Great Lives of Fort Worth: These 173 Fort Worthians shaped an Army camp into a major city over 173 years.

by John Henry, Brian Kendall

It was June 6, 1849, when Maj. Ripley Arnold chugged up the banks of the Trinity on horseback and laid down stakes on behalf of the U.S. Army. 

A fort was to be established to keep peace among the Native Americans and settlers who had started to arrive on the frontier. 

It seems just like yesterday, but our beloved Fort Worth turned 173 years old over the summer. Far gone are those days. Today, we’re the 13th-largest city in the U.S. and international destination for any number of pursuits. That transformation didn’t merely just happen. 

That requires exceptional people, leaders, and innovators. Fort Worth has been blessed with those, not to mention an uncommon character and self-confidence.

To mark her years, we set out to identify 173 people — the doers, the catalysts — who shaped a city. 

Don’t try this at home. It’s hard, dangerous work. 

R.L. Paschal, one of our 173, can say it better than I can, the task before us.

“It is a little hard to say what constitutes greatness or to determine by what criteria our estimate of it should be formed,” he said in 1907 when asked about the greatest Texans. “Some are possessed of those qualities that make them successful in one branch of endeavor, others in another, few in all. All truly great men have, however, one thing in common: They are great in character.”

Much of our list truly is a compilation of the great lives of Fort Worth. There are exceptions. We set down some criteria: Persons who were born here or lived a substantial part of their lives here and who made a positive impact economically, culturally, or representative of their group, ethnicity, or gender.

There are a few exceptions. 

To complete our assignment, we scoured newspaper archives and books and worked hard not to be overly influenced and biased toward events and people of our lifetime. We also consulted Dr. Richard Selcer, a Fort Worth historian and author of 13 books. 

We did not try to rank them. We divided them into categories and listed them alphabetically within that grouping. Ripley Arnold is not ranked No. 1, and Ida Turner is not ranked No. 173. Likewise, Amon Carter, who would be at the forefront of any Fort Worth Mount Rushmore, is not ranked 18th. That’s simply where he fell alphabetically. 

So, without further ado, 173 Fort Worthians who shaped their city and its culture.

Where it all started. U.S. Army Maj. Ripley Arnold plays the role of founder in the history of Fort Worth, setting up a camp he named in honor of Gen. William Jenkins Worth at “the confluence of the West Fork and the Clear Fork of the Trinity River.” 

Ephraim M. Daggett had lived a full life, including serving under Gen. William J. Worth in the Mexican-American War and in the Texas state House, before moving here in 1854. Daggett’s influence as a former state legislator from Shelby County was instrumental in Fort Worth securing the county seat. His likeness was adopted and placed on the city seal when it was incorporated in 1873, and he further cemented his legacy by donating almost 100 acres to lure the Texas & Pacific Railroad to town in 1876.

Col. William W. Dunn, owner of the Mansion Hotel, “one of the finest in the state at the time of its construction,” was also said to have played a prominent role in Fort Worth winning the highly contentious county seat election over Birdville. In Thirty Years in the West, the man born in Virginia wrote of the prairie town he found when he arrived in November 1858. “Fort Worth then consisted of two stores, one tin shop with stoves, one grocery with whiskey and tobacco, a small hotel, a doctor’s office, a shoe shop, and two land offices, five or six small residences, a well on the square of brackish water.” 

When the U.S. Army arrived at the bluff to set up camp, they found Press Farmer and his wife, Tennessee natives who lived in a tent on the site of the Tarrant County Courthouse. Maj. Ripley Arnold needed someone to operate a post exchange and appointed Farmer for the job of sutler, that person who followed an army and sold provisions to soldiers. Upon hire, Farmer became the first merchant in present Fort Worth. 

Julian Feild, “one of the leading factors in building up of the city and county” had business connections that at one time were “as wide as the limits of the state.” He was the first Democrat postmaster in the South after the Civil War. With Ralph S. Man, Feild brought the first steam-powered grist mill to the area. In 1859, they moved it a little east. Their names, Man and Feild, were later combined to create a new Texas town, Mansfield. 

Walter Huffman, reputedly the city’s first millionaire, had his fingers in a lot of pursuits in early Fort Worth. Have you ever heard Fort Worth referred to as “Queen City of the Prairies?” Me either. But that moniker was popularized during this time, an effort led by Huffman, who also served as an alderman.  

Col. Middleton Tate Johnson was the political and business leader of this part of the frontier. Johnson and his wife were said to be outstanding hosts at their home, the “social center of North Texas,” which sat in between Camp Worth and Dallas — he entertained many famous guests there, including Sam Houston and William Jenkins Worth. But Johnson also owned the land on which Camp Worth sat and thousands of adjoining acres.

In the early days of Fort Worth, civilian merchants were not allowed to sell on the army post. Archibald Leonard solved this problem by opening Fort Worth’s first civilian store, a log store and trading post, in partnership with Henry Clay Daggett. In 1850, Leonard was elected Tarrant County’s first county clerk. Leonard also established Leonard’s Mill, which was later renamed Randol Mill.

Among Fort Worth’s greatest citizens ever, John Peter Smith, who arrived here from Kentucky in 1853, was instrumental in just about every civic endeavor of the 19th century. A Wikipedia historian would certainly take note of his distinctions as the city’s first schoolmaster and his six terms as mayor, beginning in 1882. By 1881, he was Tarrant County’s largest landowner, some of which he donated to open Oakwood Cemetery, the final resting place for many of Fort Worth’s preeminent early citizens, including himself. 

At the time of his untimely death in 1912 at age 65 from injuries sustained in an auto accident, Neil P. Anderson was one of the state’s most prominent cotton dealers. Anderson was the head of the Trinity Compress Company, the Northwestern Compress Company, the Fort Worth Cotton Oil Company, and the Neil P. Anderson Cotton Company. The Neil P. Anderson building downtown, constructed in 1921, still stands, converted several years ago into luxury condominiums. 

The neighbors loved Ninnie Baird’s bread. She made it using her own wood-burning range in her own kitchen. It proved to be so successful that Ninnie Baird purchased a bigger oven from the old Metropolitan Hotel, installing it in her backyard on Hemphill Street. A family-owned bread empire, Mrs. Baird’s Bread, was born in 1911. And a trip down Interstate 30 later in the century sure smelled good.

Few post-Amon-Carter Fort Worthians have had their fingerprints all over this city quite like Ed Bass. Heck, he might even give Mr. Carter a run for his money. The second-born son of Sid Richardson-heir Perry Bass, Ed’s eclectic and enigmatic choice in projects include the failed Biosphere 2 in Arizona; Fort Worth’s Sundance Square development, which is now home to Bass Performance Hall; and Dickies Arena. His commitment to downtown redevelopment, local arts, and philanthropy (he remains chairman of the board of directors for the Sid W. Richardson Foundation) have played a big part in expanding Fort Worth’s cultural significance. 

Perry Bass was said to have learned the oil business “at the elbow of his uncle,” Sid Richardson. Bass, reportedly left about $11 million in real estate and oil properties from Richardson’s estate, set up Bass Brothers Enterprises in 1960 to manage the family’s oil and ranching interests, including the Sid Richardson Energy Services, which they sold in 2005 for $1.6 billion. 

Lawrence D. Bell and associates formed Bell Aircraft Corporation, today Bell Textron, in Buffalo in 1935. In 1951, Bell opened a plant at an industrial site on Blue Mound Road. “Bell Aircraft isn’t coming to Texas just to make jet engine assemblies for Convair,” he said. “We’re coming to do other work as well, and we not only expect to stay but to grow.” He told no lies. The company’s headquarters are here now. 

Entrepreneur George Bennett left a successful career behind at McCormick Harvester and Reaper Company because he identified a void in the marketplace of a growing region: brick. Brick was needed to build homes and commercial buildings. Bennett uncovered a spot that had both the right economic conditions and clay reserves in Parker County. Acme Brick would soon become a corporate staple in Fort Worth. 

Currently the president of Hillwood, a Perot-led development company, Mike Berry cut his teeth as one of the key cogs in the development of Alliance — the 27,000-acre masterplan development that includes the world’s first industrial airport. With the exponential growth occurring north of Interstate 820, Berry’s 30-plus year tenure at Hillwood has resulted in a massive imprint on the North Texas landscape

The city of Fort Worth owes its very existence to the cattle industry, and the cattle industry owes its development to pioneers like Burk Burnett, who transformed primitive, open prairies to the west into fertile acres on which cattle were produced for market. They literally turned wilderness to wealth, which extended to Fort Worth and beyond. The tentacles of this legendary cattleman, oilman, banker, and friend to presidents extend 100 years after his death, through the philanthropy of the Burnett Foundation. 

Like K.M. Van Zandt, all one has to do is look to his right or left to see the impact of Amon Carter on Fort Worth. He had a mouthpiece as publisher of the Star-Telegram, and it had an underlying philosophy: sell, promote, and build the city and region. Says Jerry Flemmons, author of the authorized biography, Amon: “He was recognized nationally as foremost exponent of the best of Texas — the joyous, expansive, unrestrained celebration of life, the genuine unfettered friendliness, the rugged individualism.” 

It was said at his death at age 62 in 1982 that Amon Carter Jr., a POW in WWII and later chairman of the Star-Telegram, never missed a stride in following in the footsteps of his famous father. While Carter Sr. made the world aware of Fort Worth, his son “labored diligently to make Fort Worth worthy of its new attention. Under his leadership, the city became one of the cultural and social oases of the Southwest.”

Eddie Chiles founded The Western Company of North America in 1939 with two trucks and three employees. It grew into a $500 million oil venture. He’s best remembered by a series of radio commercials: “I’m Eddie Chiles, and I’m mad.” He bought the Texas Rangers from Brad Corbett in 1980, a hands-on owner who turned a money-losing operation into the black.

July 19, 1876, in Fort Worth is known to history as “Railroad Day — by all odds the greatest day in the history of Fort Worth.” The dreams of Fort Worth being the base of rail travel for all of West Texas was manifested in the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway Company made reality by Grenville Dodge, a Union general. 

With his sister, Cass Edwards formed Cassco to develop the family-owned Edwards Ranch, founded in 1848, predating the city. Much of southwest Fort Worth, including City View and Clearfork, sit on where the Edwards brand once roamed.

A businessman whose Fort Worth-based private investment group, DFB Pharmaceuticals, has had a hand in developing groundbreaking oncology drugs, Paul Dorman is also one of the biggest benefactors for the TCU School of Medicine and UNT Health Science Center.  

An executive of the Gould railroad system founded the Missouri Pacific Hospital, the city’s first hospital, in 1883 for railroad workers. In 1885, the Sisters of Charity of Incarnate Word of San Antonio were invited to take over the duties of nursing. The sisters purchased the hospital and renamed it St. Joseph’s Infirmary in 1889 in honor of the patron saint of dying. 

Billionaire developer John Goff has planted stakes in Fort Worth with an endeavor that will redefine the Cultural District, a development that includes 166,000 square feet of office space, a 200-room luxury hotel, an upscale restaurant, and 170 high-end residences. It will also be the base of operations for Goff’s Crescent Real Estate. Crescent Fort Worth is set to open in the spring of 2023. 

George Haltom, who moved to Fort Worth from Bowie in 1907 to run a jewelry store that prospered, bought up 3,000 acres six miles northeast of downtown. With it, he established the Diamond H Ranch. To the south, he bought more acreage around the intersection of East Belknap and Denton Highway. In 1932, the community was named “Haltom City Village.” It’s merely Haltom City today.

A titan of Fort Worth, his place in the history of the city as a businessman and civic leader is in a secure lockbox. Justin, who took the lead of Justin Boot Company in the late 1940s, transformed his company through marketing and sales innovations that remade the organization from a regional to national brand. Justin was mayor of Fort Worth from 1961-63.

King was among three prominent candy makers in Fort Worth enjoyed by your grandparents (or great-grandparents). Though King avoided the lure of public office, he was the leading advocate for bringing about the council-manager form of city government to Fort Worth. King and partners also developed a number of residential neighborhoods, including Oakhurst and Monticello. 

Ben E. Keith was a noted produce and beverage executive, leading the company that still bears his name. Keith also led in civic affairs, helping land Camp Bowie — “due largely to the activity of Mr. Keith and his associates.” “Fort Worth has been fortunate, indeed, to have had a native son of his caliber and worth,” read the Star-Telegram upon his death in 1959. 

Laneri immigrated from Italy at the age of 15, making his way to Fort Worth by way of New Orleans, Galveston, and Marshall. In partnership with Louis Bicocchi, he founded Fort Worth Macaroni Company, better known by its rebranding, O.B. Macaroni. As a philanthropist, he founded Laneri College in 1921 as a memorial to his wife

A giant, Marvin Leonard, later joined by his brother, Obie, built Leonard’s Department Store into “one of the largest and most diversified merchandising establishments in the South.” But it was the sport of golf where he left his deepest divot, leaving the city an annual stop on the PGA Tour, not to mention bringing the U.S. Open to town in 1941, both at the country club he founded, Colonial. All made the more unique by the bent-grass greens everyone told him couldn’t survive the Texas heat. His decision to remove “whites” and “colored” from the bathrooms and water fountains, as well as other symbols of Jim Crow at the department store was a monumental first step to desegregating Fort Worth. 

Martin B. Loyd was the founder of the First National Bank of Fort Worth in 1870. It was started for and by cattlemen. The bank’s new 10-story building, erected in 1910, became the city’s first skyscraper and first edifice of steel construction in Fort Worth.

From his perch as president of Maddox Properties, Web Maddox became a civic leader on various fronts, including president of the Fort Worth Chamber and the Fort Worth Opera. Yet, he once said he was most proud of his position as the first southwest regional chairman of the Crusade for Freedom, established to raise money for Radio Free Europe, which was started by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.

William Madison McDonald, said to be the first Black millionaire in Texas, is as important a figure in Fort Worth history as there is. McDonald moved here in 1906 and opened the Fraternal Bank and Trust Company, the first Black-owned bank in Fort Worth, which built the Black business community. The bank survived the Great Depression and reputedly bailed out some white banks. He rose to the very top of the leadership in the Texas Republican Party as a member of the “Black and Tans.” “His life testifies to the abiding truth that a determined person, given less than half a chance, can achieve anything that he or she desires sufficiently.”

Hotelier, barber shop owner, and TV host, Jonathan Morris is one of Fort Worth’s most recognizable young entrepreneurs who is both civically engaged and culturally influential. Last year, Morris opened Hotel Dryce off Montgomery Avenue and kicked off his own show, “Self Employed,” on Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Network. 

Steve Murrin, a businessman, realtor and developer, once a city councilman, the “Mayor of the Stockyards.” In 1973, Murrin began a movement that brought about the renovation of the area, turning it from decay and possible demolition to a place that draws visitors from all over the world. 

37 Louville Niles and Greenlief Simpson

The platform for Fort Worth’s thriving cattle centerpiece of the Stockyards was Boston. These two gentlemen provided the financial brawn to get a meat packing operation operational, Simpson going so far as to offer Texas cattlemen 50 cents more a head if they would ship their cattle to Fort Worth instead of the Kansas City stockyards. Most importantly, though, the two successfully lured Armour and Swift to the Stockyards. 

Ross Perot Jr. and his famous father’s vision for prairie land in north Fort Worth was more than merely an airstrip to help alleviate cargo pressure from DFW airport. Rather, they saw a model for inland ports with air, rail, and interstate highway transportation access. The AllianceTexas development has become a city within a city and gold as an economic development hub that pays lots of taxes into the public coffer.

Described as a “quiet mover of wealth and power,” Fort Worth-born Richard Rainwater, said to have a Midas touch for real estate, entertainment, and oil, was an iconic investor who got his start through a classmate at Stanford graduate school, Sid Bass. As an investment manager for the Bass family, Rainwater is credited with increasing the family’s fortune from $50 million to $5 billion between 1970-86. Rainwater started his own firm in 1986. Rainwater died in 2015, but the Rainwater Charitable Foundation is an enduring presence.

Sid Richardson, one of the last of the great wildcatting oilmen, was “a barrel-bodied, taciturn, plain-spoken man with a face of furrow-like wrinkles.” In his early days, he was most often broke, remembered Jerry Flemmons in Amon, “a fixture around the Fort Worth Club where his bills went unpaid for years.” Then his fortunes changed, striking black gold in West Texas, its reserves valued at more than a billion dollars. The philanthropy of the Sid Richardson Foundation and the Bass family has never seemingly recognized any boundary in Fort Worth.  

“John worked tirelessly to make Fort Worth a better place for over 50 years,” said Betsy Price of John Roach, a civic and business leader. He succeeded Charles Tandy as CEO of the Tandy Corporation in 1981, at 42 becoming one of the youngest CEOs in the country. While chairman of the TCU Board of Trustees, the school’s endowment more than doubled to roughly $1 billion. 

The son of a Mexican immigrant, Rudolpho Rodriguez opened a grocery store that serviced Fort Worth’s northside — and its growing Latino population — in 1939. The store would eventually morph into a popular tortilleria, which, today, is Rodriguez Foods. The food service distributor produces hand-rolled tamales and offers service to your doorstep. 

Elliott Roosevelt, FDR’s son, was another of Fort Worth-born-and-lived-here-a-long-time exceptions. Roosevelt married Ruth Googins, the daughter of a Swift and Armour executive. Roosevelt formed the Texas State Network in 1938 with KFJZ as its flagship. Roosevelt built a studio on West Lancaster, where the president once broadcast an address. The Roosevelt scion’s most important contributions, however, were as son of the president. He played an instrumental role in Amon Carter’s dogged pursuit of the bomber plant in the early 1940s. 

Sam Rosen, a Russian immigrant who traveled to the U.S. at 12, was a turn-of-the-century businessman and developer who owned the Fort Worth and Rosen Heights Street Railway Company and the Rosen Heights Amusement Company. After the relocation of the Swift and Armour meat packing plants, he developed the Rosen Heights neighborhood. 

Real estate tycoon John C. Ryan’s legacy in Fort Worth is the many residential neighborhoods that he planned and developed, including Morningside and Ryan Place. It was Ryan Place that Ryan chose to realize his belief in the City Beautiful Movement, which theorized that planned development and reverence for natural beauty would result in functional yet aesthetic neighborhoods. 

When he died in 1911 at age 64, Winfield Scott was the largest taxpayer in the city, his property holdings including four hotels and a fifth on the way (the future Hotel Texas) and an iconic mansion he had renovated but not yet moved into (Thistle Hill). This self-made man was worth an estimated $150 million today, his fortune made in cattle, banking, and cotton.  

One of the founders of XTO Energy, a company that specializes in the drilling and production of unconventional oil and natural gas assets — and was later acquired by ExxonMobil for $41 billion — Bob Simpson might be best known for his ownership stake in the Texas Rangers. Soon after purchasing the Rangers — and subsequently getting the franchise out of bankruptcy — in August 2010, the team went to its first World Series that October. 

C.R. Smith, a native Texan and first chief executive of American Airlines, guided the Fort Worth-based company through infancy to full maturity and status as the one of the world’s leading airlines. 

A merchant and civic leader, W.C. Stripling opened a store in the late 1800s that survived into the 2000s after merger with Cox. “He was that rare community leader who sought neither the limelight nor the honors of public office for himself, but who labored as energetically as any for the advancement of the community,” wrote the Star-Telegram at the time of his death in 1934. Stripling Middle School is named for him. 

Charles Tandy, a Central High graduate, began a career in sales at age 10, peddling strips of scrap leather from his father’s shop to classmates for a nickel. Several years later, he converted his father’s shop into a thriving leather crafts business, which became the Tandy Corporation in 1960. Tandy interests expanded when his company purchased the floundering Radio Shack in 1963, building it into the world’s largest consumer electronics chain. 

If one seeks a monument to Khleber Miller Van Zandt, “he has but to look about him,” the Star-Telegram eulogized upon the Major’s death in 1930. “No history of Fort Worth could be written without constant returning to the name of Van Zandt, and any story of the life of Major Van Zandt would provide a very complete history of Fort Worth.” His contributions include obtaining the first post office; building a street car system that was among the first in the state; and the driving force for bringing the Texas & Pacific railroad to Fort Worth. 

W.T. Waggoner, a prolific rancher, was said to be “mad as a nest of hornets” when he struck oil instead of the water he was drilling for at the Waggoner Ranch. What was he to do with oil? Turns out, one can do quite a bit as one of the wealthiest men in the Southwest. Waggoner moved to Fort Worth in 1904, became director of First National Bank, and built two office buildings. He also built a house, Thistle Hill, for his daughter as a wedding gift, which presumably was not on a Target registry.

When Amon Carter wanted to buy the Telegram he went to Paul Waples, head of Waples-Platter, a canning plant, for the capital investment. “A mighty oak has fallen this day in the forest of humanity,” the Star-Telegram wrote of his sudden death in 1916. Yet, it was his company’s Chuck Wagon Beans that looms as the man’s largest legacy. Renamed in 1935, Ranch Style Beans became a favorite worldwide.

W.R. Watt’s legendary run as head of the Fort Worth Stock Show began with a meeting with Amon Carter. Watt said he didn’t know anything about running a stock show. “I didn’t call you up here to learn what you can and cannot do,” Carter said, as recalled by Watt. “I called you up here to tell you you’re going to run the stock show.” Due to the efforts of Watts, the city boasted the largest municipally owned complex in the nation at the time of his death in 1977.

55-56 C.N. Williamson and E.E. Dickie

C.N. Williamson and his cousin E.E. Dickie had a hat distributorship with business across the state. In 1922, they bought U.S. Overall Company, a Fort Worth manufacturer, for $12,000. Williamson-Dickie was born. 

Daisy Emery Allen in 1897 became the first woman to graduate from a Texas medical school, completing her degree from Fort Worth Medical College.  Following med school, Allen became Tarrant County’s first female doctor in a career — here, in West Texas, and Oklahoma — that spanned almost 50 years. 

The leadership of Dr. Marion J. Brooks led to the integration of Fort Worth hospitals, but before that, he established the first hospital for Blacks in the city. “Before that, either you didn’t go or if you got in at all, they stuck you in the basement,” recalls Richard Selcer. 

Clifford Davis was largely responsible for the desegregation of the Fort Worth school district, stemming from a suit he filed in 1959 on behalf of two Black families, a legal challenge he won with a federal court order to integrate Fort Worth schools in 1962. 

Carl Everett, with scant resources, joined George J. Luibel and Danny Beyer in opening the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1970. Everett also led to the state of Texas’ support of TCOM under the banner of the University of North Texas and its board of regents.

Smith, Thomas (NIH/NIDDK) [E]

In 1903, Mary Keys Gipson received her nursing certificate at age 53, the first Black graduate of an accredited nursing school to work in the South. A lifelong advocate for the desegregation of the nursing profession, she was a founder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, which led to the integration of the American Nurses Association.

Texas Health Harris Methodist Fort Worth was the vision of Dr. Charles Harris, who opened a sanitarium just north of Rosedale Street in 1912. In 1920 the state Methodist conference, at the urging of Harris, took over the clinic and enlarged it as “Harris Hospital.” The conference built a new Methodist hospital in 1930. In 1937, the hospital was renamed Harris Memorial Methodist Hospital. 

Dee Kelly was a trusted adviser to some of the country’s most prominent citizens and organizations. His clients included the Bass and Moncrief families, John Justin, Anne Marion, and AMR Corp., the parent of American Airlines. Kelly was a friend to presidents, LBJ, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. 

William P. “Wild Bill” McLean Jr. is among Texas history’s most renowned defense attorneys. At his death at age 69 in 1941, Bill McLean had successfully defended 75 defendants accused of murder over the course of 35 years.

Dr. Bacon Saunders, a noted surgeon, was one of the founders of the Medical College at Fort Worth University and later TCU, and he went on to serve as dean for 10 years. However, Saunders is best known as the builder of the Flat Iron Building in downtown, erected in 1907 on its current site on Houston Street.

A visionary mayor who served longer than anyone in the job until Betsy Price, that was Bob Bolen, a toy and bicycle merchant turned devoted public servant. His enduring economic development legacy is Alliance Airport, which has turned into a development that has generated more than $100 billion in economic impact and more than $3.13 billion in total taxes paid to local public entities. 

Fort Worth’s first mayor, elected in 1873, was Dr. William P. Burts, who was sent to the earliest city dais by the skin of his teeth with Ed Terrell, Martin B. Loyd, and Gus Rintleman. They all served without pay, a circumstance some would undoubtedly say is much the same 173 years later. 

The longest-serving sheriff in Tarrant County history is Lon Evans, born and raised in Fort Worth, a football star at Polytechnic High School and TCU. In 1960, he won the first of several terms, eventually retiring in 1984. Evans is credited with modernizing the department and transforming it into a big-city department. An Evans biography noted that he was the first sheriff in Texas to hire a Black deputy. 

No Fort Worth marshal was reelected more times — eight terms — than Sam Farmer, who defeated three others, including Jim Courtright. He is credited with bringing a level of professionalism to the FWPD heretofore unseen, according to Richard Selcer’s Fort Worth Characters. 

Bayard Friedman was elected to the Fort Worth City Council in 1963 and appointed by the body to be mayor at age 36, believed to be the youngest ever mayor in the history of the city. (Mayor Mattie Parker was elected at 37.) As mayor, Friedman was the city’s chief negotiator with a city of Dallas delegation to hammer out an agreement for a shared airport authority that had the power to tax, build, operate, and maintain a regional airport. 

Kay Granger, a former teacher and businesswoman, became the first Republican woman to represent the U.S. House from Texas when she was elected to replace the retiring Pete Geren in 1998. Granger, the former Fort Worth City Council member and first female mayor of the city, is the ranking member of the House Committee on Appropriations. 

72 Maj. Edwin St. John Greble

Maj. Edwin St. John Greble was the first commander at Camp Bowie. “We are all here for the same purpose,” the general said, “to help the United States win the war for humanity. The troops will be ready for service as a good fighting machine in France whenever needed. We have an ideal place for training.”

Robert Gillis Johnson was Tarrant County judge for one term, beginning in 1893. He played a leading role on a Commissioners Court that approved the funds to build the 1895 courthouse, the one that stands today. For that vote, he and colleagues were promptly booted out of office, the plebeians believing the expense was too extravagant. History has affirmed the wisdom of that elected body’s appropriation.

Gib Lewis was the first person in history to be elected Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives for five terms. Lewis, first elected to the House in 1970, was elected Speaker in 1983 and became a key figure in the 1984 education act, the so-called “No Pass, No Play” legislation championed by Ross Perot and Gov. Mark White.

Henry C. Meacham, a merchant who owned Meacham’s Department Store, was Fort Worth’s first mayor under the council-manager system he espoused as chairman of the Citizens’ Association for Civic Advancement. Voters approved the new charter in 1924, and he was elected as one of nine City Council members in April 1925. Meacham was appointed mayor by his council colleagues. Meacham Field is named for the former mayor. 

Mike Moncrief served in a multitude of elected government positions for 41 years — culminating in Moncrief becoming the 43rd mayor of Fort Worth, a postiion he held for eight years. While mayor, Moncrief was instrumental in getting ESPN to broadcast their pregame shows from Sundance Square, showcasing downtown Fort Worth to tens of millions of television viewers.  

Anna Mowery served 18 years in the Texas Legislature, but it was her 13 years as the Tarrant County Republican Chair, the first woman to head a major political party in the county, that she made her most lasting impact, setting the foundation for making Tarrant County a bastion of Republican politics and policymaking. 

William “Pappy” O’Daniel, a president of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce while president of Burrus Mills and founder of Hillbilly Flour, created a political foundation in Fort Worth, which he used to win a home in the governor’s mansion in 1938 and a seat in the U.S. Senate by defeating Lyndon Johnson in a 1941 election that included a number of, ahem, suspect late returns.

Before Amon Carter, there was Boardman Buckley Paddock. He is mostly remembered as editor of the Fort Worth Democrat, and president of the Fort Worth and Rio Grande Railway Company and four-term mayor of Fort Worth. He used his positions at the Democrat and as mayor to reinforce the city’s status as a railroad and distribution hub. The bridge spanning the Trinity from the courthouse to the North Side was named the Paddock Viaduct in his honor. 

The longest-serving mayor of Fort Worth is Betsy Price, who stepped away from the city’s top elected office after five terms. Price presided over explosive population growth that saw Fort Worth become the 12th-largest city, while leading a council that managed to balance budgets and cut tax rates.81

Tom Vandergriff’s life dedicated to public service included a fruitful 26 years as mayor of Arlington, during which he brought the General Motors assembly plant to the city. He championed the elevation of Arlington State College to four-year status, but his pièce de résistance was negotiating the relocation of the Washington Senators to Texas in 1972. Vandergriff was also a congressman and Tarrant County Judge.

Jim Wright rose from modest means, not to mention the setback of defeat in the Texas House, to the highest echelons of power in Washington, D.C., as Speaker of the House from 1986-89. Wright evolved into a powerhouse in Congress, bringing bountiful tax dollars back into his district through his work on the House Public Works Committee, including lucrative defense contracts. 

Fort Worth citizens approved of single-member districts for the City Council in 1975. That created opportunities for traditionally underrepresented voting blocs, including Hispanics on the North Side. Louis Zapata used the change to make history, becoming the first Hispanic elected to the City Council in 1977, a position he held until 1991. 

Texas Wesleyan was founded as Polytechnic College in 1890 by the Methodist Episcopal Church. Bishop Hiram Boaz took over as president in 1902, envisioning a new university for Southern Methodism. Polytechnic College, he believed, could be that university. 

Victor Boschini, TCU’s 10th chancellor, has been on the job for 20 years during which he has overseen unprecedented growth, a strengthened academic profile and campus culture, and support, including the school’s most ambitious philanthropic campaign in history, Lead On, with a goal of $1 billion. 

Reby Cary, a World War II veteran who wrote more than 20 books on the history of Black men and women in Fort Worth, was the first African American to serve as trustee on the Fort Worth school board. He also served in the Texas state.

In 1873, Addison Clark conceived of opening a university in Texas in which the youth of the state might receive an education that was largely biblical so that they “might go forth and carry the word of the Lord as teachers.” That became TCU in 1895.

88-89 Stephen and Manet Fowler

“Together,” writes Richard Selcer, “Manet and Stephen Fowler broke down walls and blazed a trail in education and the arts from Fort Worth to New York City.” The native-born Fort Worth couple was, Selcer asserts, America’s first African American power couple, she the founder of the Mwalimu School of Music and Creative Art in New York City in 1933. Stephen made the “Colored YMCA” in Fort Worth a center of the Black community. 

90-91 James E. Guinn and Edward Guinn

The son of a former slave, James E. Guinn was principal of the South Side Colored School in 1900 — the first African American Fort Worth native to serve as principal in the school district. His grandson was Edward Guinn, a medical doctor with a practice in Stop Six who became the first Black Fort Worth city councilman, serving two terms, from 1967-71. 

Alexander Hogg was already recognized as an authority on education when John Peter Smith invited him to Fort Worth in the late 1800s to address a public assembly on the advantages of taxpayer-funded public schools. He was so convincing that Fort Worth indeed adopted the concept and then hired him as its first school superintendent. 

Robert Hughes, a Naismith basketball hall of famer, made Fort Worth the center of high school basketball across the state of Texas, the winningest all-time basketball coach in the nation with 1,333 victories over a 47-year career at Fort Worth’s I.M. Terrell and Dunbar. “You work the best you can every day. You practice every day; you carry yourself with dignity every day.” 

In 1906, R.L. Paschal was promoted from principal of the Fifth Ward school to principal of Fort Worth High School, later renamed Central High School. Paschal was the face and conscience of the public schools for the first third of the 20th century, until his retirement in 1935. Central was renamed R.L. Paschal High School in 1935.

Hazel Harvey Peace, a community leader in the Fort Worth African American community, was a teacher and administrator at I.M. Terrell for almost 50 years. She is credited as a driving force for Terrell’s high-quality college-prep curriculum despite the lack of resources that defined separate-but-unequal segregation. 

Sisters of St. Mary Namur

96 Sisters of St. Mary Namur

At the invitation of Fr. Jean Marie Guyot, the Sisters of St. Mary Namur opened Fort Worth’s first boarding school for Catholic girls in 1885, St. Ignatius Academy. Their growing institution required a new building on Hemphill in 1910, soon to become a landmark in town, which was called Our Lady of Victory Academy. 

On Oct. 6, 1899, the Masonic Home and School of Texas for widows and orphans and displaced children opened with Dr. Frank Rainey, a physician, legislator, and government official, as superintendent.

Fort Worth superintendent Alexander Hogg hired I.M. Terrell as principal and “Superintendent of Colored Schools.” He remained an advocate for education for Black children and college students his entire life. “As a builder of concerns with which he was connected, he had but few equals,” read one eulogy written for him in 1931. 

