Texas Standard commentator WF Strong says the Gruver Farm Scholarship Foundation has already made a multi-generational impact.
Donation
Why Fort Worth ISD is canceling sex ed this year
Fallen trees and branches, downed power lines and more as Texas weathers the first statewide winter storm of 2023. The worst of the weather stretches along a line west of I-35, but most Texans are feeling the impact one way or another, with driving extremely hazardous and scattered outages leaving hundreds of thousands without power.
There’s been lots of talk about property taxes in this legislative session. How’d they get so high in the first place?
Fort Worth ISD scraps its plans for a sex education course after spending millions in the ramp-up. So why the reversal?
Also a PolitiFact check of gun violence claims.
Jesse H. Jones was a model philanthropist
Over 30% of annual nonprofit giving happens in the last month of the year. In Texas, philanthropists Jesse H. Jones and his wife, Mary Gibbs Jones, have been very generous. Texas Standard commentator WF Strong has more on the gifts bestowed by the couple on the Lone Star State.
Texas Standard: December 12, 2022
For the first time ever the Red Cross declares a national blood crisis. We’ll look at what that is and what is needed from Texans. Also: masks, social distancing, vaccinations, booster shots, now pills have been added to the COVID-19 fighting arsenal, though many Texans may not have heard about this development or know who’s eligible. We’ll get some answers. Plus Texas’ Rice University among a group of prestigious private institutions of higher learning being sued over financial aid practices. And a new push to compensate Texans unwittingly affected by nuclear testing dating back to the cold war era. Those stories and more today on the Texas Standard:
The Texas Polio Epidemic
The silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic, if there is one, seems to be that it spares children. The polio epidemic that raged off and on in the United States for about 40 years did the opposite. Indeed, it seemed to focus on children. Whereas there is hope that COVID-19, like the flu, will weaken in warmer weather, polio was most aggressive in the summer months. As such, Texas was perhaps the hardest hit state of all.
Dr. Heather Green Wooten, a medical historian, and author of the award-winning book, The Polio Years in Texas: Battling a Terrifying Unknown, told me the story of how Texas responded to the polio epidemic that terrified the state every summer for years.
Dr. Wooten told me that when San Angelo had a breakout of polio in 1949 – the hardest-hit town per capita that year in the U.S. – it was horrifying in scope for the city of 50,000. Sixty children in San Angelo came down with polio in one summer. Many died. Movie theaters and swimming pools and public gatherings were shut down. Travelers passing through would roll up their windows so as not to breathe the potentially contaminated air. They wouldn’t even fill up a low tire at the gas station for fear of taking the virus with them. Some residents refused to talk on the phone with anyone, believing that perhaps, somehow, polio could travel through the phone lines.
This kind of fear gripped Texas every summer for years. Parents would not let their children swim or go to summer camp or do anything in groups in an effort to keep them safe. Houses were kept spotless and were scrubbed top to bottom to kill all the germs. In fact, Wooten told me, “When mothers lost a child to polio, they suffered added anguish because they felt they would be judged as bad mothers and poor housekeepers. They would explain to reporters that ‘they had always kept a very clean house and didn’t understand how this could have happened.’”
There was a public service song by Red River Dave, frequently played on the radio in those days. It stressed cleanliness. Here’s a sample:
Take care that all the food you eat and kitchen ware is clean/
Kill the rats and kill the mice and make the roaches go/
That’s the way to really whip that mean old polio
The response to polio was largely a grassroots one, with the common man (and children) largely funding the research, the treatments, the hospitals and rehab centers. The March of Dimes, launched by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was enormously successful in this regard. It mobilized school children and civic groups of all kinds – Rotary International, Kiwanis, The Masons – to collect dimes, quarters and dollars from anyone and everyone. Theaters would play a short film like “The Crippler” before every movie, and then turn on the lights and collect donations from the crowd. It was incredibly effective. The March of Dimes also introduced us to the concept of the poster child, one of the most persuasive fundraising strategies of all time. Collection receptacles, in the form of little iron lungs, were placed at cash registers everywhere.
Wooten said that the small donations coming from almost every American gave each person a stake in beating polio. I like that one year the March of Dimes national campaign was launched from the community of Dime Box, Texas, about 70 miles east of Austin. How’s that for creative marketing!
When World War II broke out, the March of Dimes feared that donations would dry up. However, FDR made beating polio part of the war effort. He said on a radio address: “The fight against [polio] is a fight to the finish, and the terms are unconditional surrender.”
Big money entered the fight as well. Texas’ great oilmen gave millions to build hospitals, treatment facilities and fund research. Two of the greatest contributors were oil magnate Hugh Roy Cullen and politician Jesse Jones, both historically among Texas’ most generous philanthropists.
Great institutions in Texas like the Scottish Rite Hospital for Crippled Children and the Gonzalez Warm Springs Rehab Hospital for Crippled Children were among the best in the country, as was the Jefferson Davis Hospital in Houston. A fascinating side note is that these hospitals were also among the first institutions to be fully integrated, accepting all children on equal terms, regardless of race, religion or creed. Wooten noted that the children took to integration beautifully and became each other’s best therapy. Doctors found that putting them together helped them function as a team against the disease, cheering each other on against a common enemy.
You know the rest of the story: Dr. Jonas Salk, funded by the March of Dimes, discovered the first vaccine for the virus in the early 1950s, and rather than getting a patent and becoming an instant billionaire, he made a gift of his vaccine to all humanity.
Texas Standard: September 13, 2019
Democratic Presidential contenders duke it out in Houston. Who fared well and who didn’t? We’ll take a closer look. Other stories we’re tracking: whether recent mass shootings in El Paso and Odessa could mark a turning point for Texas. Also 20 years after a Texas church shooting, a remarkable story of healing. Plus Ken Burns rosins up the bow for a major public TV documentary, this time on country music. And the week in Texas politics and more today on the Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: January 23, 2019
The Supreme Court appears to take DACA off the table in shutdown negotiations, but where does that leave thousands of DACA recipients in Texas? We’ll explore. Also in the Texas Standard newsroom, another Supreme Court order we’re assessing: the impact of the reinstatement of the Trump administration’s so-called transgender military ban. We’ll take a look at the impact of those seeking to serve. And police, veterans, cancer research, political action committees have formed around lots of worthy causes. But where’s the money going? A look at so called scam pacs and more today on the Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: November 16, 2016
A bill introduced to end sanctuary cities across Texas… but wait a minute. Are there any sanctuary cities across Texas? We’ll explore. Also a new oil boom becomes a knife fight for land. We’ll hear where, what’s behind it, and who’s getting rich. Plus Texas leads the nation in wind power, but at times, has to give away electricity because there’s no place to store it. Now a possible solution, under our feet. And remember the surge? Years after the first rush of immigrant families across the border, a Texas city demands compensation…so far to no effect. We’ll learn the backstory and much more this hour on the Texas Standard: