What did Gary Cartwright and 'Mad Dog' Know in 1963?

Notes on Mad Dogs: On Being Young, Talented, and Slightly Insane in Old Austin

By Clay Smith, Fri., Jan. 26, 2001

Originally published in The Austin Chronicle

Anyone who has tried to write about Mad Dog, a bizarre moment of this state's literary history, can lay claim to the same feelings Susan Sontag experienced when she wrote "Notes on 'Camp'" in 1964. "It's embarrassing to be solemn and treatise-like about Camp," she declared right off the bat, and proceeded to sketch the sensibility of camp in the form of descriptive notes because "to snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful, one must be tentative and nimble." The essay form is too definite, too knowing, perhaps, to snare a sensibility. Mad Dog is not a sensibility that is alive and powerful, but it was at one time. But the rules are the same for snaring lost or living sensibilities, and in the case of Mad Dog, for which there is not an abundance of recorded history, the effort of resuscitating its lost sensibility can be addressed most effectively by making notes about it. 

These notes are for Bud Shrake. 

"There were people who refused to join Mad Dog. ... I think they thought it was too elitist. So we decided it was: It was too elitist for them."

-- Bud Shrake being interviewed, Jan. 13, 2001

Defining "Mad Dog"

1. An attempt at definition: Mad Dog is the chosen name of a band of rebellious artists -- mainly writers and journalists but also musicians and painters -- who lived in Texas, mostly in Austin, in the late Sixties and early Seventies who partied and wrote in an identifiably Texan, outlaw manner. Members include  

• Texas Monthly senior editor Gary Cartwright and his wife Phyllis; 
• novelist and screenwriter Bud Shrake (Shrake and Cartwright were the founders); 
• Dennis Hopper, who starred in Kid Blue (1973), a movie that Shrake wrote; 
• Marvin Schwarz, who produced the movie; 
• actors Peter Boyle and Warren Oates, also in Kid Blue; 
• Willie Nelson; 
• Jerry Jeff Walker (and later, his wife Susan); 
• Peter and Jody Gent (Peter Gent is the author of the classic football satire North Dallas Forty and a former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver); 
• Bill Brammer, author of The Gay Place; 
• painter and sculptor Fletcher Boone; 
• labor lawyer David Richards and his wife Ann, who would become the governor of Texas; 
• Larry L. King; and 
• Threadgill's proprietor Eddie Wilson, among others. 

Once a Mad Dog always a Mad Dog, but the hotbed of Mad Dog activity has long since passed. The unofficial anthem of Mad Dog is said to be "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother," by Ray Wylie Hubbard, but the Jerry Jeff Walker version. 

Holding a book-signing at Scholz Garten (in this case, for Larry L. King's … and other dirty stories in 1968) is the epitome of Mad Dog style: a little beer with your books. The man smoking behind King (seated) is artist Fletcher Boone, and behind him, Bill Brammer. (Larry L. King Archives)

Trying to define the sensibility of Mad Dog in one statement would betray the spirit of the group, since harboring anything as sophisticated as a "sensibility" is not what Mad Dogs were after. There was no purpose to Mad Dog (more on this later); its motto was "Doing Indefinable Services to Mankind" and its credo was "Everything that is not a mystery is guesswork.

Part 8 of Land and Loot

Tracing the Roots of General Homes in Houston

Eden Corporation was one of the names under which General Homes Consolidated Companies, Inc. did business after the public stock issue, even though the first land transaction involving Eden Corporation had occurred on June 29, 1976 when Eden bought a 127-acre tract near the present Barker-Cypress Reservoir from Candace Mossler, only a few months before her death the following November. Candace and her son, Norman Johnson, had offices just west of the Astrodome, at 2525 Murworth, Suite 200 (known as the International Trade Center building), on the same floor as Douglas Welker of Eden Corporation.

Accused murderers, Candy and Mel

Candace Mossler was not just anybody. She was notorious, and her sensational story had been splashed from coast to coast from the date of the murder of her husband, Jacques, in 1964 until her trial in 1966, with that of her nephew/lover, Melvin Lane Powers. 

As we learn from the New York Times, "Mr. Mossler was killed on June 30, 1964, stabbed 39 times and bludgeoned on the head. His wife found his body wrapped in an orange blanket when she returned from a hospital where prosecutors said she had gone to establish an alibi."


Mossler conveyed an adjoining tract of land to First Management Corporation, another subsidiary of First Mortgage Co., which was a partner with Eden Corporation in a joint venture in Stafford (southwest of Houston) called Keegans Wood. She first acquired the land in 1968 from Percy Selden and the J.T. Rather, Jr. Estate [C822661].

John Thomas (Tom) Rather, Jr. had been born in Copperas Cove adjacent to what is now Fort Hood in Bell and Coryell Counties, and but he had moved to Houston to work for the Houston Post at the time World War I began. Fort Hood was built up during the next world war as the tank battalion training area on land that surrounded Oveta Culp Hobby's stomping grounds in Bell County.

J. T. Rather and the Monteiths from Belton

Oveta worked for quite a few years as the parliamentarian in the Texas Legislature, having been trained by her father, Rep. I.W. Culp of Killeen, who also was acquainted with Edgar Monteith and his elder brother Walter E. Monteith; their family had created Monteith Abstract Co. in Belton.

After graduating from Belton High School in 1904, Edgar Monteith would move to Houston to work as an attorney for Herman Brown's corporate empire. Both Herman and his younger brother George were also born in Belton, but grew up in nearby Temple (Belton is county seat of Bell County, where both Temple and Killeen are also located). Walter Monteith--an 1894 Belton High graduate--would be appointed judge in Houston's 61st district in 1919 by Governor Hobby, and he was elected mayor of that city in 1928.

Edgar's one attempt at electoral politics was a disaster when he ran in 1916 for the Democratic nomination for District Attorney in a three-county district and polled last in his own county in a four-man competition. Thereafter, he would content himself for pulling strings for Lyndon Johnson, while hiding behind the Brown & Root curtain. Edgar married Grace Wilson from the same graduating class as Tom Rather, no doubt giving him an entrée into his future career as a architect for Houston's oilmen.

Oveta met and married Lt. Governor William P. Hobby, who replaced as governor the impeached Gov. James E. "Pa" Ferguson from Temple (in the same county she and her father were from). She also worked for the newspaper Hobby edited, the Houston Post, which also employed J. T. Rather, Jr. Oveta would later become the only woman member of the Suite 8F group that frequented Herman Brown's suite in Jesse Jones' Lamar Hotel. Years later it would be learned that Hobby's nominal ownership of the Post was merely a front for Jones' powerful control of the paper.

J.T. Rather's parents were living in the small town of Belton (county seat of Bell County, Texas), where both George and Herman Brown (founders of Brown & Root and Texas Eastern Transmission Co.) were born. Not only did the Rather siblings go to school in Belton with the Brown children before the Browns moved to Temple a few miles away, but also with the Monteith brothers mentioned previously.

The 1920 census reflects that the Rather family by then lived at 2610 Webster in Houston, where a brother, Nathaniel H. Rather, worked as an attorney; the senior Rather was a bookkeeper for an oil company; and daughter Vera, 28, an oil company clerk. J.T. (Tom) Jr. was also a member of the mostly adult household and listed his occupation as an architect. Herbert, the eldest at 31, was a teacher in public school. He married Mary Stokes in Lampasas in 1926.

J. T. Rather and W. H. Francis, Jr.

In 1953 the following announcement appeared in the news:

W.H. Francis [Jr.], a Houston attorney, and architect John Thomas Rather, have been appointed to four-year terms on the board of governors of Rice Institute. George R. Brown, chairman of the board, announced their appointments, succeeding Herbert Allen and Robert H. Ray. Both new governors are graduates of Rice.

Chairman Wiess, Humble Oil

William Howard Francis, Jr. was married to Caroline Keith Wiess, one of the three daughters of Humble Oil chairman, Harry Wiess. His father lived in Highland Park in Dallas and, according to his 1946 death certificate, had served as general attorney for Magnolia Petroleum Co.

Rather's contacts helped to get him appointed to various state boards as well, and, working for the firm of noted architect John F. Staub, he designed several of the homes in the private enclave of Shadyside, a highly exclusive neighborhood between Rice University and the museum district where W.S. Farish, Kate Neuhaus, R.L. Blaffer (W.S. Farish’s first partner in a number of oil companies created during their Spindletop beginnings which they later merged into Humble Oil) and Irishman J.S. Cullinan, founder of the Texas Company (now Texaco), lived.

The book, Monster in River Oaks by Michael Phillips, tells the story of one of the heirs to the oil millions--Joan Blaffer Johnson, who lived on 2933 Del Monte in the River Oaks section of Houston.

"Despite her wealth, Joan [Blaffer], born in 1952, was no stranger to tragedy. Her younger brother committed suicide in 1990. She "married the irresponsible, alcoholic Luke Johnson, Jr., and was sinking her money into his failing car dealership," according to the book....Johnson was found dead in 1995 at the family's second home at Morgan's Point. It was ruled a suicide by shooting, but a mystery remains involving a male prostitute Johnson had flown in. Johnson was HIV-positive. According to the book, it was in the devastating aftermath in 1996 that Joan Johnson met [Dinesh] Shah and his friend David Collie at a Bible study group at the River Oaks Boulevard mansion of Baron Ricky di Portanova [mentioned in George Crile's book and the subsequent movie, Charlie Wilson's War], who has since died. Johnson would become romantically interested in Collie, but it was Shah who, presenting himself as a financial wizard, would gain her trust and take over the role of father to her children, actually moving into her house."

Del Monte St. home of Joan Blaffer Johnson

Shadyside Addition was a gated enclave developed by the Texaco founder before 1930. The senior Cullinan that year resided at 2 Remington, while son Craig and his family were on Longfellow, one street away. Mayor Monteith had a residence on Sunset Boulevard, almost within shouting distance. In 1950,
55-year-old Craig Cullinan's pajama-clad body was discovered by his son Craig Jr. in a third-floor bedroom, dead from a gunshot wound to the heart, ruled to be suicide. His 1943 will, made shortly after his daughter, Barbara, divorced her husband J. H. Pittman, cut her from his estate and took custody of her only child. Barbara Cullinan Pittman Waller, by then a Baton Rouge waitress at the Black Lamp Lounge, sued the estate which was ably represented by Leon Jaworski, whose law partner John Crooker had also lived near the Cullinans. In 1964 the Black Lamp Lounge was called a gay bar and "rendezvous for minor police characters," which found a place in the Warren Report.

We can only wonder whether any neighbors heard the gunshot. W.S. and Libbie Farish lived a few doors away at 10 Remington, while Hugo and Kate Neuhaus lived at No. 9. The Blaffer and Wiess homes appear to have been side-by-side on Sunset Boulevard, but the numbers do not match today's street configuration.

Does it not seem strange that all these supposed competitors in the oil business would choose to isolate themselves together into such an exclusive residential area? Could it be that they were all--even then--mere fronts for secret investors who wanted to fool the public into believing that a monopoly did not exist? What a legacy they left to their children!

Of course Farish, Wiess, Blaffer and Cullinan became part of what we now call "Big Oil," but a similar situation existed for the "wildcatters" like H.L. Hunt, Hugh Cullen, R.E. Bob Smith, J.S. Abercrombie and Michel Halbouty, who called themselves "independent" oil men.

W.S. Farish's first partner, Robert L. Blaffer, was married to the daughter of Scotsman W.T. Campbell, who, ironically, was J. S. Cullinan's partner in the founding of the Texas Company, later changed to Texaco (now Chevron). The story was always told of Cullinan's flying of the pirates' flag atop his Petroleum Building in Houston (later called the Great Southwest Life Building) on St. Patrick's Day as a "warning to privilege and oppression, within or without the law--the latter including witch burners, fanatics, and the like, who fail to realize or ignore the fact that liberty is a right and not a privilege."[1] It was, more likely, symbolic of his membership in a secret society such as the Knights Templar, which was more accurately represented by the skull and bones. The truth will never be known.

Percy Selden

Selden was formerly known as Percy Straus, Jr., heir to his family’s interest in R.H. Macy’s Stores, founded by Nathan Straus in New York. In 1954 he set up a trust for his children—all named “Straus”. By 1968 the family members were using the name “Selden,” when he conveyed real estate to Mossler. At some point in between he had the name legally changed. All his children, some of whom were already married, also changed their names to “Selden.”

His wife was the former Lillian Marjorie Jester, daughter of Frank Godwin Jester, a real estate developer in Dallas (not the former governor of Texas Beauford Jester); they married at Highland Park Methodist Church in 1937 and had a reception at Brookhollow Country Club. Selden, an attorney, possessed a collection of armour and chivalric weaponry which he eventually donated to a Houston museum.

