Another jukebox musical has made its way to Dallas. Tina: The Tina Turner Musical traces Tina Turner’s rise to stardom from her Tennessee roots. As America’s favorite pop stars become folk legends, Tina Turner’s life as told in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical is no exception.
Her story is one that much of the audience at Fair Park Music Hall knows well — a story we have talked about among friends, a story we have long read about or seen on the big screen. A pivotal moment from Turner’s life story — the moment she left her abusive husband Ike at the Statler Hotel — is part of Dallas’ history. Hers is a story we’ll show up to hear again.
Born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, Tina overcame her abusive family to start performing at 17 years old with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue.
For the next two decades, she would suffer physical and emotional abuse from her bandleader and later husband Ike Turner, who would also keep her from any of the show’s earnings despite her critical role in the duo.
The book is by Katori Hall, Frank Ketelaar and Kees Prins, with music and lyrics entirely from Tina Turner’s discography. Her story is apt for musical adaptation: her humble roots, her overcoming of abusive individuals in an equally abusive industry, her international love story, her eventual stardom — all stuff of legend.
Yet, with a run time of almost three hours, the show leaves the audience unfulfilled. As Tina charges through the plot, checking off each turning point in Tina’s life, it forsakes the intimate moments that explain that what made Tina Turnergreat was Tina Turner, and no one else.
Performers Ari Groover and Parris Lewis take on the athletic role of Tina Turner together, and their vocals carry the production until its very end.
Tina opens with Tina preparing for her solo debut in Brazil, sitting backstage and reciting a Buddhist chant. The stage fills with figures from her past until we are transported back to her childhood church in 1950s Tennessee. From that initial flash forward, the musical pushes ahead, maintaining the chronological integrity of Tina’s story (sometimes to the detriment of a compelling narrative).
Seeing a show at Fair Park Music Hall informs the viewing experience almost as much as the very set on the stage. Seating over 3,000 people, the hall filled with a collective gasp when Symphony King (Young Anna-Mae Bullock) starts to sing.
In this small-town church, Anna-Mae Bullock’s voice soars over the ensemble as they sing “Nutbush City Limits.” It’s a strong introduction into Anna-Mae’s upbringing that cuts straight to a fight between her mother Zelma (Roz White) and father (Kristopher Stanley Ward).The show introduces the rotation of abusive men in Tina’s life right from the start.
Her father attacks her mother. Her mother leaves Tennessee for St. Louis, taking Anna-Mae’s sister with her. It’s not until her later teenage years that Anna-Mae reunites with her sister and mother in St. Louis.
Anna-Mae is then courted by the scheming Ike Turner (Deon Releford-Lee), who renames her Tina and invites her on tour. While performing with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, she is forced to abandon her secret romance with saxophonist Raymond Hill (Gerard M. Williams) and marry Ike Turner — all while carrying Hill’s child.
With ample fight scenes throughout Act I, Ike’s abuse does not cease with Tina’s pregnancy nor their children’s presence. And, with Ike menacingly as a backdrop, the show never finds any levity even while the Iketettes sing backup for the revue in shiny little dresses.
Ike and Tina Turner traverse the industry as a duo, although most of the interest is in Tina. (In one scene, legendary Motown producer Phil Spector, another member of the abusive men of Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, wants to record only Tina without Ike on “River Deep Mountain High.”)
The show’s most staggering moment takes place during “I Don’t Wanna Fight,” with a lone Tina on stage, blood on her face, begging for a hotel key so that she can escape Ike’s abuse.
Scheduled to perform in July 1976 in Dallas with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, this scene takes place after Tina ran from her and Ike’s room at The Statler Hotel on Commerce Street to the Lorenzo Hotel, known as the Ramada Inn at the time.
As the Ike and Tina Turner Revue dies and Tina’s solo career begins, Ike’s lingering evil is undying. Tina sweats through the taxing Vegas show schedules, but Ike jumps through legal hoops to keep her out of any money. Even as Tina’s mother sits on her deathbed, Ike returns with a new scheme to thwart Tina’s independence.
It isn’t until Tina starts recording with Capitol Records in Europe that the story of the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll takes off. From here, a young Roger Davies (Dylan S. Wallach) shepherds her into a changing industry she already knows well. While working in Europe, she also meets the love of her life, Erwin Bach (Max Falls).
Tina stumbles into the well-trodden territory of jukebox shows. After all this singing and dancing, the audience is still left feeling like they don’t know the point of view of any of the characters. That is, despite marching through all the major happenings in Tina’s life, we’re still left wondering who Tina Turner was.
If not educational, Tina is still fantastically entertaining, however. The reenactments transport audience members straight to the 1970s with all of the decade’s coked-out glamour, flared jumpsuits and hypnotic dance numbers.
With all of Fair Park Music Hall on their feet as red and white lights illuminate the audience, Tina takes the show home with “Simply The Best” and two encore numbers.
For the final triumphant songs, the musical fully leans into itself as a rock concert (a place where the show seems to find itself). And it certainly makes a better concert than it is a musical.
Tina: The Tina Turner Musical runs through Feb. 4 at the Music Hall at Fair Park, 909 First Ave. Tickets are available at the Broadway Dallas website.
More April 23 primary election candidates are surfacing for Luzerne County’s proposed government study commission.
County voters will simultaneously decide if they want to convene a commission and choose seven citizens to serve on the panel. The selected seven would only serve if the referendum passes.
Prior county councilman Matthew Mitchell, of Plains Township, said Friday he has decided to run.
A seven-citizen “Unity for Our Community” slate of candidates also was announced Friday in a release from Beth Gilbert, the voting engagement organizer for Action Together NEPA.
The slate: Alisha Hoffman-Mirilovich, Fairview Township; Vito Malacari, Hanover Township; Mark Shaffer, Wilkes-Barre; Andy Wilczak, Wright Township; Fermin Diaz, West Hazleton; Claudia Glennan, Salem Township; and Cindy Malkemes, Dallas Township.
Among the other confirmed candidates:
• Ted Ritsick, of Forty Fort, a professional planner, a current member of the county’s Wyoming Valley Airport Advisory Board and a prior Forty Fort Borough councilman.
• Pittston resident Tom Bassett, a music teacher
• Prior county councilman Stephen J. Urban, of Kingston
• Nescopeck Township resident Vivian Kreidler-Licina, who previously ran for county council
Wyoming Valley West School Board member and prior county councilman Tim McGinley also said he is contemplating running for the commission but has not yet made a final decision.
If a commission is activated, the panel must examine the county’s current home rule structure that took effect in 2012 and decide if it wants to prepare and recommend changes. The commission would be free to recommend alterations to the existing charter, an entirely new charter or a return to the prior state code system in which three elected commissioners and multiple row officers handled decisions that now rest with an 11-member council and appointed manager. Voters must approve any recommended change for it to take effect.
Mitchell said Friday he decided to run because he is intimately familiar with the charter and has ideas on ways it could be streamlined and improved.
“Serving on council gives you a different perspective on what does and doesn’t work. Overall the charter has worked, especially when it comes to finances,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell expects commission discussions on the pros and cons of reducing the 11-member council and electing some or all council members by districts instead of at large.
The release announcing the “Unity for Our Community” slate says it is a “diverse and dedicated” mix of residents from varied professional backgrounds and geographic areas of the county “embodying the true spirit of diversity and representation.”
This slate includes an executive director, a teacher, data analyst, professor, engineer, Navy veteran and counselor, it said.
”This variety of perspectives ensures a comprehensive understanding of the community’s needs and a balanced approach to governance,” it said.
The slate’s objective will be making necessary adjustments to the existing charter, it said.
”We recognize that while the existing charter is not perfect, it is a crucial instrument that strengthens and empowers the residents of Luzerne County. Our aim is to enhance the charter in ways that truly benefit our community,” it said, inviting voters to email unityforourcommunitypa@gmail.com or visit https://www.facebook.com/UnityforOurCommunityPA for more information.
Prior county councilwoman Jane Walsh Waitkus, of Dorrance Township, had attended a training session on the nomination signature collection process last week but said later she has decided she won’t be running due to the time commitment.
“It is an important job. I hope people who have the time step up,” Walsh Waitkus said.
In May 2009, the last time a study commission was on the ballot, 20 residents from throughout the county appeared on the ballot. That commission was 11 members and ended up drafting the charter in place today.
The commission held weekly public meetings to consider and debate options. Study commissions typically retain a solicitor and consultant to assist.
Serving on a study commission is a long-term commitment. The panel has nine months to report findings and recommendations and an additional nine months if it is opting to prepare and submit government changes. An extra two months is allowable if the commission is recommending a charter electing council by district instead of at large.
The only eligibility requirement for study commission members is that they be registered voters of the county, according to the state’s home rule handbook.
Study commission candidates must obtain at least 200 signatures from county registered voters on their nomination papers. Up to seven candidates have the option to team up to collect the minimum 200 signatures on the same nomination paper. Voters can nominate up to seven candidates.
Because the study commission is nonpartisan, any registered voter in the county can sign a study commission nomination paper.
Nomination papers and all required documents must be filed with the election bureau before 4:30 p.m. Feb. 13.
Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.
The cat needed medical attention to help heal his mouth from the damage, the Massachusetts animal shelter said.
Screengrab from Scituate Animal Shelter of Massachusetts’ Facebook
A cat came into a Massachusetts animal shelter with serious injuries — so the staff jumped in immediately to help.
Chase the cat was brought into the Scituate Animal Shelter after cat trappers caught the roaming feline, who was “hungry as can be,” the shelter said in its Jan. 26 Facebook post. But on first glance, the shelter said it noticed Chase had a serious problem, hinting to a “traumatic past.”
The black and white cat had major damage to his mouth area, so the shelter’s veterinary team had to get to work. The injuries were causing him “lots of pain,” according to the shelter.
Chase underwent surgery, as well as cleanup on his jaw and the removal of some teeth, the shelter said.
The shelter believes Chase may have been hit by a car, causing the trauma to his face. He’s estimated to be about 2 years old.
Chase’s health has also been impacted by his positive diagnosis of feline immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS in cats, according to Mar Vista Animal Medical Center. It’s one of the most common feline diseases that only affects cats, so it’s recommended to have only one FIV-positive cat in the household, according to The Humane Society of The United States.
Cats with FIV can live healthy lives and have similar lifespans as cats without the disease, the organization said.
Despite his health issues, Chase has managed to stay a “sweet and outgoing” cat, the shelter said. He’s also a very “fun fella” who can most likely fit into a home with dogs.
“We are sorry he had to suffer at all but we are glad he came to us, getting the help he needed! Now let’s get this fantastic feline into a great home,” the shelter said.
Those interested in adopting Chase must email the shelter at adopt@scituateanimalshelter.org. The shelter will provide an application, and appointments to meet animals can happen after that, according to Petfinder.
Scituate is about 30 miles southeast of Boston.
Makiya Seminera is a national real-time reporter for McClatchy News. She graduated from the University of Florida in May 2023. She previously was a politics reporting intern at The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, and The State in Columbia, South Carolina. She also served as editor-in-chief of UF’s student-run newspaper The Independent Florida Alligator in 2022.
Longtime North Texas culinary fixture Keith “Buttons” Hicks — a chef known for his infectious personality and joy — has made significant contributions to the community with his Southern cooking. Over the years, he’s helmed the kitchens at The Worthington Hotel, The Italian Villa, Mercury Chophouse, The Rim and his namesake restaurant, Buttons Food and Music for the Soul.
Hicks is now battling end-stage COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). He is under palliative care and in need of a double lung transplant. His friends, family and current and former staff members are hosting a special concert and benefit dinner to show their support for the chef and his family.
The Buttons Family Affair Benefit Concert event will take place from 5 p.m. to midnight on Wednesday, Jan. 31, at the Ridglea Theater, 6025 Camp Bowie Blvd. in Fort Worth.
Tickets for the event range from $25 for general admission to $400 for VIP tables. Tickets can be purchased through Eventbrite. For those who cannot attend the concert, donations can be made through GoFundMe.
Throughout his career, Hicks’ restaurants have been loved by guests and critics alike, which has given him a platform to give back to others.
“We’ve hosted countless benefit events and celebrations at Buttons’ restaurant, due to our love and compassion for the community. I am asking the community to support Chef Keith by attending this benefit concert in his honor,” said Carolyn Hughes, a former co-owner of Buttons restaurant. “For so many years, he brought so much ‘Love, Peace and Gritz’ to each of our lives, and now he needs us.”
Musical guests at the event will include many who have played at Buttons’ restaurants throughout the years, including Rob Holbert Band, Natural Change, Melanie Dutton, Paul Cannon, Kenya Crawford, Bergette Rideau, Lori Dawn and many more. Musical performances are set to begin at 6 p.m.
Attendees can look forward to popular Southern appetizers from Buttons’ original menu that will be prepared by former Buttons chefs Billy Kidd and Ty Frazier. Food trucks will be stationed onsite to serve additional items, including Fat Face Full by Angie Edwards, Angi’s Louisiana Kitchen and The Rim Restaurant Waterside.
For those who haven’t had the pleasure of knowingHicks, his infectious and joyful personality has been described in countless articles. In a 2016 article by KERA, the chef explained that “’Buttons’ was the nickname my grandmother gave me as a kid ‘cause I was cute as a button,” adding that for him, cooking is an intuitive and spiritual process that he learned from watching his mother.
A suspect in the fatal shooting of two Wylie teenagers has been arrested, the Garland Police Department said.
Amancio Anton Noriz, 16, of Dallas, was located and detained Wednesday, Jan. 24, in the area of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, the Laredo Police Department said.
“With the assistance of Laredo U.S. Marshals, Noriz was later deported via land to the United States pending capital murder proceedings out of the area of Garland, Texas, involving the alleged murder of two teens,” Laredo police said.
Noriz was booked by the Laredo PD/U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force and remanded to Webb County Juvenile Detention Center, pending extradition, police said.
Noriz had been named in an arrest warrant issued in the Jan. 14 attack on two teens in the parking lot of a shopping center on West Buckingham Road in Garland.
He’s accused of killing 18-year-old Alan Jesus Chavez and Ruben Santibanez-Arzola, 17, both from Wylie.
Santibanez-Arzola attended Wylie ISD’s Achieve Academy. Chavez previously attended Wylie ISD schools but was not enrolled at any district campus this school year.
For more stories about the Wylie community, see the next print or digital edition of The Wylie News. Subscribe today and support local journalism.
Justin Timberlake announced on Thursday that he will bring his Forget Tomorrow World Tour to Dickies Arena in Fort Worth on Tuesday, June 4. It’s his first North Texas show since 2019.
In other words, it’s official: That *NSYNC reunion that was hyped up for months seems to have been nothing more than a marketing gimmick for the animated film Trollz Band Together.
There are so many reasons why this Timberlake comeback is confusing, the first of which is that nobody seems to want it. Timberlake’s reputation has taken a bit of a beating in recent years thanks to controversies both new and old, from jaw-dropping details of his relationship with Britney Spears revealed in her memoir, to rumors of infidelity in his marriage to Jessica Biel to renewed debate over who actually should’ve taken the heat during the XXXVIII Super Bowl “Nipple Gate” debacle. (The new consensus is “not Janet Jackson.”)
Moral and ethical dilemmas aside, Timberlake has kind of fallen off in recent years. This tour is in support of his upcoming album Everything I Thought I Was, his first in six years. In that time, most of his musical output has been in the form of soundtracks for Trollz, which he also stars in.
Normally, a gap that long could be an asset, a tool to help build anticipation. When your last release was 2018’s Man of the Woods, however, absence isn’t guaranteed to make the heart grow fonder. The album received poor reviews, underperformed commercially and compelled him to degrade himself by wearing a camo suit (which is not less embarrassing than a nip slip, by the way) at the LII Super Bowl in 2018. In short, the music-listening public isn’t exactly clamoring for Timberlake to come out of the woods and back into the pop-stardom spotlight.
That’s where the rest of *NSYNC could’ve come in. When the full lineup reunited at the 2023 Video Music Awards, millennials (the ones who weren’t Team Backstreet Boys in the ’90s, that is) rejoiced at the possibility of a reunion. The rumor mill was further fueled by the full band’s Trollz soundtrack contribution, “Better Place,” their first song in 20 years.
Even other members of the band seemed hopeful. In an interview with E! News, Lance Bass claimed that “the door is always open” and that he had his “fingers crossed” for a full-blown reunion.
Bass and the fans’ hopes were deflated when Timberlake began teasing new music and a surprise show in his hometown of Memphis last week. With a new album and music on the way, it seems like Timberlake will be too busy for a proper *NSYNC comeback.
However, if last year’s joint tour between Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service (both fronted by Ben Gibbard) taught us anything, it’s that it is not impossible to co-headline with yourself. If ticket sales aren’t what Timberlake and his team are hoping for, there seems to be a ready and willing opening act that will do the trick.
