The Hopkins County Echo (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 201, No. 3, Ed. 1 Friday, January 19, 1996 Page: 4 of 4
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Hopkins County Area Newspapers and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Hopkins County Genealogical Society.
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Bud Sides; on engineering technician with the state Davis and Connally streets Thursday morning. The
highway department, puts the finishing touches on ramps and railings have been an on-going project
a railing for a handicapped ramp on the corner of for almost a year.
Driver Beware
City traffic enforcement more active
By BRUCE ALSOBROOK
Check that inspection sticker and
make sure the old insurance card is
handy before taking off on the next
Sunday drive or you might be taking
a trip to municipal court.
With the dawn of a new month —
aided by a shift change at the Sulphur
Springs Police Department — has
come a multitude of traffic tickets
issued to drivers in Sulphur Springs.
In the past six days, police have giv-
en out a whopping 147 citations,
many for expired inspection stickers
and driving without proof of insur-
ance.
Sulphur Springs Police Chief Don-
nie Lewis said patrol officers became
more “pro-active” enforcers of traffic
laws recently after police personnel
switched to new shifts, and were told
by supervisors to pay more attention
to traffic vi<
1 shifts, and one
m3
: violations.
**lhay fcawc changi
CITATION: Officer Harold
McClure writes a citation Wednes-
day afternoon on College Street
of the supervisors told them they
needed to pick up on traffic enforce-
ment,” Lewis said. “They’re being a
little more pro-active on enforce-
ment.”
He said a quick check of violations
found that driving without insurance,
along with expired inspection and
registration stickers, have dominated
the lists of violations.
Students plot their plot for space shot
By DAWN CHALAIRE
Students at Houston Elementary
School are putting Sulphur Springs on
the map.
The satellite resolution map, that is.
Two classes of first-graders, along
with their teachers Salli McClendon
and Trish Elliott, visited Heritage
Park Thursday equipped with a tape
measure, compass, orange traffic
cones and a sophisticated hand-held
global positioning system (GPS).
As part of the school’s Globe Pro-
gram, their mission was to stake out a
30-by-30-meter plot, find its center
and record the coordinates of the
location.
Next, the latitude, longitude and
elevation, along with the date and
name of the school, will be engraved
on a brass marker supplied by the
program and embedded into the
Bent out
of shape
Travis Elemen-
tary School
fourth-grader
Alton Vititow
gets some sup-
port from Sul-
phur Springs
High School
cheerleader Ash-
ley Westbrook
as she does a
back bend
Thursday after-
noon. Travis stu-
dents were try-
ing out — with
the help of the
cheerleaders —
for the school's
new gymnastics
team.
0y Amy Logoi
SSISD discovers that hiring
minorities not always easy
By BRUCE ALSOBROOK
News-Telegram City Editor_
Finding minority teachers to add to
the faculty of Sulphur Springs High
School may prove to be harder than it
sounds.
A speaker at Tuesday night’s Sul-
phur Springs Independent School
District board of trustees meeting said
she was concerned about the lack of
African-American teachers in the
school district, and urged the board to
take action to resolve the situation.
But SSISD Superintendent Paul
Glover said Wednesday the problem
is not because there are no qualified
teachers, nor is it a lack of desire on
the school district’s behalf to hire
minority instructors. The problem is
more one of supply and demand.
“No, it’s not that simple,” said
Glover, who pointed out that a com-
mittee was appointed in the fall to
join school personnel on spring visits
to universities in an effort to recruit
minority instructors.
"They’re finding out when they go
with us to recruit that there are just
not that many, out there. A good
minority teacher with a choice
between coming to Sulphur Springs
or going to Richardson and making
$10,000 a year more, it doesn’t take
long to make that decision.
“Unless they have some tie to Sul-
phur Springs, they’re going to look
for where their salary is the highest,
and I can’t blame them.”
The lack of minority teachers is not
a problem confined to Sulphur
Springs, either.
“We’ve got a program going now
we’re working on with East Texas
State University and Greenville, Paris
and Commerce ISDs to try and
address our recruitment of minority
teachers,” Glover said. “It’s some-
thing we know we have a need for,
and we’re certainly addressing that.”
SSISD is not without instructors
who are members of minority groups.
There are minority teachers in tne
middle and elementary school sys-
tems, and one elementary principal is
African-American. There are also
instructional aides at the high school
who are members of minorities, but
there are no full-time minority teach-
ers at the high school.
“High school is where we have the
most difficulty,” Glover acknowl-
edged. “Most of the applicants we
have are for the elementary school
level. We have very few minority
applicants at the high school level.
“We’re working on it,” he added.
“We know it’s been a concern for all
the community, as well as the school
district, and we’re working on it as
diligently as we can.”
“It seems like this morning it’s kind
of leveled down some, but for some
reason this month we’ve had a lot of
those,” Lewis said.
He added however, that the police
department does not operate under a
“quota system,” and won’t as long as
he has a say in the matter.
“We do not, repeat, do not have a
quota system, and I will never volun-
tarily work under a quota system,”
Lewis said. “That’s part of our job.
We have to issue citations the same as
we have to work traffic accidents. But
I like an even balance, and I have
never gone out and put any kind of
quota system, other than telling our
patrols they need to pay more atten-
tion to traffic.”
He also believes more diligent
enforcement of traffic laws helps hold
down the number of wrecks that
occur.
“I do think it holds down on traffic
accidents when you’ve got a pretty
progressive traffic force,” he said.
ground.
“Once we do that, we’ll be able to
get a global image of our site on the
computer that we have at school,”
said McClendon, who is in charge of
the Globe program at Houston.
“So the kids will actually be able to
see from a satellite in the sky what
our plot looks like.”
McClendon said that the entire
school, grades K-4, has already been
involved in the Globe program for
about two months.
Every Friday, fourth-graders mea-
sure the temperature of the pond in
Heritage Park and bring back a water
sample to test for acidity.
Second-graders are in charge of
entering all of the data onto the com-
puter.
McClendon’s first-grade classes
have been recording data from a U-
shaped minimum-maximum ther-
mometer located outside the school.
At Home With Words
Just 6, and already published
Jeffrey Johnson, 6, holds the magazine that recent-
ly printed his winning entry in a poetry contest. His
15-line, three-stanza poem, “The Race,” was
judged the best entry from children 6 and under in
Staff Photo By Amy Logan
a contest held by Racing For Kids magazine. Jef-
frey’s teacher at Austin Elementary School said the
student is an avid reader and writer.
1 st-grader wins poetry contest
By BRUCE ALSOBROOK
News-Telegram City Editor
At an age when some kids are
struggling to write complete sen-
tences, Jeffrey Johnson is already a
published author.
The Austin Elementary School
first-grader, an avid reader and
writer, won a recent poetry contest
for ages 6 and under in Racing For
Kids magazine.
The 15-line, three stanza poem.
“The Race,” tells of a racing fan’s
trip to the track “to see my favorite
car.”
“My Mom had to help me with
spelling the words, because I don’t
know how to spell all of the
words,” he admitted, but that was
all the help he got. The words and
meter were all his own composi-
tion.
“I think that’s really wonderful
for a 6-year-old to come up with a
form like that,” said Stacy Davis,
Jeffrey’s teacher at Austin who
describes him as a “good, good
kid.”
“He did not tell me he was doing
that. His mother showed it to me,”
she said.
“She said he had worked &n it at
home, and apparently he did it all
by himself. She helped him with
some of the spelling, but he came
up with the form.”
“Oh, he’s a sharp boy,” said
Tona Sue Hudson, principal at
Austin.
A big gap-toothed smile spreads
across Jeffrey's face when he talks
about racing. He’s never actually
been to the track — but he wants to
go some day.
“One of my uncles has been to a
lot of races. He works at Jim’s
[Truck Repair], and they have a
race car tow truck. He goes to
races a lot.”
Jeffrey is always writing, Davis
said.
“He loves to write, and he loves
to read,” Davis said. “I still have
several [students] that, when they
write, they’re just writing one or
two words, but that [poem] is won-
derful.”
Jeffrey and his classmates get
some training at school through a
writing center they attend.
“Sometimes they do lists, some-
times they have to write a story, or
fill in the blanks. It’s just different
things on different weeks,” Davis
said.
For his writing efforts, Jeffrey
said he received a race car game
from the magazine.
“My grandmother, she likes that
game. It’s at her house. When I go
over there, we’re going to play it.”