Described as tough but genial, superintendent Julius Truelson was the perfect leader to guide the Fort Worth school district through the choppy waters of integration and the very “tense days” after the city’s first court-ordered busing directive, moved by a determination to get on with the “business of educating children.”

William Tucker, once a Brite Divinity student in the 1950s, was named chancellor of TCU in 1979, a post he held until his retirement in 1998. During his tenure the university’s landscape changed with increased construction, and the school widened its range academically, too, with the start of an engineering program.

101-103 Eloise Snyder, Betty Spain, Jeanne Axtell 

Eloise Snyder, Betty Spain, and Jeanne Axtell Walker, all very capable musicians who left promising operatic careers in New York to join their husbands in Fort Worth, had a vision: the Fort Worth Opera.

Three people have received a ticker-tape parade in Fort Worth. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, just relieved of his duties in Korea by President Truman, was feted in 1951. John F. Kennedy, in pursuit of the presidency in 1960, was the second. And Alan Bean, the pride of Paschal High School and the fourth person to walk on the moon on the Apollo 12 mission in 1969, was the third. 

One of baseball’s most colorful personalities, Bobby Bragan was a player/manager with the Fort Worth Cats from 1948-52 and won two Texas League titles. Bragan made Fort Worth his home and invested in it through the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation. 

Once a dishwasher at Del Frisco’s who did the occasional open-mic, in the past seven years, the Fort Worth-based singer-songwriter has become one of the most widely recognized musicians in the world. And, with a frequent lyrical nods to his hometown, Leon Bridges might be Fort Worth’s biggest ambassador. 

Fort Worth, Arlington Heights, and TCU were the springboard into Betty Buckley’s career in the performing arts. Buckley co-starred in the widely popular “Eight Is Enough,” but she won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Grizabella in the original Broadway production of “Cats.” 

One of the most influential record producers of all time, T-Bone Burnett has had a hand in projects that changed the trajectory of popular music. Yet, he himself was greatly influenced by the city he calls home — regularly dropping into TCU’s Record Town when it was on University Drive and sneaking into local clubs to hear bands. Among Burnett’s production credits include the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers film “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” “August and Everything After” by the Counting Crows, and “Raising Sand” by Robert Plant and Alison Kraus.  

Benajah Harvey Carroll organized the Baylor Theological Seminary in 1905 and led in the founding of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1908. He served as its president until his death. 

North Side graduate Horace Carswell’s B-24 Liberator was struck by enemy fire while flying a bombing mission over the South China Sea in 1944 during World War II. He kept the plane aloft while the rest of his crew jumped out. He perished with his downed aircraft. For his bravery, Carswell was Fort Worth’s first Medal of Honor recipient. 

Wiley Clarkson is another of the notable architects whose fingerprints can be found all about the city, characterized by neoclassicism, Gothic, Italianate, and later art deco. His works during this time include Trinity Episcopal Church and the 1930 Harris Hospital building. In the late 1920s, he began producing many of the city’s best examples of the art deco medium, including the Sinclair Building, the Masonic Temple, the U.S. Courthouse, and North Side High School.

The Elvis of classical music, Van Cliburn broke Cold War barriers by captivating a rapt Russian audience with stirring interpretations, including Piano Concerto No. 1, in winning the inaugural Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958. The quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition attracts a streaming audience of millions to Fort Worth. 

A force in the public education system, Alice Contreras was the first female director of the FWISD bilingual department — a position she captured in 1976. The following decade, Fort Worth saw an influx of immigrants from Mexico, and through programs championed by Contreras, these students were able to master English and receive a proper education. 

114-115 Jim Courtright and Luke Short

The duel between ignoble characters “Longhair Jim” Courtright — his given name was Timothy, and he didn’t have long hair — and Luke Short at the White Elephant Saloon, historian Richard Selcer contents, “is the second-most famous shootout in Western history after the O.K. Corral.”

What has become a massive restaurant whose capacity seems almost immeasurable began as a quaint 16-seat restaurant. Joe T. Garcia and his wife, Jessie, opened the Mexican diner — which carries Garcia’s name — in 1935, and its popularity quickly soared. Though Garcia would die in 1953, the following decades saw continued growth, and the restaurant’s reputation spread worldwide. Garcia created one of Fort Worth’s undeniable landmarks. 

There are two Preston Gerens, father and son, and both were instrumental in shaping the architectural landscape of Fort Worth. As chief engineer for Sanguinet, Staats & Hedrick, the senior Geren worked on the Fort Worth Club and the Texas and Pacific Passenger Terminal. Geren formed his own firm, which his son joined in 1949. That firm was responsible for the design of Arlington Heights High School and Farrington Field, as well as the 30-story Continental Bank Building, with the revolving clock and temperature display. 

Under the direction of TCU graduate John Giordano, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra took on world-class status. More importantly, he democratized classical music, bringing it to the people, as he told TCU Magazine. “Some people feel uncomfortable going to a concert in a venue like Bass Hall. So, we also performed throughout the community” and to diverse audiences. 

While it’s difficult to pinpoint the first Mexican immigrant to Fort Worth, Riley Gonzalez, who no doubt was among the first wave of immigrants, serves as a representative of those who came to the northside of Fort Worth from Mexico. A factory worker who likely moved to Fort Worth in 1920, Gonzalez — along with the thousands of Mexicans who moved in preceding years — would greatly impact the city through new businesses, cultural and religious institutions, art, food, and more.  

This Catholic missionary priest from Galveston laid the foundation of Catholic society in Fort Worth, growing a city with 15 Catholic families in 1884 to seeing through the construction of St. Patrick, today the cathedral of the Diocese of Fort Worth. The building, dedicated in 1892, features the first stained-glass windows in North Texas, all of them imported from Germany.

121-122 Frederick Gunn and Louis Curtis

Fort Worth has been blessed with able architects designing the buildings that stand in downtown. Frederick Gunn and Louis Curtis drew up the blueprints for the 1895 Tarrant County Courthouse. 

To this day, Al Hayne is the face of courage, the only fatality in the 1890 Spring Palace fire. Hayne, a civil engineer, was killed while directing panicked throngs of people to the various exits of the burning building. The monument to him still stands at the intersection of Lancaster, Main, and Houston streets.

Three of the most important art deco structures in the city’s architectural arsenal are thanks to Wyatt Hedrick. A prolific architect, Hedrick designed the Will Rogers Memorial Center, including the Pioneer Tower; the Texas and Pacific Terminal and Warehouse; the downtown Electric Building; and the U.S. Post Office on Lancaster. 

