Category: Profiles

Rick Hunter lives here. And many other places.

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Rick Hunter lives with us.

He is present when our whole family sits down for Thanksgiving dinner.

He greets us “Devine”-ly every time we walk in the door.

We are not special; he lives with many people.

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The store-window-size tribute by photographer Al Rendon conveys how much respect Rick commanded from his fellow artists.

The walk-by cellphone photo of Rick’s photo in Al’s window should be a throw-away. But the layers quickly enveloped us.

Some of Rick’s last Facebook posts were of Day of the Dead, and particularly poignant was one of an aged woman.

The woman you can barely make out in this photo, the one hovering above my head as though reflecting our inevitable future, is seated by a grave. The Mister noted the death date carved in stone. Our birth year.

And then there are the reflections of the buildings across the street.

No one wandered this neighborhood more than Rick. We rarely set foot in Southtown without bumping into him. He loved his hood.

The streets seemed particularly empty this afternoon.

George Hutchings Spencer, 1923-2013

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george-spencer-uniformGeorge Hutchings Spencer died on June 29, 2013, at the age of 89. George was born in 1923 in Kendall County in the house he and his sister still own. His parents were Flora Houston Johns (1894-1962) and Radcliffe Spencer (1881-1965).

After graduating from Boerne High School, he entered Texas A&M University. Following his junior year, he voluntarily enlisted in the United States Army. Despite a passion to serve in the Horse Cavalry, he received his commission in the Armor branch. He then volunteered for Jump School and, following completion, was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. He was honorably discharged as a 1st Lieutenant in 1945.

young-lawyer

Like many others in the Class of 1944 at A&M, he never completed his senior year. Instead, he entered Law School at the University of Texas. After graduating in 1948, he joined the law firm of Davis, Clemens, Knight & Weiss in downtown San Antonio. He became a partner in 1957, and the name of the firm evolved to Clemens, Knight, Weiss & Spencer. In 1990, the firm still led by his son, George, became Clemens & Spencer.

A Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, he tried cases to jury verdicts in more than 30 counties throughout the state and argued before multiple state and federal appellate courts. George retired in 1998 after practicing law for 50 years. Among the honors he received were the Texas Center Professionalism Award (2000); the Joe Frazier Brown, Sr., Award of Excellence (2004); and the Ethical Life Award (2009). In 2012, he was recognized as the Outstanding 50 Year Lawyer by the Texas Bar Foundation.

He married Virginia Lamar Hornor (1924-2000) in 1950, and they raised three sons: George Hutchings Spencer, Jr., married to Polly Jackson Spencer; Lamar Radcliffe Spencer, married to Gayle Brennan Spencer; and John Cotton Spencer.

In addition to his children, he is survived by his sister Dorothy Traylor of Boerne and five grandchildren: Caroline Radcliffe Spencer of San Antonio; George Hutchings Spencer, III, of Philadelphia; Virginia Lamar Spencer Summers and her husband John Summers of Dallas; Katherine Conway Spencer and her husband Cameron Ladd of Austin; Warren Jackson Spencer of San Antonio; as well as numerous beloved nieces, nephews, grand nieces and nephews, and cousins.

katesweddingIn lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorial contributions be made to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Good Samaritan Community Services or the charity of your choice.

A memorial service for George will be held at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 3, at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, the church in which he and Virginia were married, at 315 East Pecan Street.

Maggie Cousins: Urban Trailblazer

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I wasn’t looking for Maggie this afternoon. But her name called out to me in the middle of a UTSA Libraries list of recorded interviews you can listen to online. I wanted to hear her voice, resurrected from the past.

