Texas Almanac, 1947-1948 Page: 39
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FIRST CITIZEN OF TEXAS. 39
titular head of the corporation. Upon Mrs.
Belo's death in 1912 Lombardi succeeded
to the presidency. It was not until his
death in 1919 that Dealey became the
chief officer of the company.
Long Trusteeship.
The twenty years after 1906 were
essentially a period of stewardship in
Dealey's guidance of The News and its
associated enterprises. He had a strong,
typically English sense of property, and
his first concern was to manage and de-
velop the heritage of the Belo heirs to
their best advantage at all times. The
chivalric was a striking part of his make-
up, and he exhibited toward the widowed
women and the young grandchildren all
the patience and fatherly interest of a
true and lasting friend.
There was no deflecting from the
course which he had been choosing for
The News, however. He had the skill of a
born businessman and was endowed with
what might be called a Galsworthian
sense of property. Yet he had long since
learned that a newspaper is more than a
private business enterprise. Its institu-
tional character, for good or for evil, was
plain to him. In the words of one who
knew his heart and mind most intimate-
ly, Dealey considered it "the business of a
newspaper always to be a newspaper first
and a money-making business second." It
stood to reason with him that if a news-
paper was good, it could not help but be
successful. He did not consider that the
proprietors of a newspaper owned that
paper half so much as the public it
served. He did not esteem any newspaper
as being half good if it did not feel its
responsibility to its city, its state and its
nation-and actively exercise that respon-
sibility.
As vice-president and general manager
Dealey held firm to his fixed principles
of journalistic ethics which he felt bound
to stick to even when that meant turning
down profitable advertising contracts or
the loss, even permanently, of subscribers
and readers. These were principles to
which Colonel Belo had subscribed, no
less than Willard Richardson in the
beginning. And out of this credo of jour-
nalism Dealey continued and increased
his promotion of those causes and move-
ments which he felt were in the interest
of his fellow man.
Major items in the original Kessler
Plan for Dallas became realities under the
impetus of Dealey and the newspaper.
The long dream for a unified railroad
passenger station came true in 1916. The
removal of railroad tracks on Pacific
Avenue-a veritable death trap lying
athwart the downtown business district-
was effected in 1921 after a decade of
infinitely detailed work. The Houston
Street Viaduct, longest concrete structureof its kind in the world at the time, was
opened in 1912. White Rock Lake in 1911
promised to solve the city's water supply
problem for years to come. The preven-
tion of disastrous floods in the Trinity
Valley through the heart of the city and
the reclamation of needed land between
Dallas proper and Oak Cliff came nearer
to reality as Kessler, Goethals and other
experts were called min to aid local civic
leaders in working out some final solu-
tion.
The internal affairs of The News be-
came more complex during these same
years of stewardship. In 1914 an after-
noon daily, The Dallas Journal, was
started, which continued publication until
its sale in 1938. Like its parent Dallas
News, The Dallas Journal had been
created primarily to meet circulation
demands, notably in outlying territories
where it was then difficult to deliver a
morning edition promptly enough. This
was before high-speed truck delivery over
modern highways could be used as today
to deliver The Dallas News up to 200
miles from Dallas by breakfast time.
There was The Galveston Daily News.
There were also two editions of the Semi-
Weekly Farm News, one at Galveston and
the other at Dallas. In the middle twenties
the Texas Almanac took on renewed life,
and ha- been published regularly since
that time.
Birth of WFAA.
A new and challenging development
in a field allied to journalism con-
fronted Dealey for a decision as the third
decade of the century opened up. This
was radiobroadcasting, hardly more than
an electrical toy, but one that was des-
tined to become a great industry. His
elder son, Walter A. Dealey, had been
with the company since 1912, and it wa s-
the faith which this son had in the new
device that was caught and held by his
father. In 1922 a small 100-watt radio
station was started by The News. Station
WFAA's first antennae were strung from
the top of The News Building to a near-
by skyscraper. Its first radio studio was a
portion of the second floor of The News
Building, shared with the newspaper
library. From this small beginning has
grown the family of allied broadcasting
services of the company. WFAA itself
became the first 50,000-watt superpower
station operated by a newspaper in the
South. KGKO came along to provide ad-
ditional network and local radio service.
The broadcasting studios moved progres-
sively to more stately quarters until
present facilities atop the second unit of
the Santa Fe Building were occupied in
1940. Dealey lived long enough to know
that the company's application for a fre-
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Texas Almanac, 1947-1948, book, 1947; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117136/m1/41/?q=%22oil-gas%22: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.