In 1978 Selden's name appears as grantor of 162 acres in Harris and Fort Bend Counties to Keegan’s Wood, a joint venture made up of Eden Corporation and First Management [Harris Co. File No. F531714]. Edgar Monteith of Monteith, Baring and Monteith (Brown & Root’s and Gibraltar Savings’ attorneys) were attorneys for Selden as well [C822663], possibly due to Monteith's knowing J. T. Rather back in Belton as children.

The founder of Eden Corporation, Douglas Welker, had worked for a number of years for El Paso Natural Gas Building Co. (a company affiliated with Clint Murchison), which had a Houston office in the Americana Building owned by Gulf Interstate, about which more will be said in other parts of the series. Welker was closely associated with Larry Johnson, who became Tom Masterson’s partner in Underwood Neuhaus investment bank in 1985. Masterson was also a limited partner in Wilcrest Apartments, Ltd. in 1975, in which Triangle Investment Co. (formerly Johnson-Loggins) was the general partner/ syndicator. Other limited partners were Philip R. Neuhaus (Hugo and Kate’s son) and Milton R. Underwood (a founding partner of Underwood, Neuhaus) [E642917]. Milton’s first wife was Catherine Fondren, whose father was one of the founders of Humble Oil.

Carroll Sterling, daughter of another Humble founder, Frank Sterling, was first married to Bert Winston (a relative of Ella Rice Winston’s husband) and later to Harris Masterson (a distant cousin of Tom). One of the unnamed partners of Underwood, Neuhaus was W.S. Farish III (stepson of Hugo O. Neuhaus, Jr.), who joined the firm in the 1960’s. Larry Johnson's office was, for a time, in the Exxon Building, constructed in 1972 in Houston a few blocks south of the original Humble Oil Building.

W.S. Farish III inherited half of his grandfather’s interest in Humble Oil in 1943 at the age of 4. His mother, the former Mary Wood, was from the Chicago family which owned much of Sears, Roebuck, her father being Robert E. Wood, a founder of America First. After her first husband died, Mary married Hugo V. Neuhaus, Jr., an architect, whose mother was Kate Rice Neuhaus--Libbie Rice Farish’s first cousin. They all lived in Shadyside Addition across from Rice University next to Texaco founder J.S. Cullinan.

And they say Arkansas natives are interbred?

Another family investment company was W.S. Farish & Co., founded by W.S. Sr., which was managed by J.O. Winston, Jr., husband of Ella Rice Winston, Libbie Farish’s sister. Ella, incidentally, had married another cousin, Howard Hughes, Jr. in 1924, a year after his father died, but divorced him in 1929. Howard’s mother’s sister, Annette Gano, married Dr. Fred Lummis, son of Frederick A. Rice’s daughter, Minnie Lummis, whose son, a partner at Andrews, Kurth, later became chairman of Summa Corporation after Howard, Jr. died. Lummis moved to Las Vegas where he supervised the operation of the Hughes companies, including the medical research foundation he had set up for his cousin before his withdrawal.

W.S. Farish Sr., one of the founders of Humble Oil in 1917, became a director of Jersey Standard (a secret owner of half of Humble Oil stock) in 1926, moved to New York in 1933, and became chairman in 1938. His office was at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, not surprisingly, since the Rockefellers had founded Standard Oil and were not allowed legally to invest in Texas oil companies. When W.S. died in 1942, followed by his son’s death the next year, his estate fell to his grandson, W.S. Farish III, who was then 4 years old. The guardian of the minor child’s estate was his uncle, Stephen Power Farish (married to his brother's wife's cousin, Lottie Rice), until 1960. The minor’s investments were managed by the investment banking firm, Underwood, Neuhaus.

According to a February 19, 1950 Houston newspaper article by George Fuermann, Steve Farish had formed a syndicate with an “accountant friend,” M.W. Mattison,[2] in 1925 to raise $800,000 to buy Reed Roller Bit Co. from stockholders J.H. Giesey and the Niels Esperson Estate. After Spindletop in 1901, Steve Farish worked at Humble Oil until he left to form Navarro Oil which was sold in 1945 to the Continental Oil Co. (later Conoco).[3]

 

One interesting fact concerning Farish is that he was apparently acquainted with George DeMohrenschildt, according to information put together from Jim Marrs and others.[4] Born in Russia in 1911, De Mohrenschildt was the son of a Czarist official who later became a wealthy landowner in Poland, and had an uncle, Ferdinand, who was secretary of the czarist embassy in Washington and was married to the daughter of William Gibbs McAdoo, Woodrow Wilson’s son-in-law and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.[5]

DeMohrenschildt immigrated to the U.S. in 1938, having been involved in espionage with the OSS and probably with the Nazis.[6] He had a doctorate in commerce from the University of Liege, Belgium, when he came to the United States at age 27, where his brother Dmitry was a professor at Dartmouth, having degrees from Columbia and Yale.[7]

Margaret Clark Williams

Visiting his brother and American sister-in-law (who, coincidentally was the mother of George Bush's prep school roommate, Edward Hooker, at Andover), DeMohrenschildt spent time at Bellport, near East Hampton, on the ocean tip of Long Island. There he met many influential people, including stockbroker Jack and Janet Bouvier (Jackie Kennedy’s parents). He was also a friend of Margaret Clark Williams, whose family had vast land holdings in Louisiana. She gave him a letter of introduction to Humble Oil.[8]

Jim Marrs said that DeMohrenschildt came to Texas by bus “where he got a job with Humble Oil Company in Houston, thanks to family connections,” and that “[d]espite being friends with the chairman of the board of Humble,” George worked as a roughneck in the Louisiana oil fields.[9]

George was married four times: first to Dorothy Pierson of Palm Beach, Florida in 1943 for seven months; then in the late 1940s to Phyllis Washington, “the daughter of a high State Department official”; then in 1951 to a Chestnut Hill socialite, Wynne (“Didi”) Sharples, a medical doctor from a wealthy Philadelphia family, with whom he had two children who died of cystic fibrosis. In 1959 he married Jeanne LeGon, whose Russian father had been director of the Far Eastern Railroad in China.[10] When his first marriage ended, George came to Texas in 1944 and got a master’s degree in petroleum geology at the University of Texas at Austin. For a time he worked overseas for the Murchisons’ Three States Oil and Gas[11] and for Pantipec, an oil company owned by William F. Buckley, Jr.’s father.

Buckley Sr., a Texan, as an undergraduate lived in an upperclass dorm at the University of Texas at Austin which was also DeMohrenschildt's residence during his time at UT. The same dorm was also the home of brothers Rex G. Baker and Hines Baker (attorneys and top executives at Humble Oil with W.S. Farish, Sr.) and Jack R. Dougherty, who owned a ranch adjacent to the Farish ranch near Beeville.[12] In the 1960s, DeMohrenschildt was represented by attorney Morris Jaffe of San Antonio, who shared a mutual friend in John Mecom, Sr. of Houston.[13] Jaffe was in partnership with the Wynne family of Dallas, who were in investments with the Rockefellers, recipients of Teamster loans and members of the “Bobby Baker Set” in Washington.[14]

As we are often wont to say: "Small world!"

NOTES:

[1] Marguerite Johnston, Houston: The Unknown City, p. 279.

[2] Mattison's name appears a number of times in the Harris County property records as a signatory on behalf of the Scottish Rite Masonic Lodge in Houston.

[3] Steve Farish was born in Mayersville, Miss. but went to prep school and later to the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, an Episcopal college.

[4] Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (Carroll and Graf Publishers, Inc.: New York, 1989), p. 279.

[5] Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Marina and Lee (Harper and Row, 1976), p. 215. Does this mean he was Wilson's grandson-in-law? McAdoo was also Wilson's Treasury Secretary. In 1918 he founded McAdoo, Cotton and Franklin, a law firm located at 80 Pine--later called Cahill Gordon--which represented TWA against Howard Hughes. [Hoffman, p. 23]

[6] Marrs, Crossfire, p. 278-9. Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (New York: Thunder Mouth Press, 1993), p. 190.

[7] Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Marina and Lee (Harper and Row, 1976), p. 216.

[8] Ibid., p. 219.

[9] Ibid. The quoted passage does not identify which of the Humble Oil founders was DeMohrenschildt's friend, but it does state that he was also friendly with H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, John Mecom, Robert Kerr and Jean De Menil, and, according to Jim Marrs' interviews with Jeanne DeMohrenschildt after her husband's death, George was making regular trips to Houston from Dallas during 1962-63 on oil business with Mecom and De Menil. George's Russian friends in the Tolstoy Foundation told Marrs that he was going to Houston to see George and Herman Brown (p. 282.)

[10] Fonzi, The Last Investigation, p. 191.

[11] Peter Dale Scott, Crime and Cover-up, op. cit., p. 34

[12] Richard Bartholomew, Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used in the JFK Conspiracy (the Nash Rambler)--unpublished manuscript, pp. 63, 88-89. Also in the Dougherty family is J. Chrys Dougherty, a 1940 Harvard law graduate who also studied at the Inter-American Academy for International and Comparative Law in Havana, Cuba, in 1948. He was also a counter-intelligence officer in World War II and later a special assistant to the Texas Attorney General in charge of defending the State's interest in offshore oil. Committee on History and Tradition of the State Bar of Texas, Centennial History of the Texas Bar: 1882-1982, p. 140. Compare this information with the discussion of Phil Graham's residence while he was living in Washington, D.C. following his student years at Harvard. The atmosphere was reminiscent of that of the Cliveden Set and Astor Round Table, which had control of the Rhodes and Beit Trusts.

[13] Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Marina and Lee (Harper and Row, 1976), p. 216. Brewton, p. 317. See also Jonathan Kwitney's book, The Mullendore Murder Case, about the murder of the Mecoms' son-in-law in Oklahoma, and the connection with Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance and the Jaffe law firm.

[14] Peter Dale Scott, Crime and Cover-up.

The Big Bust

George Washington Owen, Jr. started life on August 14, 1925 as the son of a Texas couple near the Corsicana oil fields in small town Emhouse. They moved to the big city of Dallas while he was in high school, graduating from Crozier Tech, formerly Oak Cliff High, in the historic downtown area in 1947. At that point he moved up to playing college basketball for Southern Methodist University, also in Dallas, from 1948 through 1951. As the photo below indicates, his basketball team was successful, taking him all the way to New York to play in Madison Square Garden in his junior year. A guard, he was often there on the rebound and sometimes saved the game, at least according to the newspapers reporting the game results.

At least George was enough of a star at SMU to catch the eye, and for a time the heart, of Nell McGrew, country girl from Rotan, near Abilene. Perhaps she was impressed by the fact he was six years older when they married in their junior year in college; he had taken several years after high school to serve in the war. But the newspaper photos would not have impressed her. She already had a huge portfolio of her own.

They appeared to be the perfect couple by the time Candy Barr appeared on the scene in Dallas. The story we hear from all the reporters who talked to Owen is that he was a young, innocent boy when Pat Gannaway's men showed up at Candy's place and were about to haul George off to jail. They say he was the reason Candy took the bottle of weed out of her bra, for which she was later incarcerated after she lost all her appeals. But we have to realize this so-called innocent boy was every bit of 32 years old, a married man with two sons, creator of a chemical business in Dallas, although what type of chemicals he manufactured remains a mystery.

Capt. W. Pat Gannaway in charge of CI unit on narcotics matters. He had been busting Dallas' underworld for over ten years by the time he got Candy Barr for possession of marijuana in 1957. Eleven years earlier he was written up in Texas newspapers for arresting a preacher who was luring young girls up to his hotel room to take nude pictures of them.

Gannaway had gone from being a lieutenant in 1955 to a captain in 1959. In between those years was his arrest of Candy Barr. It was that big bust (no pun intended) which may have made the difference.

Candy Barr, who danced at the Weinstein brothers' high-class joint next door to Jack Ruby's Carousel Club, was the big time for Gannaway. He liked high-profile arrests. Every cop does, if the truth be known. Big arrests mean better pay, more power. Gary Cartwright's story was posted previously on this blog, but it is worth repeating.

Taking the wrapper off a Texas legend

Copyright 1976 by Gary Cartwright 

Texas Monthly (December 1976)

Juanita Dale Slusher encountered the joy of sex at age five with the aid and comfort of an eighteen-year-old neighbor named Ernest. She remembers that he was gentle, and not at all unpleasant. It wasn’t until she encountered the Dallas police force some years later that Juanita Dale associated sex with guilt. When she was nine her mother died and her father remarried: Doc Slusher, brick mason and handyman, a whiskey-drinking harmonica player and all-around rowdy, already had five kids, and right away there were four more, then two more after that. With all those Slushers around, you’d think the work would get done, but it never seemed to…. At age thirteen and painfully confused, Juanita Dale took her baby-sitting money and grabbed a bus out of Edna, an independent decision that would become socially acceptable, even laudable, to future generations, but an act worse than rebellion in those days: it was the act of a bad girl. For a while she lived with an older sister in Oklahoma City, then a year or so later moved to live with another sister in Dallas. The Dallas sister soon hooked up with a man, and Juanita Dale was on her own….

To be technically correct, it was the old Liquor Control Board (LCB) that first discovered the girl who would become Candy Barr. They discovered her posing as an eighteen-year-old cocktail waitress—the minimum legal age. She wouldn’t be eighteen for another four years, but girls from tough backgrounds develop early, or they don’t develop at all. She kept changing jobs, and the LCB kept discovering her. Once they sent her home to Edna, but she caught the next bus back to Dallas…. Candy’s first husband, Billy Debbs, was a graduate of Shorty’s academy. Billy was a good lover but a poor student. He went to the pen, got out, then got shot to death. Somewhere in there—she can’t fix the exact time—a pimp spotted her jitterbugging in a joint called the Round-Up Club and launched Candy’s movie career. She must have been about fifteen when Smart Aleck was filmed. The thousands (perhaps millions) who have seen this American classic will recall that she was a brunette then. Smart Aleck was America’s first blue movie, the Deep Throat of its era, only infinitely more erotic and less pretentious. It was just straight old motel room sex; the audience supplied its own sounds….

One of the fringe benefits of being in films was that Candy got invited to all the best stag parties. Several prominent and wealthy Dallas business and professional men, on my oath that their names would not be revealed, recalled a Junior Chamber of Commerce stag where Candy was the star attraction. One auto dealer told me, “She went for two hundred, three hundred, even five hundred bucks. There was a banker who paid five hundred every time he put a hand on Candy.” … The Colony was the Stork Club of Dallas, the Cocoanut Grove, the butterfly of the Commerce Street neon patch where Jack Ruby ran the sleazy Carousel and conventioneers intermingled with cops and hustlers and drug merchants.

…Nobody in the Dallas Police Department wanted to talk about a marijuana case from twenty years ago, and Pat Gannaway, who retired a few years ago to join the Texas Criminal Justice Division, wasn’t available for an interview. But I know this: Pat Gannaway spent a lot of man-hours bringing one stripper to justice. The confluence of these two forces—Candy Barr, desecrater of all that is decent, and Pat Gannaway, the terrible swift sword—is surely the quintessence of a morality frozen in time.

Captain Pat Gannaway was referred to in newspaper accounts of the time as “Mr. Narcotics.” As a lad he had been so eager to join the Dallas Police Department that he lied about his age. For twelve years, until he was kicked upstairs (he was put in charge of rearranging the Property Room) in the 1968 department shake-up, he ran the special services bureau as his private fiefdom. He reported only to the chief. “His passion,” reporter James Ewell wrote in the Dallas Morning News on the occasion of Gannaway’s retirement, “was police work, down on the streets with his men.”

He loved the Army, too. He served in Army intelligence and was an expert wiretapper. When he wasn’t swooping down on the vermin that afflicted his city, Gannaway and his entire force were making speeches to civic clubs, warning of the peril. Those recent 1,000-year sentences that made Dallas juries such a novelty may have been the direct result of Pat Gannaway’s tireless crusade. Gannaway told James Ewell: “It was always a good feeling to see someone on those juries you recalled being at one of those talks. We always told our audiences if you got rid of an addict or pusher, you were also getting rid of a burglar, a thief, or a robber.”

In the autumn of 1957 Gannaway assigned Red Souter (now an assistant chief) and another of his agents, Harvey Totten (now retired), to rent an apartment near Candy Barr’s apartment and establish surveillance. A telephone repairman would testify later that he discovered a “jumper tie-up” connecting Candy’s telephone to the telephone in the apartment occupied by Souter and Totten, but the jury either ignored this or didn’t believe it. A few days after the surveillance began, Candy received a visit from a friend, a stripper named Helen Kay Smith, who laid out a story about her mother coming to visit and asked Candy Barr to hide her stash—the Alka-Seltzer bottle of marijuana. Candy agreed and slipped the bottle inside her bra, next to her big heart. Two hours later, as Candy was talking on the telephone to a gentleman friend (and therefore obviously at home, in case anyone with a search warrant wanted to drop in), there was a knock at the door. Candy’s defense attorneys claimed the search warrant was a blank that Gannaway filled in after the arrest, but the court didn’t buy that either.

Candy’s gentleman friend, who asked to not be identified, told me what happened next: “Candy said hold on, someone is knocking at the door. I heard some noises and someone hung up the phone. All I could think of was she’s in some kind of trouble. I got over to her place. When I walked in I saw Gannaway, Totten, Red Souter, Jack Revill, and I think one other narcotics officer.
Gannaway picked up a chair and said something like, ‘Well, well, that looks like a joint on the floor.’ I swear to you, it was the first marijuana cigarette I ever saw. That’s when Candy, God bless her, said to Gannaway, ‘He’s just a square john kid. He doesn’t know anything about this. If you let him go, I’ll give you what you came for.’ She reached in and pulled out the bottle. Gannaway decided he would take me in anyway, and that’s when Jack Revill said, ‘Captain, if you do that, I’m turning in my badge.’ So they took her away.”

Candy’s four-day trial the following February was a farce, which didn’t prevent it from also being a sensation. 

In its year-end review the Dallas Morning News headline read: Candy’s Trial Led ‘58 Scene.
Judge Joe B. Brown, who would later make his mark as the buffoon judge in the Jack Ruby trial, borrowed a camera and during one of the recesses snapped pictures of “the shapely defendant.” Defense attorneys Bill Braecklein and Lester May realized from the beginning that their problem was much larger than a bottle of marijuana, although, as May explained, “In those days marijuana was worse than cancer.”

“It was a time when the pendulum had swung far to the right,” May told me. “If the police decided you were guilty of something, they made a case and you were found guilty. It was just that simple. Candy’s real crime was she wouldn’t cooperate with the vice squad.”

No, the real problem wasn’t the marijuana, it was Candy Barr herself. It wasn’t merely her reputation, though God knows that was strong enough to kill a rogue elephant, it was that combative stubbornness, that unwillingness to throw herself at the feet of the jury and beg forgiveness. Chief prosecutor James Allen offered her two years for a guilty plea, and if Les May hadn’t got her out of the room she would have spit in his eye, or worse.