Tickets for Justin Timberlake’s Forget Tomorrow World Tour at Dickie’s Arena will be available to the general public on Friday, Feb. 2. More information about tickets and presale opportunities can be found on Ticketmaster.
When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton reached a settlement with whistleblowers in February 2023 he unwittingly initiated a House investigation into accusations of corruption and bribery. The House impeached him, but in September, the Senate, for the most part, voted along party lines to reinstate him to the position to which he’s been elected three times.
Now, more recent legal move by the Lone Star State’s top lawyer might’ve just tickled the tripwire for yet another round of impeachment discussions, if one GOP senator has his way.
On Jan. 18 Paxton announced his office would no longer contest the whistleblower lawsuit and requested a final judgment. The McKinney resident used the occasion to present himself as a Texas-defending martyr of sorts.
“Now, in the best interests of the State of Texas, the Office of the Attorney General is moving on from an employment lawsuit against the agency by four employees that presents the same issues brought against Attorney General Paxton in the impeachment trial,” the release stated. “The OAG has made the determination that these bad-faith efforts to prolong legal proceedings are an unjustifiable waste of taxpayer resources and an intolerable distraction that risks compromising critical state business.”
Perhaps it was a case of hoping to manifest an outcome, but the headline of the news release announcing his intentions seemed to be more wishful thinking than legal fact, stating “Attorney General Ken Paxton Releases Statement Ending Litigation with Former Employees.”
Just to refresh your memory, a group that included some of Paxton’s top aides filed a wrongful termination suit against their former boss in 2020 under the Texas Whistleblower Act. The suit claimed the plaintiffs were fired by Paxton in retaliation for reporting him to the FBI for what they felt were misdeeds amounting to abuse of his office, especially as they pertained to helping real estate developer and Paxton campaign contributor Nate Paul.
Immediately after Paxton’s latest attempt to somehow bring the case to a close, an attorney representing the whistleblowers said the matter isn’t over, regardless of the AG’s legal maneuvering.
“[T]his is but another desperate stunt by Ken Paxton to try to avoid a court order compelling him to answer questions about his grimy behavior,” attorney Tom Nesbitt told Austin’s Fox 7 immediately after Paxton’s Jan. 18 announcement.
It’s important to note here that in his announcement, the AG didn’t mention his apparent allergy to being deposed, something a Travis County judge recently ruled that Paxton must do. As of now, he’s set to be deposed on Feb. 1. Paxton has a long history of finding ways to lengthen court cases, and University of North Texas political science professor Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha told the Observer via email that this latest move is likely “a useful delay.”
On Thursday night, the party line broke up a bit, if only just symbolically. State Sen. Drew Springer, a Republican from Muenster, one of the GOP state senators who was unmoved by nearly two weeks of eyewitness testimony detailing in highly specific terms just how severe Paxton’s alleged abuse of power was during the impeachment trial, admitted he was finally moved.
AG Paxton said, in his whistleblower lawsuit, that he “elects not to contest any issue of fact in this case, as to the claim or damages.” He cannot admit guilt while claiming innocence. I urge the Lt. Gov & my Senate colleagues to consider reopening Paxton’s impeachment. Paxton… pic.twitter.com/Z02SXRWdd8
“At this stage, and the point of this letter, I am asking the Senate whether there is a legal mechanism to reopen the impeachment proceedings,” Springer wrote in a statement posted to X. “Failure to at least consider this possibility runs the risk of AG Paxton making a mockery of the Texas Senate.”
To be clear, according to Springer, now, four months after the fact, is the time to consider the possibility of removing Paxton, rather than in September 2023 when a real, live Senate impeachment trial was underway.
Springer is not seeking re-election this year, so perhaps there’s a hint of “What are they gonna do, not vote for me?” attitude in play. After all, he is not facing any of the Paxton-backed challengers that now dot the state’s GOP primaries. But it is still significant in that the question is being asked by a one-time Paxton backer after this latest offering of the AG’s signature opaque, obtuse brand of legalese.
Of course, Paxton replied with a shot of his own, calling Springer “a bad senator,” according to Texas Tribune reporter Patrick Svitek on Thursday night.
The outgoing senator’s call for another impeachment trial is eye-catching, but it’s difficult to imagine that it will go very far, given how the September trial played out. UNT’s Eshbaugh-Soha isn’t convinced the climate is ripe for such a move.
“This seems risky, especially right now,” he stated. “Perhaps from an electoral standpoint, impeachment proceedings after the primaries (and after any incumbent Republican legislators have fought off any primary challenges from the right) is a possibility. But everyone spent a lot of political capital on the first round. Why would Springer think that a conviction is more likely now than a few months ago? The Legislature has not become more opposed to Paxton (in terms of new membership or any changes of heart), and so the needle has not moved much, if at all, even with the judge’s decision to depose Paxton.”
The man who served as Texas Wesleyan’s athletic director for many years died this month at the age of 86 after prolonged health issues.
Family and friends gathered for a celebration of life Sunday at the Sid Richardson Center on campus. After having been hired at TWU (then known as TWC) in 1967, the deceased had put a great deal of his time, effort, and into the construction of that facility, which opened in 1970. The Rams’ women’s volleyball and men’s and women’s basketball teams play their home games there, as they did then. Yes, Wesleyan had women’s teams in 1970, two years prior to the passage of equality-mandating Title IX legislation.
In the run-up to the event, the leading scorer on that ’70-’71 squad emailed the former AD’s son.
“I was one of the few who started asking (sometimes begging) every professor in the physical education department, and even Catherine Wakefield, who was Dean of Women at the time, to be our coach. I can’t remember when or how your dad told me that he was going to coach the women’s volleyball and basketball teams. We were just a group of athletes who loved the sports and weren’t ready to give up on competing,” wrote Susan Watson.
“As I have thought back on the beginning of our campaign, and after coaching for twenty years, I realized how unselfish your dad was. He was already head of the physical education department, athletic director, teaching professor, and also the coach of the men’s and women’s tennis. If that was not enough to shoulder, he and Fran (his wife) had two young kids to raise,” she continued. “I know it must have been a difficult task to work with little or no funding for our program and we were NOT very good! We didn’t know that we weren’t very good, because your dad was always positive and complementary for our efforts. He was a very special and dedicated person who went way beyond the expectations of his job.”
Under his guidance, TWC became the first co-ed, four-year college in North Texas to establish a varsity women’s athletic program. As Watson noted, he served as a professor as well and viewed the educational effects of sport for the student-athlete as the number one priority in any athletic program. He saw no reason why female students shouldn’t receive those benefits.
Those who attended the celebration found out the man many called “Doc” received his undergraduate degree from Arizona State, where he played baseball and basketball. He earned his PhD from Ohio State. He won Texoma Conference titles as a coach, earned plenty of trophies playing tennis himself, and even scored four points in a March Madness basketball game as an undergrad. But Doc’s family and friends didn’t spend a ton of time talking about his exploits on the court or field. They spent more time on the values that influenced how he ran his teams and his departments.
In February of 1964, he wrote a letter to the editor of Ohio State’s campus newspaper. It rebutted a previous editorial encouraging spectators to boo the men’s basketball team’s archrival (which they apparently did). He found it unacceptable to jeer Michigan All-American Cazzie Russell’s “skill, finesse, and gentlemanliness.” He went on to write, “the appreciation of another’s value is not the degradation of your own . . . if sport can teach no other lesson, this would be the greatest rationale for its existence.”
Playing sports the right way meant everything for him. And sportsmanship was bigger than sports.
Former Texas Wesleyan baseball player Jeff Herr remembered when the athletic director joined his head coach, Brad Bass, to explain the concept of an honor call.
“If a play, a call, a ruling was made inaccurately—and went in your team’s favor (and you knew it), it was to be on your honor to make it known to the umpire and, subsequently, have that call reversed. If you ‘made’ a diving catch on a low liner to center and only you knew the ball was trapped on a short hop, you needed to be honorable. You needed to come clean. You needed to alert the umpire of what really happened.”
Herr noted that at the time, the concept didn’t resonate with a group of highly competitive young ballplayers. But as he progressed through life, earning his own doctorate and becoming an educator himself, Herr realized the bigger-picture implications of what he’d heard that day at Ab Adams Baseball Park.
“Doc’s advocacy for instituting honor in a dishonorable time was bigger than sports. Bigger than the bravado instilled and fostered in 18-22 year-old ballplayers. Heck, it was even bigger than baseball itself. Doc’s honorable idea was about human progress.”
Former Ram tennis player Norm Smith spoke at the ceremony about the influence his former coach had that extended on the court in terms of “competing fairly” and beyond it into life.
“We now realize the lasting impression that Doc made on our lives,” Smith said. He teared up as he said it.
I felt that effect, too, in every area of my life. Former Wesleyan AD Ed Olson was my father.
As my amazing sister Missi and I spoke Sunday, we tried to give the audience an idea of what our dad was all about. He was a superb athlete, but what made him truly special went beyond what he could do with arms and legs, though he was both strong and speedy. What distinguished Pops was how he thought about sport beyond just when to play a timely drop shot or hit behind the runner.
We showed a video with shots of the National Youth Sports Program. During several summers in the 1970s, TWC opened its athletic facilities to neighborhood kids who received instruction in activities like basketball, tennis, volleyball, swimming, and tumbling. I got to join in, too. After the ceremony, someone described me as a “beam of light” in the video because of the way my pale white skin contrasted with that of the African Americans with whom I played the sports we all enjoyed. I loved playing the games that summer, but the lessons I learned about humanity mattered a lot more in the long run than any drive to the basket or bounce on the trampoline.
Like all the best educators, my father didn’t just teach you what to think. He taught you how to think for yourself. That’s something he gave to my family that we’re happy to share with lots and lots of people.
A video recording of Edward Olson’s Celebration of Life can be viewed here. To donate to Texas Wesleyan’s Catherine Wakefield Scholarship Fund in Ed Olson’s memory, visit txwes.edu/makeagift.
A bill signed into law by the governor in June 2023 reformed the state’s community college finance system.
Shifting away from the previous enrollment metrics model, Texas House Bill 8 (HB 8) is an outcomes-based approach that rewards colleges for awarding degrees and certificates, completion of dual credit courses and successful student transfers from community colleges to four-year universities.
For more on this story see the January 25, 2024 print, or digital edition of The Sachse News. Subscribe today and support local journalism in your community.
Caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease is stressful, and when combined with family and work responsibilities, it can affect everyone involved.
In her work as an executive director for Lakeshore Assisted Living and Memory Care, Jenni Knutson has seen the disease’s impact on caregivers. And in her Jan. 9 presentation to the Sachse Chamber of Commerce Knutson focused on how workplaces will be impacted by Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia over the next few decades.
For more on this story see the January 25, 2024 print, or digital edition of The Sachse News. Subscribe today and support local journalism in your community.
Commercials used to be great. They used to be an art form. They used to be fun. Today’s advertising is boring in comparison.
Television commercials were something to which I looked forward when I was a kid. Some were better developed and more interesting than the shows they sponsored.
By John Moore
For more on this story see the January 25, 2024 print, or digital edition of The Sachse News. Subscribe today and support local journalism in your community.
Filing opened last week and continues through Friday, Feb. 16 for two places on Sachse City Council.
Place 1, held by Brett Franks, and Place 2 held by Michelle Howarth.
For more on this story see the January 25, 2024 print, or digital edition of The Sachse News. Subscribe today and support local journalism in your community.
The first regular council meeting of the year, Tuesday, Jan. 16, included multiple updates on projects happening within the city.
Following some delays, the multimillion-dollar enhancement project for the city’s largest park began in summer 2023. The Heritage Park expansion project is expected to be completed this summer and the results so far are impressive. A key component of The Station development, Heritage Park is located off Hudson Drive between Miles and Merritt roads.
For more on this story see the January 25, 2024 print, or digital edition of The Sachse News. Subscribe today and support local journalism in your community.
Before Tuesday’s Luzerne County Council vote, three community leaders presented their views on why a $3 million allocation was warranted for a hotel/convention center project at the former Hotel Sterling site in Wilkes-Barre.
A council majority ended up approving the earmark toward H&N Investment’s $37 million, 112-room Gateway Hyatt Place Hotel and Conference Center on a 2.1-acre lot at River and Market streets where the landmark Hotel Sterling once stood.
Council members said an indemnity clause and other conditions will help protect the county funding if problems surface.
Terrence W. Casey, who oversees a financial investment advisory firm based in downtown Wilkes-Barre, told council there is a “huge need” for downtown hotel space.
“We haven’t had a flagship hotel in downtown Wilkes-Barre since the Sheraton Crossgates left. That meant we have not been able to have a convention in downtown Wilkes-Barre,” Casey said.
He was referring to the 183-room Public Square hotel that opened the end of 1980. It later became the Ramada Inn and was then purchased by King’s College to be repurposed for academic use.
Casey cited several major downtown gatherings that were held in the 1980s, including a Lion’s Club national convention.
“All of that resulted in a tremendous amount of money to the businesses in downtown Wilkes-Barre and to the residents here,” Casey said.
Casey serves on the Wilkes University Board of Trustees and said he learned an estimated 5,000 downtown hotel rooms would be booked annually for activities and visits related to the university. Another approximately 4,500 stays per year were anticipated for King’s College, he said.
“I’m very much in support of this,” Casey said of the Sterling allocation.
Casey said he has worked in the city’s downtown since he graduated from Wilkes in 1981.
“I’ve been through a lot of cycles in downtown Wilkes-Barre,” he said, noting the Sterling site has been an empty lot for a “very long time.” The hotel was condemned and demolished in 2013.
The Gateway Hyatt Place Hotel and Conference Center would be constructed with a mix of private and public dollars, and the private investment “shows a strong commitment,” he said.
“This appears to me to be a very viable project from what I know of it, and I’ve done a lot of research,” Casey said.
Downtown recovery
Larry Newman, who runs the Diamond City Partnership —Wilkes-Barre’s downtown management organization — said the funding request is part of a broader post-pandemic downtown recovery plan.
At the start of 2020, 10% of all county jobs were located in the city’s downtown, and the downtown economy was powered by office workers, he said.
“While there were other pillars — arts, dining, entertainment, the colleges, Boscov’s and the downtown housing sector that added more than 1,000 new residents in the last decade — the office market was our foundation,” Newman said. “That foundation has been rocked.”
Employee visits to the downtown in 2023 were 56% of the 2019 total, and it’s “unlikely the office sector here or anywhere else is going to return to the way it was before,” he said. As a result, a “new course” had to be set.
“We’re working to shape a downtown that people are going to visit because they want to be here, not because they’re required to be here,” he said.
This focus includes residential development, the colleges, concerts and festivals, dining, night life, the arts and “curb appeal” to make the downtown safe, clean and attractive, he said.
“But we’re missing a big piece of the puzzle because the downtown’s lodging sector is so underdeveloped,” Newman said.
Today, the downtown has one hotel with 72 rooms, which means it cannot host larger conferences that go to Scranton or other cities with multiple downtown hotel options, he said.
Travelers want choices, and event bookers are increasingly looking for walkable downtowns offering options for lodging, dining and recreation, he said.
“We’ve got the dining and the amenities, but we don’t have the room count,” he said.
Data from across the country shows downtowns with higher percentages of employment in leisure and hospitality have had higher overall recovery rates, he said.
“But to unlock this potential, we have to invest in it,” Newman told council.
Downtowns with more robust visitor sectors, such as Lancaster and Scranton, “didn’t occur by accident” and instead resulted from substantial public investment over decades into the planning and development of hotels, meeting space and visitor attractions, he said.
“If we want to achieve similar results here, we have to get similar commitments,” Newman said. “So please know that by choosing to invest in enhancing downtown’s hospitality sector, you’ll be driving the recovery of Luzerne County’s largest city and adding long-term value to the county economy.”
Staying competitive
Bob Borwick, chair of the Diamond City Partnership Board and the county’s visitor and tourism bureau board, pointed to extensive private development that resulted from public investment in the Mohegan Sun Arena and roadway infrastructure in Wilkes-Barre Township.
While growth in the township has been positive, officials must make sure downtown retailers stay viable, he said.
“Let’s face it that we need to grow this community and be strong and competitive and that a downtown hotel will definitely make a major difference,” Borwick said. “I support it wholeheartedly.”
Sterling project
Under the conditions council approved Tuesday, the county grant for the Gateway Hyatt Place project would be rescinded if construction does not start within 36 months. County funds would be released in two phases — the first after the structure shell is completed and the second after the remainder of the work is finished.
H&N representative Stephen Barrouk told council the goal will be to break ground this summer with the required removal of underground debris left from the hotel demolition.
“We’re grateful to get the county support,” Barrouk said Wednesday. “We still have some building blocks that we have to accomplish. Hopefully we’ll have more to talk about in the very near future.”
Council did not proceed Tuesday with a requested $2 million allocation for BIG Public Square LLC to acquire and convert the former First National Bank building into an upscale restaurant linked to a 105-room “Tribute by Marriott brand” boutique hotel it is creating inside its adjacent Luzerne Bank Building. That project is estimated at $23.8 million.
Several county council members said they were influenced by the developer’s comments during a Wilkes-Barre City Council meeting that the First National Bank building could be restored for a meeting space instead of a restaurant if the county funding was not provided. Concerns also were expressed about the county investing in a restaurant.
Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.
The Garland Police Department has issued an arrest warrant for a suspect in last week’s fatal shooting of two Wylie teenagers.
The GPD’s public information officer, Lt. Pedro Barineau, said a Directive to Apprehend warrant names 16-year-old Amancio Anton Noriz of Dallas.
While it is not customary for police to disclose information regarding minors, the court granted permission because of the severity of the offense, Barineau said.
He described Noriz as Hispanic with dark hair, brown eyes, about 4 feet, 9 inches tall and weighing around 120 pounds.
Barineau said anybody with information about Noriz should call 911 immediately.
The shooting victims were identified as 18-year-old Alan Jesus Chavez and Ruben Santibanez-Arzola, 17, both from Wylie.
Santibanez-Arzola attended Wylie ISD’s Achieve Academy, WISD said. Chavez previously attended Wylie ISD schools but was not enrolled at any district campus this school year, the district said.
Detectives believe the two met the shooter at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 14, in a parking lot in the 2300 block of West Buckingham Road, almost across the street from North Garland High School.
A small shrine to the victims’ memory was placed on the sidewalk in front of a barber academy.
Police said tips may be submitted anonymously to Garland Crime Stoppers at 972-272-TIPS (8477), with a reward of up to $5,000 for information that leads to an arrest.
For more on this story see the Feb. 1 print, or digital edition of The Sachse News. Subscribe today and support local journalism in your community.
The school board approved a motion to accept donations for the Mendoza Legacy Project. The upcoming memorial at Cox Elementary will honor siblings Sofia and Daniela Mendoza, who were killed during the Allen shootings on May 6, 2023.
The district also addressed Senate Bill 763, which requires every school district to decide whether to adopt a policy that allow chaplains to serve as counselors in public schools. The board approved a motion to reject the policy.
For more on this story see the Jan. 31 print, or digital edition of The Wylie News. Subscribe today and support local journalism in your community
I think the best part of Pitchfork’s demise — parent publisher Condé Nast laid off a ton of the music mag’s employees and announced it would be absorbed by GQ (!) — is that Condé Nast Editorial Director Anna Wintour remained on brand while informing the staff of their fate. According to a tweet, newly laid-off Pitchfork writer Allison Hussey said that Wintour “did not remove her sunglasses while she was telling us we were about to get canned.” I like it because it’s the kind of rockstar detail you’d see in a movie about a music magazine, probably right at the end of the first act, the inciting incident in which the unemployed music journalists have to figure out their next move after the fabulous, elegant, ice-cold media powerbroker destroys their careers. Also, this character is played by either Helen Mirren or Will Ferrell.
Regardless of the cast, the reason people would watch this movie is because its plot exists within the frame of “people really loving music.” And that, I think, is why music journalism matters, and why it will never really go away: Humans are captivated by music. We love to experience it, to think about it, to have it rattling around in our brains, sometimes to the detriment of many other, more important tasks. Making sense of music and its effect on our existence does not have an intrinsic value like harvesting grain and baking bread does. Instead, its worth lies in what it does to our minds and souls. Talking about it is a way of finding meaning, even when the discussion is something as granular/asinine-Facebook-comment-thread-y as “Strat is better than Tele” or “jazz is punker than punk.” Discussing what a critic has to say about Bad Brains, Bad Bunny, or Bad Company is us using our intellects for something other than the tedious bullshit required to keep ourselves and our kin fed and sheltered. In the way that the bass in a song makes you feel the music in your solar plexus, reading about music further cements it in your core. Finding out how a song or an album or an artist makes someone else think and feel draws you deeper into your own listening experience.
But our collective listening experience has shifted, and the economics of mass-market music journalism have forced it into a state of continual contraction. In a recent edition of his newsletter, venerable jazz critic and music historian Ted Gioia attributes this contraction to the state of the music industry itself, pointing out that Pitchfork is but one endangered species in the music industry ecosystem. Spotify, Universal, YouTube, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, and Tidal have all laid off employees in recent months. Building up to that is a path to oblivion that began with major labels and other investors buying up the catalogs of established legacy artists rather than spending money on new acts, joined by a streaming-service trajectory that encourages passive listening and AI-generated artists. Gioia’s take on all that: “If people don’t listen to new music, they don’t need new music reviews.”
The thing is, people do listen to new music, after a fashion anyway, because TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are all still huge platforms. Yet what is the staying power of a song when it has to fight for attention in a channel that is also not specific to enjoying music? In the olden days, the competition among artists for radio airplay was fierce, but they had to contend only with other artists. If you’re a band trying to promote on TikTok, you’re also fighting dozens of other videos in a feed which have nothing to do with paying attention to a guitar solo. Imagine Limp Bizkit trying to break through in a medium that also has pugs being adorable and old people playing Skyrim or whatever. Regarding TikTok and those others, I’d say that music journalism is even more vital, if only that it is a way to cut through all the audio-visual clutter.
I think the newly diminished Pitchfork is symptomatic of how the music industry has changed. Think of the dinosaurs — when those behemoths died out, what do you think happened to the creatures that ate the bugs off their backs? I assume such things existed, and if so, when the dinosaurs died out, the Jurassic versions of a cowbird probably weren’t far behind. But local music journalism outfits — like this one, for example — are not lumbering giants crashing through the forest. We are closer to the ground. The artists we cover are people we see in our neighborhoods as often as we see them onstage, and we cover them because they are part of what it is like living in Fort Worth. And that goes for every one of us journalists who work on a local level — whether you’re writing about the scenes in San Antonio or Syracuse, you’re likely doing it because you like it. And the same goes for you readers. Local music writers go to the same shows you do, and they write about your friends’ bands. In a way, we’re chronicling parts of a lot of people’s experience with music, from both sides of the stage, giving you insight into the musicians schlepping their gear back and forth every night, giving them a chance to explain why they riffed how they did on their record or why they write what they write. As long as there are new local bands, there will be local journalists to write about them, and there’s nothing that Anna Wintour — or Spotify or the decades-long demise of major labels — can do about that.
1.) Beloved local Chef Keith “Buttons” Hicks is suffering from end-stage COPD and needs a double-lung transplant and some love and financial support in his journey to a healthier life. At 6pm Wed, Jan 31, Ridglea Theater (6025 Camp Bowie Blvd, Fort Worth, 817-738-9500) will host the Button’s Family Affair Benefit Concert, and everyone is invited. When Hicks’ Buttons restaurant was open, it played host to many such events, and now it’s time to return the favor. There will be live music, complimentary appetizers, and food for purchase from Chef Billy Kidd, Chef Ty Frazier, The RIM, Fat Face Full, and Ms. Angi’s Louisiana Kitchen. This event will be staffed by a group of Hicks’ former employees and friends. Tickets start at $25 per person on Eventbrite.com.
2.) At its Meet the Maker tasting event on the last Thursday of every month, Toro Toro inside the Worthington Renaissance Hotel (200 Main St, Ste B, Fort Worth, 817-870-1000) invites you to try local bites and spirits 5pm-7pm. This time, the featured spirit is La Pulga by Fort Worth natives Sarah Castillo, Andrew De La Torre, and Stephen Slaughter. This free-to-attend event is open to the public (21+ only) and includes complimentary valet parking.
Sample Toro Toro bites and La Pulga Spirits at Meet the Maker at Worthington Hotel Thursday. Courtesy La Pulga Spirits
3.) To celebrate the birthday of Scotland’s national poet, Robert “Rabbie” Burns, Acre Distilling (1309 Calhoun St, Fort Worth, 817-632-7722) will serve up an incredible array of artisan cheeses paired with an exclusive lineup of limited-edition whiskies and all your other Acre faves on Burns Day at 5:30pm or 7pm Fri. Taste an assortment of five artisan cheeses and seven spirits, plus receive a 15% discount on retail bottles. Tickets are $25 per person at AcreDistilling.com.
