Where I Come from

by Woolley, Bryan

• ISBN13: 9781574411645
• ISBN10: 1574411640
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-09-01
• Publisher: Texas A & M Univ Pr

Summary

Everybody has a story to tell. In former times families sat together and told of things that happened to them or to their parents or to more distant ancestors. In this way, a family's history and folklore were passed down through the generations. Nowadays, people don't sit together and swap stories. As a result, many Americans born during the past fifty years have almost no knowledge of their own family histories. They have lost their roots. They have little or no idea where they come from. In 1999 Bryan Woolley of The Dallas Morning News set out to record the stories of ordinary people in North Texas, to tell about their lives, especially their past, and how they became who they became. These stories were published in a column entitled "Where I Come From," which ran in the Sunday newspaper from May 1999 to December 2000, to great reader acclaim. Now, for the first time in book form, the best of those stories is gathered herein with photos of each storyteller. Among the people featured--an orphan boy who lived in a movie theater; a refugee who traveled a long r

Author Biography

Bryan Woolley is a native Texan and a senior writer on the staff of The Dallas Morning News. He has won many awards for his journalism and has published four novels and seven works of nonfiction, He lives in Dallas

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(4)
Kenneth Irby, orphan	5	(6)
Tony Zoppi, friend of stars	11	(6)
Jennifer Nguyen, war exile	17	(6)
Lois Adair, saloonkeeper	23	(6)
Clebo Rainey, performance poet	29	(6)
Jeanette Crumpler, the Tomato Lady	35	(6)
Frank Rush, pioneer entertainer	41	(6)
Denise Brown, member of the French Resistance	47	(10)
Burt Finger, gallery owner	57	(6)
Kenneth Adams, shoeshine man	63	(4)
James Jennings, back-roads traveler	67	(6)
Ed Seay Sr., model builder	73	(8)
Oksana Marchenko, new citizen	81
Beatrice Woolley, mother	57	(38)
Dale Long, bomb survivor	95	(6)
Terry Baker, finder of lost heroes	101	(6)
Gwendolyn Leakey, singer and yodeler	107	(6)
Frances James, the Cemetery Lady	113	(6)
Aki, hair stylist and potter	119	(6)
Etta Maberry, doing whatever had to be done	125	(6)
Lindon Dodge, paraplegic	131	(4)
R.L. Griffin, blues singer	135	(6)
Herbert Shore, gerontologist	141	(6)
Leo Laufer, Holocaust survivor	147	(18)
James Bell, firefighter	165	(6)
Ann Cushing Gantz, painter	171	(6)
John Hardman, puppeteer	177	(8)
Abel Reyna, history teacher	185	(6)
Sam Baker, public radio host	191	(6)
Big Bill Johnson, the Singing Drywall Man	197	(6)
Alfred Martinez, restaurateur	203	(6)
Pat Arnold, dog lover	209	(6)
Bob Walker, barbecue chef	215	(6)
Billy Roy Switzer, one-man band	221	(6)
Paul Hastings, singing store greeter	227	(6)
Quida Johnson, schoolteacher	233	(6)
Bob Colombe, Lakota barber	239	(6)
Frank Joseph, rabbi disk jockey	245	(6)
Efren Ortega, priest	251	(6)
Netha Stanton, actress	257	(6)
Fred Bruner, defense attorney	263	(6)
Al Cornelius, county judge	269	(6)
Artist Thornton, helper of young people	275