Tales from the Morgue

1956: TW Freshman Hopes To Fight In ’56 Olympic

An ambition of being the first West Texas and certainly the first El Pasoan to make the U.S. Olympic boxing ream is what Texas Western College freshman Jake Martinez dreams about, and by a mere glance at his boxing record, one can see that his dreams are very capable of coming true.

Martinez, former Bowie High School student, brought with him a very impressive record to the campus, including a Golden Gloves state lightweight championship.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Following very closely behind the footsteps of an older brother, who five times captured a Golden Gloves state title, Jake got interested in boxing at the age of 18. Having fought in only 12 bouts before he entered the service, Jake won a runner-up position in his first swing at the Golden Gloves in 1951.

After entering the Marines, Jake quickly captured his post championship while punching for his division. Shortly afterwards, he began a swing at bouts around the west coast, winning the National Junior AAU lightweight championship at San Diego, Calif.

It was while he was stationed at San Diego that Jake won over the National Golden Gloves Lightweight Champion in 1952, although not in Golden Gloves competition.

Titles which he won during his three year span in the service included runner-up honors three times in the national lightweight division, losing each time to Herschel Action, who captured the national title three straight years.

FIGHTS FOR CYO

Returning to fight for the Catholic Youth Organization in El Paso last year, Jake quickly rose to stardom. In three bouts, he took the district crown and in four, copped the state title in Fort Worth. Going to the nationals in Chicago, he lost a split decision to a former All-Service champ, who eventually went on to win the lightweight title and go on to the Pan American Olympics in Mexico to win the title

Perhaps 1956 will mean a national title for Jake, and perhaps he might just hit the berth on the big Olympic squad heading for Australia.

1984: Modern barnstormers part of aviation history

October 6, 1984

By David Hancock
Times staff writer

While hanging upside down in 100-150 mph winds, professional wing rider Paula Cherry says she keeps an eye out for errant birds as she waves at air show crowds.

“I don’t want to run into any birds. At 100 miles per hour that would be pretty fatal,” Paula, half of the Cherry aerobatic team, said.

Earl and Paula Cherry are modern-day barnstormers, airborne show biz folk working the air show circuit across North America. After doing a show last weekend in Halifax, Nova Scotia, they are in El Paso for the Amigo Airsho.

Though Earl said he’d always wanted to be a performing pilot at air shows, Paula, his wife, admitted that as a girls she never envisioned a career spent strapped to a pole above a vintage biplane.

The Cherrys are three-year veterans of the air show circuit, working almost every weekend from March to November in different cities.

“We’re preserving part of aviation history. Very few people do this barnstorming anymore,” said Earl, who does a solo stunt act in addition to the loopy ride with Paula.

In the off season, they retire to their Lafayette, La., home to arrange next season’s bookings and to overhaul “General Smoke,” their faithful 1943 Stearman biplane.

“We’ve got to depend on that plane. We’ve got to make sure everything is in tip-top shape,” Paula said.

Although the duo’s act consists of usually trouble free upside-down flying and loops, earl remembers a 
close call a year ago in Salina, Kan.

He was flying upside-down low over the Salina airfield with Paula on the wing when General Smoke’s only engine cut out.

“That got my attention real quick,” Earl said. He quickly righted the plane and fired the motor by continuously working an emergency starter.

The Cherrys. Who are just one of several acts at the Amigo Airsho, travel separately when they leave for  their next destination. They try to make 800 miles a day, with Earl flying on ahead and Paula following in a car.

“Anybody would love to see this country like this,” Earl said.

“Your imagination gets running and you think you’re an old time mail pilot delivering the mail. Or Charles Lindbergh.”

Asked whether Paula gets the short end of the deal by having to drive, Earl described other cold, rainy flights when he said he wished he could change places.

Earl and Paula have some company during their long travels; a little dog, Orville.

1956: John Selman’s Luck Was High For A While

December 12, 1956

El Paso in the early ‘80s was a tough, roaring boomtown. The Iron Horse had come, the copper mines and honkytonks were running full blast and money and liquor flowed like water when the river was up.

The lure of a fast buck had brought to El Paso as choice a collection of tinhorn gamblers, hijackers, horse thieves, gunslingers and just plain thugs as ever remained unhung. This did not make for peace and quiet. It was a dull evening when at least one citizen didn’t get himself shot.

Yes, El Paso was tough. But John Selman was tougher.

John Selman, ex-soldier (Confederate), ex-cattle rustler, ex-member of Billy the Kid’s gang, ex-sheep-thief, ex-bushwhacker, came to town looking for a law job and the boys at the Courthouse rolled out the red carpet for him. A plain, run-of-the-mill peace officer didn’t have a chance against the array of talent in El Paso, and the town was about to run out of law men. The authorities figured John was just what the doctor ordered.

John, on assuming office, found it necessary to pistol a few of the more obstreperous characters. Others left town hastily. The mayhem rate took a sudden drop.

John Selman looked as little like a killer as is possible to imagine. He habitually wore a boiled shirt, a well-tailored suit and highly polished shoes. He carried a cane. He was soft-spoken and polite to one and all. All this led some of the more ignorant into the fatal error or of believing they were dealing with a meek, harmless, little old man. That one was about as harmless as a gila monster.

Three playboys from the boondocks found this out the hard way when they undertook to shoot up a parlor house owned by Tilly Howard, John’s true love. John came galloping to the rescue and, although he took a bullet through the leg before he got into action, he quickly made three new customers for the undertaker.

The high point in John Selman’s career came when he tangled with John Wesley Hardin. That slayer of 40-odd men who had once, by his own account, made wild Bill Hickok eat crow; blew into El Paso looking for trouble. He found it.

John Selman and John Wesley Hardin were both gunslingers of renown. That they would fight was as inevitable as that two strange bulldogs should fight. Tales of the shooting are garbled. The fact remains, however, that John Selman shot John Wesley from behind, through the back of the head, and before Hardin could draw his gun.

John was tried for murder. It is a commentary on the quaint folkways of early day El Paso that the jury brought in a verdict of self-defense.

John Selman’s luck ran out on April 5, 1896, eight months after he gunned John Wesley Hardin. He was shot and killed by Deputy Marshal George Scarborough, who was never considered better than a third rate gun hand.

1966: El Paso Too Tough For Wyatt Earp

April 22, 1966

“We are going to prove to Arizona beyond question that El Paso was too tough for Wyatt Earp,” Chris P. Fox told City Council yesterday, Mr. Fox appeared before Council to enlist the city’s co-operation with regard to a new series of bronze historical tablets to be put up by the State National Bank.

One will be a plaque titled “El Paso Too Tough For Wyatt Earp.” Wyatt Earp came to El Paso and dropped in at the old Gem Saloon near what is now 127 South El Paso street, Mr. Fox said, and “Two fellows were shot dead in front of his face.”

“He had to stay overnight to testify at the next day’s legal proceedings, but then he left town and never came back. He had come to El Paso to look for a job,” according to Mr. Fox.

Mr. Fox predicted that the Arizona towns of Tombstone and Tucson will receive with considerable agitation the word that El Paso was too tough for their local hero and that “The TV writers will have to rewrite their scripts.”

Other plaques will be at Immaculate Conception Church, commemorating the first Knights of Columbus council in Texas; and at Oregon street and Yandell drive, marking the site of the first Jewish temple in El Paso. Temple Mt. Sinai.

Two events will be re-enacted when the tables commemorating them are unveiled. One will be a gunfight involving El Paso Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire and badman Johnny Hale at the corner of West San Antonio avenue and South El Paso street. The other is the killing of Marshal Stoudenmire by Doe Manning, where the Cushion and Cue billiard parlor is now.

There will also be a tablet on the San Antonio avenue side of the Popular Dry Goods Co., marking the site of El Paso’s first Masonic Lodge, Lodge 130, A.F and A.M.

Mr. Fox said another El Paso first was Texas’ first railroad bridge over the Rio Grande. A stone out of the bridge’s original foundation, which was near the smelter, will have the tablet mounted on it and placed in Pioneer Plaza.

Council authorized he bank to install the markers. Mayor Williams complimented Mr. Fox for the historical tablets that have been installed in the past, and said, “I get a real feeling of satisfaction up on Scenic Point when I show the plaques there to visitors to El Paso.”

The Knights of Columbus plaque will be the next installed, May 17, Mr. Fox said, with the others to be presented at intervals though the rest of the year.

1951: Boot Indicates Military Man Buried Near Tomb

Dec 19, 1951

A square-toed cavalry type boot today gave a clue as to the identity of three skeletons found yesterday near the old Hart Tomb at the foot of the Main street viaduct.

City police theorized yesterday that one of the skeletons might be that of Simeon Hart, El Paso’s first industrialist. Whereabouts of his burial place has long been a mystery.

Today, however, Jack Rodehaver of the Rodehaver-Miller Funeral Home said he believes the skeletons came from the Old Ft. Bliss cemetery, and were the remains of military personnel.

Like a Cavalry Boot

“The piece of boot found with one of the skeletons is not like a cowboy boot,” Mr. Rodehaver said. “It has a square toe, like a cavalry boot.”

So far nobody has claimed the skeletons.

Mr. Rodehaver said he may give them to Texas Western College for use by pre-medical students. “Maybe they can identify the skeletons, or establish definitely whether they were male or female,” he added.

Workmen on the Paisano drive extension project uncovered the skeletons.

A Few Teeth, Little Clothing

City police dug out the bones, which were mixed with the remnants of redwood caskets. There were a few teeth, but no bits of clothing.

A crucifix found with one of the skeletons was examined in the police laboratory by Detective Tomas Mitchell and Lieut. Jimmy Warren of the records department. Acid failed to reveal any name or identification marks on the crucifix.

Detective Mitchell said he felt sure one of the skeletons was that of a man about six feet wo inches tall, and another that of a man five feet seven inches tall. The third appeared to be a woman’s.

Transferred Bodies

Old Ft. Bliss was located on Simeon Hart’s property near the Hart Tomb and homestead prior to 1900.

In 1936 bodies buried in the Hart Tomb were transferred to Evergreen Cemetery under terms of the will of the late Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Davis, who had married two of Simeon Hart’s daughters.

But only two bodies could be found – those of Hart’s son, Juan S. Hart, and daughter, Pauline Hart Davis.

The elder Hart, who died in 1874, presumably had been buried in or near the tomb. A veteran of the Mexican War, he married a prominent Chihuahua woman and established a grist mill on the Rio Grande just west of El Paso. He became wealthy and a famous

1928: “Our Amelia” Comes To Town

September 12, 1928

Well, folks, Amelia came to town yesterday.

Amelia Earhart, you know, the little girl who flew across the Atlantic.

Landed at 4 o’clock yesterday in her own little plane, all decorated up like a Christmas tree with little dew-dads on it, the gifts of her admiring friends in England.’

Incidentally, Amelia, and El Paso now can rightfully call her Our Amelia – is the first woman pilot ever to land her ship here after the dedication of the Municipal airport.

Of course that might not be any feather in her chapeau, but it means a heap to us.

What kind of a girl is Amelia?

Nice, yes, decidedily.

Kinda thin face, sprinkled with freckles like nutmeg on a fresh apple pie, nice teeth, a winning smile and a throaty laugh that makes one instinctively want to laugh with her.

High hat? Not a bit. She’ll talk with the Colonel’s lady or Judy O’Grady. Folks are folks, to her, apparently, and she has evidently learned that one can catch more flies with sugar than vinegar.

Not that she tried any beguiling stuff at the airport yesterday. She didn’t. But she soon had the mechanics there eating out of her hand.

She told the mechanics what she wanted, smiled a little, and – well, there sure was action on her plane.

Guess it all boils down to her having that two letter word Eleanor Glynn coined.

How did she like El Paso?

Fine! Good enough at any rate to want to stop here overnight.

Does she like Texas? The reply is affirmative.

Does the sunshine bother her? The answer is no. In fact she is tickled pink at it. Where she comes from, she says, when she does a little bit of luandrying – hose and thingamyjigs like that – they don’t dry and they do get musty. Yes, sunshine, she likes sunshine.

Her nose, however, we suspect is not exactly in accord with her on that, as it was an angry red.

What kind of clothes did she wear?

Well, now, she had on a skirt, but what kind and what color is beyond the writer. She had a scarf around her neck and some kind f a tight-fitting hat on her head.

Anyway, folks, she was nice looking.

What kind f a trip did she have from Pecos?

Sure nice. Cruised around at 7,500 to 8,500 feet. Kinda took her time, and all that. Hopped off once from there and had to go back, but the nice mechanics there soon fixed up the plane and she came on.

Did she expect to go to Los Angeles tomorrow? Well, and she grinned, that depended. On her, the plane and the distance. Maybe and maybe not.

Anyway, she is going there. Going there if it busts a plane, herself and etcetera.

Determination. She has perfect quantities of it!

And, folks, that’s Amelia Earhart. Our Amelia.