Dallas

Texas Standard: April 11, 2017

A federal judge declares the Texas Voter ID law discriminatory. We’ll explore what this means as a practical matter, and what happens next. Also as Texas celebrates a raft of Pulitzer nods, one of the worlds oldest news organizations launches a new salvo in the war against fake news. We’ll hear all about it. And you’ve heard of one armed bandits, but in south Texas police worry about 8-liners holding up an entire local economy. Plus salad days for storage containers: as grocers look for ways to market veggies fresher than farm grown. For real? All that and a whole lot more today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: March 16, 2017

A tweak to a plan to ban sanctuary cities statewide: one that could make a big difference at the side of the road, we’ll explore. Also jammed 911 lines blamed for two deaths in Dallas: is a cellphone glitch gumming up the whole emergency system? And a regulation aimed at preventing another west, suddenly headed south. What this means for efforts to safeguard chemical plants and the people who live near them. Also a crime problem so bad the city’s police chief says you can’t arrest your way out of this one. We’ll hear the backstory. And the latest effort to curb fake news: is that a robot editing your Facebook feed? All of that and lots more today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: January 2, 2017

A federal judge in Texas issues a nationwide injunction seen as another blow to transgender rights and the Obama administration, we’ll explore today. Also, we’ve heard the warnings from the mayor himself: Dallas could be forced into bankruptcy because of a pension fund meltdown. Now, the mayor’s asking the Texas Rangers to step in. Plus, it’s black Monday for pro football. Why this matters to you, even if you’ve never so much as touched a pigskin. And what do you call a fish found all across Texas that doesn’t swim? Our resident expert calls it a pest. What you can do if you find yourself on the hook. All that and much more coming up on today’s Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: December 14, 2016

The countdown is on- just 5 days left until a new rule takes effect across Texas, and no one’s quite sure how to implement it. The story today on the Texas Standard

Closing in fast on 500: across the border from what was recently called the safest city in the nation, a new surge in killings could shatter records. We’ll hear the backstory…

Also, a wave of resignations and a serious shortage of police in Dallas. This, only months after reports of an avalanche of applications from would be cadets.

And its official, but as Rick Perry prepares to be grilled for a gig as energy secretary, how do his past statements rate on the Truth-o-Meter? All that and much more today on the Texas Standard.

Texas Standard: December 5, 2016

After a phone call from Taiwan and a few tweets from the President-elect, a potential global crisis. A goof, or something more: the story today on the Standard

A pension plan meltdown that could leave Dallas bankrupt. But the rest of us are ok…right? The state controller warns, this could hurt all of Texas. He’ll tell us how and why.

Guess who’s making a massive new investment in drilling in the Gulf of Mexico? Here’s a hint: its initials are B and P.

And the bizarre disappearance of 300 rare blind salamanders from a Federal research center in Texas. Some wonder if they’re part of a black market in exotic animal trafficking. Those stories and much more today on the Texas Standard.

Texas Standard: November 22, 2016

Detroit, Stockton, Orange County: all on a list of cities and counties that have declared bankruptcy, could a big one from Texas be next? Plus we’ll have the latest on the ambush-style killing of a San Antonio Police Officer. Also, over the top tweets gotcha down? Facebook giving you the frowns? NPR’s All tech Considered tells us why after the election more and more folks say they’re pulling the plug on social media. Plus a world class symphony playing the blues…what a strike and concert cancellations add up to for the arts, and for the citizens at large. And Exxon fires back over global warming with an unprecedented move. Those stories and lots more today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: November 21, 2016

Police ambushed in three states this weekend including an officer killed in San Antonio. Mere coincidence, or coordinated? We’ll explore. Plus he calls them the worst of the worst: how does the president elect’s plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions square with reality? Also, no longer going Strong? After a weekend loss, Texas’ football coach appears all but fired, but critics say it’s the university that’s fumbled. We’ll hear why. And the rise of a new music city not powered by musicians as much as their producers. Plus the anatomy of a fake news story and much more today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: August 28, 2016

A billion dollars for the border? A request from Texas law enforcement raises eyebrows and more than a few questions. Plus could it be Nullification nation? More than two months away from the election, a Texas elector says no Trump, no way…raising the prospect of an electoral college uprising against the popular vote. We’ll explore. Also, maternal mortality spikes in Texas but experts can’t figure out why suddenly so many pregnancy related deaths…we’ll hear what’s behind the data…and what isn’t. And oh Give me a home and an aerial drone: why some say today marks the start of a revolution on the Texas range. Those stories and so much more today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: August 18, 2016