In the 1960s, General Dynamics engineer Harry Hillaker began designing the jet fighter of his dreams. Working secretly at first with a design team and a group from the Pentagon, including Maj. John Boyd, Hillaker is credited with turning a collection of ideas, theories, and the concept of a “lightweight fighter” into the revolutionary F-16. 

The Hawk, who got his start in golf as a caddy at Glen Garden Country Club, made Fort Worth golf’s center stage through his inspirational comeback from a near-fatal car accident; his 1953 season, considered one of the best in history, with three majors wins; and his golf equipment company that became the standard-bearer for the industry. Oh, and observers also acknowledged his nine major titles.

A mostly forgotten Fort Worthian, this baseball hall of famer got his start on the North Side, playing at age 13 on the Armour meat packing plant team. At 15, he was playing in an adult league in Fort Worth and a semipro team in Granbury. In 1915, the St. Louis Cardinals discovered him. 

In 1921, Amon Carter asked Harold Hough, the Star-Telegram circulation manager, to build a radio station and to spend no more than $300 doing so. Hough was WBAP’s first broadcaster and first station manager. In 1946, Carter tapped him to build a television station, WBAP-TV, today NBC5. 

While he was successful as the owner of Jara Printing Co., Manuel Jara was more known for his civic involvement. Jara worked tirelessly to achieve great cooperation and understanding among the city’s ethnic groups and served as president of the Mexican-American Chamber of Commerce and of the Boy Scouts Outreach program. FWISD named an elementary school after Jara in 1988. 

Bud Kennedy was in the newspaper before he was even born. He was sold for $600 to his adoptive parents, who made the purchase out of a classified ad in the Fort Worth Press. He’s still in the newspaper and all the other media platforms, opining mostly on good — and bad — local government and public policy players, as well as chicken-fried steak. 

For more than two decades, the beloved Fr. Stephen Jasso was a leader on the North Side as an advocate for Catholic education, a champion of immigrants’ rights, and the unborn. He also served on the city’s Task Force on Racism. In 2002, he met with President George W. Bush during the Hispanic Leadership Summit. 

Paschal and TCU graduate Dan Jenkins was a prolific author of sports novels, always with a place in them for his hometown. Semi-Tough and Dead Solid Perfect were adapted by Hollywood for the big screen. 

Knowing literary resources and learning are inextricably linked to a city’s public library, Mrs. D.B. Keeler asked every man in town to donate the price of a good cigar to the library fund. She also wrote to Andrew Carnegie, the philanthropist who made public libraries a personal mission statement. Carnegie was sold, donating the “magnificent sum of 50,000 for the Public Free Library.” 

Yale Lary is Fort Worth’s only member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, enshrined in 1979 in a football journey that began at North Side High School. Lary was a member of the Texas House of Representatives while still playing, from 1959-63. 

Last year, the grandmother of Juneteenth, Opal Lee, saw her decades-long fight to make Juneteenth a national holiday become a reality. On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that made Juneteenth the first federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The 95-year-old Lee remains a spry and deeply engaged activist who routinely shows up to events and lends her voice to numerous social causes. 

Tim Love, Fort Worth’s most prolific and recognizable chef and restaurateur, has opened four new concepts in the past three years. With three of those concepts opening in the Stockyards — and an upcoming music venue, too — Love has had a significant hand in shaping and redefining the Stockyards, which remains Fort Worth’s most important real estate.  

Rufino Mendoza was at the forefront of desegregating Fort Worth’s public schools. A longtime Hispanic activist, Mendoza was a founding member and former chairman of the Mexican-American Educational Advisory Committee. The lawsuit that resulted in the desegregation of Fort Worth schools came to be known as the “Mendoza lawsuit.” 

Dutch Meyer, with the help of two great quarterbacks in Sammy Baugh and Davey O’Brien, put TCU on the football map in the 1930s, culminating with a national championship in 1938. 

Nolan was a distinguished prelate and nurturer of the Catholic flock of Fort Worth for almost 40 years. While a priest at St. Patrick’s, he was appointed dean of the Fort Worth part of the Diocese of Dallas, a post he held until his death in 1939. The diocese renamed the new coed Our Lady of Victory High School in his honor in 1962.

Rev. J. Frank Norris virtually created Protestant Christian fundamentalism with congregations in Fort Worth and Detroit. He preached both the Gospel and controversy. Norris raised most of the money to move the Seminary to Fort Worth though he ultimately had a falling out with the seminary and Baylor over Evolution. To that end, he started Arlington Baptist College. 

Quarterback Davey O’Brien capped TCU’s 1938 national championship-winning season by accepting the Heisman Trophy, the only TCU player to win college football’s most prestigious award. The Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award, presented to college football’s most outstanding quarterback, has been presented since 1977.

Gary Patterson turned TCU football into a prominent player on the national stage, and in doing so infused millions of dollars into the university by way of bowl games won, increased national exposure, and an invitation to a Power 5 conference, the Big 12. The Gary Patterson Foundation focuses on educational opportunities for children. 

No one knew the picturesque little boy who made it as an extra in pictures of the crowd during President John Kennedy’s impromptu address in Fort Worth the morning of Nov. 22. However, when he died in 2017, Bill Paxton was known to worldwide audiences as a Hollywood leading man, with almost 100 credits as an actor and director. 

The oldest Mexican-owned restaurant in town, The Original Mexican Eats Café, was also a favorite for frequent visitor President Franklin Delano Roosevelt — who the restaurant has rightfully named a dish after. The Original Mexican Eats Café, which Geronimo Pineda opened in 1926, is unique in that it is located in the traditionally Anglo west side of town. Their clientele was a proverbial who’s who among Fort Worth’s elite, including the Leonards, the Moncriefs, and the Carters. 

Fort Worth’s introduction to the great flying machine occurred on Oct. 17, 1911, when Cal P. Rodgers flew the first airplane into Fort Worth. Landing south of town in Ryan’s Pasture, the pilot was welcomed by cheering throngs, including Amon Carter. The next morning, an estimated 5,000 were on hand to watch Rodgers take off in his Vin-Fiz Flyer for the State Fair in Dallas, a 41-minute trip. Your read that right: 41 minutes.

Lenora Rolla was the founder of the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society. In that position, Rolla was personally responsible for the recovery and preservation of most of Tarrant County’s African-American artifacts.

On Dec. 11, 1921, Fred Rouse, a Black meatpacking plant worker, was lynched by a mob of White men at the corner of 12th Street and Samuels Avenue. Despite his untimely death, Rouse’s name and story have become a rallying cry for locals who seek equity and understanding. His name will also grace the 1012 North Main Street building — which once housed the local Ku Klux Klan chapter. The large structure situated between the Stockyards and downtown will become the Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing. 

Johnny Rutherford, another North Side High School graduate, reached racing’s pinnacle at age 37 by winning the illustrious Indianapolis 500 in 1974. He went on to win it twice more, in 1976 and 1980. 