The big rock on College Street
«
Legends aside, a local doctor used it to mount his horse
' I' here are many stories and legends that tell
A about Sulphur Springs’ early history.
Some have grown over the years to contain as
much fiction as fact, making it very difficult for
a historian to sometimes separate truth from leg-
end.
Although historical fiction may hold more
interest for the reader, facts are necessary to tell
the correct history. There are many.jiistoncal
events that are documented and still raise inter-
est in the days of yore.
One of these stories centers around a large
rock on College Street. It has been a central
meeting place and a source of great imagination
for generations of children.
The rock is several feet long and weighs sev-
eral hundred pounds. It is located at 414 College
in the front yard of Dr. Bill Bryant, and it’s been
there for over a hundred years.
The property was once owned by Dr Edwin
P. Becton. He bought the property in 1874 and
moved to Sulphur Springs from Tarrant, the
original county seat. He reputably moved his
home from Tarrant and rebuilt it on this site.
Becton was a noted physician and had mar-
ried the widow of another Tarrant doctor, D.
Powhatten L. Smith.
Mrs. Smith, the former Olivia Bowman, was
an early settler of Tarrant. Dr. Smith had come
from Jefferson and his sister, Sardinia Smith
Hopkins
County
Remembered
Perry was the first owner of the famed Excelsior
Hotel of Jefferson.
Becton first married Mary Dickson in 1857.
They had three children, Mrs. J.J. Nunnally,
Mrs L.J. Wortham and Dr. Joe Becton. Mrs.
Wortham's husband was the editor for the Fort
Worth Star Telegram for many years.
When his first wife died. Becton married Mrs.
Smith in 1867. They also had three children,
Mrs. Elbe McDaniel, Mrs. Mary A. Chandler
and Dr. Ed Becton Jr. Drs. Ed and Joe ran the
Becton Hospital in Greenville for many years.
Mrs. Olivia Smith Becton had two daughters
from her previous marriage. Kate Baxter and
Mrs. Tanny* Stirling. Mrs. Baxter was married
to two doctors, first Dr. A.E. Garrett and later
Dr. W B Baxter. She lived on Putnam Street in a
two-story gingerbread house until her death in
1942. Mrs. Stirling was married to Dr. W.C.
Stirling, a prominent local doctor. They lived on
Jefferson Street.
The elder Becton was instrumental in getting
the county seat moved to Sulphur Springs in
1871 He was very involved in the growth of the
town and was held in high regard by both his
patients and friends.
He was a man of short stature and had diffi-
culty in later years mounting his horse for his
medical rounds. He found a large rock near Tira
and paid several men to the rock on a wagon
and haul it to his home. The rock was placed in
his front yard and he would use it to mount his
horse.
He was appointed as the superintendent of the
State Institution for the Blind at Austin in 1895.
He left Sulphur Springs and stayed in Austin
until his death in 1901.
Becton’s house was sold and remodeled
extensively in the early part of this century. For
many years. Chester and Minnie Sheppard lived
there, and later a Hopkins County historian,
Gladys St. Clair, called this place her home.
In 1983, Bill and Lydia Bryant bought the
home and through much hard work have
restored it to its original grandeur
The rock and the alley on the west are the
only reminders of the days when Becton lived
there
Incidentally, the alley is named for Becton,
but the street sign has been misspelled over the
years as “Beckton.”
Breaking new ground
low* Belcher of Buster Pavfr* drives a bulldozer Wednesday at the site
of Ike mem parking bt ia front of Hopkins County Memorial Hospital.
TW hospital's Women's Pavilion «fl be built where the current parking
lot Is located.
Despite a bit of precipitation - even snow - this part of Texas remains dry
Bright, cheery weather may Warmer-than average tempera- and brush outdoors. Coupled with grass fires,
have area firefighters hopping tures are expected to result in dry ground conditions and 15 mph “All we can do is hope for the
mad before the weekend is over. many local residents burning trash winds, that creates a real threat of best,” said one firemen .
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Keys, Scott & Lamb, Bill. The Hopkins County Echo (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 201, No. 3, Ed. 1 Friday, January 19, 1996, newspaper, January 19, 1996; Sulphur Springs, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth780544/m1/4/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hopkins County Genealogical Society.