In a year of deadly storms, and torrential downpours, one south Texas sheriff is wishing for a hurricane. His radical call for relief near the border, we’ll explore. Also he’s accused of being a deserter but new evidence suggests Bowe Bergdahl wanted to be something else: a Russian mob hitman. We’ll hear the latest on the eve of a potential turning point in his court martial. And if its good enough for kids, why not for schools? A plan to give Texas educators grades of A to F. And when it comes to the unofficial state entree, one town must be crowned as most improved. We’ll taco all about that and much more in just a moment, on todays Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: August 9, 2016

It’s the story with more twists and turns than the best Hill Country ride you could imagine…yep, we’ve got news for the bikers caught up in the Twin Peaks shootout. Plus the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas started as a prison gang, but the violence hasn’t stopped inside prison walls. We’ll look at what a massive federal takedown means for one of the most infamous hate groups of Texas. Also, startup news is often buoyed by hype…but there are real jobs and economic numbers below the surface. Plus, in this summer heat, we’ve chosen a few refreshing songs to keep you cool, both morning and night. All that and more just for you on today’s Texas Standard:

The Life of Tom Landry, the Man in the Hat

Tom Landry and Charles Schulz died on the same day: Feb. 12, 2000. Mike Thompson, the Detroit Free Press cartoonist honored them both with a cartoon showing them entering the pearly gates together. Schulz was depicted as Charlie Brown and Landry had his arm around him. Landry said, “Now a few pointers on kicking a football…”

For Coach Landry, at least, I can’t imagine a finer eulogy.

I mourned Landry’s passing, of course, along with millions of other Landry fans. A day that was almost as tough, though, was the day Landry was fired, in 1989. That day, too, hit me like a death in the family. Landry had been our coach since many of us were children. And when he was fired, we were 40. He had been our father on the field. He raised us within the game, teaching us to be gracious in victory and dignified in defeat. And with one stroke of Jerry Jones’ pen, he was gone. Devastating.

Landry was known as the man in the hat. He was the stoic leader on the Dallas Cowboys sidelines, always impeccably dressed and sporting his fedora. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said, “If there were a Mount Rushmore for the NFL, the profile of Tom Landry would have to be there, wearing his trademark hat.”

While coaching, Landry was so focused he rarely smiled. He was often called “unemotional.” But I can think of words that would be more fitting: a man of character, honor, integrity, and faith. He was pure class, on and off the field. He was ethos personified.

In his 29 years as Dallas’ head coach, Landry led the Cowboys to more playoff seasons, by far, than they have had since. And here is another statistic hard to fathom: the Cowboys still have not played as many games without Landry as they played with him.

Under Landry, the Cowboys won 13 Divisional titles and played in five Super Bowls, winning two. They enjoyed 20 consecutive winning seasons, a record no NFL coach has ever come close to matching.

As glorious as those years were, none equalled Landry’s finest season in football. He played for the New York Giants professionally, and was all-pro one year, but that was not his finest season, either. He played football on scholarship for the University of Texas, but after only one semester, his career there was put on hold by World War II. He volunteered to join the Army Air Corps and flew 30 missions over Germany, crash landing once in Belgium. Though the wings were shaved off, he and all his men walked away without serious injury. Not bad for a 20-year-old.

One could consider his WWII service, in a Churchillian sense, his finest season, but as we are talking football, we have to go back further.

To get to his best season ever, we have to go all the way back to his high school years in Mission, Texas, way down in the Rio Grande Valley.

It was Landry’s senior year, 1941. He played both sides of the ball. He played quarterback and defensive back. Landry led the Mission Eagles to a perfect 12-0 season. They went all the way to the regional championship, which was as far as they could go that year (there was no state championship in those days).

The Mission Eagles won every game they played, holding every team scoreless, except for one. In 12 games they gave up only one score. Donna High School managed to squeeze out one touchdown against them.

Many years later, in his autobiography, Landry wrote, “That autumn of glory, shared with my boyhood friends… remains perhaps my most meaningful season in my fifty years of football. The game was never more fun, the victories never sweeter, the achievement never more satisfying.”

