Prewitt, III, Wendell C. Williams, Paul Kerr, 

Mac Longoria, John “Mac” Burrough, Alan 

Johnson, Gerald W. Drews, Glenn Richards, and 

Dennis Hobbs. 

Today, Temple EDC is directed by an 

outstanding leadership team that recognizes 

and appreciates the time-sensitive and 

confidential nature of business attraction 

projects and is responsive to the site 

selection team’s needs. Staff members serve as 

business ombudsmen to all clients and facilitate 

the communication and development of 

new projects. 

Temple EDC also assists with business 

attraction projects in many ways including a 

comprehensive database of information on 

available sites and buildings, demographic 

data, labor market information, and wage 

data; workforce training resources involving 

employers, public schools and community 

college; assistance in site selection, expansion 

needs, financial resources and other 

services throughout the planning and 

development process; marketing presentations 

and area tours; and trained and skilled 

economic development professionals to assist 

with business needs. 

Temple EDC continues today as a 

unique mixture of public and private 

support for the economic growth of Temple, 

making a difference that will last for generations 

to come. 

Temple Economic Development Corporation is 

located at One South First Street. For more 

information, please visit www.choosetemple.com. 


Temple College is recognized at the state and 

national levels as one of the most progressive 

two-year institutions in Texas. A dynamic 

educational, cultural, and economic resource for 

the Central Texas region, TC has received state 

and national recognition for programs ranging 

from the visual and performing arts to 

competitive athletics, and has become one of the 

premier institutions in the state for the 

education and training of healthcare providers. 

Founded in 1926 as Temple Junior College, 

the college has traditionally offered academic 

courses for transfer to a four-year university. 

Through the years, the scope and mission of the 

college expanded and in 1996, the name was 

changed to Temple College to reflect its role as a 

comprehensive college, offering academic transfer 

programs, technical and health profession 

education, community education, career and 

workforce training, and cultural activities. 

TC is now recognized as a leader in higher 

education with innovative model programs such 

as the Clinical Simulation Center, Texas 

Bioscience Institute, and Middle College and 

Early College High School programs for high 

school students. 

The Clinical Simulation Center, a partnership 

with Scott & White, Texas A&M University 

College of Medicine and Laerdal Medical, was a 

2005 Bellwether Award Finalist and continues 

to attract national and international attention as 

a regional center for the integrated education of 

healthcare professionals at all levels. 

Development of the Texas Bioscience 

Institute through multiple partnerships and a 

new curriculum in biotechnology are critical in 

the community’s emergence as a center for 

medical research. The TBI and the Middle 

College Program have received numerous 

state and national accolades, including the 

2007 Bellwether Award and the 2007 Texas 

Economic Development Council Workforce Best 

Practices Award. 

The main campus is located in south Temple. 

In addition, TC also operates the Downtown 

Center, Temple Business Training Center and 

Temple Business Incubator in downtown Temple 

and the Texas Bioscience Institute in West 

Temple. TC also has expanded service to the 

communities within the three-county service 

area. Educational centers were established in 

Taylor and Cameron, and TC is the lead 

institution for the East Williamson County 

Higher Education Center, a new multiinstitutional 

teaching center in Taylor. 

Additional information on Temple College is 

available at www.templejc.edu. 

TEMPLE 

COLLEGE 

❖ 

The Mary Alice Marshall Performing 

Arts Center at Temple College is home 

to a nationally recognized performing 

arts education program as well as the 

Temple Symphony Orchestra, Temple 

Jazz Festival, and Temple Jazz 

Orchestra, and is widely used for 

community events. 


RVOS FARM 

MUTUAL 

INSURANCE 

❖ 

Above: The original nine founding 

officers and directors from 1901. 

Below: Current officers and directors. 

Founded over a century ago with the goal of 

providing peace of mind to Texas farmers and 

ranchers, RVOS Farm Mutual Insurance 

Company is proud to offer quality property 

insurance to its membership through 

outstanding products in an exceptional 

environment. It all started when a small group 

of local Czech immigrant farmers pooled their 

resources to start a basic fire insurance 

protection program. They saw the great wisdom 

in sharing the burdens that often accompanied 

the tragedies so common in that day and age. 

Since its founding, RVOS has grown from a 

single company offering a basic fire insurance 

policy to a group of companies uniquely 

positioned to expediently address our everchanging 

market conditions. The subsidiary 

companies include Priority One Insurance and 

New Century Insurance—each offering 

innovative and competitively priced insurance 

products to meet the needs of property owners 

across the state. 

Being a Farm Mutual, the company’s focus to 

provide insurance products to homeowners, 

farmers and ranchers in Texas has given them a 

unique ability to adapt quickly to new 

circumstances, while offering a variety of 

insurance products that can meet various needs 

and budgets. Being owned by their 

policyholders, commonly known as members, 

affords RVOS the ability to provide the best 

insurance products at the best value rather than 

having to focus on sending profits to a publicly 

held parent corporation. The company’s profits 

are held in surplus to pay future claims and help 

offset future premium increases. 

Today, RVOS continues to provide peace of 

mind to homeowners, farmers and ranchers 

across the state. The rock solid company 

includes more than 68,000 members and over 

$12 billion of insurance in force and is rated “A 

EXCELLENT” by A.M. Best for its stable 

outlook. It ranks among the top farm mutuals in 

the state of Texas. 

The company has weathered economic 

downturns, wars and numerous catastrophic 

storm events, yet remained strong and true to 

the principles upon which it was founded—a 

visionary plan of providing security and peace 

of mind to policyholders. 


