BEXAR COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
INTERVIEW WITH: Mr . Jack Trawick and Maj. Gen. William A. Harris
INTERVIEWER: Mrs. Esther MacMillan
DATE: October 22, 1979
PLACE: Strauss Frank Company on South Alamo . ~I want them to talk parti ­cularly
about their contribution to Hemisfai~
M: Mr. Trawick, I would like to start with you . When did you come on the
scene of Hemisfair? Were you in on the planning?
T: I initially joined the Fair as a consultant on the scheduling of the
construction . And all other activities req uiring completion prior to its
April 6, 1968 opening. That would have been in the summer of 1965 . I
was in a consultant capacity with Frank Drought Construction Engineers and
had just returned to San Antonio from Carnegie Institute of Technology and
had done quite a bit of research in what is called Cr itical Path Scheduling.
Mr. H.B . Zachry, who was chairman of the San Antonio Fair, Inc. was interested
in finding someone with a background in and a knowledge of this particular
technique of scheduling and monitoring the progress of construction because
he saw the need to have such a tool in order to have the Fair ready to
open on time.
M: Zachry was in on it that early?
T: Oh yes . He was chairman of the Board of San Antonio Fair, I n c. at
that time.
M: In 1965? Wow. Three years . .•
TRAf-IICK 2.
T: Three years and two months. Just about three years prior to the opening
of the Fair. And of course, he was concerned with the fixing of the date,
with the construction, and with all the things that had to be done. Exhibitors,
both Industrial and Governmental, and Concessionaires had to be signed up.
They had to be found first; they had to be signed up; architectural work
had to be done; contracts had to be let; and the construction itself had
to be done. And all this had to be done prior to April 6, the day of the
opening. It was necessary that some formal method be used in trying to
cope with the different things that had to be done and many of, them were
tied together. That was my initial area of concern and responsibility
with the Fair .
M: What is Critical Path Scheduling?
T: It just means that in the process of carrying out any project there
are certain things that must be done; certain activities; and some of them
must be preceded by other activities and must wait until something has been
completed before they can be started . Critical Path Scheduling is very
simply a pictorial representation of all these activities with time estimates
for the completion of each. Certain of these become what are called critical
to the completion of the project. The main thing is to determine the most
critical activities and those activities that are going to consume and
require the greatest amount of time. Those are the ones you obviously need
to concentrat e your attention on .
M: In '65 that you're talking about now, had the site ...
H: How did you get to San Antonio?
T: I had worked in San Antonio after I had initially gotten out of the
military service. I worked for Frank Droughtconsulting Engineers as a
consulting engineer. When I finished up my graduate work in college, I
came back to San Antonio and rejoined that same Consultant Engineering firm.
TRArviCK
M: What I started to ask was: had the site been chosen by '65?
T : Yes, it had been selected.
3.
M: I have used Sue Vickers on Hemisfair. Have you seen that? She did
it for a Mas t er's degree.
T: No.
M: It's very enlightening . I've been using this for my sort-0~ r esearch.
And she says ther e was a big fuss about where the thing was goi ng; they had
all kinds of suggestions and finally settled on the present site because of
Urban Renewal.
T: I'm not famil iar with that period . Two people that you might talk to
who would be totally aware of all the things that took place during the
site acquisition and how the selecti on was made are Bill Jackson, who now
works for Quincy Lee, and Winston Martin.
H: He's right in the middle of this housing battle. The company is known
as Lee, Jackson, a t torney . And he's the Jackson.
M: Bill Jackson and who else? Not fllinston Martin?
T: Winston was the head of the agency; Bill Jackson worked for Winston in
the Urban Renewal Agency .
M: Still is .. . Winston Martin is still head .•. so you were hi r ed first as
a consultant in other words, you were not supposed to be giving full time to
this.
T: No. In fact, it was a full time assi gnment but I was not on the staff;
I was not on the payroll.
M: General Harris has told me, we come along and things kind of fell apart
and Mr. Zachry took over. Is this when you came on as a regular?
T: No. That was not until the Fair had actually opened and had been in
process for three months. That's right, it had been in process for a couple
of months before all that happened.
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M: Then what was your title in Hemis fair? When did you get that title?
T: I came on the s taff as the planning grew and as the number of staff
members grew; it seems like it was probably the early part of 1966 or the
latter part of 1965 that they were looking for a Comptroller to join
their Fair staff. So I moved from my consulting capacity and joined the
staff. It would have been in late 1965 when that occurred.
M: That early? I know that when Zachry took over, theq appointed a lot
of vice presidents and you were one of them.
T: There was nobody on the staff that was actually an officer of the Fair
corporation. Frank Manupelli was the general manager . You see, Dingwall
was the then existing vice president of the Fair corporation. Ding was
there when I first joined the staff. He had come down at the earliest
start of all the planning. But none of the members like myself, none of
the staff members, were officers with the exception of the executive vice
president.
M: And that was Dingwall.
T: That is correct .
M: Who was the president at that time?
T: Marshall Steves was probably the president even at tha t time . Zachry was
the chairman of the Board.
M: That ' s the way it was worked out .
T: H.B. Zachry, chairman of the Board; Marshall Steves, president of the
Fair Corporation and then the head staff member was the executive vice
president . And that was E.C. Dingwall, initially . He in turn was followed
by Jim Gaines. Jim Gaines left and Frank Manupell i assumed the responsibilitq.
Then Jim Gaines came back i n 1967, the year prior to the opening of the Fair,
maybe eight or nine months , something like that, and he reassumed that
capaci t y as chie f executive officer . I think they left Frank as executive
vice president and Jim Gaines b ecame the chief. executive officer.
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M: It was tangled d eal, wasn't it? But then if you do anything in this
t own it is.
H: One side note, Esther. I think Walter McAllister's present secretary
was Jim Gaines secretary .
T: That ' s correct. She had been his secretary when he had worked at WOAI
and when he came o ver to assume the vacated position that E.C. Dingwall had
been in, she came over with him as his secretary.
M: Elinor Traher. Do you think I should interview her? I do not have
her name on my list .
T: She was certainly in the center of things.
H: I think it might be worthwhile . You might get some leads from her.
T: Elinor would know the things that were occurring in Jim ' s office or
around that area and would really be quite knowledgeable about things that
were happening.
M: I know her on the telephone, only . General Harris, when did you come
on the scene?
H: I was supposed to come on 1, January of 1968.
M: That late?
R: Yes. But Jack, in addit~on to being Comptroller , had all the headaches
for the Hemisfair so I came on about two weeks early and tried t o take some
of the headaches on .
T: As time went on and as things continued to grow and build closer to
the opening of the Fair, I also had the responsibilities for the operations
of the Fair , which included tickets and admissions, personnel, administrative
services, fire protection , parking lot tickets, medical, liability insurance,
a lot of .• .
M: And you took over a part of that burden?
R: I was his assistant vice president in charge of headaches and did what-
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ever I could do for him.
M: And you stayed on all the way through the Fair?
H: Yes.
6 .
M: Did you last? (l aughter) What about the finances? As the Comptroller,
you must have had an awful lot of problems with the fi nancial end.
T: We had an accounting manager whose name was Bob Boerner . Bob is currently
with the sigmore Shamrock, the Tom E. Turner Enterpri ses. He was our
Accounting Department Manager and of cours e of the things he had to do
monthly all the way up to and including the Fair was to meet with the
exe cutive committee weekly. We, of course, had monies available through
the underwriting of local businessmen. And, obviously, it was our responsi ­bil~~
y to try to anticipate and forecast the nee ds we had for money: how
much is it going to take to meet the obligations for the Fair for the next
month at l east. And we me t, accordingly, with the finance commi ttee from the
execu t ive committee . We met with them monthly . That included Forrest Smith,
who was then president o f the National Bank of Commerce; Bill Flannery,
who was presrdent of the Alamo Na tional Bank; Ang us Cockrell, who was one
of the partners of Ernst and Ernst. I believe those were the three people
we reported to,
M: They were the finance committee .
T: That's correct.
M: You had problems with money, didn ' t you?
T: Yes. We had a certain amount of underwriting and all of this under­writing
and the whole economics of the Fair was based on a study by the
ERA: Economic Research Associates out of California. Of course , their
entire study was based on what the economic f easibilities of the Fair woul d
be. How much underwriting would be needed; what kind of attendance would
be anticipated. And of course, we did not have the 7.2 million people they
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had forecast in their economics. So, accordingly, the amount of income,
not having the number of people, was less than we needed to take care of
the out-go plus the cost of construction was considerabley greater than
what had originally been planned for .
M: From what I've been able to read and hear, that was the real problem.
What with strikes, and rain and .. .
T: There were a number of things during that year, if one were to go
back . .. it ' s ten years, eleven years now . .. it's kind of hard to remember all
these things that far back. During that year, I think if you were to go
back and check all amusement areas, all entertainment areas for example
in the year 196B ... I'm talking about things like Six Flags, Disneyland,
those types of attractions, .. . that you'll find out that all entertainment
attractions that year were down for a number of reasons. There was a
great deal of racial unrest . . . the opening day of the Fair, Governor Connally
was down for the rLbbon~cutting ceremony and of course I had the security,
one of the departments I had the responsibility for, and through the various
law enforecement agencies . . . and I don't recall specifically which one ...
but like t he FBI or some other source, they came to us the morning of the
day that the Fair was to open with a report that there was going to be
an attempt on Connally ' s life . We went over and had a meeting with Governor
Connally that particular morning and for that particular r eason, there was
no announcement as to where the ribbon-cutting was going to take place.
It turned out nothing happened that day.
H: No, that ' s not right. we had a fire . Don ' t you remember?
T; Well, we had a fire in the Tower. That's correct . Right at the opening.
Right on the openi'ng day. As a matter of fact, we had fire protection in
our section, too . Chief Fullbright, who was the city fire marshall at
that time, was working part time on the staff, being paid by the Fair
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Corporation. But nonetheless, Chief Fullbright, enroute, saw smoke billowing
out of the top of the Top house.
M: Was it arson?
T: No. But as it turned out, we had a number of occasions during the
Fair where there were reported bomb threats.
H: The one that I remember, Jack, that you may not . You remember later
on i n the day, Lady Bird ... we took her around in back of the Arena; she
was going to go in there. And just as her car arrived, I was with inspector
Fitch and we looked up to on top of the Tower and it turned out it was
just someone trying to make sure there weren 't any more fires, but to both
of us it looked like somebody up there with a rifle . So we kept the door
closed and didn't let her out of the car until it was cleared up. But
Inspector Fitch was very, very concerned .
T: All during the Fair, there were a great number of threats of violence,
bomb scares, thi"s type of thing . Reall y I would say the general public
and probably the media were not even aware of. And none of them ever came
to pass.
We had one occasion where we thought we probably had n e eded to evacuate
the Tower. As it turned out, we had the bomb squad, everybody was over
there and nothing ever turned up.
H: I remember you did have the one at the opening opera . We had to evacuate
a little bit.
M: At the opening opera?
T: But nonetheless that year was a year where there was a gr eat deal of
unrest in t he whole country.
H: You remember just before that, Martin Luther King . .. was assassinated.
T: I don't know; if you look back, some of those things may have had some
impact on: "Do I go somewhere?" or "Do I not go somewhere?" I think it
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probably did have an impact on people not going to major entertainment
areas because of the fact of violence.
9 .
M: I read some material they had stashed over at the DRT Library on
Hemisfair ... not much . . . some clippings and things like that ... and somebody
from New York came down here and sneered at San Antonio because it was
such a conservative town; they did such "pedestrian" architecture; they
could have been so much more imaginative and modern . Do you agree with
that?
T: No, I don't completely . Getting away from the cost and everything
else but I think the Fair, itself, was properly described as a "little
jewel box. " I think it was e xtremely well done .
M: So do I.
T: That's not to say that I always agreed from a monetary standpoint
with the architects ' point of view . But I ' d say the end results were
extremely well done and I think it was an attractively developed area .
M: I do, too, but it was just something I had read . It was a major .. . one
of the adject ives that is used to described it is warmth. It was cozy ;
it was friendly; there was just something that nobody else will ever do.
I was talking to Patsy Steves the other day on the phone , getting
ready to interview her and she said, and I hadn ' t heard this, that New
Orleans is talking about doing a World ' s Fair . And she said wouldn't it
be wonderful if they could come over to San Antonio and profit from all
the mis.takes that were made here . The so- called archives for Hemi sfair
are over at Trini'ty University i 'n boxes. Never have been undone; never been
indexed; or anything like that. So it is true that when we get these
records done, thes:e ' tapings done, it's going to help an awful lot .
H; 1ack, before Esther ' s next question, what we would really like you to
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do is answer as frankly as you can, if you want to put a delay on this
thing being available to people for a certain number of years, go right
ahead . In other words, we ' re trying to get the real true story. I wonder
if you would discuss the matter of that last month and Zachry ' s offer to
open Hemisfair on time and the veto of the cost-plus contract .
T: I don 't recall exactly when tha t was but it was through the many delays
that had been involved in the preparations of plans and letting them out
for bids, we were going down to a point where it was humanly impossible for
all the things to be done in the normal way that you 'd l ike to have. In
other words, here's a set of plans and specifications; put i t out for bids;
bring the bids back in; select the low bidder and let the contract. With
the things that had to be done . .. I can ' t remember all t he things t hat
needed to be completed: Project Y, various site development work , the
ramps, and all that work. It had literally gotten down to the point that
in order to meet an ~pril 6 opening date, that normal process was no longer
a lo~ical way to go in order to have the Fair open . So there were many
alternatives looked at that time and the decision was to take a contractor
and haye it handled on a cost-plust basis. By so doing , short-cut the
necessity for letting plans out and the like .
K.B. Zachry, as I recall, had made an offer that he woul d undertake
that responsibility and guarantee that the project would be completed and
ready for the opening April the sixth . There was a decision on the part
of the Fair ' s Executive Committee and I don't recall the mechanics by which
this was done .. . but nonetheless Cosmo Guido was in fact the contractor ...
Guido Construction Company was the company that was selected to do the
work with a stated over- r i de over his basic cost .
M: What does that mean?
T: It means that he would do it at cos t plus a percent . A very low percent,
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I do recall that . I think at that particular time, there was some disagree­ment,
possibly by Mr. Zachry that he did not feel that Cosmo's firm at
that time ... because he knew t hat in order to do it you had to be on top
of that project every minute; you had to have a handle on your cost in
order to get it done as cost effectively as possible . I think there was
probably some feeling that the Guido Construction office was not large
enough to cope with this particular work to be done and that he possibly
wouldn't have the same ab~~ities of keeping his fingers on the cost and
to do it as· cheaply as the Zachry Company. At any rate , I think that the
feeling of the Executive Committee was . . . and I can understand because you
see we had already been through a conflict of interest question on the
Tower of the Americas, wnen Dan Rheiner who was on the Executive Committee,
was prQposed as the contractor to build it there had been a question of
conflict of i nteres·t raised about that . I don't think there was any ques t i on
about Mr . Za,ehry 1s motives; no question that his firm, and he i ndividually,
were absolutely professional in the way they do a job and do them quickly,
i n a shorter time and lower cost than most any contractor. But a possible
question of conflict of interest was probably the strongest considerat ions
at that time. He was chairman of the Board and I t hink that they felt
tha t probably was the reason why ... I think that since he was chairman of
the Board tbat t here was a feeling that conflict might be brought up.
M; Did Guido . •• was Guido fired when Zachr y came on the job?
T: No,
M: Guido continued to the end.
T: That's right. Guido came in at that time with that work that General
Harris is talking about ana did , in fact , complete the Fair . I'd say it
was 95% completed by the time we opened up.
N; frett~ good, too.
\
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T: He came in and he did get the job done. What it did mean, though, there
was not a handle on the cost. It was probably two months into the Fair,
in fact, before all of the costs were put together and Guido Construction
could come over and submit a final billing for all the work that he had done.
He got the job done. It cost us more than wha.t had been programmed for it
to cost but whether or not that was the contractor's problem or whether it
was the architect's is another question. This assumption is how much is
it going to cost for what he drew •.. that's another question. There are two
sides to that. The cost of that last work was tremendously greather than
what had been planned.
M: Who were the architects?
T: We had Al Peery was the director of our Site Development Department.
He had a staff of architects working for him. I haven't seen him since
the Fair.
M: His name is Allison Peery, isn't it?
H: He worked with Ray Ellison; then he went out on his own small company.
He built a condominium out on Harry Wurzbach. I don't know what he is
doing now.
T: Another was Boone Powell. Boone worked, I believed he was on the staff
at that time. He worked for O'Neil Ford.
M: Didn't he have something to do with the Tower?
H: I think Ford was one of the group.
T: I ·don't really recall who the architects were. I guess it was O'Neil
Ford.
M: I know Boone Powell had something to do with that Tower.
T: I don't think there is any question but that Mr. Zachry's (proposing
to move in with his company,) only desire was in serving the community.
He knew he had the man power; he knew he had the wherewithal; and they had
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the ability to go in there and get the Fair completed. It looked like an
almost impossible task at that time. Some few months before the Fair was
scheduled to open and the tremendous amount of work that was left to be
completed ... And that was what Mr. Zachry's pledge was · that if they would
turn it over to him, he would go out and complete the whole thing.
I've been around Mr . Zachry long enough to know that when he says
he can do something, he can do it.
M: Yes, indeed.
H: As an example, Esther: One that Mr. Pat talks about is that he had
much more equipment than Guido. When Guido needed a piece of equipment,
he had to go out and rent it. And then he added his percentage on top
of it.
T: There is no question that Mr. Zachry is the largest of the contractors
here in town but it very simply came down to his capacity as Chairman of
the Board ... certainly there would be a questionable problem even if he could
have done it for 25% less than Guido. There'd always be that question
harboring in somebody's mind.
M: One of the people I have interviewed said there were six or eight people
on salary during the Fair, making a survey on what to do with the Hemisfair
after it closed . Is that true? It doesn't sound logical.
T: There's not a black and white answer to that. The reason I say that
is this: those people who were involved in the site development • •. Al Peery
and his staff of people .•• continued on the payroll of the Fair during the
period of the Fair because there were continuing ongoing duties that they
had during that time . I don't believe there was any major effort on their
part, although I know that either in executive committee or in discussions,
there was always a discussion "what is going to be the destiny of the Fair
site after the close of the Fair?"
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M: People were aware of this, then? What went wrong?
T: Back i n the earliest stages, not only developing the site for the Fair
but what would be the post-Fair usage of that site. What official purpose
would it serve for the city, for example . So that was a consideration
before the Fair opened and it was a continuing consideration during the
period of the Fair.
M: What happened?
H: I'll give you my opinion. And I'll be interested in Jack's reaction
to it. When I came into the Fair, it appeared to me that the City staff
and the Fair staff did not have any feeling of cooperation. The only one
that had it was Walter McAllister and he happened to be the mayor as well
as on the Board . But the rest of them didn 't speak. There were several
little feuds going on.