They decided not to put her on the stand; without her testimony, of course, it would be almost impossible to challenge state witnesses: she was in possession of marijuana, regardless of Helen Kay Smith’s testimony. That mysterious cigarette on the floor, though, was something else entirely. The attorneys worked out a way to let Candy make a statement to the jury without actually testifying, which meant that she could not be cross-examined. No one remembers Candy’s exact words, but it must have been a stirring oration. When she had finished, the jury just retired and voted her fifteen years in the Big Rodeo. It was Valentine’s day 1958.
“She was a very naive young lady,” Braecklein recalled. “While we were waiting to come to trial, she was out in Las Vegas, doing her act. Just one week before we came to trial, I got word that she was going to be a bridesmaid in Sammy Davis, Jr.’s wedding [to a white actress]. Anyone who grew up in Texas knew …

Although they didn’t anticipate anything approaching fifteen years, the defense team had braced itself for a verdict of guilty. They had already drafted a list of reversible errors that would have choked the Star Chamber. The real shock came when they lost a 2—1 decision in the State Court of Criminal Appeals. In the eleven months that separated the trial from the appeals verdict, Candy had reinforced her public image by moving in with hoodlum Mickey Cohen: one assumes justice is blind, but just how blind is an open question.

… I offered her one of my cigarettes and asked about Mickey Cohen. Cohen had personally guaranteed her $15,000 bond while the marijuana appeal ran its course. In a cruel way, those were the peak years for Candy Barr. She lived in a villa in the notorious Garden of Allah on Sunset Boulevard in L.A. and earned up to $2000 a week stripping there and in Vegas. Simultaneously, a pack of lawmen and profiteers howled like hungry dogs in her shadow—FBI agents, CIA agents, treasury agents, IRS agents, L.A. cops, Vegas cops, Dallas cops. The pressure was so enormous that the El Rancho Vegas had her replaced with Nelson Eddy. She was also in and out of the hospital with hepatitis. Candy recalled that the first time she ever heard of Mickey Cohen was when he sent an orchid in a champagne glass to her hospital room in L.A., along with this note: “Don’t worry, little girl, you got a friend.”