In 1888, Reverend W. S. Lockhart was 

invited to Temple to hold a tent revival. At the 

end of the meetings, a building committee 

located the site to become First Christian 

Church and a frame structure was erected at No. 

8 North Fourth Street between Central and 

Avenue A. 

The congregation welcomed its first pastor, 

Reverend C. W. Strawn, in 1889. He organized 

the church board, women’s organization and 

Sunday School. In 1893 his successor organized 

a youth work and the church soon outgrew 

its building. 

In 1901 a lot on the corner of Third Street 

and Adams Avenue was purchased and 

construction soon began on a red brick veneer 

building with white stone trimming. 

When Reverend F.W. O’Malley became pastor 

in 1908, he discovered that the church was 

delinquent in its mortgage payments. Reverend 

O’Malley rallied the congregation and the 

church contributed to pay the entire note. 

First Christian Church has been blessed by 

many outstanding leaders in its history. They 

include John Wright Holsapple, who arrived in 

1921. He took a special interest in the Men’s 

Bible Class and was a gentle and loving pastor to 

the members of the congregation. 

In 1943, in the midst of World War II and the 

building of Fort Hood, Dr. Noel Keith became 

pastor. He immediately went to work helping 

thousands of servicemen and women. Before his 

departure in 1946, Dr. Keith led the church in 

purchasing property at the corner of Fifth Street 

and Calhoun Avenue. 

In 1947, Dr. Bill Daugherty became the 

church’s pastor. He was followed in 1951 by Dr. 

Harrell Rea, who built an active youth program 

and led a remodeling of the sanctuary and 

increased involvement in the community. 

In 1963, Reverend Clyde Nichols began 

his ministry in Temple. Before retiring in 

1986, he was well-known for his weekly 

column in the Temple Daily Telegram entitled 

“Lift Up Thine Eyes.” 

Reverend David Fischer became pastor in 

1987. During this time, average attendance 

reached more than three hundred in worship 

and a family center was completed. 

Reverend Phil Hills arrived as pastor in 2001. 

His ministry was marked by growth among 

young adults and serious consideration of the 

long-range goals of the congregation. 

In 2003, Reverend Hills was succeeded 

by his associate, Reverend Deborah Jones. 

Under her leadership, the church worked 

through a spiritual life emphasis that built 

communication and cooperation among 

church members. 

Today, First Christian Church continues its 

historic legacy of ministry and service to the 

community, offering an after-school program 

and on-site preschool program for children ages 

eighteen months to kindergarten with a current 

enrollment of seventy students. 

For additional information about First 

Christian Church’s programs and services, 

please visit www.firstchristiantemple.org. 

FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH 

(DISCIPLES OF CHRIST) 


SPONSORS 

Aladdin Car Wash ........................................................................................................................................................................90 

Aldrich-Thomas Group, Realtors ..................................................................................................................................................64 

Blackland and Grassland Research..............................................................................................................................................106 

Central Texas Housing Consortium ..............................................................................................................................................98 

City of Temple............................................................................................................................................................................113 

Cultural Activities Center .............................................................................................................................................................88 

DanHil Containers II, Ltd.............................................................................................................................................................62 

Drews Hunt Builders ..................................................................................................................................................................112 

First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)................................................................................................................................127 

Gidden Distributing, Inc. .............................................................................................................................................................62 

Grace Presbyterian Church .........................................................................................................................................................123 

Holy Trinity Catholic High School/St. Mary’s School...................................................................................................................117 

Immanuel Lutheran Church .......................................................................................................................................................120 

In the Mood Ballroom ................................................................................................................................................................100 

iZone..........................................................................................................................................................................................114 

Jack Hilliard Distributing Company, Inc. ....................................................................................................................................116 

Jancer Group................................................................................................................................................................................63 

Johnnie’s Office Systems, Inc. .......................................................................................................................................................96 

King’s Daughters Hospital and King’s Daughters Clinic ...............................................................................................................102 

Materials Transportation Company ...............................................................................................................................................63 

McLane Group, L.P. ......................................................................................................................................................................80 

Precious Memories Florist & Gift Shop.......................................................................................................................................121 

Ralph Wilson Youth Clubs of Temple, Inc. .................................................................................................................................104 

RVOS Farm Mutual Insurance ....................................................................................................................................................126 

Scott & White Health Plan .........................................................................................................................................................119 

Scott & White Memorial Hospital.................................................................................................................................................72 

SPJST ...........................................................................................................................................................................................92 

Strasburger Enterprises, Inc..........................................................................................................................................................68 

Sunbelt Transformer, Ltd. ...........................................................................................................................................................108 

Temple Chamber of Commerce ....................................................................................................................................................89 

Temple Civic Theatre, Inc...........................................................................................................................................................118 

Temple College...........................................................................................................................................................................125 

Temple Economic Development Corporation..............................................................................................................................124 

Temple Independent School District...........................................................................................................................................122 

Temple Iron & Metal ..................................................................................................................................................................115 

Temple Machine Shop ................................................................................................................................................................110 

University of Mary Hardin-Baylor.................................................................................................................................................94 

Wendland’s Farm Products and the Wendland Family ..................................................................................................................84 

Wilsonart International, Inc..........................................................................................................................................................76 


LEADERSHIP SPONSORS 

SCOTT & WHITE 

HEALTHCARE 

THE WENDLAND 

FAMILY 

ISBN: 9781893619968

Historic Temple

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