Landry’s near flawless season, and his impressive professional life thereafter, was honored in 1975 when the Mission School District named their football stadium the Tom Landry Stadium. And when he died in 2000, I-30 between Dallas and Fort Worth was named the Tom Landry Highway.

To me, one of the trivial truths about Landry that speaks to his greatness, is that his Cowboys never gave him a Gatorade bath, never dumped the ice bucket down his back.

After his coaching days were over, he developed a sterling reputation as an inspirational speaker. He always advised young players to keep their lives ordered in this simple way: faith, family, and football. He was also fond of saying, ¨As of today, you have 100 percent of your life left.¨

He took his own words to heart. After he was fired, while the rest of us were using our energy being mad about the disrespectful way our icon was sacked, Landry was already moving on with his life.

He didn’t waste time being angry or bitter. With characteristic optimism, he saw the silver lining. He said, “As a boy growing up in Mission, Texas, I always dreamed of being a cowboy. For 29 wonderful years, I was one.”

W.F. Strong is a Fulbright Scholar and professor of Culture and Communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. At Public Radio 88 FM in Harlingen, Texas, he’s the resident expert on Texas literature, Texas legends, Blue Bell ice cream, Whataburger (with cheese) and mesquite smoked brisket.

Texas Standard: July 20, 2016

He’s the nominee. The role Republicans from Texans played to secure Donald Trump’s presidential nomination, we’ll explore. Also plans for a new South Texas family detention center are moving forward, without the support of many in the community. We’ll explain. And police officers in Dallas were targeted and killed, even though that department had fewer cases of officer-involved shootings than others. We’ll take a look at the facts. And one of the most sought-after advice columnists in Texas is revealing his true identity: we’ll introduce you to “The Texanist.” And what you can and can’t do legally speaking when it comes to getting Pokemon hunters out of your yard. Those stories and more today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: July 13, 2016

Texas dealing with tensions over race and policing. Moments of healing at a Dallas memorial service… and reminders of past scars, we’ll explore. Also One year ago today, a young woman found dead in her jail cell. The video of the arrest that put her there going viral. Plus no silver bullet: recommendations for fixes to the state’s foster care system and new challenges right around the corner. And Texas teens can face intense personal challenges… a look at why it appears young Latinas are especially feeling the pressure. And why what was once cool may also be hot… and what’s good is also wicked… today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: July 12, 2016

The nation mourns for Dallas. President Obama in North Texas today to remember 5 police officers. And bending the President’s ear. A US Representative from Dallas tells us what she has to say to the President… and what she wants her colleagues in Washington to know. And a convention in Cleveland. Events begin to ramp up for the Grand Old Party’s party… but not everyone is celebrating. Plus tens of thousands of precious Texas artifacts have been removed from the Alamo… where they’re going and why. And bats just might be useful allies in the fight against Zika… but don’t count on them to eradicate it. We’ll explain… Those stories and lots more today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: July 11, 2016

Promoting unity in Dallas and action in Washington. Efforts to enact change after last week’s shooting, we’ll explore. Also: A new precedent. A criminal justice expert on the Dallas Police Department’s use of a robot with a bomb to eliminate the shooting suspect. Plus: Little Saigon. Why a Houston city council member’s plan to re-name part of a neighborhood is a little more divisive than expected. The Giant Still Sleeps… a film series looking at political trends… including why Texas Latinos aren’t going to the polls. Plus… The debate over handing out diplomas to Texas students who haven’t passed big tests. Those stories and lots more today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: July 8, 2016

A deadly day in Dallas. At least 5 killed, four police and a DART officer, and several others wounded. What happened in North Texas last night? Details continue to come in. We’ll try to paint a picture of what we know of events and how they unfolded. And reactions to Dallas, the governor offering up backup law enforcement and regular Texans offering up sentiments of shock and sorrow. Plus carrying while black. Does the right to carry arms put some people at greater risk than others? And veteran suicides. New numbers out this week that make clear the issue is serious. We’ll break down the statistics. We’re following these stories and more… today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: April 27, 2016

A so called bathroom law in North Carolina and the blowback from the business community: could it happen here? We’ll explore. Also some say Dallas has gone to the dogs. Big D thinks its found just the ticket. Lots and lots of tickets, actually…we’ll explain. And 40 years ago, an accident on a Texas expressway changed how cities across the nation handle crises…but does shelter in place still make sense today? And Could you draw an outline of the state of Texas? Are you sure you know what that looks like? The state acquires some new maps that push the historic boundaries. Those stories and lots more today on the Texas Standard:

The Airline That Started With A Cocktail Napkin

This story starts off like many good stories do: two men walked into a bar. Now, we have to expand it a little, two men walked into a bar in San Antonio fifty years ago. Okay, it was actually a restaurant & bar. They ordered drinks, and perhaps hors d’oeuvres. One grabbed a cocktail napkin, took out his pen, and said to the other, “Here’s the plan.”