4.) Join the Fort Worth Food + Wine Foundation for a cross-cultural dining experience called Beyond Borders at Whiskey Ranch (4250 Mitchell Blvd, Fort Worth, 817-840-9140) 6:30pm Sat. The multi-course meal will be followed by a panel discussion with the three chefs: Rodrigo Cardenas of Don Artemio Mexican Heritage, Michael Fojtasek of Olamaie, and Tom Perini of Perini Ranch Steakhouse. Tickets are $250 at FWFWF.org/Events/Beyond-Borders.
5.) Learn to make three different handcrafted alcoholic drinks at Cocktail Class with Master Mixologist Jason Shelly at TX Whiskey (2601 Whiskey Ranch Rd, Fort Worth) 6pm Wed, Jan 31. Your $86.80 admission includes one drink ticket to redeem pre-class, a guided demonstration of three cocktails to make and imbibe during instruction, and 15% off bar and drinkware in the TX Ranch Store. Tickets must be purchased in advance at FRDistilling.com.
6.) Don’t forget to visit any Fish City Grill or Half Shells location by Wed, Jan 31, to try the “chalkboard specials,” including grouper tacos (with charred pico de gallo, fresh spinach, avocado crema, and cilantro bourbon roasted corn for $15.99) and shrimp-and-andouille mac ’n’ cheese (with creamy smoked Gouda and Parmesan plus a breadcrumb topping for $16.99), and more. Other specials are unique to each restaurant and will change twice daily. You can see them via live chalkboard cameras at FishCityGrill.com/Locations. Choose your location and click “daily specials” to see what is available now.
7.) Southfork Ranch (3700 Hogge Dr, Gate 1, Parker) will host a murder mystery dinner — All Is Fair in Love and Murder — on Fri, Feb 9. Arrival is requested at 6:30pm, then the dinner and show are 7pm to 10pm. Tickets are $95 per person at SouthforkRanch.com/Murder-Mystery-Dinner. This Valentine’s Day event is happening a little earlier in February than the other ones I’ve seen. Pick up next week’s paper to check out more such activities and specials closer to the “holiday.” It will be chock-full of love and other icky stuff in this column and Night & Day.
8.) On Thursdays Feb 22, Mar 14, and Mar 28 at 7pm, attend a hands-on pasta class at il Modo inside the Kimpton Harper Hotel (714 Main St, Fort Worth, 817-332-7200). You will learn about the history and process of making pasta, eat samples, and leave with your freshly made noodles and a takeaway recipe card. Wine and additional beverages will be available for purchase at the event. Tickets are $70 on Eventbrite.com.
Learn to make pasta at il Modo in February and March. Courtesy il Modo
Zenorah was barely one week old when doctors took her off life support. She exhaled her last breath in the arms of her grandmother.
“I held her until she was, you know,” Kimberly Hammond said. “I held her until she went on and her body was cold. It was like somebody ripped out my soul.”
Zenorah’s official cause of death was asphyxiation — her umbilical cord was tightly wrapped around her neck, suffocating her.
The unofficial cause of death, as her family argues, is a deplorable Tarrant County Jail. Zenorah was born there on May 5, 2020. Mother Chasity Congious was left to bleed out and suffer in a cell for hours before she was given medical attention, says Jerrett Adams, a national attorney representing Congious and her mother in an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit against Tarrant County. By the time Zenorah reached John Peter Smith Hospital in mid-May of that year, she was brain dead due to a lack of oxygen.
As Hammond talked, Congious sat beside her at their Northside apartment holding a baby doll.
Do you often think of Zenorah, I said. Congious’ eyes widened.
“She is so cute,” she replied ecstatically. “She is the cutest. I love what God gave me.”
Shown while on life support at John Peter Smith Hospital, newborn Zenorah was kept alive for only a few days before doctors, with the grandmother’s permission, removed the neonate from life support. Jason Brimmer
Adams told me before the meeting that Congious often talks about her deceased baby in the present tense. Hammond said her cognitively impaired daughter has only recently found the right blend of mood-stabilizing medications. Due to the amount of work it takes to monitor her, Hammond is able to work only part-time, meaning her family relies on state-funded nonprofits like MHMR (My Health, My Resources) and JPS for checkups and prescriptions. During visits with either group, Congious rarely sees a physician, Adams said, and if he wins his lawsuit or settles with the county, Congious may finally receive the medical attention she needs and deserves, her mother said.
Before Zenorah’s death, Hammond said she viewed cops as the “good guys.” She lost faith in our local justice system after Fort Worth police arrested Congious in 2020 after she had experienced a mental health flare-up during her second trimester and needed to be taken to JPS — not jail. Her three months in confinement were equally disillusioning to her mother.
“The hospital called to tell me my daughter gave birth but not the jail,” Hammond said. “The sheriffs never called. During that whole ordeal and after Chasity returned back to the jail [after Zenorah died], they wouldn’t let me check on her. We owe everything to our children. I haven’t grieved because [the county has] not been held accountable. They are still trying to cover it up.”
The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department, which oversees the county jail, continues to ignore our requests for comment.
Based on open records requests, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, which compiles in-custody jail death data, says Tarrant County Jail logged 17 custodial deaths in 2020 and 13, 11, and nine deaths the years following. For unexplained reasons, Zenorah was not included in the 2020 records.
Adams is seeking monetary damages. The suit filed in January 2022 is now in mediation, and Adams said county leaders recently made a settlement offer that may help cover treatment and housing costs for Congious. A quality facility in North Texas, he said, would cost $5,000 to $7,500 per month.
Speaking about her baby doll, Chasity Congious said she wanted a “little girl to dress up.” Photo by Jason Brimmer.
Congious’ case underlines a disturbing trend. The Texas Tribune says the federal government has designated 98% of the state’s 254 counties as “mental health professional shortage areas.” The Tribune estimates that more than 2,000 members of Texas’ jail and prison population are waiting for a bed in the state hospital system. Nationally, 44% of state-run jail detainees have at least one diagnosed mental health disorder.
Texas has a “chronic problem” of allowing men and women with intellectual disabilities and mental health diseases to become stuck in the criminal justice system, said Texas Jail Project executive director Krish Gundu.
The systemic problems that lead to cases like Congious’ are complex, Gundu said, and our state’s underfunded mental health system — ranked last in a recent study by Forbes — is a major factor but only one of many. Gundu’s nonprofit works to improve the conditions within our state jails while advocating against mass incarceration policies, but too often, she said, hospitals and public health groups like MHMR dodge criticism.
“Many of these people go to hospitals only to be arrested,” she said. “It is shocking how many people are criminalized in the very places they go to for help.”
*****
When Adams heard about Zenorah’s death, he said he couldn’t sleep. He soon contacted Hammond, Congious’ legal guardian, and offered to represent them. Suing the government for monetary damages can be a long and complicated process, he told us that month (“ Justice for Chasity,” Jan. 2022). He initially filed a lawsuit against Fort Worth police, the City of Fort Worth, and Tarrant County for Zenorah’s death, but District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the officer who wrongfully arrested Congious, David Nguyen, was protected by the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, which often shields peace officers from liability for misconduct in all but the most egregious circumstances. The district court did find grounds for suing the county based on the disproportionate number of deaths at Tarrant County Jail.
Judge O’Connor wrote, “The overall statistics that Tarrant County Jail has failed three inspections in the past seven years, has the highest inmate mortality rate in North Texas, and has a mortality rate 3.5 times higher than Dallas County Jail should put a reasonable policymaker on notice about potential condition of confinement issues at the jail. Based on the court’s own analysis and bolstered by the findings of the other courts in this district, the court finds that the plaintiff has successfully articulated” that the jail’s unsafe conditions can be the subject of a lawsuit against the county that manages the jail, Tarrant County.
MHMR’s Mark Tittle: “Our programs are driven by what the patient wants.” Photo by Edward Brown
Few publications outside the Weekly showed interest in covering the story, Adams said, adding that race likely plays a role in the lack of mainstream media coverage. In November, he updated us on the lawsuit, expressing his frustration with the county’s less-than-earnest attempts to comply with court-ordered releases of evidence which would allow him to prepare his case should it go to jury trial.
“We had court today,” he told us, referring to the ongoing mediation and discovery process. “They gave us 60,000-plus documents. We are making our way through them.”
Most of the documents, he said, are completely irrelevant to the lawsuit, something he said may be purposeful to drain his law firm’s time and resources.
“Litigation is not just costly,” he said. “It is emotionally damaging for the victims.”
