,
THIRD INTERVIEW WITH WALTER W. McALLISTER
Interviewer:
Date:
Clyde W. Ellis
July 21, 1976
(Tape 3)
Place: 4th Floor, San Antonio Savings Association Building
ELLIS: Today is July 21, 1976, and this is Clyde W. Ellis with my
third interview with former Mayor Walter W. McAllister in his fourth
floor office in the San Antonio Savings Association Building.
McALLISTER: Talking about the Savings and Loan Association, one of
the things that we did that I think had a great deal to do with our
acceptance at the local level was the fact that, in 1926, a sugges tion
was made that we establish school savings in the public schools. If
we named Tuesday as Saving Day, we would accept payments from any
child that had opened an account. All savings were collected that day,
and the statements made by each teacher for children in her room sent
to the principal. We sent a collector to each of the schools to pick
them up. We opened some 30,000 accounts that way to begin with and
since, of course, it has been enlarged very, very much, though we don1t
push it in the schools like we did to begin with. But that has been
one of the really important city public relations operations that we
indulged in that had a beneficial effect upon the growth of the
Association.
ELLIS: I want t o tell you that I did that when I started elementary
school and when I graduated from high school, I had $1,200.00 in there
in just quarters and dollars that I had saved.
McALLISTER: Think of that.
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ELLIS: Well, yes, and I think that was a good education for the pub­lic
to train themselves.
McALLISTER: And, of course, you can understand that handling small
amounts like that and having to do the service that we did, it never
was a profitable operation for us but we didn't ever look at it from
that point of view. It was unquestionably a fine public relations
activity.
ELLIS: Absolutely. Before we had discussed the fact that you were in
Washington. Do you remember anything significant about your career
there, the atmosphere of the town, the lifestyle, the pace?
McALLISTER: Life in Washington was entirely different than it was in
San Antonio . I might say that going there in '53, I had been to Wash­ington
at lease once a year for ten years prior to that time as a
result of savings and loan businesses always having some interest in
legislation. We had a Legislative Committee of the U.S . League of
Savings Associations, on which I served (and still do), and we met
each February in Washington. Consequently, I attended that Committee
Conference every year. When I lived in Washington from '53 to '56-­those
were the years it was evident what a change was taking place in
the population of the city. In other words, how many blacks were com­ing
into Washington. They were coming in by the thousands and moving
into a neighborhood, buy a house there (that was called a "block­buster"),
and then buy more houses in that area--and they'd move on
and move on and so on. I can't say that I observed them as being any
less responsible as citizens, though I must say to you that Washington
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today is not at all like Washington was i n 1955--there are just no ifs,
ands or buts about that. I went to Washington two years ago and when
I arrived at National Airport, which is the airport t hat's close to
town (Dulles is some 25 miles ou t of town), and being close to town, I
got a cab to take me to the hotel, and the cabbie seemed like a nice
sort of chap, and I sat in front with him (and gene r ally they don't
like that, but then I don't mind doing that, especially if I haven't
anything to read) as I wanted to ask some questions. The cabbie said
to me, "Mister, do you know Washington?" And, immediately being
interested in knowing what he was going to say, I said , I1Well, lI ve
been here before, but I can't say that I know Washington . " (I didn't
tell anybody I had lived there for three years). And I said, "Why do
you ask that?" And he said, "Well, I just wanted to tell you that it
isn' t safe to be out downtown at night at all." I s aid, "Oh?" and he
s aid, "Now I 1m not trying to hring the cab any business b ecause we've
got more business than we can take care of.1I And I said, "Is that so,
you mean even downtown?" And he said, ''No sir, not safe at all down­town.
"
Well, as I say, I had some friends in Washington, f r om when my
wife and I lived there . I had invited seven friends to go to dinner
with me that night at Kushner's Restaurant in Silver Springs, which is
a suburb of Washington. Kushner's was one restaurant in Washington
that had live baby lobster from Maine, shipped in almost every day -­and
if you 've ever eaten bigger lobster, t hen you r eally know how good
Maine "chicken lobsters" can be. Four of my guests went in their own
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car, they lived nearby and had driven over; and the other two were in
the cab with me. I was sitting in front with the driver, and the two
men in the rear seat, and I was leaning back talking . We hadn't gone
three or four blocks from the hotel, in fact we were on 16th Street,
going northerly direction, when the driver said to me, "Mister, do you
notice anything peculiar?" And, it's strange to say, I looked on both
sides of the streets--I could see about three blocks ahead--and there
wasn't a single person on the sidewalks. And I said, '~hy, I don't
observe anybody on the sidewalks. II He said, "No, and you won't he see­ing
anybody--and if you do, they're going to be running like dogs were
after them." I said, "You mean to tell me it 1 S as had as that?'! And
he said, "It sure is bad." And then, in about the fourth block, there
was a man running, an Anglo, and he was running like the dogs ~
after him. About the middle of the block he stopped, turned quickly,
and dashed into an apartment house entrance. Now, 1 don't know that
it's quite as bad as that now, but that's what it was a couple of
years ago.
ELLIS: I think that's interesting, being the national capital and
a l so the discussion of the pollution of the Potomac right there under
the Capitol. Uh, did you attend any White House functions?