T: There were coordinating meetings and I didn't attend every one . . . but
periodically I would attend •.. held with the City staff. I know that Jack
Shelley, who was then city manager, and his staff of managers at the city
level met periodically with the site development staff and r epresenatatives
of the Urban Renewal Agency because there was an effort, a desire, on the
part of the staff planners as it related to the Fair site, to do things
that would not be inconsistent with the post-Fair usage. Now there was not
always full harmony, or an agreement for example, between their envisioning
what that site was going to be and what the Fair staff architects would
have liked to see it be. I think it was natural there would be some mis­understandings
and disagreements there.
M: But here's this marvelous place going to waste.
T: That's true. There were a number of trips to other Fair sites. For
example to Seattle. What was done to that site, post-Fair? The foremost
thought of everybody was, "what useful purpose is this site and the buildings
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on it, going to serve in the future?" Probably before the Fair, during
the Fair, and now after t he Fair, there are a hundred ideas of what purpose
that site should serve.
How do you tie in the I nstitut e of Texan Cultures, the Federal Pavilion ,
the Hemi sfair Arena , the theater complex, the Tower ... how do you tie all
those t ogether into o ne meaningful thing?
M: How get people there?
T: What gets lost is the density of the s ite.
H: Wha t they're figuring on doing now, Jack, is the plan of dividing it
up into parts, thinking that the whole thing is too big to attack in one
bite. For example, the part where UTSA is now, of some way o f deeding it
to UTSA so that they can put money into i t . They can 't put money into it
as long as they don't own it. And rent it for a dollar a year, something
like that . Secondly, giving an area right down through the center and
offering it to a private developer to develop into a mall. Not the whole
thing, but right down through the center , ending up on Alamo Street, right
in there.
M: And a motel for low ••.
H: A medium priced motel down n ear the Institute of Texan Cultures. In
other words , what they're doing now, not solving it at once
1
but di viding
up the pieces and see if they can do it that way.
M: They told me •.•
H: Zachry is still interested in it . He had me go out and find the old
study that was made by the Southwest Research Institute in which it was
going t o be patterned after the Tivoli Garden type of t hing.
T: Tivoli Garden was one I recall very specifically.
M: Carlos (Freymann) talked about that t he other day . He went over t wice
to Denmark.
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H: Did he? We had a hell of a time finding a copy.
T: I think there were probably as many ideas for post-Fair use for that
site as there were people going to places like Tivoli and the like. Every
time somebody would go some where, there was a new idea.
H: Jack, there are two things I want you to hit on our conversation here:
One is the critical time in the financing when Zachry took over and secondly,
if you can, touch briefly on the financing of the Women's Pavilion because
Esther is going to interview some people on the Womens ' Pavilion.
T: I'll take the second one first. To be honest with you, it's the first
time I have even thought of the Women's Pavilion since the day the Fair
closed.
H: Didn't Zachry come in on that?
M: Yes he did~ I remember that. And lost a lot of money.
T: I don't recall .•. The only thing that I can specifically remember about
the Women's Pavilion .•. some period before the Fair opened, there had been
a request submitted to the finance committee for I guess what would be
called front money or seed money. That the Fair would underwrite so that
they could secure the financing necessary for the Women 's Pavilion. Vivian
Hamlin was the driving force behind that, wasn't she?
H: She was there; I don't know if she was the driving force or not. Who
was the British girl who was'·the executive director? I don't remember
her name.
T: For some reason, Vivian Hamlin's name sticks in my head as being the
number one person involved in the development of Womens' Pavilion.
M: They lost a lot of money , I remember that. I thought it was a disappoint­ment.
T: Let's swing to the first question, going back to ..• I don't even remember
the time span but I do know that it was obvious before the Fair opened
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that we were in an impossible position, monetarily. Two things then
happened after that because I guess it was six months before the Fair
opened, it was pretty doggoned obvious that it was just going to be awfully
hard for the few remaining funds , to stretch out far enough to take care
of the antici pated needs of the Fair both in the way of payi ng the staff
and operating the Fair as well as paying all the construction bills that
were yet to be seen. Two things happened after that. That made it worse.
First, the cost of construction went way beyond what was budgeted for,
planned for and allowed for. Number two, the attendance was much l ess
than had been anticipated . The average per capita spending of those people
who came was less than had been included in the Economic Research Associates
study. The reason for that problem was the concessionai res on the Fair
site, we had contracted wi th each one of those conc e ssionaires . .• the Fair
corporation received a percentage of the monies spent with each one of them.
When that guy on the site didn't spend as much as anticipated, the money
that the Fair received from the concessions was less than had been antici­pated
. We had a number of theatrical type attractions; we had a Fair­sponsored
attraction in the Arena ••. you may recall that ..• I don't remember
what it was called. But it was put together . . • entertainers from South
America as I recall ..• it was in the Arena and you could shoot a shot gun
through the place the night it opened and not hit a soul. That went on
for approximately a month. Of course, the Fair corporation was obligated
to pay its obligations to those people and yet it was dead. There was
absolutely no income from that entire attraction . The other entertainment
in the theater ••• I don't recall what some of those were but I do recall
they made a change there •.•
H: The one that sticks in my mind was that they scheduled Bob Hope in the
Arena and Glen Campbell in the theater at the same time. It was so obvious
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to them that Bob Hope went to Glen Campbell and said, "Let's combine
and put it all in one." They both agreed but their managers would not.
But this is the type of thing that Jack is talking about.
T: There was in the entertainment area a lot things, particularly early
in the life of the Fair, that were not well coordinated, were not well
planned. There were difficulties in people even getting tickets at that
time. In fact it was not until Mr. Zachry came over that that whole
thing was finally straightened around. We had a new ticket manager come
in from out in New Mexico, I don't remember his name, but he was hard as
nails. I remember "Man of La Mancha" was showing at the Theater at the
time and he went right to work and in a short period of time, he had
reorganized entertainment ticket sales; people could get their tickets;
they could get them to their seats and all of a sudden entertainment
started turning around.
But it was the combination of a lot of losses that were incurred
on the entertainment to start off with. Cost over-runs on the construction
and a lesser amount of attendance than had been anticipated. And a lesser
amount of spending on the part of the people who went to the Fair. I
don't remember the figures but the forecast had shown that there would be
$13 and some odd cents per capita of the Fair site. And it was assumed
that the Fair would receive a certain percentage of that. The spending
was considerably less.
M: You were lucky in weather, weren't you? Wasn't the weather good for
six months?
T: No, it was not. We had a great deal of rain. You'd have to go back
and check but it seemed to me that we had an excessive amount of rain
during that six months.
M: What I was referring to was that every day everyone held his breath
TRAWICK 19.
that it wouldn't get to a 100° and it never got to 100° all during the
summer of 1968. That was a plus.
T: I don't recall the weather having been a real hard, hot summer, but we
did have a great deal of rain.
M: That's bad for a fair because you want to be outside. I want to ask
about these people who had concessions. When a concession came in, did
that person pay you a rent for the space, the building or did the per­centage
you got cover the whole thing?
T: If you should talk with Bill Jackson, by the way, he had previously
been with Urban Renewal, Bill was Director of Concessions on the Fair
staff. So he could go into the details on that.
It depended on the individual concession. In most cases they had
to pay a front end type of rent. Then in addition to that there was the
percentage of the income that they realized off of the Fair.
M: So it was both.
T: Yes .
H: You've got to get ·to that critical point, Jack.
T: That occurred •.. let's see, we opened April the sixth .•. by the end of
that month, we were coming down to the point of the question being raised,
how do we keep the Fair doors open? I'll be honest with you, I don't
even remember how this all finally came to a head. When Mr. Zachry came
in at that time, he had kept himself compl etely up to date with everything
that was happening at the Fair. He used to come over and meet with me
every Saturday morning. He probably knew more than anybody about the Fair,
financially as well in all other areas. It wasn't as if he had been away
from the things and come back to it. He'd been keeping himself abreast of
everything.
For the life of me, I do not remember how that finally came to an
TRAWICK 20.
ultimate head. But it finally resulted in Mr . Steves resigning as the
President. Frank Manupelli resigned and went to work with Ellison. Jim
Gaines stepped down as chief executive officer. All three of them left
at about the same time.
M: Was there a reason that they all left at the same time?
H: As Jack said, there was a money problem. They had to get some more
unde rwriting.
T: That ' s right. We had to go back and secure a second underwriting
in order to continue to meet our payroll and .• .
H: The only one who could do it , as I recall, was H.B. Zachry . Mr. Zachry
said he would do it on the condition that he be allowed to run the Fair.
T: That's right. There were a number of actions that took place immediately
after that. We had a great reduction in the number of people that worked
at the Fair. In order to cut our payroll; in order to cut the cost. In
other words it wasn't a simple matter of his walking in and going out and
getting another underwriting to k eep the Fair going. But there were a
number of things that he had to cope with at that time . First, we had
contractors that had monies owing to them. He had to meet with all those
contractors.
I went with Mr. Zachry on the majority of those meetings. Nobody
knows what H. B. Zachry did for this city in keeping that Fair open, more
than I do.
M: Out of his own pocket, didn't he?
T: That ' s right. Not only personall y but in terms of just his own time.
Those were difficult meetings. I learned an awful l ot by just being with
him during that period of time because he had but on e object ive and that
was he did not want this city to suffer the embarrassment o f having a
Fair open up and then after being opened for a few months , close it down .
TRAWICK 21.
M: Wouldn't that have been a catastrophe!
T: It was that close. It was a day to day situation . Mr . Zachry moved
in and like I say, it wasn't just a matter of his stepping in and that
was it, because here was a man who once he was briefed on what was happen­ing
and the like, then he determined what he wanted to do.
One was the reduction of the number of people that we had operating
the Fair. Obviously if we weren't going to have the number of people
that had been forecast to be there, we didn't need as many of the ticket
sellers as we had provided for; as many guides and hostesses as we had
provided for ; or any of the things . So we cut our staff to meet the size
of the operation .
At the same time, he got with the Public Relations and Promotions
Department headed by Irv Weinman ... he's now dead •.. and in tha t case made
a committment for spending some more money that we hadn't even programmed
to spend in order to try to get the word out more and to draw more people
into the Fair. Unfortunately, it was one of those things that had to be
done but it really didn't accomplish anything as it turned out. But he
did make the effort to try to draw more people in .
He met with the contractors •• . those people that were owed money by
the Fair. And came up with solutions for those kinds of problems •.• to
either compromising on amounts that were owed to people . And finally we
got all these people satisfied and as a consequence the Fair continued
operating until the closing.
M: Let me check ••• Irv Weinman r eminds me of something •.. I was just shocked
all during the Fair at how poor the advertising was. One of the people
I've interviewed said that the New York agency which was about to go out
of business was the one hired. They did one real bad job in Time magazine
TRAWICK 22.
which was not ... had nothing really to do, didn't tie in .••
H: Jack, I'm going to embarrass Esther, eor tife0
fir-:Ef 10 years of Betty
Crocker, she was in charge of their test kitchens.
M: (Not the first 10 years. That would make me 150l I came on later.)
I thought it was so kind of horse and buggy stuff. There were people in
the State who didn't know anything about Hemisfair. To me that is the
biggest catastrophe of the whole Fair that more people didn't know about
this lovely thing we had here.
T: I certainly think there is a lot of truth to that. I think a lot of
people feel that our effort in that area didn't really accomplish what
we wanted. One thing I can say, though, and that, Esther, is the atten-dance
that we had at the Fairy the ERA did their study, you'll notice
that it says that out of this forecast 7.2 million people that were going
to come to the Fair, a certain number of them would come from the primary
market which was this metro area. Then it kept telling us how many people
were going to come from the tertiary and secondary areas or ones as you
moved away from San Antonio. We didn't do this extremely scientifically,
but the one thing I kept trying to find out was: where ~our people
coming from? So we had some people that were involved in ticket sales
that would run a survey on the site periodically ••. are we getting people;
where are they coming from and are they liking it ..• you know, just an
attitude kind of survey, too. It was interesting because in every case
it seemed like we were getting the number of people that our feasibility
study had indicated from the outlying areas.
M: In Texas?
T: Yes. From outside this primary market. And where we fell down, compared
to the 7.2 million was in our primary market; right here.
M: Was it? Did we get people from New York and •.• New Jersey ••• and •.• ?
TRAWICK 23.
T: This is not saying it was as good as it should have been. What I'm
saying is compared to our feasibility study, program, what we should
look for, we got the kind of people from Mexico, New Mexico, New York,
and Washington ... and outside of this primary market that that study had
included but we did not get the kind of attendance from the local market
that had been anticipated.
H: I always thought that the ERA study leaned a little too much on Seattle
from the standpoint of the means, wage earning, of the people up around
Seattle as opposed to those around here.
T: I think there is a lot of truth to that. Look at King County, which
is Seattle, and I'm sure if you were to look at the kind of income level,
this is undoubtedly one of the reasons why our per capita SPending would
have been somewhat less than what they anticipated . Because a lot of their
work had been based on what had happened in Seattle.
We don't have, and didn't at that time, have that kind of per capita
income here. So consequently the amount of disposable income for Hemis­fair
would be less. Whether or not that is the reason, I don't know.
M: One of the people I interviewed said •.• and I remember this ... that
Stewart Fisher issued a thing in the paper; said "don't come down town" to
the people who lived i n San Antonio, "you won't find a place to park."
This particular person had a business down town and that business dropped
off to almost nothing because of that warning . I think that would have
kept San Antonians away from the Fair. It would me, too.
T: There was some of that kind of stuff. How much, if any, impact that
may have had on fair attendance I don't know.
SIDE II
M: Was that it? I am mixed up with something else, maybe.
TRAWICK 24.
T: I believe that what you're talking about may have had to do with a
trip that Jim Gaines and some other people on the Executive Committee
made to Washington at the time our congressman Henry B. Gonzalez was
raising a question about a conflict of interest on the construction of
the Tower of the Americas. I believe there were some confrontations
with Jim Gaines at that time and other people ...
M: Yes, that was it.
T: Jim Gaines was in his capacity on two different occasions. He came
back from that first trip to Washington and resigned.
M: Dingwall had had such good experience and from what I've heard we would
have added immeasureably to the Fair.
T: At that particular time I was in a consulting capacity to the Fair.
I had a number of contacts with Dingwall during that time but not nearly
like I did with Gaines after him. Dingwall seemed to be a very knowledge­able
individual to me and certainly had the experience of one fair under
his belt and there aren't many people that can run around and say they've
had the experience of one of them. At least from the concept level. The
Fair hadn't gotten any more than at the concept level when Dingwall left.
So I can only judge from the concept of the Fair. Whether or not a guy
from another part of the country coming down and coping with those of us
who were from San Antonio ••• that might have had something to do with the
conflicts that were occurring at the time.
M: Could be. And he didn't go to A & M, I have heard. (laughter)
I want to ask you one last question, Mr. Trawick. San Antonio has
been known as a manai1a town and the people who run it didn't want things
disturbed and what not. When ·the Fair was first propased ••• this is what
I've been told •.• since it was not going to really distrub anything, these
people gave their approval of the Fair because it tied in with the traditional
TRAWICK 25.
historic quality of the city and it was not going to upset anything as
far as big industry, etc . was concerned. So that is why, I am told, that
is why the Fair was accepted by the people who ran the town at that time.
Now, everybody I have talked to f eels that the Fair r eally started
San Antonio out of its manana attitude and its sleep and that this yeasty
business that ' s going on in this town now with the hotels and reconstruc­tion
and preservation and what not really traces its source back to the
Fair. Do you agree with that?
H: I totally agree with that.
T: I have to qualify that by saying that my perspective of San Antonio,
though; is not stretched out that far before the Fair. I don't think
there is any question that the things that happened subsequent to the
Fair, new hotels, additional conventions, additional tourism, was involved
with, related to and a by product of the Fair. I think all the economics
have resulted from it can be attributed to the investments that people
in the town made in the Fair at the time.
M: The development of the river.
T: Of course, the river was already an existing tourist attraction ...
David Straus, the guy next door, was the fellow who probably, if somebody
wanted to thank someone like Jerome Harris for coming up with the idea
of the Fair, David is the guy that really got the river development off
the ground ••• He really became .•.
M: I know. There are certain people ••.
T: On the river itself there was already a tremendous amount of develop-­ment.
But with the river extension itself ••. there's been ••• the Chamber
of Commerce moved down there and the continued development of other enter­tainment
attractions along the river.
TRAWICK 26.
M: In other words, it was a lovely Fair; it certainly moved San Antonio
forward; but, third, we haven't done right by the Hemisfair grounds .
T: I guess I'd have to confess to being as guilty as most of the other
people in this town. I have business occasions when I've been down to
the Fair site. But as to the Tower of the Americas, to eat, since the
Fair I have probably been no more than three or four times in all those
years . I've been to the Institute of Texan Cultures maybe twice. My
kids just love the Institute; they go all the time. Doing a little
research, as a matter of fact.
M: They had 5,000 people yesterday for that Day of the Child.
T: I am embarrassed to say that right now I couldn 't walk through the
gate on Alamo Street and tell you what I would run into because I haven't
been through that gate and on the grounds for so l ong ..•
M: You will not run into maybe six people. The Oral History office is
over at the Institute and I someti mes walk all the way down t o the Philli­pine
Restaurant for lunch. I may meet two, four, six people at the most
at lunch time. And those are mostly people from the Federal Building.
It's just terrible. I read just this morning that all but two buildings
were now spoken for by Continuing Education. So it looks like it's going
to be a downtown campus, which has been the idea all along.
T: That was one phase that was discussed back in the earliest times as
a campus type thing of Continuing Education.
H: Jack, while I haven't discussed this with you before, but I heard
people discussing that the word Hemisfair, although it's a catchy word
and all that, it did not immediately connote a world's fair.
T: A half a fair or something.
H: Yes.
M: Mr. Harris, when I interviewed him, said his original idea was that
TRAfVICK 27.
it was to be just this side of the world and that he did not envision
it to be a world's fair in the beginning.
T: During the Fair that was one of the things you heard a lot of people
say that Hemisfair just carried the wrong connotation to it •• . that it
meant something less than a full Fair . It's a shame how people can play
with words--twisting and distorting.
M: Too bad. It was a wonderful experience. An historic event.
T: It ' s kind of like a beautiful girl dressed up in a fine wedding dress
and not having a date .
M: The guy didn ' t show up.
I want to thank you. I know you are a busy man and I am so appre­ciative
to you for doing this.
T: I guess a person's perspective changes as time goes on. You ' re kind
of removed from it; you kind of look back and what maybe at the time was
something . . . there ' s a different perspective . I've always wondered about
people writing history . . • your perspective really does change.
M: When General Harris asked me to do this, I thought, "Oh heck," then
I got to thinking this was a very important historic event in San Antonio ' s
history. Come fifty years from now we're going to have all these opinions,
all this material on tape, and it's going to be extremely valuable .
T: I guess in my role . •. because I did go from the very inception right
to the end. There weren't too many people who could say that. I t was
an exciting experience!
M: Everybody said I must get an interview with Jack Trawick and you sure
were a hard man to catch but, Lord, I sure appreciate this . You're just
wonderful.
ONLY A FEW MINUTES ON SIDE 2--SEE MARK ON TAPE.