Adams has tried and won many high-profile civil rights and wrongful death lawsuits. He said this one is by far the most appalling. For one, he said, Zenorah wasn’t a member of the jail population. Court documents indicate that Hammond warned the jail’s medical staff that Congious had cognitive impairments and would not be able to fully comprehend her surroundings or know where she was. Hammond also confirmed that she had alerted jail staff to the complexities of her daughter’s pregnancy.
Adams also believes Tarrant County jailers failed to complete checkups every 20 to 30 minutes as mandated by both the state and county. Indeed, the Weekly was the first to publish previously unreleased audio from mid-2020 tied to the death of Javonte Myers at the jail (“ Checking Out,” Nov. 2023). In the audio, Texas Ranger Trace McDonald questions jailer Erik Gay about the day Gay was tasked with checking up on Myers, who died from a seizure disorder and was only found hours after his death.
Gay confessed that he did not check up on Myers and other detainees while on duty and that he falsified government reports to say that he did. He went on to allege that supervisors not only condoned but encouraged jailers to falsify reports. Upon hearing the confession, Ranger McDonald stopped, saying that it could open a “Pandora’s box.”
In the recording, McDonald told Gay, “I get how hard it would be to do all of your duties and keep up with this thing accurately as well. I’m not mad at you at all. It’s a technical thing that unfortunately happened around the death of a guy that may cause some stink. Hopefully, we’ll get through it. For me, even if you walked down the hall at all, I tended to give you credit for it, even though you didn’t look into the individual cells. I was primarily focused on the dead guy’s cell.”
Gay and colleague Darien Kirk are currently indicted on felony charges for tampering with a government document.
In 2022, McDonald left the Rangers and joined the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department’s narcotics team.
*****
Texas Jail Project directors are calling on state leaders to audit and analyze Texas’ forensic waiting list, which determines how long jailed individuals must wait for mental health treatment at one of 15 statewide facilities offering around 2,400 beds. Gundu said her nonprofit is seeking data on how many inmates on that list have an intellectual or developmental disability like Congious. The state is failing families from the moment they interact with the health-care system, she said.
“From our work, we have seen a pattern,” she said. “When people call a public crisis line, they are asked if [their relatives] are actively hurting themselves. If not, [public crisis workers] say they can’t help. If they are, then it is too violent [and requires law enforcement intervention]. Either they aren’t nonviolent enough or so bad that you are at risk of incarceration. There doesn’t seem to be a point where [public crisis teams] engage.”
Gundu said another barrier to proper care that can lead individuals with intellectual disabilities to lose state-funded treatment is if the patients lack resources and support to meet appointments.
“Once you miss an appointment or two, you are considered noncompliant,” Gundu added. “If they drop you from service, you can end up in jail.”
The nonprofit leader pointed to the early-2023 death of Nathan Lee Johns, who committed suicide in Smith County Jail at the age of 28. His death is an example of how law enforcement can send patients in crisis to a detention center even when they are initially taken to a health-care facility, she said. Tyler-based KLTV said Johns used a phone cord inside his cell to hang himself. Before his detainment, he sought medical help at a local hospital.
“His family called the crisis line because he was suicidal,” Gundu said. “At the hospital, he tried to kill himself. The hospital staff collaborated with the sheriff office and sent him to jail without him being stabilized. At the jail, he gets put in solitary for a week. By the seventh day, he kills himself with a phone cord. What was the need for this man to be taken from the hospital when he is in acute crisis?”
The new Texas law SB 840 intended to protect nurses and doctors makes physical assaults of health-care workers a felony, which further criminalizes acts by patients who may not be lashing out with criminal intent to harm, Gundu added.
“People with an intellectual or developmental disability often can’t express themselves,” Gundu said. “They use their body to communicate. It’s like a kid having a tantrum.”
Gundu said she recently spoke with the family of a young Black woman with an intellectual disability who was arrested shortly after her dismissal from a hospital. Her charges were later dropped, but the detainment traumatized her, Gundu said.
Federal law under the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act mandates that hospitals ensure public access to emergency services regardless of the patient’s ability to pay. Gundu, based on her work with hundreds of cases across the state, sees a pattern of health-care providers violating that law by allowing or even facilitating the transfer of patients with an intellectual disability or an ongoing mental health crisis to county jails.
“We are actively pushing people with [intellectual disabilities] into our criminal punishment system because we haven’t invested in robust mental health care,” Gundu said. “We have become comfortable pushing them into the system and saying there is nowhere else to go. Why is there nowhere else to go? People are sitting in jail waiting for help. Somehow, we are OK with that.”
Another law, SB 26, which was passed earlier this year, requires the state to audit mental health authorities once every 10 years and publish findings on the reasons for backlogged wait times for state hospital beds. The current waitlist is around 2,500, based on state data. Gundu believes most of the men and women on the list may have intellectual disabilities and are waiting for so-called competency restoration — which Texas Health and Human Services says consists of services “designed for people with a mental health disorder or co-occurring psychiatric and substance use disorders who are found incompetent to stand trial and are court-ordered to participate in competency restoration treatment.”
Texas Jail Project routinely documents cases in which individuals with an intellectual disability are arrested for nonviolent offenses like trespassing, Gundu said.
“That approach is such a bad idea,” she continued. Treating those individuals inside jails “takes away resources from preventive solutions. That’s the frustrating part. We are taking bad, short-term approaches to a problem that has been in the making for a long time.”
While Gundu founded her nonprofit to address inhumane conditions within Texas’ jails, her advocacy has grown to criticize the state for not providing adequate resources for impoverished individuals struggling with mental health disorders, hospitals for colluding with sheriff departments to jail patients seeking mental health treatments, and state agencies like MHMR for not providing adequate treatment options for the communities they serve. Leading to Congious’ 2020 arrest, she received uneven mental health-care services from MHMR and JPS, Hammond alleges.
“All we see are nurse practitioners,” she said. “They are in control of medication management. My daughter needs talk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. She needs to be in a position to be treated on a day-to-day basis and with a support group that is consistent. She doesn’t see the same doctors. We have to repeat her background over and over again. We aren’t getting anywhere.”
Gundu believes the current under-funded system is allowed to persist because jails are rarely successfully sued for causing on-site deaths and because state leaders benefit by avoiding the financial cost of adequately funding state health-care resources and institutions.
The system that is driven by a punitive culture, Gundu said, works to expand Texas’ multi-billion-dollar carceral system.
*****
Several dozen people recently packed the Tarrant County Sub-Courthouse in Arlington for a panel discussion focused on the high number of deaths at the county jail. Commissioner Alisa Simmons organized the event that featured Rev. Katherine Godby, County Criminal Court Judge Deborah Nekhom, Tarrant County Magistrate Judge Tamla Ray, County Administrator Greg Shugart, Sheriff Bill Waybourn, and Pamela Young from the grassroots group United Fort Worth, along with Gundu, who spoke first.
“The pretrial population [in Texas jails] is over 76% percent,” she said, citing state data. “Ninety-one jails are housing population members outside [their respective] counties. County jails have become de facto mental health-care warehouses. I do not call them mental health-care providers. When your largest population in your jail is the most vulnerable, people with mental illness and disabilities,” that isn’t a justice system.
Speaking on behalf of United Fort Worth, Young said her group’s focus has been to see that people who did not need to be in jail were released. The main barrier keeping nonviolent, legally innocent defendants from being released, she said, is Texas’ cash bond system. “Our county officials continue to invest an exorbitantly high amount of resources and our taxpayer dollars into law enforcement instead of more cost-effective, people-centered solutions that get to the root causes of harm in our community.”
Waybourn began by describing the scope of the work his employees perform at the jail.
“Tarrant County Jail is the 14th-largest jail in America,” he said. “It’s a big operation. Our jail has been described as a large mental health facility. It is. Let me describe who I see in jail. Eighty percent of that population has three things in common. They are going to be fatherless, not have a high school education, and motivated by some type of narcotic. As the Texas [Commission on] Jail Standards have told us, we’re the largest, cleanest, and safest jail in Texas. We have noble people doing noble things. We have had 59 deaths. We dole out around 2 million pills a year, as far as medicine. We have a group that takes people to JPS every day. We have started doing mental health restoration. We restored 430 people who could go to trial and take care of business [because of the mental health restoration program]. As you look at the causes of death, they are having heart attacks. Because they used drugs, they are addicted to opioids. Those things happen all the time in our jail. Let’s not call them ‘nonviolent,’ because almost every crime that we have, there is going to be a drug close by. You can almost bet on it.”
Kimberly Hammond (right) said home life can be stressful due to the constant care and attention that her daughter requires. Photo by Jason Brimmer.