McALLISTER: Yes, and my first White House party was an interesting
thing. Dwight Eisenhower was the President, and it was the practice
of the President to entertain groups of people. This particular
reception at the White House was for the people who were connected
with the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (of which I was chairman), and
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those connected with the Supreme Court . We were invited to a recep­tion,
let's say it was on a Friday night, and my wife hadn't come to
Washington yet. I was living there, but she hadn't made her arrange­ments
to come. So, I went with a friend of mine who had been the
Chairman of the Board before I was. He was a Democrat, and with the
change in administrations he resigned as Chairman but stayed on the
Board, and I became the Chairman. We were, however, good friends and
still are. He and his wife were going and he had a daughter who was
16 years old and a nice young lady, and I said to him, "Well, wouldn't
Diana like to go?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "All right, I'll
be glad to escort her." There was a new building attached to the
White House which is a sort of glorified hallway. In other words,
it's about 25 feet wide and close to 100 feet long. And the people
were lined up there, probably four lines, double, standing in that
hallway which led to the stairs going to the second floor of the White
House, which is where the reception was. My friend, Bill Divers,
called an usher and said, '~i11 you tell Mr. So-and-so that Mr. Divers
is here." I said, '~o's that you're calling, Bill?" He said, '~e11,
it's the Chief Usher." Well, I said to myself, "Chief usher, what in
the world?" Well, the Chief Usher came, took us out of the line,
walked us up the stairs, past all those waiting, into the ballroom,
which was of 60 by 100. There were about ten lines there, and he took
us past those and into what is known as the Green Room, which is a
small room, and we waited there. In a moment, we were put in the
line, and the next moment, why we were speaking to Ike and Mamie! In
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other words, the fact that he knew the Chief Usher must have saved us
easily an hour to an hour and a half of standing in line! I don't
know how many were there. There must have been 500 people lined up
ahead of us. Well, then we talked--they, of course, were very, very
gracious . I hadn't met either one of them previously, and from there
we walked into the dining room. The dining room was a large room and
quite a number of people were there. I saw people walking over toward
one person, and speak to that particular individual. And so, without
really thinking about it, but just a natural proposition, I meandered
on over that way and met the individual and introduced myself. And he
said, "So glad to meet you, Mr. McAllister." And didn't tell me who
he was, so I asked and found out he was Chief Justice Warren of the
Supreme Cour t.
ELLIS: Did they serve meals there, food and--?
McALLISTER: Yes, they served refreshments and food and so on, and had
the Marine Band in the hall, playing for the group and which you could
hear allover the building except downstairs in the entrance hall.
ELLIS: Which other presidents did you have an association with? I'm
sure you must have known President Johnson.
McALLISTER: Yes, I knew Johnson. I knew Johnson before he was Presi­dent,
and I can't help it, but I like Mrs. Johnson, Lady Bird, is a
charming woman. And she's a gracious lady. President Johnson was a
very personable individual, but also rather ruthless in achieving his
objectives whatever they may have been. For instance, the stories
about his election as Senator from Texas the first time are, well,
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makes you raise your eyebrows a little bit anyway .
ELLIS: What has been published about the ballot boxes and-­McALLISTER:
Yes, the ballot boxes. Each county has to send in their
report to the Secre tary of State . And 253 counties had sent in their
reports and Lyndon was trailing Coke Stevenson by about 2,000 votes.
And only one county was left, and that was Duval County, which is
rather famous, or infamous, for its politics. And, when they sent in
their vote, it gave a total of 2,085 to Lyndon, so Lyndon was declared
elected by 85 votes. And the strangest thing, before you could say
scat, President Truman had gotten Justice Black of the Supreme Court
to issue some sort of an order which stopped a recount. I don't think
it was legal--as far as that goes, but, nonetheless, it did put oppo­nents
on notice that there was going to be a fight if there was any
attempt to recount. And Coke Stevenson said, "Oh, well, I--what's the
us e --I'm not that interested. There's no use me gettin' into a big
fight and stirrin ' things up." And so he wasn't in favor of demanding
a recount. And then some of the others were pretty unhappy with the
proposition, but at any rate, before you could say scat, they had a
fire in the basement of the Duval County Courthouse, and the ballot
boxes burned up . Nothing else--but the ballot boxes burned up. Most
peculiar~
ELLIS: Well, wasn't--didn't President Truman pardon George Parr about
that time, too?
McALLISTER: Yes, yes . Parr did get a presidential pardon . I'm try­ing
to think who the dickens that prominent man was; he was really
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running for the Presidency a t the time of Eisenhower , and yet I can't
recall his name. He was, I think, a member of the Supreme Court, yes,
wasn't Black. I don' t know it right now.
ELLIS: Well, then, did you have any association with Kennedy?
McALLISTER: (Laughs) one of the first things that I had to do when I
got there--before I really knew what my routine was or how our opera­tions
flowed--I had to appear before the proper Congressional commit­tees
to justify our budget for the next year. The strange proposition
is, the Federal Home Loan Bank System was originally started by the
federal government, by a federal act. The Federal Savings and Loan
Insurance Corporation was also chartered the same way--the government
put up $100,000,000 to provide the insurance. By the time I was chair­man
we had repaid the government's $100 million. Also, our budgets
had to be reviewed by the proper House and Senate committees despite
the fact that we paid our own operating costs. Actually, our opera-tion
hadn't cost the Treasury a dime.
I had gotten our budget approved by the proper House commit-tee,
and when I appeared before the like Senate committee I found it
chaired by John Kennedy. He asked if the House committee had okayed
our budget and on so advising him, he said, "No further hearing is
needed before my committee. 1I
When I was chairman I wanted to do two things. I was particu­larly
anxious to get us r ees tablished as an independent agency. When
we had been originally planned and created under Hoover's administra­tion,
the Home Loan Bank Board and systems was an independent agency ,
directly under the Pres ident . And then Mr. Roosevelt, with his pen­chant
for change, had abol ished the Board and had named John Fahey
65
the chairman, the single person running the Board. He was a man who
didn't know much about the savings and loan business, and wasn 't par­ticularly
interested i n it. Mr. John Fahey had been a newspaper pub­lisher
in Boston. Well, to make a long story short, his appointment
irritated the savings and loan people markedly, and we were determined
to try to get ourselves reestablished as an independent agency. So,
under Truman's administration, we did get ourse lves reestablished with
a three-man board, one man being chairman and two Board members, which
was better than it had been before. But they put the Board under the
Housing and Home Finance Administration. And the Housing and Home
Finance Administration was chaired by Al Cole, who was the only Repub­lican
Congressman from Kansas who had been defeated when Ike was
elected in 1952. And so Ike had named him as Chairman of the Housing
and Home Finance Administration. So he was the one who had to recom­mend
me. He didn't contact me, but he was the one who had t o recom­mend
me to the President so that I would be appointed as Chairman of
the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. So, when I went to Washington for
the first time, I went to AI's office (I knew him from the days when
he was a Congressman because I'd lobbied with him), and I said, "Al, I
just want to say one thing--I appreciate very much your willingness to
recommend me to the President--but if I get this job my objective is
going to be to get us out from under you." And he gave me a kind of a
wry smile--he was having trouble with the FHA in those days and the
66
idea of losing somebody who was good and not in difficulties wasn't
exactly a pleasing thought to him--and he said, "Well, Walter, you're
going to have to bear in mind that if you take this job you're on the
team. II I said, "Yes, I 1m on the team. I can always do one of two
things, I can shut up or resign. But we want out from under you. Not
because of any difference of opinions with you, but simply because
you've got a lot of eleemosynary operations and we're private enter­prise."
And so we worked toward that end. I stated earlier about
appearing before the House Committee and then the Senate Committee, to
justify our budget for the coming year. Strange thing is that the
Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation's $100,000,000 had
since been repaid to the government in full, and that the capital of
that corporation has been built up by the associations themselves and
is, oh, a billion dollars. Yes, it's a whale of a proposition, and
the capital of the Bank System has likewise been repaid to the federal
government in full, and it's now a billion and a half dollars. And
that has come by putting in money from the various associations that
now own the bank stock. For instance, San Antonio Savings Association-­we're
members of the bank systems--and we have $3,465,000 stock in the
Little Rock Home Loan Bank. And the other associations all have capi­tal
that is based on their assets--so there is no government money in
the insurance corporation either. But what I started to say was that
one of the first things we had to do was to justify our budget, and
the peculiar proposition is that if the Savings and Loan Insurance
Corporation has income, and I'm just using that as an illustration, of
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let's say $100,000,000 and has expenses of $10,000,000, it has a sur­plus
of $90,000,000, so that money goes into the insurance corporation
and does not go into the treasury. Just the same, our federal govern­ment
has such a peculiar way of keeping its books that it shows that
$90,000,000 as a federal surplus. It doesn't go into the treasury at
all. So, one of the first things I had to do was to appear before
Albert Thomas of Houston, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Appropria­tions.
He had about six or seven men on that committee, and I went
over there after a week in Washington, took two or three of my staff
along who knew more about it than I did. And so we started in and I
testified and finally he asked a question that I couldn't answer and
that my men that I had brought along couldn't answer, so I said, "If
you want the answer to that I'll have it for you tomorrow morning if
you'll be here at 9:00, or whenever you say. I don't know it now."
And somehow or another the fact that, maybe because I was a Texan, or
maybe because I admitted not knowing the answer, which isn't standard
with the bureaucrats, that we got along fine and never had a nickel's
worth of trouble with him from that time on. Then when I got through
there, I had to appear before relatively the same committee in the
Senate--and the chairman of that subcommittee was Senator John Kennedy.
And this is just about how much it took to testify. He said, "Mr.
McAllister, how did you come along with Mr. Thomas?" I said, "Every­thing
is OK, fine." He said, "All right, OK then." And that was it.
ELLIS: That's quite a way of getting through. Do you recall right
offhand any other distinguished or outstanding or colorful political
68
figures that you had association with during that period then? And,
also, you mention lobbying. What was the nature of your lobbying?
McAlLISTER: The savings and loan business is always interested in
what's going on in a legislative way. In other words, what the trends
are. And we are always having to protect ourselves from what might be
termed harmful legislation that sometimes people introduce without
really knowing what the effect of it will be. And then, again, we'll
just be frank, if there's a complication with banks and insurance com­panies--
and sometimes they get stuff introduced that curtails or limits
our activities. We got to keep alert all the time to keep from having
something objectionable enacted. And tha t's what our Legislative Com­mittee
does. I never was chairman of it; though I was president of
our national trade association in '46 and '47, a very interesting
experience.
ELLIS: Well, it intrigues me, the fact that your training was in
engineering and you have dealt in insurance and real estate and all
that, but I suppose it would be just your gregarious nature that led
you into all these circles so successfully, because you certainly did
do a variety of things with regard to politics and We had dis-cussed,
I wanted to ask you, we hadn't mentioned your family since you
were about 1917 and lived on Slocum Place at that time, and you were
married and we had discussed that, and you had one child at that time-­McAlLISTER:
One child, yes.
ELLIS: And I think you were living in your apartment house.
McAlLISTER: We were living in a two-story frame apartment house that
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my mother had built, oh, many years before, and which, in turn, she
had given to me. We lived there until 1924. Our second child was a
boy, Walter, Jr., born in 1918, and our third, a boy, Gerald, the min­ister,
was born in '23 . They were about four years apart as I recall.
ELLIS: And your first child was .
McALLISTER: My first child was born in 1914, that's my daughter,
Elizabeth McAllister Solcher. We lived in that apartment until 1924.
I had bought a bunch of lots in Laurel Heights on Huisache and had put
a house or two there and sold some improved lots. Meantime, we'd been
looking for a house, hadn't found anything that I liked, really wanted,
we hadn't been very, very happy with doing it, and in December '23, as
I was finishing the last house there on the south side of Huisache, my
wife went out to take a look at it with me. And she said, "Well, why
don't we live here?" And I said, "Gee whiz, it 1 s only a single lot,
and the houses in back are real small, and so on. 11 It was a two-story
house with about eight rooms.
ELLIS: Where was it on East Huisache?
McALLISTER: 138, between Main Avenue and McCullough. On the south
side of the street. And the house is still there and in very good
condition, too. And so I made a deal. I was managing the Associa­tion,
that was my full-time job, but my partner, Gerald Melliff, that
I told you about before, in 1923 we bought out the, one of the Steves
Lumber Yards, the INGN Lumber Yard and gradually built that business
up and he was managing that business.
ELLIS: Had you gotten out of the Frost Estate affairs by this time?
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McALLISTER: No, I was in the Frost Estate affairs until 1924. In
1924 we moved from the Frost Building over to the building right
across St. Mary's Street from the Blue Bonnet Hotel called the Insur­ance
Building. The Association had the ground floor of that building.
My office was on the eighth floor. When I moved out of the Houston
Building, that meant giving up my relationship with the Frosts.
ELLIS: And so, you had--Mr. Melliff running the lumber business, and
you had built these houses on Huisache, you found that you were about
to move into one of your own houses.
McALLISTER: I had made a deal with a builder, John Westerhoff, who
did business out of our lumber yard. I think I told you how the lum­ber
yards were acting as the financial agencies for the builders, and
I just made a deal with John that he build this house. However, we
had the plans and specifications, and I said, '~ell, John, you build
it for me and I'll pay all your expenses and pay you $500." That was
the deal I made with him, which was a little bit unusual. At the same
time, as he was dealing out of our lumber yard, why, it was all right.
And as I look at that house as it was built then, compared to the
structures that we get nowadays, I guess that'll be there a long, long
time.
ELLIS: And that's got to be a very with it Monte Vista Historical
District. It has a whole new value. So, then, you did move in there.
McALLISTER: We moved and lived there from 1924 until 1957. In about
1955 or '56, somewhere along there, we wanted to get a larger house.
In the meantime all three children were married. I'd been looking for
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one, and one day our loan man said to me, "Would you, would you lend
$125,000 on the Brady House?" The Brady House is a very unusually
built house on the top of Alameda Circle, there in Olmos Park, on the
north side, facing south, the one right in the middle of the circle.
ELLIS: Big Spanish style?
McALLISTER: Yes. All right. And I said, "Well, sure, I've been
through the house, I know it's built of solid concrete, poured." And
I said, "Provided the individual can afford that kind of a house, yes .
We don I t want to take the house back." So he said, IIWhat about Morris
Jaffe?" And I said, "No trouble at all. " We'd been doing financing
with Jaffe. I guess we'd done, oh , I don't know, $50 million worth of
financing for him, after the War was over. He came back, and our
relationship with him had been very, very satisfactory. He was always
aboveboard- - absolute l y dependable, that ' s all there was t o it. He
said he was going to do something, well, he did it, that ' s it. So we
made the loan of $125,000 on that house, and Jaffe bought it. About a
month or so after that, why our loan man said to me, "You've been
looking for a house--why don't you take a look at Jaffe's house?" I
said, "What does he want for it?" So he told me and I went to his
house, I may have phoned that I was coming and made the appointment.
Didn't bring my wife , I wanted to see it first. And when I went into
the house and I saw how carefully the woodwork had been handled, the
mitering of the corners and joints and so on , it was workmanship, you
could tell it you know, by l ooking at i t right away .
ELLIS: Had the Jaffes built it?
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McALLISTER: Jaffe built it for himself, for his home. And Jaffe,
Jaffe's mother was a Mexican . His father was a Jew, rather prominent
in San Antonio. When I saw the house and went through it, I made up
my mind that that was the one I wanted and I liked it. And when I
took my wife out, all she had to see was a walk-in pantry in the
kitchen! After that, she was sold. Old-fashioned, you know, you
don't have those things anymore. And so I ended up buying the house,
and it's been a very satisfactory place to live.
ELLIS: Well, it's very contemporary looking, and I just wondered if
it suited your collector's taste.
McALLISTER: Yes, it does. It suits, it's just A-I. It's been very
comfortable. My daughter before the War lived in Houston. Her hus­band
was a geophysicist with the Humble Company. And then she'd come
to San Antonio and stay with us. And that house has four bedrooms and
four baths. And the only change that I have made in the house is I
have built a little brick one-room cottage in the yard for my house­keeper,
one room, bath, and a little kitchenette. And then, I've also
moved out one wall almost 10 feet to make what was the inside ser­vant's
room into a, oh, a game room, so it's a little bit larger, but
otherwise, the house has been very, very comfortable.
ELLIS: Mayor, this might be a good time to start our discussion and
background into your city politics and your political career here in
San Antonio. I wanted to ask you, first of all, well, I know you had
a great fondness for Roosevelt when he was here with his Rough Riders.
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Can you think offhand where your political interests started? You'd
have to be very astute to observe all this.
McALLISTER: Yes, I can say this. I was interested and had a tendency
to be a Republican, for the simple reason that my father was a Repub­lican
at the national level. That made me, naturally, interested to
know why he was a Republican, and so on. And when Roosevelt
ELLIS: Excuse me for interrupting you, but your grandfather, by the
way, we never said it, was also in politics.
McALLISTER: My grandfather was in politics. He was the County Judge
(Samuel Williams McAllister) when the courthouse was built in 1894.
You see his name on the cornerstone. 'Though he was not a lawyer. As
a matter of fact, he was sort of a contractor, I guess, a builder.
But he organized the Company, I think I t old you that before, in San
Antonio that fought with the Confederates. And my mother's father,
Stumberg, born in Germany, came to this country and had a very strong
affiliation for the Union. And not being at all interested, they were
anti-slave people, not being sympathetic to the Confederate point of
view. And when Texas got into the Confederacy, why, Stumberg left and
went to Mexico. And how he left and supported his family here, I just
don't know . I never did find out, but they managed to do all right.
He wasn't a wealthy man, but he was a good provider and a good money­maker,
and at that time, well, let's see, in 1861, I think, he probably
lived on Houston Street. Originally their home had been the middle
lot where the Menger Hotel is now, that is when my mother was born. I
told you about the cordial relationship we had between the owners of
the property in that block.
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ELLIS: Well, I was amused; I drove past City Cemetery the other day
and I saw Mr . Chittum standing there, surveying the cemetery. And so,
then, your father was interested in politics, you said, and so you
were curious to know why he . . .
McALLISTER: Yes. My father was once in politics and ran for County
Commissioner, and lost the race. I don't think that he ran on the
Republican ticke t . I think he ran as a Democrat. All the politics
locally have been Democratic for a long time . And, as I said, Teddy
Roosevelt was my boyhood hero. He was a president of the United
States after the War, you know, in 1901; he was elected to the vice­presidency,
and then was elected President, and then Taft in 1908 was
elected as President, and then in 1912 Teddy, being unhappy with the
way things were going, became a candidate for the presidency on the
Bull Moose ticket, which was a new organization. The first time I
voted in a presidential election was in 1912. And I voted for Teddy
Roosevelt, Bull Moose--it wouldn't have made any difference what it
was, I would have been for him. He didn't win, of course.
(Tape 3, Side 2)
ELLIS: Well, about this time, then, did you begin to observe the
trend of things on the local scene?
McALLISTER: Yes.
ELLIS: And wonder what was going on?
McALLISTER: Yes. We had at that time, we had what was known as the
aldermanic form of government. We had the City divided into eight
wards and an alderman was elected from each ward. And then we had
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four aldermen elected at large, and the mayor was elected at large. So
we had a council of thirteen men. That was the form of government
that San Antonio had from, you might say, the time of the adoption of
the Constitution in about 1875 or '76, until 1914. In 1914, we changed
and adopted the mayor and commission form of government. We saw t hat
the aldermanic form of government was not as good as it might be. I
don't think that we ever had any aldermen, or a mayor, as far as I can
tell or can recall, that really was a grafter. Now, of course, it was
common that, if you were on the council--why you scratched my back and
I scratched yours . That type of proposition. That was just ordinary
procedure, part of the game after a l l. And in 1914 we changed to the
mayor and commission form of government. That was the form of govern­ment
that had been developed only a few years and, I think, as a mat­ter
of fact, Galveston was the first city in the state to adopt that
form of government, and they did so after the Galveston flood in 1900.
And the trouble with tha t was you had eleven commissioners and a
mayor . One was commissioner of fire and police, another was parks and
sanitation, another was finance commissioner, and the other one was
streets and public works. Well, each of these men not only was the
one-fifth of the policy-making, but they were likewise the managers,
the administrators of their departments. See, it was a full-time job.
And the man who was in charge of streets was the one that had charge
76
of seeing the streets were cleaned and that they were paved and
repaired and so on . With the result that you couldn't always have men
in there, under that form of government, who had any previous experi­ence
along that particular line. The result of it was that we, you
might say, had a city-manager form of government with five city man­agers,
see? The activities that didn't belong under any other partic­ular
department finally settled under the mayor and, of cour se, he had
to overlook all of them, as far as that goes. The objection to this
system was that you'd have peop l e who were operating, administering
affairs of the city, with a lot of people under them, who perhaps
hadn't had any previous experience in that operation.
ELLIS: Was there a lack of coordination among the departments, too?
In separation?
McALLISTER: Yes, there was an independence, there was no question
about it. And about that time, or shortly after that, there was
formed what was known as the council-manager form of government.
Gradually it became more widely accepted and its merits recognized,
different schools, universities, put in government departments and
trained men for that particular operation. A man would go, after he
graduated from the university in that department, to some little town,
to, just say, Plainview, that had council-manager. He 'd be an assis­tant
city manager, then he'd go to a larger town as an assistant city
manager; and then he'd become manager of a medium-sized town, and pass
on, just like that. In other words, progressively, the objective
being to be the city manager of a l arger city. The remarkable thing
77
about that operation is that the city managers did not operate under a
contract. The city manager that we had in San Antonio could be fired
by the council any instant they wanted to fire him. In other words,
they were here, they were willing to risk their jobs, their reputa­tions,
on their ability to do a job well. Well, I ' ll say one thing,
not all city managers were of equal capacity. But if you got a good
city manager, you got government at the local level, in my opinion, at
the highest point of efficiency. So, I was very much sold on the
council-manager form of government. And in the early thirties, of
course, the depression hit, but, nonetheless, we organized a group of
young fellows and we would eat lunch at the Menger Hotel on Wednesday,
so we called ourselves the Wednesday Club and we were interested in
politics.
ELLIS: Who were some of your friends in the Wednesday Club?
McALLISTER: Well, Frost Woodhull was one of them, Charlie Dixon was
another. Woodhull, of course, has passed on, but Woodhull's mother
was a daughter of Colonel Frost--T. C. Frost--by his first wife. And
Dixon was a rather well-known attorney here in San Antonio. One man
that still is left with me here that was in our group is Stanley Banks.
ELLIS: Oh, yes, I know Stanley Banks well.
McALLISTER: Yes, Stanley Banks . And another one was Hubert Green.
And we organized, we formed, a little bit of a political club, and the
result of it was we ran some friends for county offices . We elected
Frost Woodhull as county judge; we elected Albert Hauser as sheriff;
we elected Neill Campbell as county clerk; and Maury Maverick as
78
county tax collector and assessor. And Maury was politically ambi­tious--
and then also later was elected to Congress, but then was
defeated. And then he ran for mayor in '39, as I recall, and was
elected. I helped Maverick, though I knew him rather well and recog­nized
his limitations. I supported Maverick, and his commitment to me
was that he would see that the council would appoint a charter writing
commission with instructions to prepare and submit a council-manager
charter. Or he would have the commission elected one way or the other.
And that was OK. Well, Maury was in there about a year and a half
before he came across with his promise and he appointed a committee.
I don't remember who was the head of it, but they wrote a good char­ter.
I was not on the committee. I don't know why, though, I had
been the motivating force, but that's neither here nor there.
ELLIS: Was Edward Conroy--was he in there?
McALLISTER: Well, Conroy was not in on tha t. Conroy was the one who
helped me in the next election go-round. I think Charlie Dixon was on
that committee, and Stanley Banks may have been on it. I was not. At
any rate, they wrote a good charter, and I studied the charter and it
was satisfactory. So we did a little talking among ourselves and our
friends and so on--"vote for it"--and this, that and the other. But,
when they counted the votes, it had been defeated. I was aghast--I
couldn't believe it--because I hadn't heard of any opposition. Fin­ally-
-so I asked different people, '~ould you mind telling me how you
voted?" Finally, I met a fellow who worked for the city and he said,
"I'll tell you what happened if you promise you'll never use my name."
79
I said, "All right, what is it?" He said, ''Maury called in all his
department heads and said, ItIf you, or any of your men, vote for this
damned thing, it's this (motion to cut throat) for you." Now let me
say to you that when Maury went in, he called in different police and
said, "You voted and worked against me--you're out." Fired them-­fired
about fifty police~
ELLIS: My word.