At first, I was disappointed to find hers was only a transcript from an interview on KLRN. But, as I started reading, I realized it didn’t matter. I could hear her.

maggie-cousinsSusan Margaret Cousins (1905-1996) had one of the most distinctive voices I’ve ever heard. Maggie lived in New York City during much of her illustrious career including time as editor of Good Housekeeping and McCall’s and at Doubleday Publishing; yet years in the Big Apple failed to tame her Texas accent. In the March 24, 1974, edition of the San Antonio Express-News Mildred Whiteaker wrote, “Authoress Edna Ferber used to visit Maggie to get the flavor of the dialogue for Giant.”

Maggie’s pitch was incredibly low, and the words drawled out gruffly from somewhere deep in her chest. Most sentences ended with her wonderful chuckle rippling through her entire body.

Of course, most of the time I was listening to her it was happy hour. You never wanted to miss it when Maggie was holding court in the huge wooden corner booth where the “River Rats” gathered five days a week shortly after 5 p.m. as diligently as if punching a job-required time clock.

Maggie Cousins, 1986 Induction into Texas Women's Hall of Fame, http://www.twu.edu/twhf/
Maggie Cousins, 1986 Induction into Texas Women’s Hall of Fame, http://www.twu.edu/twhf

Maggie was a regular as long as she and her cane could propel her slowly huffing and puffing down the River Walk to the Kangaroo Court from her double-apartment in the Clifford Building. As a professional woman, Maggie broke the glass ceiling, inspired others to follow and never stopped writing, but the undated interview on UTSA’s website deals with Maggie in her role as a true urban trailblazer in downtown San Antonio in the 1970s:

I’ve been unusually happy in the city because when I first came I used to just walk up and down the River Walk. Sat down at Kangaroo Court one day and had a drink. Bob (Buchanan), the owner, came out and talked to me and from then on it became my place. I met all the young people that work downtown and the people that have the dreams and hopes and ideas and I was able to be in and listen to all their plans and most of them have come through with a lot of them. The wonderful young people who are downtown.

The booth in the Kangaroo Court was a great incubator and percolator for ways to improve downtown. But Maggie was one of the few “rats” who actually lived right downtown.

Here are a few of the Maggie-isms about dwelling downtown from the interview transcript:

  • There isn’t any atmosphere in the suburbs. You know, people live in large houses, have great manicured gardens, and they never go outdoors. I never see them using their lawns for any purpose.
  • I intended to have a car when I first came , and I couldn’t find a place to park. Living alone, you need a place to park and you can’t leave it in front of the building. So, I waited until they built a garage and then I was too old to drive.
  • Since the big boom in building has come and many of the old buildings have gone; when the new ones are built the rents are too expensive for small-time businesses like typewriter repair. When I moved here that was very important to me. There were three repair shops within walking distance of a block.
  • Mr. Butt, who lives in King William, has not built a grocery store for us poor people. But I presume when all these big condo projects are inhabited there will have to be a grocery store. I’ll be 95 years old. I’ve faced that.
  • I’d rather put up with the inconvenience and enjoy the things I enjoy down here. This place is within walking distance of the public library, which is important to me.
  • I have women friends who haven’t been downtown in ten years, they say proudly. I say, you gotta be crazy.
  • …I thought if I show people that they can live downtown they’ll get interested in it, but Texas people are very hard to change. But sooner or later, this generation will be interested in it.
  • If I ever get bored, all I have to do is look out the window….
  • Your lives are always made up of the past, present and future and without the past you just don’t have very much to look back on. And I think that San Antonio, that’s one of its great charms, the fact that it has some extremely fine 18th century architecture and lots and lots of 19th century architecture which I think gives it a quality that no other city in Texas has.
  • Imprint of human life on a place makes it more interesting and more attractive.

And Maggie’s imprint was rich and lasting.

I can hear her even now.

Update on June 13, 2013: Maggie’s obituary from the New York Times

Update on June 14, 2013: For more Maggie, visit these pages from When I was Just Your Age by Robert Flynn and Susan Russell:

I didn’t have any children to play with, but I had Grandpa and Grandma and aunts and people who had time to talk to me. They told me stories. That’s one reason why I became a writer.