Former Fw Masonic Home Dorm To Become A Shopping Center

[GreenBat]

Former FW Masonic Home dorm to become a shopping center

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"take paradise and put up a parking lot, ooh, wah,wah,wah..."

Cowboys legends plan to demolish Masonic Home's Mighty Mites dorm

By Barry Shlachter, Jim Fuquay, Maria M. Perotin

Star-Telegram Staff Writers

A 1920s-era Masonic Home building that two Dallas Cowboy greats, Emmitt Smith and Roger Staubach, want demolished for a Fort Worth shopping center, once housed scrappy orphans who managed to win a state football championship in a Hoosiers-like underdog story.

The tale is gripping enough to fill an upcoming book, Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football, by Jim Dent, author of Junction Boys and The Undefeated. And Disney and other studios are negotiating for a film version.

To be released Sept. 4 by Thomas Dunne Press, the book chronicles how the Masonic school went from being without a football to a state championship six years later, then making it to the semifinals three times: in 1934, 1938 and 1940. Hardy Brown and DeWitt Coulter from the '40 team became All-Pro players with the 49ers and Giants, respectively.

The two-story structure figures prominently in Mighty Orphans. Later renamed the Remmert Building, the senior boys' dormitory was known for generations as the "Big Guys' Building," and its basement housed the players' locker room, said Billy Threlkeld and Paul Underwood, both players on the Mighty Mites' undefeated 1966 team. A rule change kept them from contesting the state championship.

"Obviously, the news disappoints me and makes me sad," said Underwood, 56.

Threlkeld, who spent 30 years in the construction business, expressed disbelief that Smith's architects can't incorporate the historic building in the design for what will be called Mason Heights Village, adjacent to a development of more than 500 houses.

"Even I could do it," he said.

Smith, who didn't respond to an e-mail seeking comment, got the go-ahead last week from the city's Landmark Commission to have the dormitory and two other old buildings razed, over the protests of Historic Fort Worth and counter to a recommendation by city staff. In his remarks, Smith did not address preservationist concerns but detailed the need to bring big-box retailers to a severely underserved neighborhood.

Developer Michael Mallick said the core Masonic Home campus of 10 structures will be given to the All Church Home and remain intact.

"Emmitt Smith is involved?" asked Bert Van Natter III, who spent five years at the home and graduated in 1967.

"Makes me sick," he said. "It's a money thing, that's what it is. If we knew there was going to be a hearing, 25 to 50 ex-students would have shown up and protested tearing down the building. It was our understanding that the historical buildings would not be touched," Van Natter said.

Dent, a prize-winning reporter who covered the Cowboys for 11 years for the Star-Telegram and Dallas Times Herald, said Smith should think twice before razing a building with such significance to Texas football.

"I have known Emmitt Smith since his rookie season of 1990 and hold a great admiration for him as a football player," Dent e-mailed us from Houston.

But, he went on, "anyone can see the historical significance of all of this, and I'm sure the backlash in Fort Worth concerning the destruction of this building will be overwhelming."

[ScreamingEaglesFan]

Is this the same masonic home that was involved with the Kids Korner ticket scandal? I.E they said they'd bring 150 kids but called and cancelled the day before the game?

[UNTFan23]

The Masonic Home has been selling off land for several years now. If anything, the people of Fort Worth should be upset at themselves for letting this happen, not a developer coming in and buying the land to redevelop it. If FW had properly supported the non-profit organization in the first place, this would have never happened.

Edited July 22, 2007 by UNTFan23

[PlummMeanGreen]

Is this the same masonic home that was involved with the Kids Korner ticket scandal? I.E they said they'd bring 150 kids but called and cancelled the day before the game?

SEF: Each and every ticket for the Kids Korner promotion for the 20?? home football season opener had actually been purchased by a whole bunch of our fellow posters on GoMeanGreen.com (as well as non-posters & non-registered members for that matter).

Not meaning to correct you, but I don't think scandal is really the word that describes what happened with that Kids Korner promo; in fact, it just boils down to where there were merely a whole bunch of un-used (yet purchased) tickets that many Denton/DFW area kids missed out on using for a Mean Green football home season opener.

GMG!

Edited July 23, 2007 by PlummMeanGreen

[FirefightnRick]

This property is in the middle of one of the highest crime riddled sections of Fort Worth. Good luck to them getting retail interests to fill it.

"Shaking Head"?

Rick

[Eagle1855]

This property is in the middle of one of the highest crime riddled sections of Fort Worth. Good luck to them getting retail interests to fill it.

Nobody ever accused Emmitt Smith of being a brilliant mind....

[Quoner]

Nobody ever accused Emmitt Smith of being a brilliant mind....

I hear he wanted a place to fight his dogs...

[Eagle1855]

I hear he wanted a place to fight his dogs...

I see someone else caught the gem of an opinion he offered up at the College Football Hall of fame induction on the subject of Mike Vick..

"He's the biggest fish in the whole doggone pond right now, so they're putting the squeeze on him [Vick]to get to everyone else. Now, granted he might have been to a dogfight a time or two, maybe five times, maybe 20 times, may have bet some money, but he's not the one you're after. He's just the one who's going to take the fall -- publicly.''

That's brilliant insight, 22!

Edited July 24, 2007 by Eagle1855