I had heard from good sources that the reason that Cohen got rid of Candy was she was giving him a bad press. The vast majority of those agents were interested in Mickey Cohen, not his girl friend. Word came down from “the Eastern organization” that if Cohen didn’t drop Candy, they would. Somewhere between Catalina Island and Hawaii….

~~~~~~~

Aug 14, 1925 - Jul 20, 2000
  OWEN, GEORGE W.

Age 74. Born in Emhouse, TX, August 14, 1925 and passed away July 20, 2000. After graduation from Crozier Tech High School, Dallas, he served three years U.S. Army, First Infantry Division, including the Battle of the Bulge in WWII. He attended Arlington State, before transferring to SMU where he played varsity basketball and was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha. After graduation, he started Mustang Chemical and other business ventures. During the mid '60s, he was the Player Relations Director for the startup franchise, New Orleans Saints. Later, he was a commercial and residential builder in North Dallas before retiring.

He is survived by children: Mitchell Owen and wife Suzzane, of Dallas; Bart Owen and wife Sheron of Garland, Kyle Owen, Wynne Owen and Mark Owen all of Dallas, and grandchildren: Haley Owen, Jenna Owen, and Scott Owen.

SERVICES: Restland Memorial Chapel at 10:00 AM, Sat, July 22, 2000. Interment to follow in Restland Memorial Park. Family will receive friends from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM Friday, July 21, 2000 at Restland Funeral Home, located on Greenville Avenue, 1/2 mile North of L.B.J.

From Candy Barr to Maureen Dean, and lots of gambling in between

In a previous edition of this blog it was mentioned that Lyndon Johnson's longtime mistress, Madeleine Duncan Brown had stated that a friend of hers (she called him George Owens) had been at the social event thrown by Clint W. Murchison, Jr. on the night of November 21, 1963, and that George had admitted to her that he had actually driven to the airport and picked up J. Edgar Hoover that afternoon.

If that is true (and George can't say since he dropped dead on the spot, Madeleine said, just as he was about to make his public confession), then that would just possibly connect Lyndon Johnson's mob-loving friends not only to the killing of JFK, but also to the plot that triggered Watergate. Madeleine was actually making reference to George Washington Owen, Jr., the subject of Doug Bedell's 1986 story below:

SMU BOOSTER HAS LIVED ON EDGE OF LIMELIGHT

(Copyright 1986) By Doug Bedell
The Dallas Morning News 7 December 1986

George Washington Owen Jr. has escaped unscathed from more than his share of scrapes in the course of his 61 years. In the late 1950s, Owen was the mysterious boyfriend of Candy Barr and narrowly avoided going to jail when Dallas police arrested the famed stripper for possession of marijuana. 

In the '60s, the former SMU athlete survived the acrimonious crash of his marriage to a stewardess named Maureen Kane, who would later become Maureen Dean, wife of Watergate defendant John Dean. "Mo' would essentially come to accuse Owen of bigamy. 

 

And in the '70s, there was an inconclusive federal grand jury investigation into a Dallas-Las Vegas gambling link about which Owen was questioned. In August 1985, George Owen was banned by the NCAA from any involvement with SMU athletics. Last month, The Dallas Morning News reported that Owen had provided a rent-free apartment

to Albert Reese, a current SMU football player. 

"I guess I've had a pretty interesting life," Owen says in typical understatement. But today, George Owen doesn't want to discuss too many of those parts of that "pretty interesting life." Fidgeting incessantly with a sterling silver letter opener, he sits behind a desk in his Addison office and gazes around the dark-paneled room at the symbols of his latest journey into the limelight: 

• SMU game balls meticulously arranged in a glass display case; 
• a proud Pony helmet, mounted and framed; 
• autographed photographs from players.

"I just don't want to do anything that would cause SMU any embarrassment or any problems," he says in low tones. "I've done enough of that already."

"He's so, so enthusiastic about sports," says one of Owen's former wives, Dallas nightclub singer Diane Wisdom. "He's a booster in the truest sense of the word."

Owen professes to feel pain at having been forever banned from associating with his alma mater's athletic programs. Owen, a real-estate developer, was one of nine SMU boosters singled out by the NCAA last year for suspect recruiting activities. 

But along with the November reports in The News that linked him to a rent-free apartment provided for starting tight end Albert Reese has come even more discomfort for Owen and his beloved institution. Should NCAA investigators find Owen was involved with Reese, SMU's football team could be disbanded for up to two years for repeated violations. 

"I understand you got to have free press and all, but this kid Reese, what they did to him was just terrible," he says. "Wait until it all comes out. We got a backup on all that."

His voice rises with a trace of anger. "The thing I really do hate is that everybody picks on SMU," he says. "Everybody's guilty of something. I've been out there recruiting, hoss, I know what I'm talking about. But they always come back to SMU."

That Owen finds himself once again in a defensive posture is, many of his friends say, the product of a pair of Owen traits:

First and foremost, Owen -- a former SMU and Crozier Tech basketball player of limited distinction -- always has been a sports fanatic who loved associating with athletes. That part of the Owen personality could be seen in the late '50s as he became a confidant of Dallas Cowboys co-founders Clint Murchison Jr. and Bedford S. Wynne. 

Owen's boyish face and dark, wavy locks became a common sight at the social functions of the Murchison coterie, known around the NFL as "The Rover Boys." And to this day, the affable Owen counts among his dearest friends former Washington Redskins quarterback Billy Kilmer and former Green Bay Packers running back Paul Hornung. 

Says a longtime acquaintance who asked to remain anonymous: "George has always wanted to be in the limelight while existing on the fringes. He's really always longed to be of higher profile."

The second trait -- common to his friend, car dealer W.O. Bankston -- is that Owen prides himself on being quick to help any acquaintance in need. 

"He'd give you the shirt off his back," says Henry Lee Parker, SMU football recruiting coordinator, who came to know Owen 20 years ago while both worked for the New Orleans Saints. "He's a very, very generous person. To a fault, I'd have to say."

Those characteristics may provide some insight into what has been the motivating force behind Owen's activities the past five years. But to fully understand George Owen, one must go back much, much further, back to the pre-World War II days when he was growing up in East Dallas, an only child being raised by his divorced mother. Back to when Owen -- a youngster of slight stature and admittedly sluggish academic drive -- yearned for his own share of athletic stardom. 

At Crozier Tech during the '40s, coach Doc Hayes was building a reputation as he was building tough, aggressive basketball teams. His teams won easily and with regularity. And one of Hayes' scrappiest guards during the latter stages of that decade was Owen. Under 6 feet, quick and muscular, Owen showed himself to be a floor leader although never a prominent scorer. 

After high school and a stint in the service during World War II, Owen returned to Dallas with hopes of entering Southern Methodist University, where Hayes had become varsity coach. "My grades just weren't good enough," he recalls. "At Crozier Tech, I had taken basket-weaving and auto shop and things of that nature. I never did really apply myself."

Disappointed but undaunted, Owen entered what was then Arlington State, a junior college that is now the University of Texas at Arlington. His grade average improved, and soon his old high school coach summoned him to SMU, where he was offered a basketball scholarship. 

For Owen, life at SMU from 1948 to 1951 was heaven. On the football field, Doak Walker, Kyle Rote and former Dallas Mayor Robert Folsom were dominant. SMU school spirit may never have run higher than in those post-war days. 

"It was just like Mardi Gras every day," he says. "Great school. Great fun."

If he was admired for his basketball skills, Owen -- a physical education major -- also was recognized off the court for his penchant for partying and fraternity life. But it was through his socializing that Owen would cement tight friendships with the likes of Murchison and Bankston. And those men would have a profound influence on the future of Owen the businessman. In many ways, Owen says he has tried to emulate his friends -- especially Bankston.

"I was kind of raised up by W.O.," Owen says as he leans back at his desk, which is flanked by portraits of his two friends/mentors. 

"He helped me when I was in school. And he helped me out of school by putting me in business . . . W.O. is the kind of guy who gets people out of trouble. Ninety percent of his day is taken up with other people and their problems. I try to take after him in some small way."

Like many college athletes today, Owen faced trouble upon graduation. "When I finished my last day of eligibility and the basketball season was over, I realized that I didn't have any formal educational tools to trade on at all," he says. 

Owen and a friend opened a maintenance supply company, Mustang Chemical. Meanwhile, his social contacts broadened at downtown night spots such as Benny Bickers University Club on Commerce Street. 

Owen ingratiated himself with nearly everyone he met. "He knew the entire spectrum of people in those days," says Wisdom, his ex-wife. "He knew the janitor in every building and the president of the company. He was chums with and knew everybody."

In social settings, Owen has always been a marvel. Friends say his memory for faces, names and events is nothing short of remarkable.

Many of his acquaintances were of the opposite sex. "Yes, he has always been a ladies man because he's charming and fun to be with," says Wisdom. "Certainly, ladies like that in him."

One of the females attracted to Owen nearly proved to be his downfall. Owen declines to discuss any of his previous marriages or his relationship with stripper Candy Barr. "That's all behind me," he says. 

But certainly the events of Oct. 27, 1957, would be hard to forget. That night, Dallas police had staked out Barr's apartment. Officers burst in and, they testified, they found a marijuana cigarette on the floor. They also found George Washington Owen. 

"If you'll let George Owen go, I'll give you the rest of the marijuana," one of the detectives quoted Barr as saying. The officers freed Owen. Then, from her cleavage, Barr pulled a bottle filled with the illegal substance, an act that would ultimately land her in prison.

In 1960, three years after the incident in Barr's room, Murchison and Wynne negotiated the birth of the Dallas Cowboys. And when they needed someone to help sign players, Owen was their man.

By 1963, Owen had two sons with one wife, then divorced and married Wisdom, a Highland Park woman who scooted around Dallas on a motorbike when she wasn't in Las Vegas for singing engagements.

This was the era when the Rover Boys were in full swing. At NFL games both home and away, Murchison, Owen, Gordon McLendon, Mitch Lewis, Bob Thompson and others made names for themselves with raucous, late-night carousing, practical joking, and fabulous spending sprees. 

Owen's marriage to Wisdom deteriorated into separation during that period, although she says she has no regrets. "He's an extremely nice man," says Wisdom, who still sings at Dallas clubs. " . . . I have no ill words for him."

During the mid-'60s, as Owen approached 40, another friendly association resulted in a new, full-time sports job. Oilman John Mecom had acquired a pro football franchise for New Orleans. He invited Owen to work in his front office, signing players. Running back Paul Hornung, finishing out his career with the fledgling team, became Owen's roommate.

About the same time [early to mid 1960's], a new woman entered Owen's life: a blonde American Airlines stewardess named Maureen Kane, a woman whose face would eventually become familiar to millions of Americans as that of the wife of embattled White House counsel John Dean. 

Click to enlarge.

Writes Mrs. Dean in her book, 'Mo': Woman's View of Watergate: "He (Owen) was great fun and we got along famously. And then we got very serious -- very serious . . . We had no major problems for six weeks, and then we had a really major problem: I learned that George was still married to singer Diane Wisdom . . . I moved out immediately and flew back to mother."

Actually, court records indicate Owen and Wisdom had obtained a Mexican divorce by that time. The particular type of divorce proceeding, however, was not recognized as legal within the United States. Mrs. Dean eventually succeeded in having her marriage to Owen annulled.

Owen stayed on with the Saints until 1969. During his last year, he was joined in the front office by a new director of player personnel, Henry Lee Parker. Parker is now SMU's football recruiting coordinator, an aide to athletic director Bob Hitch until the latter's resignation on Friday. It is Parker whom former SMU player David Stanley said mailed cash to his family, even after SMU was put on probation in 1985.

Dallas, 1974. Owen ran into more trouble, but once again he wriggled free with little more than a brief mention in local newspapers. A federal grand jury subpoenaed Owen -- along with restaurant owner Joseph Campisi, millionaire builder James L. Williams and two police officers -- during an investigation of local bookmaking operations. 

The grand jury had been looking into the Las Vegas-to-Dallas transmission of wagering information. In part, the investigation was prompted by the 1972 discovery of an envelope containing $10,000 during a raid on the home of a known gambler, Bobby Joe Chapman. 

The envelope had the words "Dallas Cowboys Football Club" written on it. But nothing ever became of the grand jury investigation, and the cash -- all in $100 bills -- was eventually returned to Chapman. 

During that period, Owen says his friend W.O. Bankston was busy helping him set up in several ill-fated businesses. Owen gradually began gaining a big hand in the building of office and residential projects across northern Dallas and southern Denton counties. Sometimes, county records show, his partners have been fellow SMU boosters like Sherwood Blount, who has acted as an agent for numerous athletes.

[Note: This article was written in 1986. In 1991, Blount would be tried and found not guilty on criminal fraud charges involving a Kansas savings and loan that failed in 1989 as part of the savings and loan scandal.]

Over the years, Owen has managed to accumulate a sumptuous, deep-red brick home that backs up to the golf course at Bent Tree Country Club, where he is a member. And the paneled offices of Owen's First Dallas Realty firm occupy prime land hard by the Addison Airport control tower.

SMU, 1976. With the arrival of Ron Meyer as head football coach, Owen said he became more and more involved in recruiting and booster activity. Meyer knew Blount. Blount knew Owen. And the three would work together with other boosters and coaches to bring the best talent to SMU's campus. 

Owen's workplace became a regular stop for SMU's top football players, says a woman who used to work for one of Owen's companies. "Football players came in all the time," she says. "It just seemed to be a big part of his life."

Large amounts of cash were also a common sight in the office. Sometimes, workers would be ordered to deliver "huge rolls of bills" to Owen or other associates. 

Meyer left SMU in 1981, but Owen continued to recruit under the new administration, headed by athletic director Bob Hitch and coach Bobby Collins, who both resigned Friday. Sometimes, the telephone work Owen did as part of his recruiting efforts was alleged to have involved more than innocent booster pitches. In 1982, Owen's involvement in the recruitment of Angleton linebacker David Stanley came under scrutiny. Published reports linked Owen to a trip to Lake Tahoe that Stanley supposedly made before turning down the University of Texas in favor of SMU.

"I was supposed to have sent him to Billy Kilmer's hotel in Lake Tahoe and then fixed the wheels so that he could win money," Owen says. "Now, how ridiculous is that?"

In fall 1983, Henry Lee Parker arrived at SMU to take over as recruiting coordinator. As a result, the two men renewed a friendship that had been born in New Orleans during the '60s. Meanwhile, the NCAA began looking into SMU's recruitment of the entire freshman football crop of 1983, a class that included an unprecedented four Parade magazine high school All-Americas and six All-State selections. 

Finally, in August 1985, the NCAA announced it was ordering one of the toughest set of sanctions ever for SMU recruiting violations. The banning of Owen from contact with athletes for life was included. 

"Why, certainly, it hurt me," he says. "I got some good friends out there. Great friends. Henry Lee is one of my best friends. Bobby Collins, and his wife, Lynn . . . "

Owen maintains that there are explanations for Albert Reese's living in what leasing agents remember as a "comp" apartment provided by Owen. Reese, however, was suspended for the last two games of his college career, even after SMU officials heard Owen's explanation.

Owen does acknowledge giving Stanley a rent-free deal at the same Surrey Highlands complex in Carrollton. Stanley had already left SMU at the time, but Owen says he was trying to help the troubled linebacker get into North Texas State University's program. And, because of that, Owen says he may have unintentionally violated the NCAA's prohibition against extra benefits for athletes.

"Everybody bends the rules a little," he says. "I was trying to help him. I wasn't trying to hurt him." 

And, for all the trouble that he seems to have created, Owen today takes solace in supportive messages from acquaintances. "I know there's going to be a lot of SMU people possibly down because of all this," he says. "But I've had maybe 200 calls -- all positive calls. Maybe I've had two negative calls. And I'm in sympathy with those two. All I can tell them is, 'Wait until the judges give you a decision. It'll be a little more clarified.' But for me to get ridiculed and get pounded on for what I've done . . . "

The strong voice of George Washington Owen trails off. He clears his throat, as if he is swallowing back any trace of self-pity. "I like to think about one call I've gotten since this happened. It's what I really appreciate. The guy said, 'George, you've helped a thousand kids. One football player's not going to get in front of you. Is there anything I can do for you?' "

"That makes me feel good. That's what I like to think I'm all about."

PHOTOS IN ORIGINAL (not available) 1.George Owen (No credit given) 2.George Owen ... here in a 1951 yearbook photo, says his years at SMU were "just like Mardi Gras every day. (No credit given) 3.Real-estate developer George Owen says he feels pain at having been forever banned from associating with his alma mater's athletic programs. (Credit: DMN-Clint Grant) 4.- 
5.Stripper Candy Barr (left) and Maureen "Mo" Kane, later Mrs. John Dean, were two of the women in Owen's life. (No credits given); LOCATION: 1. Owen, George Washington Jr. (ran color, bw filed). 2. - 3. Owen, George Washington Jr. 4. Barr, Candy. 5. Dean, John.