going public w/ added Texas tales

[Wayne Johnson]

Well now, as many of you know, the West family was very successful in the
timber business in East Texas...until they found oil under the trees.  Jim
West the senior would drive around Houston in his Packard limosine throwing
silver dollars out to the crowd because he had once heard that Rockefeller
had done the same with dimes.  Jim became a "patron" of the Houston Police
Dept.  (yukkk)  There is a gymnasium named for him at Southwestern
University in G'town. (Check it out.)  My grandmother worked in the
Admissions office there and said he liked to wear boots with silver spurs
and he was found of raking the rowels across the furniture. He had two sons,
Jim II and another (name forgotten) who bore a son, Jim III, that Honor and
I knew in Austin who married a woman named Susie Shemmick (sp?).  They moved
to Carmel, CA in the mid-sixties and Susie ran off to Europe with one of
their pilots or a tennis pro or something.  Jim II and is brother (Adrian?)
owned ranch property near to Austin.  The original spread had a big house
and a small landing strip not far away for their airplanes.  Jim and his
brother had a spat and split the ranch in two.  Naturally, the landing strip
was on one parcel and the house on the other with a six-strand barbed-wire
fence between running all the way out to the county road.  If you flew in to
the ranch, you then drove out to the county road, out the gate, made a
U-turn, went through another gate and then back down to the house.  All this
info from Jim III.  Both he and Susie were in the Art Department.  Madelon
might remember them.  Sibling rivalry in Texas could make for some strange
doings.

All of the above is true.

But....I had NO idea that there could be any connection between these Wests
and Cornel or the Franklin clan.

-----Original Message-----
From: austin-ghetto-list-admin@pairlist.net
[mailto:austin-ghetto-list-admin@pairlist.net]On Behalf Of Jim Baldauf
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2002 7:20 PM
To: Wayne Johnson; Michael Eisenstadt; austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net
Subject: Re: going public

>I thought Cornel Wilde was dead by now.<

Actually, Cornel West and Cornel Wilde are half brothers
sired by Colonel Beuford B. Wilde of Franklin, Texas. The
Colonel's wife, Mrs Mary Margaret Wilde, died giving birth
to Cornel. Many years later, Beuford had a second son, also
named Cornel, by a much younger woman the old man had
taken under his wing.  For a variety of reasons, the second
son was encouraged to leave Franklin and to change his last
name from Wilde to West. Because ol' Beuford was always
addressed as The Colonel, he so named both boys "Cornel"
to further honor himself and his cherished military title. We
know this from a branch of the Goethe Clan that moved from
Navasota north to Hearn and then to Franklin in order to
escape a brewing scandal down in Washington County.
jb




----- Original Message -----
From: Wayne Johnson <cadaobh2@brgnet.com>
To: Michael Eisenstadt <michaele@ando.pair.com>;
<austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net>
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2002 4:18 PM
Subject: RE: going public


> Michael.
>
>
> First of all, I am very disappointed that you shared my "highly poisonal"
> statement to YOU about Harvard.  You have completely trashed my burgeoning
> reputation as a Harvard basher and general excorifier of life along the
> Charles!  Now, no one but Jon Ford will take these statements seriously.
> Everyone else will just roll their eyes ceilingward and say to themselves
or
> to their significant other (or other, bi-polar self or whichever is most
> convenient or most in line with their therapist)...Oh!  There goes Bubba
> Harvard-bashing again.  No suspense.  Nothing.  Thank you, Mr.
> Shares-Every-Little-Thing-and-Undercuts-the-Irony-Person!
>
> Secondly,  I thought Cornel Wilde was dead by now.  At least he should be
> after running away and leaving Gerte Frobe to be baked like a summer yam
by
> a bunch of guys wearing banana g-strings and bad body paint.  I don't
think
> Richard Harris would have done that!   Why the hell would PBS bother to
> interview Cornel Wilde anyway?  Oscar Wilde, I could understand.  Cornel
is
> too old, if still alive and ambulatory, to be shlepping Sharon Stone or
> Jessica Lange or one of the seven Britney dwarves.   What have I missed
here
> in the Dominion Boon docks?
>
> B.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: austin-ghetto-list-admin@pairlist.net
> [mailto:austin-ghetto-list-admin@pairlist.net]On Behalf Of Michael
> Eisenstadt
> Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2002 10:05 AM
> To: austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net
> Subject: going public
>
> Bubba wrote:
>
> > I know I give you a lot of silly guff about Harvard, but I really have
the
> > deepest respect for the institution and their approach to education...as
> you
> > examples illustrate...it operates a vastly more sophisticated approach
> than
> > most other schools.
>
> and boy are they in the news right now. i heard a
> Cornel Wilde telephone interview with a PBS reporter
> this morning.
>
> as you know fat boy Larry Summers is their new el
> presidente. he is very young for the position and
> he may have ambitions to do a Woodrow Wilson
> (Princeton president -> White House).
>
> so he may have said to himself 'lets see what
> happens if I move against the Black Studies
> department.'
>
> so he braced Cornel Wilde in an interview. the
> one thing he was accused of if it is true is
> very very damaging in Harvard terms: missing
> classes.
>
> at Harvard the profs never but NEVER miss
> classes unlike everywhere else in academia.
>
> of course they should have never set up an
> independent Black Studies department in the
> first place. it should have been placed in
> the History department. if Summers can
> reverse this, he's got my vote.
>
> C Wilde in the telephone interview said that
> as far as he was concerned, colleges were
> instruments of social change and that his
> agenda could be as well pursued in a community
> college as at Harvard or Princeton.
>
> stay tuned!
>
>