BEXAR COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
INTERVIEW WITH: Miss Lasca Fortassain
INTERVIEWER: Karen Jackson
DATE: November 9, 1977
PLACE: Institute of Texan Cultures
This interview will focus on the La ViII ita Restoration
Project. Lasca Fortassain organized and supervised a
stenographic bureau for the City of San Antonio during
the term of Mayor Maury Maverick.
J: Could you tell us a little bit about your background
before you came to work and how you came to work for Mayor
Maverick?
F: At the time that it was suggested that I talk to
the Maverick Administration about a position, my experience
had been right out of high school (six months in journalism),
because I had been the editor of my high school newspaper
in Laredo, Texas . The previous editor had gone to work
for the local paper and then she 'd gone to college. Then
the summer after I was graduated/ by fall, they were
looking for me, because I was the only person with any
journalism experience. So, I worked there for about six
months and then came to San Antonio . It was a bad time
for someone without specific office skills, but in about
three months I did get a position with an insurance company.
FORTASSAIN
I went to night school and took shorthand, which I rarely
used, but it had been suggested that I do that. I was in
the insurance business, specifically in claims; at which
time I went to work for the Ranson-Davidson Company Texas
Municipal Bond House. While I was there, a man named
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Dodie Smith, who was the agent for dictaphones in San
Antonio, carne up to the office and asked me to go in and
apply for a position and my reply was that I had a position.
He knew it quite well because he had just sold dictaphones
in that office . I thought I had some part in recommending
dictaphones to Mr. M.E. Allison who was one of the partners
in the firm. Well, Mr. Smith replied: "One should never
turn down a propos i tion without lis tening to it," and I took
his advice and did go over and talked with the people who
were interviewing for the position of dictaphone operator
for Maverick. Maverick had been in Congress in the previous
term and had become very interested in the use of dictaphones
because they saved so much time. He could go horne at night
and dictate six or eight records and take them into the
stenographic pool in Washington the next morning, and get
that much of his work off before he even hit the office .
So, in San Antonio, he was interested in doing the same thing.
I might add, too, that another factor that might have been,
that in some offices, it had been the custom that each
of the commissioners would hire people who were particularly
loyal politically and who had a great many brothers, sisters,
mothers, fathers, cousins, and uncles, who had poll taxes,
so that each commissioner controlled a number of votes.
FORTASSAIN 3
To what extent that affected Mr . Maverick ' s decision to
have a stenographic bureau, I never inquired, but it did
appear to me that that was a possibility. It was a more
efficient operation for many reasons, but one of them was
that frequently people who were hired by the commissioners
were not particularly well-equipped to do a job in an
office. In a stenographic bureau, the work goes to the
bureau and the bureau gets it out, and when the secretary
or the stenographer is finished with one piece of work,
she goes on to the next piece. In an office where there
might be two or three stenographers, very often one or
two of them were idle for periods during the day because
the director was in conference or because the dictation
was all done and she had no other particular duties . We
didn't have the luxury of the wasted time in the stenographic
bureau.
In any case, the idea of working with Maury Maverick
appealed to me greatly because I had known about him from
someone who had worked for him and as a matter of fact, the
first recollection I have/ that my mother ever entered into
any po litical activity, was at the time Maury was running
for County Clerk and he did get elected . The problem
with the position they offered me however, was that it
didn't offer any more salary than I was getting and it was
a political job, which might or might not last longer
than two years. I was interested in politics but I was
not interested to the point of wanting to make it my life.
FORTASSAIN 4
So, I decided that if I stopped what I was doing and took
two years out, or some period of time out, then at whatever
else I was started, I woul d have to start over, and I
didn't feel that I wanted to lose that much time, even
though I would be missing what I was sure would be a very
exciting experience from all that I had heard of the kinds
of things that Maverick was interested in .
I told them that I was not inclined to consider it
favorabl y and told them why, and they suggested that I
go out and think about it. So, I went back to the office
and hadn't done much thinking because within fifteen or
twenty minutes they called back and asked if I would consider
the possibility of being the supervisor of the bureau .
Would I organize and supervise the stenogr aphic bureau? I
had not done that kind of thing and didn't know if I
could but I thought that this was a chance to find out.
What we did then .. I did take the position ... and what
we did then was to .. the stipulation I made about it was that
I would not be forced to accept political appointees in
the bureau because if the work were to be done efficiently
I would have to be able to screen and choose my workers.
It was agreed that if I hired someone who turned out to be
a lemon, it would be my job to get rid of that person, and
that if anybody who was a holdover under my direction turned
out to be a lemon that would not be my responsibility . It
didn't turn out that way because I did have the job of
moving along a couple of people who didn't really fit into
FORTASSAIN
the kind of job that had to be done for the bureau.
J: Well, now, Maverick ran for some county offices here.
Then he was Congressman and was defeated, right ?
F: Yes.
J: Then he came back to San Antonio and ran for Mayor?
F: Yes.
J: And you worked for him what dates / now?
F: From ... as I recall it was the latter part of August,
in 1939 until the first of February, 1941.
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J: How did you find Maverick as a person and as a person
to work for, the Mayor of San Antonio?
F: Well, my contact with him was not nearly as frequent
as it was with the Deputy Mayor who was ... isn't that strange,
all of a sudden I block on his name. Well, I'll think of
it presently. Also, I had a great deal of contact with
the heads of the departments because the bureau was
supposed to send help to the departments as needed. And
when I hired someone, and at first they were all women, they
had to learn to work in at least three or four different
offices. So that wherever the need was greatest, I could
send an extra force. The bureau did not entirely replace
the clerical, secretarial help in the offices, but the bulk
of the secretarial help was in the stenographic bureau, with
the exception/one time / that they hired a number of young women
to try to get up to date on traffic tickets in the ..... They
were months, even years, behind in traffic tickets and they
hired workers and it was the "powder puff" squad whose work
FORTASSAIN 6
was speci fically ... was with trying to get that up to date ...
and, for a time, I did have some people who were assigned
over there.
Maverick was a very interesting man because he
was a man of such vision and he also was a great funny
man . He was ... he could charm the birds off the trees
and yet there were times when he was very blunt to many
people . .. almost ugly in the way he spoke. I recall a
time when some of his political enemies, objecting to some­thing
he had done, wrote a letter to the newspapers,
lambasting Maury for his behavior on a certain issue and
saying almost directly that: "If you're not a coward, you'll
answer this letter and tell us why you did it, you know,
explain yourself." Well, Maury's sense of humor was so
excellent and there was such emphasis laid on his answer
to this letter, you know, "if you don't answer we will
know the sort of person you are." So he sat down and
dictated practically a one-line letter saying, "Dear
So and So, Yours of the 16th inst., received and contents
noted. Sincerely yours, Maury Maverick ." and he sent
copies to the newspapers.
The only time I had a problem with him in the bureau
was right at first when he would corne rushing in saying,
"Where ' s my speech, where's my speech," and I would say:
"I told you I would have it ready by ten-thirty." And he
would say, "Yes, but it's ten-fifteen." And I'd say: "Alright
FORTASSAIN 7
if you get out, you'll have it by ten - thirty, but if you
stay here you'll make all the secretaries so nervous they
won't be able to finish it." And he ' d say, "Alright, Miss
Fortassain." It only happened a couple of times and after
that, if I said "ten-thirty" he knew it would be there at
ten-thirty and that was satisfactory for him.
Floyd McGowan was the Deputy Mayor .
J: How did, well how did he feel about the La Villita Project?
I ' ve heard, I've read in some newspaper articles that
he went out on a moonlight night, one night and just had
a vision of this or something, you know, and that's how
it came to him as a thing . Do you think that might
be credible or is that kind of part of the legend of Maury
Maverick? You know, put out by Maury Maverick?
F: I have never heard him testify to a vision. He was a
man of vision and he was always envisioning things that
would be good for the city and he was very concerned about
the people. So, the Villita Project , in a way, was sort
of an integration of his interests in what would be good
for the city and what was good for the people because he
saw it as a people place and also a place that would bring
money to the city, because we were beginning to have
conventions and we needed to have a lot more, and he saw
that we needed to have an open-air place to take advantage
of the beautiful weather in San Antonio . There needed to be
an open-air place where people could, where convention groups
and other groups could meet. He also was extremely interested
FORTASSAIN
in good neighbor relations with Mexico and the .. . . had a
great interest in the whole cause of liberty. Are you
familiar with his writings?
J: Not really .
F: Do you know "In Blood and Ink?"
J: No.
8
F: Which is a marvelous book about the documents of liberty,
that I think you'l l find interesting.
J: I do know he was determined that the house s , as they
were restored, should be named after South American liberators.
F: Yes, the whole cause of freedom was so important to
him that he sort of put everything together---his interest
in the freedom of man and the freedom of peoples and his
interest in the Latin American countries, and his interest
in people and his interest in improving the economic
situation in San Antonio--it all went together. But, as
far as this vision is concerned, the legendary vision that
is .... 1 have heard that restoration ... I mean my understanding
was, that restoration of that area was something that had
long been a dream of some of the women in the Conservation
Society and whether Maury had the dream independently or
whether this was something that because he knew those
l adies and whether this was something that had come
up in discussions then and had started him thinking about
it, I don't know. My own interpretation has always been
that they were all interested in the same things. But the
Conservation Society women did not know the ropes and Maury
FORTASSA1N
did, having just been in Washington and having just
been there for the past several years in the business of
helping to get legislation written, as a result of
9
which we were able to get a WPA project to clean up the
river and make the river banks a place of enjoyment. He
knew where the money was; in what piece of legislation;
what the appropriations ... what it was possible to do. He
knew about the National Youth Administration. All of these,
of course, were "depression children"--government
depression children, but the money was to be used for
useful purposes. But the projects would never have been
set up had not there been such unique unemployment all
over the country, and the river was a WPA project--
"Works Project Administration". Villita was a National Youth
Administration project.
J: Do you personally know anything of the relocation of
the .... 1 think there were 119 residents and then they didn't
know how many immigrants ... do you know what happened to them?
F: I unders tood they were being located ... reloca ted, but I
did not have any personal knowledge of where they went or
who was taking care of the relocation.
J: How about opposition to this. Surely in America there
was an opposition. You know there must have been, or was
there an opposition to it at all?
F: Of course there ... 1 suspect there was opposition.
Perhaps not so much to the project as to Maury, because there
was a strong political faction working against him, of course.
FORTASSAIN
He defeated them at the election, but they didn't lose
any time attacking him during the course of his turn
at the wheel.
J: Did he only serve one term?
F: Yes, that's right.
J: So they did succeed in getting him?
F: They succeeded in getting him out of office, but not
before he started so many things that have meant so much
to San Antonio. In the years since I have been back in
San Antonio, since 1962, I have heard any number of the
people who fought him say: "Well, old Maury was a kook,
but he did some goo d things." But there were people ...
10
the people who opposed him based their opposition on whether
they really believed it or not, I don't know, but they
based their opposition on the idea that Maury was a
radical and even a Communist, and a lot of the people
sniping at him was done from that ... that point of view.
But at the time the ViII ita project was mounted there were
all sorts of opposition, all sorts of comments: "Well,
crazy Maury, just sitting there figuring up ways for the
city to waste money." Because the city did, I suspect,
have to put in a piece of the money. I think that was a
part of the ... of all of those projects . I don't think
they were one hundred percent funded, although I might be
wrong in my recollection.
J: Well, then he was so politically adept that he just
kind of moved over them or went around them or ... ?
FORTASSAIN
F: Well, well they couldn't keep him from making an
application to NYA, for that was a project that would
employ San Antonio youth, and the project was not to
be a one time thing .. . wasn't just rebuilding , restoring,
Villita . Inherent in it was the codicil that they
teach, they re-teach,particularly the Mexican-American
youth, the arts and crafts of their forefathers which
were rapidly go ing in to disuse . There ·.. .. as no market for
them. The older people who did these things were, I
suspect, getting less and less work. They weren't
teaching their children. Many of them had learned their
crafts in Mexico, and when they came here, it was a
different ambience completely,and there was the same
sort of thing there (Villita) that had been in a small
community in Mexico out in the country where everybody
11
taught his sons and the women passed it on to the daughters-­the
things that they knew. So that there were classes in
copperwork and there were classes in weaving. The tiles
that were originally the paving in La Villita were made
by these young people; the cUrtains, original curtains,
I remember , in the office, had been woven by students
from the project.
Another stipulation in the proposal was that there
be places rented .. . there be shops, but that where ever there
was a shop selling something, they had to be making something.
They didn't have to be making everything they sold, but
they were supposed to be making some things that they sold,
FORTASSAIN 12
and I think that is honored more in its absence now than it
is in the present. When they started out it was to be
that way and it likely would have continued that way had they
not gone to war, because all of these young people either
volunteered or were drafted. I mean the whole project
was ... . the young people who had been working for the
proJecc became involved in a war . .. in, I suspect, some
defense industry/ for a great many of them because they
were of draft age or of the age to volunteer ... went into
military service.
J: Well, then but the project was completed enough .
F: Yes . Yes.
J: Completed in 1941?
F: Yes. I left in 1941 in February, and by the time I
came back in August of 1942, La Villita was a jumping
joint. There was something going on at La Villita every
night, in 2 or 3 places. The Cos house was available
for rent and there were things going on in Juarez Plaza
and entertainment of the very top type. I knew a
number of military men who were from the theater and writers'
world in New York, and they were so impressed with the
types of entertainment that was put on by the recreation
departments--the groups --the Mexican and Spanish dancing
groups of the recreation department were so good that these
fellows would tell me these kids would be sensational in
New York. And this was a recreation department activity.
That of course is another ... I mean what happened in the
recreation department is another story.
FORTASSAIN 13
F: But a story that I think you'd be interested in,
is the story of the Little Church and how it came to be
a puppet theater. When at first the church was in
disuse and had come to a place that you probably almost
couldn't get into it because it was in such bad shape,
it was cleaned up. They did some restoration. Maury had
added to the Recreation and Parks Department staff a
cultural and educational director. We had never had that
kind of thing in the Parks Department before. He had
hired Rose Bernard who was a woman of no formal training
for the job, but of tremendous creative ability and soul.
When the building was about getting ready for occupancy,
Maury called Rose and asked her to meet him over at La
Villita one day. They looked around and he said, "Rose,
if you had this building, what would you do with it?"
And she said, "I think I would make a puppet theater here."
And he said, "Do it ." She didn't know anything about
puppet theaters, she'd never made a puppet .
But she did have friends who were artists, and writers
and designers and what not, and she had lots of free
consultation available. And she had another asset because
under WPA,there were many people in San Antonio who had
gone to work for the WPA because there was no market for
their particular talents at the time: writers, musicians,
artists and what not. The city had no idea what to do with
them because they didn't have, at the time, anyone like
them on the payroll . .. there was nothing. The city fathers,
at the time, did not see any specific way to use them to
FORTASSAIN 14
the limit of their abilities and they had been put on
the Recreation Department payroll to occupy them . . . handing
out baseballs, mitts, bats as they were turned back in.
Well, Rose was permitted to draw on the Recreation
Department for these people . She got artists and writers
and designers and musicians. They wrote their own first
show with Maury Maverick, a puppet, introducing the show.
And you saw the puppet in La Vilitta the other day and
its little stomach sticking out with its outfit made out
of a shirt that Mrs. Maverick had given. I think the
first story was about San Antonio in the early days ... the
days of the Chili Queens and it was great. Everything
that was in that show was put into it by these people who
had been so under-employed as far as their skills were
concerned . Later I remember one of the things they did was
Chekov's "Jewel Tree" with some of the best screaming of
a witch that I ever heard (laughter).
J: In church it might be real, very real.
F: They did the scenery for the first one. They wrote the
script, made the scenery .. . they did everything about it. But
there is one little story that I should put in here. When
they had gotten just about to the point where they were
ready to go into some kind of production, one of the friends
who had come in to help Rose Bernard, was Mrs. Sidney
Berkowitz, who was herself an artist and had been advising
and been very much present in the work that had been going
on, and she and some of the other volunteers ....
END OF TAPE I, SIDE I
FORTASSAIN
NOTE: This section of the interview is being re-taped
due to the fact that the original tape was erased while
being copied. Date: April 11, 1978.
15
F: Mrs. Rosalie Berkowitz, shortly before the plays were
ready to go into production, looked about the Little Church
and liked what she saw except for one thing. The thing that
she missed was stained glass windows ... a church should
have stained glass windows. Naturally enough there were
no stained glass windows available to put into the Little
Church, and indeed, maybe it had never had stained glass
windows, but Mrs. Berkowitz and her friends decided that
there was something they could do about this. So they
designed scenes from fairy tales and cut the different
colors of the design out of what would have been called
cellophane and came in and pasted them on to the inside
of the window, and when they had finished and the sun
came through, they were delighted with their work. But
still there was one thing that was missing and that was
that the stained glass looked too perfect. It had no
crinkles in it and stained glass should have little
imperfections in it. So they couldn't think of a thing
to do about it and they went home, came back the next day,
and the paste had dried and they had their stained glass
windows with the little crinkles in the glass.
Perhaps another thing that I might mention, at this
FORTASSAIN 16
point is that, when Rose began to organize her talented
staff, she had reached out, as I have indicated, to friends
who were artists in the community and one of these was
Octavio Medellin, a sculptor who, as far as I know, is
now living in Dallas, Texas ... he was there in the late
'50's and the early '60's. 11edellin had attained local
and, I would say , state and national reputation by that
time, but he was a man who was always ready to help someone
else and Rose asked him if he would come and show her
staff how to make faces, heads for the puppets. He
came and showed them how to carve the heads. The whole
thing was kind of a community project, and, of course,
all of these artists were very much interested in every­thing
that went on here, and were regular attendants at
the performances that were given.
And speaking of performances, let me go back for
a minute to the kinds of things that were going on during
World War II when I came back here to the city after 18
months absence. One of the groups ... one of our local
groups that was performing there was a group from Sidney
Lanier High School. They were a group directed by a
teacher named Rosa Elida and they were called Las Elidenas.
The girls in this group were selected as if almost for an
honor society. They had to have grades. They had to have
character . They had to give service to the schools, and,
of course, they had to be susceptible to be taught to
dance. But the kinds of things that they did were so
FORTASSAIN
professional that they elicited bravos and other cries
of admiration from people from allover the country
who came to the kinds of fiestas that were being held
constantly in La Villita during the war. I don't know
what has become of the Elidenas. I don't know whether
someone else took over the group when Rosa Elida ceased
to be its sponsor, which I think she did after she was
married and possibly when she was having a child . But
that is a story of, I think interest and significance
because it was making it an honor to be a good dancer
in the same way that, I understand now days is true,
if you are in the Jefferson Lassos or one of the pep
school organizations. This might have been the fore­runner
of the kind of standards that were set up for the
youngsters who go into organizations like the Lassos.
17
J: What do you feel were the basic aims of Maury Maverick,
or the basic purposes of the project?
F: Basic purposes of the project were several and I may
have touched on these before. Maury was great on pre ­servation
and great on history . In his speeches, and he
made a lot of speeches in those days, you are aware that
the man was a considerable scholar and a person whose
education was possibly much deeper than people who heard
him in ordinary conversation might have thought. I
think there i s a story that Maury was not graduated from
the University of Texas because of a course that he didn't
pass with a very rough teacher, and I'm not sure of all
FORTASSA1N
these details, but I do know that . .. 1 have been told,
however, that this was the only course that he hadn ' t
passed and considering the eminence of the man as
time went on, I can think of lots of people who have been
given Doctors of Letters who had not accomplished nearly
as much as Maury Maverick had. But I was told that the
University of Texas refused to let him take the course
in absentia and pass it. And eventually he got a degree
from a university in Washington, as I have been told.
18
Now, I have to check that one out but I have been told
that that is true. He was always studying. He was always
reading, and the results of this studying and his reading
went into his speeches.
Another of his favorite soapboxes was Pan American
friendship and I don't know if we've talked about this
before, but one of the purposes of La Villita was that
it be a place where Pan American friendship could be
celebrated, and that's why the different houses there,
the old houses that were restored, are named for various
ones of the Latin American heroes that fought for liberty
in their various ways ... . San Martin House and others.
These are all ... these all memorialize the heroes who
believed in liberty and Maury believed in liberty. He
believed in free speech for everybody, even if you didn't
agree with him. He believed that you had a right to
express yourself.
J: That's what caused the auditorium riot, isn't it?
FORTASSA1N 19
F: And it was that strict construction of the idea of
free speech and a l so the strict construction of the purpose
to which the Municipal Auditorium was dedicated, that
led into the incident which gave rise to the auditorium
riot. The auditorium riot was framed in my opinion.
(laughter) There need have never been an auditorium riot
had there not been people, and 1 must include the American
Legion among these, who thought that it was right for
any group who did not agree with them to be refused t he
use of the auditorium . And since, if 1 remember ... 1
don't remember ... 1 don't have the exact quote, but the
auditorium was dedicated in the '20's, probably '23, ' 24,
maybe '25, along in there, to the idea of the ... of liberty
and free speech and in memory of the men who had died for
this kind of thing in World War 1 . And so when Maverick
came into office, and at one point, he was out of tm-Ill for
oh, possibly a week, and a young girl named Emma Tenayuca
asked for the rental of a room in the auditorium. And
the rooms were available to the public to rent theoretically,
without anybody's inquiring what you wanted to rent the
room for as long as you were responsible for taking good
care of it. But Miss Tenayuca, who was 17 and tubercular,
was sort of the head of a very small group of people here
in San Antonio who considered themselves Communists. You
have to recognize that in those days it was not against
the law to be a Communist. As a matter of fact, a lot of the
young intelligentsia were leaning in that direction. Not
FORTASSAIN
that they bought the Russian expression of Communism,
but that they bought the idea that there were advantages
20
in a system in which we were not all working for ourselves,
but had some concern for the group as a whole . And so
a great many people who were later clobbered because at
one time they had been card-carrying Communists in the
days of their youth, really had been card-carrying
Communists in San Antonio. I'm trying to remember ...
it seemed to me that there was in the State of Texas at
that time considered to be a total of something like 17
Communists. And this group was in a little meeting and
they rented, they wanted to rent, one of the rooms in
the auditorium, and to do that you had to pay a fee and
get a permit. And so Floyd McGown, who was the Deputy
Mayor, approved the application and they got their permit
and immediately the guns started to blaze. All the people
who were against Maverick were dragging out the fact that
Maverick had sold out to the Communists and, of course, I
think that was purely political. Anybody who came from
a family like Maury's is not going to be a Communist. That's
not the way he's going to go. He's going to work with
them and assist them and try to effect the remedies that
he thinks are indicated . In any case, there was a great
hullabaloo about it and by the time Maury got home, there
had been demands on Maury to rescind the permit. And
Maury said: "These people have paid their fee and they
are citizens of the United States and they have asked to
FORTASSAIN
rent the room and they have as much right to rent it as
anybody else." But Maury had brought in a new Chief of
Police, a fellow called Ray Ashworth, who had done some
reforming, re-educating of police groups in several
21
cities in the country. He wasn 't a very old man . I'll
bet he wasn't even forty. But he was a really progressive ,
new-idea type, police chief, and when Maury had hired
Ray Ashworth, a great cry had gone up ... Why did we have
to go out of state to hire somebody for a lucrative position
such as this? They passed completely over the fact that
t~ere wasn't anyone available who had the kind of training
and experience as Ashworth had had. They were too comfortable
with the kind of police force that they had had. The idea
of a reforming police force was the last thing that some of
these people wanted to see happen (laughing). So,
newspapers began to be peppered with letters and there were
all sorts of interviews with people who were objecting,
and anybody who would like to read about this can go back
to the newspapers and see it.
Well, among other things, apparently, they had this ...
the dissident groups had trained a group of young people,
male youth of San Antonio, in what to do in order to
get a riot going. Well they kept peppering Maverick
to know what he was going to do about it. They expected
him to withdraw. They demanded him to withdraw the permit
right up to the last minute . When the time came there were
very few people who were in the meeting room. They had
FORTASSAIN
the .. . the people had . . as I recall, it was a room in the
basement either that or they went down to the basement
when the danger threatened. But Maury had had great
consultations with the police chief and the police chief
had given his men strict instructions that there was not
to be a shot fired ... there was not to be any violence.
They were to use fire hoses if necessary. And so this
little inoffensive group met and one Catholic priest
from Boerne who had come because he wanted to refute
their arguments, and they permitted him .... 1 mean they
didn't say he couldn't come in. Anybody who wanted to
22
come was welcome, but the people who wanted to come did not
want to come to the meeting. They wanted to come to make
trouble for Maury, and they did because they were determined
that this was not going to pass off peacefully . Even
though the police did not attack the crowd, the people
who had planned ahead of time that they would attack, did,
and they stormed the auditorium and ran over the seats and
ripped up the seats with knives and did thousands of
dollars worth of damage. I don't remember what the amount
was but it was considerable. And all because a dissident
political group had decided that this was the way to make
political hay, and make this appear to be a big mistake
on Maury's part, and to try to picture him as a person who
sympathized with the Russian type of government.
END OF TAPE I , SIDE II
FORTASSAIN
TAPE II, SIDE I:
F: The salaries were very poor and I imagine that
whatever he made from his regular bureau speeches was
a very welcome addition to the family income, but
Maury was colorful. He was ... well, for instance, he 's
the father of the word "gobbledegook" I as you know/ and
he became the father of the word because he got so
disgusted with all the jargon they used in Washington,
which he characterized as " gobblede gook" and the ... he
was very inventive himself, in the way of words. He
wrote well. I've done typescript from records ... really,
he would go home at night from here and I know he did
23
it in Washington, and I know personally that he did ...
He'd go home, go to some meeting that he had to attend in
the evening---go home maybe about 10:00 o'clock at
night and by 8:30 the next morning the chauffeur, Albert
Chavez, would come in with a couple of racks of records
that Maury had dictated before he went to bed the night
before. He wrote very well. I mean his ideas were good,
and he expressed himself in a colorful way so that he
was an interesting man to listen to. The speeches were
interesting.
J: I understand he had an injury.
F: He had a World War I injury.
J: He was just in pain most of the time.
F: The information ... the intimation I have f rom Terrell was
FORTASSAIN 24
that he didn 't know how long he had to live. Of course,
none of us does, you know. But, he was sort of on borrowed
time, and I believe that what he had was, I think, he had
been hit in the spine. And he did walk with a kind of
forward lean ... with his head kind of forward, and canted . ..
I've forgotten whether it was to the left or to the right,
but he had a limp. It was obvious. It wasn't obvious
that he had a lot of pain but he didn't pay attention to
things like that. He just tootled along and worked at
the things he was interested in. He continued with the
things he was interested in .
I think you'd be interested in one story about him.
Someone, some famous national musician, it may have been
Goldschmann, who was the Director of the St. Louis Symphony,
he was quite famous at the time, who came through here ... or
it may have been a violinist who was here with the symphony .
I don't recall the name, I mean exactl y who it was but,
Rose Bernard had called Maury and had said to him: "Maury,
I would like for this man ... I would like to bring this man
over tomorrow. He wants to meet you." And Maury said: "Oh,
sure bring him over." She said: "Now look, I'm not going
to bring him unless you're going to be nice to him .. .. you know
if you 're not going to have time, a few minutes at least, to
be nice to him, I'm not going to bring him." And he said, "I'll
be nice," (laughter) "I'll be nice." So the next day
she brought him and he was just charming. And the man just
FORTASSAIN
25
fell in love with him, with Maury Maverick . And after
they had spent oh, I guess 10 or 15 minutes, much longer
than Rose had expected that they would have, then they
started out and he called Rose back, as if he were going
to talk business with her and said: "How did I do, Rose?"
(laughing) He was just as mischievous as he could be .
J: Do you know ...
F: He was a great civil libertarian too, as is his son.
J: He went on to be head of one of the ...
F: Small Business ... he went into ... I don't know his title
there, but he was in the Small Business Administration .
J: Of Roosevelt?
F: Yes, and I know also from Terrell ... I think of her as
Mrs. Maverick, and when she is in San Antonio she thinks of
herself as Mrs. Maverick , and when she is in Austin she
thinks of herself as Mrs. Webb. At any rate, Terrell said
that during the war he had ... Roosevelt had sent him
several times on secret missions into fields of operations.
He apparently was that close to Roosevelt that he would
be trusted to do things of that sort .
J: When we were out there in La Villita the other day, you
said you thought that St. Philip's College classes had begun,
original classes had begun ... .
F: My information from a couple of directions has been that
the original classes for St . Philip's College classes were
sewing classes for young Negro women and that they were held
in the church. Now, last week somebody challenged that
FORTASSAIN 26
and said to me that it was in the building ... that 2 story
house next to the church where that occurred. I haven't
done any research on it myself, but I have talked with ... I
believe it was Melvin ... I believe one of the people who
told me was Melvin Sance, who is the person who is in
charge of Black History here at the Institute (S-A-N-C- E) .
It seems to me Dr. Scott told me the same thing. Dr.
Scott is the Assistant Superintendent of Education for
the San Antonio School District, and the impression that
I've had from 2 or 3 people has been that the first
classes were held there, and yesterday I heard something
that interested me. And that was that St. Philip's had
at one time been a Catholic College . And that I'd never
heard before. It had been an Episcopalian, I mean a long
time, it was Episcopalian.
J: Well, the church at that time was Episcopalian, wasn 't
it? And then they sold it to the city or gave to the city.
F: Well, at the time St . Philip's Col l ege was started the
I
church was probably Episcopalian and I don't know at what
point it .. . I don't know whether they abandoned it or
whether they sold it to somebody else, but eventually it
was abandoned . It's my impression that it was not in use
at the time. I mean the Little Church was not in use at
the time that La Villita restoration was begun. I could
be wrong, but it is my impression that ...
J: That it had been abandoned in that area.
F: Could have been that people lived in it.
FORTASSAIN 27
J: The area was, way back centuries ago, was a nice place
to live, wasn't it, because of its location. It never
got flooded .
F: Well, it is said that there was an Indian village here.
I remember in one of Maury's speeches a reference to the
fact that there is a description of the place where the
spring comes out below the Fig Tree Restaurant. You know
where the water gushes out? According to some research
that Maury had seen, the description of a place where
one of the Spanish explorers , and could it have been
Cabeza de Vaca, he had come in 1539, I believe. There
was a description of a place that was very much like that
so that there was thought to be some possibility that
the Spanish explorers passed this way, but they didn't
stop . .. there was no settlement . But there is said to
have been an Indian village on this site, and then it
became a not very elevated community, primarily inhabited,
I think, by the Spanish soldiers. And then there was
a flood and the people on the other side discovered that
this was high ground and it was not affected, and so an
upper class .. . a more upper class ... of course then there
were only two classes---either you were really poor or you
were pretty well-to-do, and you either had practically
nothing or you had quite enough. The quite-enough people
came and lived here after the flood according to things
I have read. I have not read anything specifically on this
myself.
FORTASSAIN
J: And it just kind of went downhill, you know, to the
slum area that it was when there ...
F: Of course it had a considerable number of years in
which to do it.
J: Well, yes.
F: I think one of the interesting things that happened
before I left, and really before La ViII ita was finished,
I'm sure . .. There was a woman in town who was going to
be 98 years old and she was said to be the first white
girl born, I think maybe the first white child born in
San Antonio after it ... let's see .. that would be right
after it became Texas ... I mean after this became Texas,
and oh, dear, you would know the name ... I'm blocking
on names today ... Sarah Riddle Eagar. Have you ever
heard of Mrs . Eagar? Well, she lived to be well past a
hundred but , at that time, she was 98 and she was a tiny
little lady who made rare public appearances, but when
she did, she was always very meticulous and dressed in
black, you know, and would be what you call attractive.
28
It was a time when that would have been proper for a lady
of her era. The Riddles ... one of her brothers had settled
in Eagle Pass, and so I'm practically a member of the family
in the Eagle Pass branch. I never knew her except from a
distance, but she was a person and a personage and Maury
felt that some honor should be done that, you know ...
that there should some recognition for this lady who had
reached such advanced age, because of her history. And
FORTASSAIN
the thing they decided to do was to have a reception, and
they did . And he was concerned about her. He wanted her
to be able to sit down at a place where not everybody
could get very close to her . Where they could speak to
29
her and be close but not so that they could crowd her,
because he knew that her strength was limited. He didn't
want her pressed upon, but he did want to do something to
honor her. So they had an open air reception in La Villita.
I was working so I didn't get to go!
J: That shows how he really did care.
F; But it's a kind of ... there are people .. I think it was
estimable, and you asked the other day whether Maury really
cared about the people or whether this was just a
political technique . Well, I don't think it was a political
technique, because he spoke truth to power when it would
have been to his advantage politically not to raise so
much dust. But he didn't seem to hold back and sometimes
he seemed to be delighted in raising dust. Particularly
if the people he was dusting were very stuffy people.
J: Let's see. I can't think of anything else.
END OF INTERVIEW
FORIl\SSllJ:N, r ASCA
AlilitDrium, Nunici.pal, 19-22
Biogr.aphical, 1- 6
Easar, Sarah Riiklle , 28 ,29
"gobbl edegook ", 23
ThlDEX
La Villita, h i_story, 27,28
J~ Villita Restorati on Project,
7- 9, 11-19, 26, NYA,9,11
17-
!-',ziVerick , ~1aw:y , 1- 3, 5-11,,, 25,
27-29
St . Phili ps Coll<=ge (bl a ck ed-ucation),
25
WPA, San Antonio river , 9
A valuable source for ~law:y Maverick, Sr . material. Under
Auditorium will be f ound an a=unt of the "Carmunist Confrontation."