Leonard Sanders was a reporter for the Star-Telegram who eventually cast his lot as a nationally best-selling author and struck gold with a number of books, including Fort Worth, which depicted the city’s early history told through historical fiction. 

Jennie Scott Scheuber brought “civilization to Fort Worth.” Scheuber, who founded the Fort Worth Public Library Association, was the city’s first librarian and stayed on the job for 38 years. But her contributions also included founding the Fort Worth Art Museum and co-founding the Fort Worth Children’s Hospital. 

Thanks to his time anchoring the CBS Saturday Evening News for 20 years, and moderating the Sunday public affairs show, “Face the Nation,” Bob Schieffer might be the most recognizable Fort Worthian of all time. A proud graduate of TCU, the decorated journalist, who’s interviewed countless world leaders and shakers, became the namesake for the university’s school of communication, which is now called the Bob Schieffer College of Communication.  

The distinct designs of Bass Performance Hall, the National Cowgirl Museum, the Fort Worth Central Library, the Sid Richardson Museum, and Globe Life Park in Arlington are all the work of David Schwarz. Though the well-regarded architect may be based in Washington, D.C., there’s little doubt he has had a major impact on the city’s aesthetics. 

Maj. Bill Smith, a WWII veteran in the Army Air Corps who retired out of Carswell, was our Col. Tom Parker. As a record producer based in Fort Worth, No. 1 hits were generated by “Hey! Baby,” by Bruce Channel, and “Hey Paula” by Ray Hildebrand and Jill Jackson. Rising to No. 2 on the charts was “Last Kiss,” performed by J. Frank Wilson. Maj. Bill is credited with discovering McClinton, an Arlington Heights guy, and reputedly turned down John Denver, another Heights grad. 

Following the city’s incorporation in 1873, city leaders decided that their little town needed an officer of color to police the Black community, “serving as a combination enforcer and liaison.” Hagar Tucker, one of the few, perhaps only, Black man in Tarrant County who owned property and was registered to vote a mere two years after the Civil War, was that man 

Music fans across the world know the music of Bob Wills, whose career as a fiddler, leader of the band Texas Playboys, and father of Western swing is inextricably linked with Fort Worth, where he died in 1975. It all began in Fort Worth at KFJZ, which signed him to play on its radio frequency.

A notable exception to the qualification that our subjects must be born here or lived a substantial part of their lives here. The picture of “The Fort Worth Five,” which included Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, taken in Fort Worth and the ghosts of these characters had unmistakable influence that endures to this day. The 1969 movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Katharine Ross, brought international attention to Fort Worth. 

Ramona Bass, a lifelong animal lover, had a plan to remake the zoo, a public-private partnership to manage the Fort Worth Zoo. The city would retain ownership while the Fort Worth Zoological Association would manage it. Texas Wild was merely the first successful project. The arrangement, which has infused $300 million into the Fort Worth institution, has made the Fort Worth Zoo world class and a destination for residents and visitors alike. 

In July of 1896, Mrs. George Beggs and 15 women from Trinity Episcopal Church met at the house of one of the ladies and left there with an agreed determination that a new hospital in the city was needed for the growing city. All Saints Hospital was dedicated in 1900.

Nenetta Burton Carter, Amon Carter’s second wife, used her energy and resources for the advancement of her city, most notably her efforts on behalf of Fort Worth Children’s Hospital, which in the 1980s merged with Cook Children’s Medical Center. She was also a benefactor of St. Joseph Hospital. 

Missouri Matilda Nail Cook dedicated the oil royalties from her ranch in Albany to build a children’s hospital in Fort Worth in memory of her husband and their only daughter. In 1952, when polio was still an epidemic, that hospital was converted to a facility for crippled children and renamed Cook Children’s Hospital.

According to Anne Marion, “When it comes to the bottom line, Kay is responsible for everything the Kimbell has become.” Fortson, the niece of Kay Kimbell, inherited the mandate of building a first-class museum from her uncle. Despite zero experience in such an endeavor, Fortson persevered and, after hiring the right people to fill the right seats, created a world-renowned art museum.

Pete Geren, successor to Jim Wright in the U.S. House and later Secretary of the Army under George W. Bush, is president of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation. 

One of Fort Worth’s greatest lives in all of its history is Edna Gladney, who had no children of her own. Yet, she found homes for more than 10,000 children in Texas during a 50-year career as superintendent of the Texas Children’s Home and Aid Society. Furthermore, she lobbied the Texas Legislature to have “illegitimate” removed from birth certificates of babies born out of wedlock. 

James J. Jarvis, lawyer and public servant who served in the Texas Senate from 1887-89, made very successful real estate investments, using his wealth to advance this city and community. Jarvis was founder and a charter member of TCU, and he established the Jarvis Institute, later renamed Jarvis Christian College — a historically Black college in East Texas — by donating land. 

Van Zandt Jarvis, son of James Jarvis, is credited with saving TCU, as well as working actively to obtain the offer to relocate to Fort Worth. Facing a debt of $275,000 and “the dark prospect of having to close its doors,” Jarvis “almost singlehandedly set in motion a campaign which successfully salvaged the institution.” Jarvis was also a mayor and city councilman for 10 years.

At the time of his death in 1964, Kay Kimbell was the head of more than 70 corporations, but business was only part of what defined him. He established the Kimbell Art Foundation in 1935. 

As heiress of Burk Burnett’s fortune, Anne Marion has spread benevolence east and west, north and south in the areas of arts and culture in Fort Worth and beyond. 

168-169 Nicholas and Louella Martin

As a philanthropist in Fort Worth, Louella Martin has been an agent of the good news of the Gospels. Texas Wesleyan is one of a long list of beneficiaries of the Nicholas and Louella Martin Foundation. 

The Lena Pope home began in 1930 out of her concern for 12 homeless children living in the basement of Broadway Baptist Church. 

Ruth Carter Stevenson’s philanthropic pursuits began with art. Stevenson was 26 years old when she brought the first American art exhibit to Fort Worth in 1949. After the death of her father, she took his vision for an art museum available to be enjoyed by everybody and built a world-class museum, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. 

In 1978, Anne Burnett Tandy founded the Anne Burnett Tandy and Charles Tandy Foundation, with resources focused on nonprofit sector in Fort Worth in the fields of education, health, community affairs, human services, and arts and the humanities. 

A transformative experience changed Ida Turner’s life and the life of Fort Worth. Turner and others were bewildered to find that the city had no hospital to provide charity care for children. She changed that: The Fort Worth Free Baby Hospital was opened in 1918, later becoming the Fort Worth Children’s Hospital.   

Brian Kendall is the executive editor of Fort Worth Magazine.

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