The majority of audience questions and comments took aim at Waybourn, both for the high number of deaths at his jail and for the sheriff’s involvement in creating the county’s Voter Integrity Unit even as voter fraud remains infinitesimally low in this country (“ The Fraud Squad,” Mar. 2023).
In January 2022, the county opened the Tarrant County Mental Health Jail Diversion Center to provide alternatives for low-level offenders with substance abuse issues or mental illness to access treatment in lieu of being jailed. Located at a former assisted-living facility in the Fairmount neighborhood on the Near Southside, the two-floor center funded by the county and managed by MHMR offers bedrooms, TVs, a kitchen, and a library.
MHMR Director Mark Tittle said the jail diversion center’s goals are to create a warm and welcoming space where the voluntary program can lead to better health outcomes. Speaking at the 42-bed facility, Tittle described the intake process. The jail diversion team never knows who will be arriving until a police officer calls to notify MHMR staff that a criminal suspect is en route to the building.
“We say, ‘Thank you for considering us,’ and we get ready for them to arrive,” he said.
The first person to contact the detainee is one of MHMR’s peer specialists, who are specially trained to interact with individuals who may be experiencing a mental health crisis. The peer specialist tells them they are safe, Tittle said.
“We perform a nursing assessment to make sure they are viable for the building,” he continued. “If they are not, we will get them to the emergency room or wherever they need to be. We want them to be comfortable. They are used to being told they are not wanted. We want them to feel accepted. We offer them food and their own bed. You aren’t going to get that at the jail.”
The typical stay at the diversion center is 48 hours, Tittle said, adding that the vast majority of alleged offenses are for criminal trespassing. Many of the building’s clients are homeless.
“We give them 24 hours to rest,” he said. “During that time, we have a nurse practitioner who will assess them for any mental health or medical needs they need. During the first 24 hours, we connect our guests with housing coordinators, therapists, chemical dependency counselors, and case managers with the aim of figuring out what wellness looks like to them. It’s driven by what the patient wants. When it is time for discharge, we take them where they need to go, and we follow them for up to a year while providing case management services.”
Since opening two years ago, the jail diversion center has received 1,021 referrals. Tittle said he would like to see more peace officers use the program.
Last year, Tarrant County’s five commissioners unanimously voted to expand the list of crimes eligible for the diversion center to include defendants facing charges for five misdemeanor offenses: theft, possession of marijuana, disorderly conduct, false report, and terroristic threat. Any person accepted at the diversion center will not have to face criminal charges, and they are free to leave at any time.
Seated next to Congious at their Northside apartment, Hammond described the challenges of taking care of her daughter.
“It is hard to put in words,” she said. “I have to focus on monitoring her triggers due to the trauma [of her jailing]. That is something medicine alone cannot address. That’s one thing. A lot of her cousins have babies. Seeing them really does affect her. She wasn’t able to hold Zenorah. She didn’t grieve properly and wasn’t allowed to attend the funeral [because she was in jail]. She couldn’t say goodbye. Because of that, she has a lot of triggers.”
Hammond said her daughter’s baby doll helps calm her.
“Her name is Layla,” Congious said. “I wanted a little girl to dress up. It’d just be me and her.”
When asked about her deceased daughter, Chasity Congious often refers to Zenorah in the present tense. Photo by Jason Brimmer.
Hammond said she knows little about Zenorah’s biological father, whom she said has not been present in her daughter’s life, either during or after the pregnancy. Hammond said monitoring Congious’ medications takes constant oversight. One medication helps calm her, but any mistiming of administering the prescription drugs could leave her unable to sleep at night.
Adams is protective about who meets Congious, but he wanted me to see the cognitive impairments that leave the early twentysomething conversing at the level of an adolescent.
“I’m Chasity,” she said abruptly. “Who can I trust?”
Adams turned toward me.
“This ain’t no game,” he said. “This is their life. At the point that she told [the jailers] that her stomach hurts, that should trigger anyone with common sense to know she might be having contractions.”
With compensation from the county, which Adams is confident will come whether through mediation or a jury trial, Hammond said her daughter can settle into a living facility that can monitor her medications and provide daily activities and a high quality of life. Hammond said she is a person of faith and knows her granddaughter is waiting for them in heaven.
The night after Zenorah was taken off life support at JPS, Hammond said the baby girl’s spirit visited her.
“I felt her,” Hammond said. “She came into my room. She told me that she was at peace, that she was no longer hurting. I felt that she was telling me that everything was going to be OK.”
The Marked Men have been one of the state’s most beloved punk bands since the early aughts. Even if they never graced Pitchfork, their sentimental lyrics, infectious sing-along style, and raw, bratty delivery elevated the four-piece to the same vaunted level as the decade’s most heavyweight indie-rockers like The Strokes, The Hives, and Interpol. At least in the hearts of Texans, anyway. That esteem has followed the members to the myriad projects that have webbed out from the original Denton collective. Whether you trace the line of singer/guitarist Jeff Burke to Denton’s Radioactivity or his U.S./Japan collab with Yusuke Okada (Lost Balloons) or follow fellow Marked Men frontman Mark Ryan to the electroclash punk of Mind Spiders — or any of the other branches that lead to High Tension Wires, The Reds, The Chopsakis, or Low Culture — the path taken invariably leads to great music.
Now, there’s a new Marked Men offshoot. Ryan’s new solo project O-D-Ex seamlessly stretches from the subtle synth-coated punk of Mind Spiders to lean hard into the gritty digital sounds of so-called Krautrock and ’80s industrial à la Suicide, Kraftwerk, and Skinny Puppy, albeit with Ryan’s signature up-tempo punk flair. Following recently released videos for two singles, “Ley Line” and “Back to Form,” the project’s 11-song, full-length debut, Breaker, will be out Friday via Milwaukee’s Dirtnap Records.
The origin of O-D-Ex “really came from me complaining that I felt like it takes forever to get stuff done with a band,” Ryan said with a laugh. “The last Mind Spiders album came out in 2018, and I felt like with that band, things had kind of fizzled out. I’d kind of done everything I’d wanted to do with it. I’d been trying to figure out something else to do.”
At the urging of friend and electronic music producer/composer Why — perhaps best known by his equally enigmatic alter-ego “M” from Denton electronic experimentalists Mission Giant — Ryan began messing around with a solo endeavor.
“A lot of it was me just getting into old digital synthesizers and digital samplers and drum machines,” Ryan said. “In Mind Spiders, I was pretty particular about things sounding very clean, and analog, and warm, but I just fell in love with that harsh digital noise and stuff like that, and I started experimenting with sounds and came up with a couple of song ideas I liked, and that sort of sparked things from there. It was an ongoing joke in Mind Spiders that Daniel [Fried], who played bass, would say, ‘You’re going to replace us all with machines someday,’ and that’s kind of what happened,” Ryan added with a laugh.
He shared his initial ideas with Why, who offered feedback and ended up becoming a quasi-collaborator.
“I come from a more electronic background in making music,” Why said. “I’d been kind of fanning [Ryan’s] flames toward that direction anyway. The thing about machines is they just want to work. They want to work when you want to work. For someone who has a bunch of ideas, just going hard, and going at it more or less alone, it actually allows for a faster result. That’s been my role, just sort of flame fanning.”
Ryan gives Why more credit than that.
“He plays it down,” he said of Why’s contributions, “but he definitely works almost like a producer role, telling me when something sucks or to try something else. He’s added a lot of parts to different songs and did the record cover and things like that.”
In Marked Men and Mind Spiders, Ryan said, he feels he may have “tried to be too serious. For O-D-Ex, I don’t take it seriously at all. I get to write lyrics with my wife, and they’re just silly — inside jokes and things that make us laugh, like wearing shorts in the winter.”
The lyrics might be silly, but the context in which they are delivered comes across as anything but. The driving pulse of synth lines and heavily distorted guitars ride the rapid punch and snap of digital drums while Ryan delivers his subliminally comic lines through a haunting robotic vocal effect. The result leaves the listener with the feeling of a blitzkrieg sonic wall bearing down, a schizophrenic aural assault that contrastingly retains an infectious slam-danceability and boasts the same subversive hookiness that has been the hallmark of all of Ryan’s material.
The songwriter has been pleased with the effort so far and the seeming simplicity of working in a more electronic medium.
“There’s a sort of immediacy to creating and recording these songs that’s really fun for me,” he said. “I can kind of bash something out real quick and come up with these ideas — it’s a very dirty and quick method of doing things, and I really like the results. It’s just really fun to make these sounds and this music.”
