The Goodfellow Fund provides $100 gift cards to low-income families.
Mirna is struggling as a single parent. Like so many in today’s economy, she simply has a hard time making money for groceries and bills.
She loves her four children dearly and wants them to have a great holiday season. The holidays can be dark times when faced with little faces wanting Santa to bring them something and parents are wondering where it will come from.
“It is impossible for me to buy gifts for all four of them at the same time,” she said. “That is why I am grateful to everyone who cares about giving gifts to many children who need them.”
The Goodfellow Fund is just such an organization, and has been for well over 100 years. Once again this year they are assisting families such as Mirna’s by providing children with $100 gift cards from Old Navy.
“Thank you for thinking of them,” she said. “My children are very excited. “Blessings to all. May God bless you abundantly.”
About the Goodfellow Fund
The story on the Goodfellow website describes its beginning as an offshoot of the first newspaper charity drive in the United States, started by the Chicago Tribune on Dec. 10, 1909. A Chicago city attorney wrote a letter challenging his friends to donate the money they would have spent on holiday partying to charity.
A couple of years later, the Advertising Club of Fort Worth staged the first local Goodfellow campaign. On the day after Thanksgiving in 1912, Publisher Amon G. Carter brought the tradition to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
To donate online and find out more, visit goodfellowfundfw.com/donate. To donate with a check, send checks made out to the Goodfellow Fund to P.O. Box 149, Fort Worth, TX, 76101.
John Gravois, Star-Telegram politics editor from 1995 to 2017, was remembered for his generosity and enthusiasm.
Courtesy Moore Bowen Road Funeral Home
John Gravois, a man whose passion for journalism shaped both the Star-Telegram’s political coverage and the reporters who worked for him, died on Nov. 11. He was 67.
Colleagues remembered Gravois for his passion for the craft and ability to make the people around him better.
“I wanted to be John Gravois when I grew up,” said New York Times investigative reporter Jay Root, who worked under Gravois at the Star-Telegram.
He had the best instincts, Root said, recounting how Gravois had a sixth sense that allowed him to envision how a story would play out after only learning a few facts.
The Louisiana native took to journalism like a fish to water starting with his sixth grade school newspaper and graduating to a sports reporter position at his hometown paper at 16.
At the Houma Courier, Gravois took on the persona of “Pierre the Cajun,” making weekly picks for high school football games.
“The players, every time I got them wrong, they loved throwing me in the shower,” Gravois said in a 2023 interview with television station HTV Houma.
Gravois’s sports reporting expanded from high school to college and professional sports before he made the switch to politics.
Making the change was a natural fit, because in Louisiana and Texas there is not a lot of difference between the worlds of sports and politics, Gravois said in the same 2023 interview
A story that uncovered a pyramid scheme in his hometown of Houma led Gravois to his first experience getting death threats. Still, he noted that people concerned about the pyramid scheme were looking to the local newspaper to uncover what was going on.
“You have to have a willingness to confront power and not be afraid to ask powerful people questions,” Root said, adding that was something he learned from Gravois.
He was very authentic, and wasn’t a show-off even though it would have been easy for him to do that, said Jack Douglas Jr., who helped recruit Gravois to the Star-Telegram in 1995, and was later an investigative producer at KXAS Channel 5.
Douglas described Gravois as a “reporter’s editor” who worked with the journalists he supervised rather than lording over them.
“When you found a great story, or you thought you had a great story, you couldn’t wait to tell John about it, because he would get as excited as the reporter would,” Douglas said.
He was always generous with his time, and wanted his reporters to succeed, said John Moritz, chief politics reporter for the Austin American-Statesman who worked with Gravois at the Star-Telegram.
Moritz recounted how Gravois would connect younger reporters with their more experienced counterparts to help with a story or to get a deeper understanding of a topic.
Gravois loved every detail of Texas politics, said Star-Telegram columnist Bud Kennedy.
He had an ability to take even the most minute boring detail or function of government and make it fascinating, because he focused on the people and the characters that made it interesting, Kennedy said.
“I used to think it was an act,” said Barry Shlachter, a former Star-Telegram reporter who worked under Gravois.
“That was John. The guy lived and breathed news.”
As the newspaper industry began to shrink amid declining advertising revenue and competition from social media, Gravois managed to keep finding jobs doing meaningful journalism work.
People have said he was an old school journalist, but he also embraced the evolution of news reporting, Douglas said.
“He used to say, ‘Think of the news businesses as being contained in a box. The shape of the box may always change, but what’s inside never will,’” Douglas said.
He left the Star-Telegram in 2017 for a position as a politics editor at the Houston Chronical before coming back to the Metroplex to work at the Dallas Morning News.
Eva-Marie Ayala, who worked with Gravois in Fort Worth and Dallas, recounted in a Facebook post how excited he would get on election nights or on covering big stories like hurricanes.
“The crazy Cajun said something to the effect of ‘Oh boy! This is gonna be a fun one. Historic. I wish I was there with you,” she wrote.
He constantly reminded reporters they were doing God’s work, wrote former Star-Telegram reporter Anna Tinsley-Williams in a Facebook post. She worked for Gravois for 16 years.
Moritz, of the American-Statesman, said he thought Gravois’ “God’s work” sentiment was pretentious at the time, but came to see its wisdom as the journalism industry continued to atrophy.
“The calling is we serve the reading public, and it’s up to us to give them the tools they need to hold the powerful accountable,” Mortiz said.
“Journalism needs a whole lot more John Gravois.”
John was preceded in death by his brother Michael, and his parents, Lloyd Joseph Gravois and Wanda Joy Gravois.
He is survived by his wife Suzanne, his daughter Joy and son Nicholas along with their spouses; three grandchildren, Adelyn, Gracie, and Lennie; his brother Jeffrey, sister-in-law Karrie, two nieces and a nephew, sister-in-law Nancy Hawley Gravois, and countless other friends and family members.
A visitation is scheduled from 6 to 8 p.m. Nov. 20 at Moore Bowen Road Funeral Home, 4216 S. Bowen Road, Arlington. A funeral Mass is scheduled for 11 a.m. Nov. 21 at St. Jude Catholic Church, 500 E. Dallas St., Mansfield.
A final visitation will take place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Dec. 5 Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home in New Orleans followed by a funeral Mass at 1 p.m.
Harrison Mantas has covered Fort Worth city government, agencies and people since September 2021. He likes to live tweet city hall meetings, and help his fellow Fort Worthians figure out what’s going on.