McALLISTER: Yes. Then he called in the Chief of Police. He said,
"You and too many of your men voted and worked against me, you 1re out. 1I
He fired him--and that chief of police was O"en Kilday who became the
sheriff afterwards. Well, all right. When Maury did that, of course,
I knew Maury pretty well, he was a likeable fellow but he was sort of
a screwball--at least I thought so. At any rate, when I found that
out, I said to myself, "Well, he sure did doublecross me--and I cer­tainly
want to get him if I get the chance." Well, to make a long
story short, when the first year's term was up in '41, Maury ran for
Congress--and I helped my friends get Paul Kilday to run against him.
Paul was an assistant County Attorney. He beat Maury by, oh, a very,
very small amount--a little over 300 votes. And that was the politi­cal
end of Mr. Maury Maverick. But Paul Kilday really made us a very
good Congressman. Those were all Democrats. I was working with the
Democrats. I was a Democrat at the local level and I was still a
Republican at the national level.
ELLIS: Is that--was it a brother of the Kilday, Representative Kilday,
who was sheriff?
80
McALLISTER: Yes, it was his brother who was sheriff. And Paul lived
in Washington, did a very fine job, stayed there, oh, I would say, how
many, '42, he was, I think, there probably until '56 or '58, somewhere
along in through there. And then was appointed a judge, a federal
judge, not a Supreme Court Justice, a federal district judge of some
kind, which job he accep ted.
ELLIS: I wanted to ask you, just as an aside, you had so many irons
in the fire at this period--you still had your business here and your
other interest--how in the world did you have time to get all involved
in this political activity and study all these angles? I've read
about many men who are very involved in a diversity of things who
require very little sleep. Did you burn lots of midnight oil when
you ..
McALLISTER: Well, I'll say one thing. I'm not one who can get by
with a small amount of sleep. I have to have seven or eight hours
each night to really feel good.
ELLIS: Yes.
McALLISTER: But, I'll also say that I have from childhood on, you
might say, learned to conserve my time. I always have reading matter
right here with me--anywhere--in my pocket--that if I have to wait ten
minutes why I'm putting in the time reading. So I guess that's the
way I've been
ELLIS: And a good organizer of all these things. OK. So then Mr.
Maury Maverick lost--and the charter that he had fostered which
defeated your interest group - -was it still in effect?
81
McALLISTER: The old charter was still in effect. Then I organized
the Council-Manager Association of San Antonio. We had an informal
group, but I organized it as an organized club. Council-Manager Asso­ciation
of San Antonio. And, because the War was on then in '42, and
I didn't figure that was a good time to get too active at a local
political level and a .
ELLIS: Well, now, when you started the savings and loan, for instance,
you investigated the types of savings and loans and their structures
and business organizations that were in effect at that time and you
selected the type you thought was the best suited to your end.
McALLISTER: Yes, yes.
ELLIS: Now all these concepts of government--you probably Were not
aware of from the very beginning--did you sort of investigate around
and see which ideas you thought were --
McALLISTER: Yes, I studied just informally. I studied government and
talked to people who lived in cities that had this or that form and
finally came to the conclusion that the council-manager form of gov­ernment
was the best. Because it was applying to municipal government
the form of structure that is used by American business, the American
corporation, so successfully. Now what is the relationship between
the city and council-manager and the corporation? All right, all the
citizens, we'll say, are stockholders of the corporation. They don't
run it, they elect directors and the directors are experienced busi­nessmen.
And they, in turn, select somebody who is a pro as the pres­ident
of that corporation. In other words, someone who is competent
82
and experienced in operating that type of business. All right, we're
doing the same thing here. We have a council of nine, and we select a
city manager who is an experienced, trained man whose record in his
city is open and available to us to study. And we pick out the man we
think is the best man for the job--for what we have to do here. And
for that reason, I was sold on council-manager form of government.
ELLIS: What is the relationship between the council, the city manager
and the mayor? Is it sort of like the king-prime minister relation­ship?
McALLISTER: Yes, in a way, except this--that the mayor has no admin­istrative
responsibilities . Unless, unfortunately, if the city man­ager
isn 1 t competent or isn't careful or isn't consistent or isn't
adroit, why you'll find that the mayor will gradually assume certain
particular responsibilities--areas of action, and so on--and that's
bad .
ELLIS: Who has the check over the city manager? The council as a
whole or . .
McALLISTER: The council as a whole, yes. They can--he has no con­tract
whatsoever--they can fire him tomorrow . Then when the war came
on, I organized the Council-Manager Association of San Antonio, and we
would meet at intervals--every two or three months--talk about the
business and so on--and keep active--keep a group of people in- - I had
probably a hundred--many of the leading businessmen of San Antonio at
that time were members of it. Strictly informal. So when the war was
over we had Alfred Callaghan as mayor. Alfred Callaghan was the son
83
of Bryan Callaghan who served as mayor over a longer period of time
than any other one mayor--not all at one time--but extended periods of
time over longer than any other mayor--and died in office in 1912.
And Bryan's father, in turn, had been one of the first mayors of San
Antonio, for t en months, in 1846 or so.
ELLIS: So this was the third generation of mayors.
McALLISTER: This was the third gener ation of mayors, yes. Alfred was
a nice fellow, but I didn't think he was smart. One of the men who we
had in our organization was Jack White. Jack White was a very well­regarded
hotel man in San Antonio. Jack had come to San Antonio in
about 1912 or '13, been a bellhop at the Gunter Hotel and built him­self
up, finally got financing for the hotel here, the White Plaza.
He had a Plaza Hotel in Corpus Christi and a Plaza Hotel in Da llas.
He was one of the men who was in my group, and ano ther was Charlie
Carroll. Mr. Carroll was kin--came to San Antonio from Pennsylvania-­to
the Carrolls of Carrolltown, signers of the Declaration of Indepen­dence,
and Charlie acquired the Universal Bookbinder y on Avenue B. He
owned a bookbindery in Canada--and one in California--and one or two
others, different place , parts of the country. Charlie was a very
unusual, a very positive, very dynamic, a very domineering sort of an
individual. I liked him fine--we got along fine. He came into my
office and said (this was in December of '50), '~alter, it's time for
us to do something. II He said, "We I re gonna go down and see the mayor-­they'll
have another race this spring."
ELLIS: Who was the mayor then?
McALLISTER: Bryan Callaghan--I mean Alfred Callaghan. And Charlie
also had Jack White in there with him. Well, nothing would do--this
was a council meeting that day--but we go down there. So we go down
84
to the council and I let 'em know that I want to have the privilege of
addressing the council. So I'm standing before them and I tell them
about the council-manager form of government, that I represent a group
of citizens who would like very much to have that form of government
submitted for the citizens to accept or reject, and after I finished my
spiel, why, Alfred very promptly says, "Nope, we're not going to do it.
I don't b elieve in that kind of government." And then he opened his
mouth and put his foot in it. He said, "If you think it's so good,
why don ' t one of you run on that ticket?" And I said, "Well, you know,
Mayor, I went to see you and I'm very dis appoint ed that you've acted
the way you have, that you've arbitrarily refused to consider it at
all. You've acted without discussion with your others members of the
commission; but I'm going to say to you, furthermore, that I appreci­ate
very much your suggestion, and we'll certainly take it under con­sideration."
So we walked back to my office (then on Navarro Street),
and I said to myself, "I know I don't want it, and," I said, "Charlie
Carroll, fine man as he is and good friend that he i s of mine , couldn't
get elected dog catcher because he's just too positive that's all, too
always saying the wrong thing, but a fine man; and so," I said , "that
leaves Jack White." Jack and I had worked together. Jack was the
chairman of the River Commission, and I was on the commission, which
was during the depression days, that was the start of the river
beautification. Our committee of four or five who were named to the
River Commission started the improvement of the river--we got about
85
3 or 400,000 dollars, 350 thousand dollars as I recall, from the fed­eral
government to make work for people.
ELLIS: WPA?
McALLISTER: Yes, leaning on the shovels, so we did that. And when we
got into it we found out we didn't have enough money so we succeeded
in getting the downtown business district to agree to become a bonding
district and to issue bonds to the tune of a half million dollars
against their properties downtown. I got that over, and with that
extra half million dollars--well, that represents all the work that
was done on the river except the cutoff. We didn't do the cutoff, but
the other stuff was all done then, at that time. So I knew Jack, and
I liked him. But, on the other hand, he wasn't exactly the man that I
would have picked for my candidate for mayor. And so when we got back
to the office, I said to Charlie, "Charlie, I know you don't want it;
I can't take it, and that leaves Jack." Jack said, "Oh, no, I don't
want it." I said, "Yes, you do too. 1I I knew he wanted it because
that was how Jack White was. And so, I said, "We're coming over to
your house, your apartment." At that time he lived on the top floor
of the hotel, which was just north of the back end of the Gunter Hotel
--it's been torn down now. I said, lIWe're coming over there tomorrow
morning at 11:45 and we're going to have lunch with you and you're
going to agree to run for mayor." He said, "Well, you come and have
lunch." All right. Well, I wrote out a check for $1,000. Then I
86
wrote out t wo drafts for $1,000 each and stuck them in my pocke t.
Next day when I went over there I said, "Jack, I'm going t o be the
business manager of the campaign. I'll raise $50 ,000, which is enough
to get anybody e lected mayor of San Antonio," (at that time). And I
said, "I'm not going t o manage the campaign--better get somebody else
to manage t he campaign--but you're going t o be 'it.'" HOh, no, no, no,
no." Well, we t alked him into it, which wasn 't too hard t o do. When
he had agreed to run, I said, "All right, I am going to be the finance
manager and raise $50,000," and I pulled out the two drafts and my
check. And I said, "Here ' s my check for $1 ,000. Here, Jack, I want
you to sign this draft, I want $1,000 from you. Charlie, I want
$1,000 from you." And both of them protested, f or different reasons .
Jack didn 't want t o sign it--he didn't want to pay any thing . And when
Charlie saw it, he said, "Hell , Wal t er , we ought to put up $5,000
apiece. II I said, "No, I don I t want over $1, 000 from anyone person. II
I said, "This administration isn't going t o be beholden to anyone
particular individual or anyone group ." And so Charlie signed his,
reluctantly; and then J ack signed hi s , even more reluctantly, but he
signed it none theless. So I started out and I r aised $37,000, and one
of the men who was helping me raise the money was Elmer Dittmar of
Dittmar Company . Aft er the $37,000 was rai sed, I turned the money over
to Elmer and told him he could finish the job, which he wanted to do,
and he did. By the way, the next day, after we had picked out Jack
Whi te, Charlie Carroll came i nto my office and he said, "He re, Walter."
And he handed me a check for $4,000. I said, "Charlie, I know you so
87
well, I'm not going to argue with you. I'm going to take this check,
but I'm going to tell you this, I'm not going to cash it . And if it's
ever cashed, it'll be because some emergency arises and we need it to
pay the last little final debt in connection with the campaign." I
turned that check over to Elmer Dittmar and told him not to cash it.
I said, "That goes back to Charlie Carroll." And I said, "Don't let
'em spend more on the campaign than you have money for--and raise the
money." Well, we raised the $50,000 all right--and Jack White was
elected. About two months after the election, somebody asked me if
Charlie Carroll got his check back. I didn't know. So I asked Jack
if Charlie had been given his check and Jack said, "No, we had to
spend some of it." Well, they had spent about $200 and Elmer had
written a check for $3,800 and given it to Jack White. Jack had the
check in his desk, and I asked him why he hadn't given it to Charlie
because it was his money. Jack said, "Well, I thought we'd keep it
because it might come in handy to have for the next campaign . " I
said, "Nothing doing, you give that money back to Charlie. I'm going
to tell him to come over here right away and get it . " So I rang
Charlie up and told him to go over to City Hall and get his money . I
said, "Some of it was spent, $200 or so. But most of it's there and I
want you to get it." So Charlie went over and picked it up. That's
all there was to it, but that was characteristic of Charlie Carroll;
and likewise characteristic of Jack White.
ELLIS: So how was Mayor White's tenure involved?
McALLISTER: Well, his mission was to appoint a charter-writing
88
commission, and in the summer of 1951, a few months after he was
elected, a charter commission of some fifteen or sixteen people was
appointed. I was the chairman, and we met every Monday, Tuesday and
Wednesday afternoons at 2 o 'clock, in one of the rooms at the Munici­pal
Auditorium. That's when I got in contact with Ed Conroy. Ed Con­roy
was at that time probably- -well, I don't know of any man in Texas
who was better posted on council-manager charters, law, and so forth
than he. Conroy had studied every angle and was a whiz-bang. So we
wrote a charter . The only person who really browbeat me into doing
something that I didn't want to do was Archb i shop Lucey . And he had
us put in a permissive participation in welfare . In other words, if
emergenci es arose, the city could consider welfare propositions--no
courrnitment of money or anything --but "permissible." I was l1agin" it.
I didn't want it in there at all because I know that once in, it
wouldn't be long before it was used. Well, at any rate, we won the
vote for the charter; it went into effect on January 1, 1952. And,
strange to say, it didn't work. The first City Manager was not a pro ­fessional
city manager, and for some reason the council just didn't
want to live up to that charter . They were operating under the old
system instead of the new plan. And a man would serve as councilman
for awhile and then resign, and so on--we had a tremendous turnover of
council members. And we probably had two or three different people
who served as mayor. In other words, it wasn 't doing right. And I
went to Washington in '53 so I didn't have anything to do with it.
But in '54, Frank Gillespie of Gillespie Ford organized the Good
89
Government League. And then the GGL began to select people for
candidates. Not the mayor because the mayor was elected by the coun­cil
from among themselves. Mr. Gillespie got a group of people to
help select the candidates rather than the candidates selecting them­selves.
That made all the difference in the world in the kind of gov­ernment
that we got.
In 1956, when I came back from Washington, I was not active
with the Good Government League because, frankly, while I was away it
hadn't gone as far as I wanted i t to go, despite the fact that it had
grown. And so, in June 1960, we had a bond election for 9 million
dollars, part of which included the North Expressway, now the McAl­lister
Freeway, and two or three people who had property along Devine
Road. One of them was in the stocks and bond business, Hal Dewar. He
owned a house, the second one south of the dam on Devine Road, the
west side--you know, right by the south of the dam. The first house
is Red McComb's.
ELLIS: Yes .
McALLISTER: Well, then the next house is back in, off the road. It
had a private road to it.
ELLIS: Sort of behind where the McFarlans were?
McALLISTER: Yes. And he was very much agains t it. He organized the
opposition. And Mrs. Arthur Seeligson, Ramona Seeligson, who owns the
property right where Contour Drive makes the turn to the west and the
Olmos Creek is in front. Well, her house is right here, and she was
agains t it. And then a man who was a director of the Al amo National
90
Bank, who owns a piece of property here, who had been a road contrac­tor
in the valley, he was against it. He put up most of the money-­matter
of fact, they tell me that he put up $40,000. The rest of them
put up some money and they were opposed to it. The only man, in my
opinion, who had a legitimate complaint was Tom Slick whose house was
on the northeast corner of Olmos and Devine Road. I knew Tom and knew
his father very well. I went to Tom and said, "Tom, I appreciate the
fact that you aren't raising any ruckus about this thing . But you're
the only man whose property, I think, might be adversely affected.
You have a bamboo growth 40 feet high in the back of your yard, you
don't look to the east and your house is air-conditioned so you keep
the doors and windows closed and you don't hear the sound. But the
sound of the Expressway might be objectionable, and I give you this
promise, that if the sound is objectionable, I'll see that the city
puts up sound bafflers that will take care of that proposition." But
I'm getting ahead of my story now--because from '56 on everything went
along, oh, fairly smoothly in San Antonio.
ELLIS: Who was the mayor then? After White?
McALLISTER: I can't tell you right offhand.
ELLIS: Was it Kuykendall?
McALLISTER: Yes. Ed Kuykendall was mayor from May 1, 1955, until
April 30, 1961. Because in June 1960 we had a 9 million dollar bond
issue which was to do the city's part of the financing on the North
Expressway. And that's when Wanda Ford, O'Neil's wife, was going to
get out there and let the machines rollover her and so on--all of
91
which I knew about and laughed at--and didn't pay any particular atten­tion
to. But as soon as that election was over, some of my friends
who were Americans of Mexican extraction came to me and asked if I
wouldn't join them in a movement to change the charter. I asked them
what they wanted to change. They wanted to go back to the mayor­alderman
form. And I talked to them, told them why I thought that
would be a bad move--but it worried me. And it wasn't long after that
that some of my friends came with the same argument. And again I was
concerned and I made up my mind that something had to be done to pre­vent
this proposition from going into effect and changing the charter.
Well, about this time the youngest man on the council who was a
rancher, lived in San Antonio but had a ranch in another town, his
name was Theo Pinson, had a heart attack and died. When that happened,
a committee from the GGL came and asked me if I would fill Pinson's
unexpired term. Well, I was very, very reluctant to do it, but at the
same time I realized that if I didn't do it, somebody else would and
maybe he wouldn't have the same feeling about council-manager that I
had--and that might encourage these people who wanted to rewrite the
charter. And I didn't want that to happen. So, to make a long story
short, after considering it for a while, I made up my mind to accept.
ELLIS: This concludes the July 21, 1976 interview with former Mayor
Walter W. McAllister.
, ..,
MCALLISTER, HALTER W, ,tape 3
biographical,family, 68-74
Federal Savings and ~oan Bank
system , 64-67
Good government Leag ue,89,91
Johnson,LBJ,62,63
Maverick,Ma urY,Sr.,77-80
( M<-/l11; 5'fr.( (,LeW"'))
~orth Expres sway,89-91
INDEX
politics , 72-79, 81-91
public school savings, 57,58
River Commission, 84,85
Savings an d Loan bus i ness, 68 ,70,71
40's
Washington D.C. ,(the 50's and now)
58-62
Hednesday cl ub,77
The main thrust of this intervi ew concerns McAllister's growing
interest in politics as a young man and his political activities through
the years, chiefly San Antonio .