He then drew a simple triangle on the napkin. At the apex of the triangle he wrote Dallas. The bottom left he labeled San Antonio. On the bottom right he wrote Houston. He said, “There – that’s the business plan. Fly between these cities several times a day, every day.” And that is the story of how Southwest Airlines began, on a simple napkin in a bar in San Antonio.

The two men were Rollin King and Herb Kelleher. Rollin was a pilot and a businessman and Herb was a lawyer. Rollin would become a managing director of the company and Herb would become its chairman. There is a plaque at the Southwest Airlines headquarters that enshrines a version of the original napkin with this exchange:

“Herb, let’s start an airline.”

“Rollin, you’re crazy. Let’s do it!”

There are many things that Southwest became famous for. First, its LUV nickname, which is still the company’s stock market trading symbol. It introduced hostesses, as they called their flight attendants then, in hot pants and white go-go boots. They were competing in the sexy skies where Braniff stewardesses wore Pucci chic – uniforms by Italian designer Emilio Pucci – and Continental advertised, in a not-so-subtle double entendre, that they “moved their tails for you.” Southwest hostesses cooed in their ads, “There’s someone else up there who loves you.”

But beyond the sizzle, there was genuine business genius in Southwest efficiencies: peanut fares and the ten-minute turnaround, which had never been achieved before. To date, Southwest has flown over 23 million flights without one fatality. Now that’s a safety record.

Perhaps the coolest story in Southwest Airlines’ history, and relatively unknown, was the fare war they fought with now defunct Braniff Airlines in 1972. Braniff went head-to-head with Southwest on the Houston-Dallas route, offering $13 dollar fares as a means of “breaking” Southwest, which didn’t have deep pockets. Southwest responded with a $13 dollar fare or a $26 dollar fare that included a free bottle of Chivas, Crown Royal or Smirnoff.

According to airline lore, for the two months before Braniff surrendered, Southwest was Texas’ biggest distributor of premium liquor.

Not long before he died, Rollin King confessed that the napkin story wasn’t entirely true, but he said that it was a “hell of a good story.” It was sad to hear that, but too late: the myth had become more powerful than the reality. An old saying in journalism is that when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. This is what I prefer to do. After all, it is hard to imagine that a concept so perfectly observant of Occam’s Razor – the simplest solution is usually the best – would not have, at some point, been sketched out on a napkin, a legal pad, or the collected dust on the hood of Cadillac.

W.F. Strong is a Fulbright Scholar and professor of Culture and Communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. At Public Radio 88 FM in Harlingen, Texas, he’s the resident expert on Texas literature, Texas legends, Blue Bell ice cream, Whataburger (with cheese) and mesquite smoked brisket.

Texas Standard: February 12, 2016

What if you planned a sex expo and the city turned off the lights? The ties that might bind Dallas…constitutionally speaking… Order in the court, and by order I mean where’s that suit, son? A Houston judge and the tirade that has the Justice Department steaming. Also The doctor, the druggist, and the Texas law that’s supposed to stop kickbacks between the two. How big a problem is it, really? And the larger than life Texas politician Texans may have forgotten too soon…and why that might be a bad thing for good government. Those stories and lots more today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: January 8, 2016

Coming up: two men arrested for terrorism related charges. One in California the other in Houston. What’s the story? We’ll explore. And you’ve heard about the standoff in Oregon? It’s been going on for a week…But did you know about the standoff in Texas that lasted more than a decade? An armed man’s been holding his ground on 47-acres outside Dallas. Plus, we talk with folks who’ve caught crawfish and others who’ve lost cattle — seriously, they can’t find them and are hoping Facebook can help. Those stories, and more, on the Texas Standard: