Oral History Audio Interviews And Transcriptions:

Part 1.  David Southern As Interviewed By Jean Cate

Part 2. David Southern As Interviewed By Dr. Tom Hamilton

Part 3. David Southern As Interviewed By Dr. Tom Hamilton

David Southern: A Legacy of Leadership and Service in Granbury, Texas

David Southern, the longest-serving elected official in Granbury’s history, left an indelible mark on our community through his 15 years as mayor and decade of service on the city council. His visionary leadership transformed Granbury, bringing about significant developments that continue to shape our city today.

Key Accomplishments as Mayor of Granbury

1. **Infrastructure Development**: Mayor Southern spearheaded several pivotal projects that enhanced Granbury’s livability and appeal:
– The “Moments in Time” Hike and Bike trail
– Granbury City Hall
– City Beach Park
– Lake Granbury Conference Center

2. **Public Safety Enhancement**: He advocated for the fire department’s first ladder truck, paving the way for multi-story building development beyond the Granbury Square.

3. **Civic Engagement**: Southern’s commitment to public service extended beyond his role as mayor. He actively participated in various boards supporting veterans with PTSD and economically disadvantaged individuals with housing needs.

4. **Community Service**: As a dedicated member and leader of the Kiwanis Club of Lake Granbury, he worked tirelessly to improve children’s lives through donations and scholarships.

David Southern’s legacy as mayor is characterized by his forward-thinking approach to urban development, dedication to public safety, and unwavering commitment to community service. His leadership laid the foundation for Granbury’s growth and prosperity, leaving a lasting impact on our city’s landscape and its people.

David Southern Oral History Interviews:

Part 1.  David Southern As Interviewed By Jean Cate:

Listen Here:

Jean Cate: Good morning. We’re here visiting with David Southern, and we’re delighted to have him with us. David has such an interesting background that we can’t cover it all in one audio. In this first part, we’ll explore what shaped David into the person he became, which leads into the second audio about his government service. Good morning, David.

David Southern: Good morning.

Jean: Let’s start with your parents. Were they born in Oklahoma, and had their families lived there for a long time?

David: Both my parents were born on farms in Oklahoma, one near Durant and one near Noble. My father’s family moved to Lexington, near Noble, so they went to school together in a one-room schoolhouse. He was a couple of years older than her, but they were still in the same classroom.

Jean: Your family began in Oklahoma but made several moves. Was that due to employment?

David: Yes. My father was a minister. When he originally asked my mother to marry him, she said, “If you think I’m picking cotton the rest of my life, you’re out of your mind. You need to go get a degree in something. I don’t care what.” She was already at Oklahoma University getting her teaching degree. He decided to go to Abilene Christian College (now University) and become a minister.

They married about halfway through his time as a student. During summers, he worked in a mental health facility in Norman, which was then called an insane asylum. Since he was going to be a preacher, his tuition at Abilene Christian in the 1940s was reduced from $10 to $5 an hour. He graduated in 1945 when he was about 26 and a half.

Their first assignment was in Cameron, Texas, where my older brother was born. Then they moved to Kansas City on the Kansas side, then back to Oklahoma to Drumright. I was born in nearby Cushing during halftime of a Friday night football game – the doctor left just before halftime and was back for the second half because my mother had only one hour of labor.

When I was two, we moved to Shidler, Oklahoma. At five, we moved to Pratt, Kansas. In those days, preachers moved every two to three years and weren’t well paid. In 1959, when I was eight, we moved to Borger, Texas, where I grew up and went to college. My mother started working in accounting for JM Huber Corporation, which made carbon black.

My father died when I was a sophomore in college. He had a heart condition from typhoid fever in his senior year of high school. They said he wouldn’t live to be 40, but he lived to be 51 and was having corrective surgery when he passed. I was 19 at the time.

Jean: When we first started talking, David, I was amused by your mother. She was apparently a very strong-willed woman.

David: Oh, yes, she was.

Jean: She told your father, “No degree, no marriage,” right?

David: Yes, that’s correct. She wasn’t going to marry anyone without a good education.

Jean: So education was very important in your family.

David: It was to her. They were both the first and almost the only children in their families to get a college degree. When we were growing up, there was no question about going to college. It was expected. I ended up getting two degrees just because I got one and didn’t know what to do, so I went and got another one.

Jean: Well, David, you graduated from Abilene Christian. What was your original degree plan?

David: Originally, I was going to be a drama teacher. Then I looked at what drama teachers got paid and decided to be a psychologist instead. I changed my degree from communications to psychology, though I was just 3 hours short of having a degree in communications too. I also have only about 3 hours short of a degree in Bible as well.

Because of Vietnam, I realized I would be drafted if I graduated in three years. So I purposely failed to take one course needed to graduate and started taking graduate courses my whole senior year. When I finally graduated in ’72, my draft number was 137, and they were drafting through 225. But on Memorial Day weekend, they announced they were lowering the draft number to 125, so that’s how I avoided going to Vietnam.

Jean: Well, David, when you were at Abilene Christian, you met your wife.

David: Yes. We started dating my senior year. She was two years behind me in school. We had our first date 50 years ago this fall. We saw “The Godfather” and went out to eat. We dated regularly for the rest of my time there, but broke up toward the end of my last year.

When I went home, my mother asked why I hadn’t gotten married. She said, “Why do you think we sent you to a Christian school? So you’d meet a nice girl and get married. What’s wrong with Claudia?” I said nothing was wrong with Claudia, I just didn’t want to get married.

My first professional job was as a district executive for the Boy Scouts of America in Pampa, Texas. After some time there and a trip to New York for training, I realized I didn’t find anyone I liked better than Claudia. So we got back together and got engaged. It was on my birthday weekend in 1974 – I had my birthday, got engaged, and took my oral exams for my master’s degree all on the same weekend. Last June 14th was our 46th anniversary.

Jean: That’s fascinating, David. Claudia was a fifth-generation Texan. Did that influence your decision to stay in Texas?

David: Not exactly, but somewhat. She made me promise that if we lived in Texas, we’d never live west of Abilene. She was born in Abilene but had lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, before college. When she moved back to Abilene for college, it was quite an adjustment for her.

Jean: So where did you go from Abilene?

David: We moved to Brownwood. I worked at Abilene State School in 1975 as a staff psychologist. Then I moved to a private company in Brownwood, where our daughter was born. After a few years, we moved to Stephenville briefly, and then decided to move to Granbury to start a business. We had visited here in 1977 and loved it, thinking it would be a great place to raise kids.

Jean: There were a lot fewer people back then.

David: Yes, that’s true. It’s amazing how many fewer people there were back then.

Jean: I think you told me once that you had come to see the 4th of July parade, and that was one of the selling points.

David: Yes. We moved here in 1980 and opened Southern Concepts on Thorpe Spring Road. It was interesting getting the facility approved. We had to get a special use permit from the city. Jim Best, the planning and zoning chair, was instrumental in getting it passed.

Jean: Well, knowing Jim Best and the Best family – very strong-willed. They were teachers here at the high school, and you didn’t mess with the Best boys or Mr. Best.

David: No, you did not. He was a real character, really a great man.

Jean: What you brought to Granbury was so important – a home for those who are mentally challenged. I think your founding of this business greatly improved the quality of life for some of our residents.

David: Thank you.

Jean: Did you have quite a few clients your first year?

David: We started the business in April but didn’t get certified with the state until June. That home only housed eleven people. We expanded to Glen Rose in ’84, then to Tolar a couple of years later. We also opened several homes in Fort Worth. We had to grow to survive. We eventually sold the company just after I turned 65 because the state was moving towards managed care, which meant less care, and we wanted to maintain our standards.

Jean: That’s extremely interesting. The mindset you and Claudia had when opening these homes was very important to your clients and their families. You made an incredible contribution to this community. I know that in establishing these homes, you had times of butting heads with government, which possibly inspired your interest in government. But we’ll leave that for our next audio. Thank you so much, David. It’s been delightful seeing you this morning.

David: Thank you.

Jean: We look forward to your next audio, which will be conducted by Dr. Tom Hamilton.

David: Thank you.

Part 2. David Southern As Interviewed By Dr. Tom Hamilton:

Listen Here:

Tom Hamilton: All right, I’m Dr. Tom Hamilton. I’m here with the Bridge Street History Center doing part two of our oral history interview with Mayor David Southern. In the first interview, we went through Dave’s biography, how he grew up, his schooling, and how he came to Granbury. This interview will focus more on his professional life as mayor of Granbury and some of the stories he has to tell. So, Dave, welcome. We appreciate you doing this once again. You’re always interesting to talk to.

David Southern: Thank you.

Tom Hamilton: Let’s start at the beginning. How did you and Claudia decide to come to Granbury to live and have a business?

David Southern: Well, when we married in 1975, I lived in Abilene and was a staff psychologist at the Abilene State School. Claudia moved there, got a teaching job, and then worked for the Y in the summer. We had some friends in town whose mother was the county extension agent in Granbury. So we came to Granbury to visit, and we just loved the town. We thought we’d love to move here and raise kids here because I’d always lived in small towns. I’ve never lived in a town larger than Abilene, and it’s just a big small town, really. So we decided we wanted to work our way here someday. We went through Brownwood and Stephenville, finally got here and opened our business in 1980, and we’ve been here ever since.

Tom Hamilton: I understand that when you first came here and tried to establish your business, Southern Concepts, you had some problems getting started.

David Southern: I did. The real estate agent had told me the land I was buying, or the house I was buying, was commercially zoned. Well, it turned out it wasn’t. It was residentially zoned. Most cities had old, antiquated ordinances. They required a special use permit for anyone it deemed as “feeble-minded.” That’s an old term that came from the eugenics period back at the turn of the 20th century when a lot of people thought eugenics was the new thing because you were going to purify the lineage of people, in other words, not let people who were not fit reproduce. “Feeble-minded” was the name they attached to what we later called mental retardation and now call intellectual disability. The state school system was set up for that.

A lot of cities, to protect themselves, had put that in their ordinances. So I had to get a special use permit to open it in a residential area. Fortunately, the chairman of planning and zoning, Jim Best, had grown up at Mexia State School where his parents worked because in those days, you lived there if you worked there. He came into the planning and zoning meeting and said, “Well, we can discuss this all you want, but we’re not going to leave here till you approve it.” Then he came to the city council meeting and did the same thing. He told one of the council members that he didn’t know what he was talking about when he started talking about people not wanting “people like these” in their neighborhood.

I still get a little emotional about that because it was such a bonus. We probably would not have gotten it approved had it not been for him. We invested everything we had in that house. We would have been bankrupt if we hadn’t gotten that approval. So we got the approval and moved forward with opening a group home. But Ben Macon was on the city council, and he shook his finger at us and said, “Now, if you people don’t do what you say you’re going to do, we’re going to cut you off in a year.” So they just gave me a one-year thing. Well, at the meeting one year later, he was the first one to say we exceeded all expectations. And so he was glad to renew the special use ordinance indefinitely.

After the Fair Housing Act came out by George H.W. Bush, we fixed a lot of things in law that people can’t do to discriminate against intellectually disabled people. And that was based on a court battle we had with the city of Cleburne later.

Tom Hamilton: Well, I guess partly due to some of those types of problems and solutions, you and Claudia both decided to throw your hats in the political ring – 1983 for her, and ’85 for you.

David Southern: Yeah, it was for two totally different reasons. There was an unexpired place on the school board – one of the members had to resign so his brother could be hired as the football coach. Billy Mitchell was the football coach that was hired, so his brother or cousin had to resign before they could hire him. So there was an unexpired term. Claudia wasn’t teaching here in town; she was only working part-time at that time because Allison was very little. So she decided to run for school board. Her slogan was “experience in education.” She became only the second woman to ever be on the school board. Later, when she ran again, she became the first female president of the board. Of course, now they’ve had several, but she was the first.

I ran for totally different reasons, having to do with the city of Cleburne. I had no idea cities like Granbury and Cleburne could tell you where you could and couldn’t live and where who you were mattered on how you could live in a city. I thought that was crazy. So I decided I’d run for city council and see what this was all about. The other reasons I ran were that the utility system was overcharging people dramatically for electricity. They had put businesses on these meters that measured your highest point of use and then charged you based on that. So there were some small restaurants getting two or three thousand dollar bills in 1985, which was outrageous. Also, I campaigned on parks. We had the least parks per capita of any city in the state in 1985. So those were my two big issues: utility reform and more parks.

Tom Hamilton: Now tell us a little about how you really played a big role in the expansion of the park board and our whole park system.

David Southern: Yeah, early on, I think it was the first year I was on the council, or the second, the parks board came up. Everybody’s terms had expired, so they needed somebody to find people to be on the park board. Well, up until that time, all the park board did was take reservation fees for the baseball fields at the main park. And that was it. I basically didn’t reappoint anybody to the parks board except for J.C. Campbell’s wife, Sylvia, because he was on city council. We replaced everybody else, excluding Jean Cate, who became the chairman after she was appointed. She said she was on the park board less time than that, but she’s really been on there for over 30 years and did a great job.

Then we worked on doing a bond issue. We did a bond issue for parks, and we did one for fire stuff and for city streets. Well, the streets and the fire passed. The parks lost by two votes. It turned out the firemen had gone and voted against the parks. So I said to the firemen, “Next time we’re putting your stuff with the parks, so if you want your stuff, you’ll have to vote for parks.” We did that, and it passed overwhelmingly for the park bond for the main city park, which we expanded from about ten acres to, I think, about 70 or 80 acres now. It’s the biggest park in town. We replaced the swimming pool, which was built in the fifties, put a lot of other attractions there, and upgraded it substantially.

Then we decided we could build more parks, and we built Hewlett Park as a brand new park because some of the land had been given to the city by the Hewletts. That’s who it’s named after. The rest we bought from Jerry East, who lived down here at the end of Bridge Street. We put that together and made that park. We also took over the baseball association’s parks when they were no longer able to manage them, put that in our park system, and improved that area a great deal.

Then we put in the hike and bike trail that joined all the parks together. You can go all the way from the airport through the main city park and eventually reach Hewlett Park on the other end of town. We did that with enhancement money from transportation dollars from TxDOT. We got two $800,000 grants to do that, and we had to really work hard with the legislature and TxDOT to get that. But it worked out famously. So that’s basically the park system today. I’m hoping someday they expand the hike and bike trail across the bridge and add more parks on the south side of town because we really don’t have any on the south side. They’re all in the old main part of town, as you know.

Oh, we also added Lambert Branch Park. We took that over and improved it. But unfortunately, that swing became obsolete, a liability, and had to be removed.

Tom Hamilton: That was a big disappointment because we used that a lot. Well, one thing we have certainly missed since you have been mayor is your fantastic ability to get grants. I know it took a lot of time and effort on your part to research what was available, but there are not many people who spend the time to find that. The community as a whole really has appreciated that, and I think we’ve learned to appreciate it more since you haven’t been here. So, when you first became mayor in 1995, the city had somewhat of a financial dilemma.

David Southern: Well, they had had one ever since I went on the council. People in the community, like plumbing companies, had extended credit to the city because they couldn’t pay for some repairs to the utility system. We had borrowed money from the general fund to pay into utilities and vice versa. Utilities were basically supplementing the tax rate tremendously, and we had a fairly high tax rate. So what we decided to do was just get our budget under control. As the town began to grow, we didn’t spend those extra dollars, we just banked them for the future.

In those ten years when I was on the city council as a council member, we were able to bank about $22 million in extra money. I think the budget in those days for the whole city was only about six or seven million, and more than half of that was utilities back in the middle eighties. By the time I became mayor, we had banked about $22 million in extra money. We’d still done some bond projects, built some streets, and done the things we could. But having that much money on hand, with the growth that we had and the tax dollars bringing in a lot more, we were in a good position.

During that period, we were the first city in the state to change to have that extra half-cent of sales tax to reduce property taxes. So we reduced the property taxes in half. But because of all the extra properties and all the purchasing power of people around here, we were getting more and more money in the general fund, which always was kind of a step-child to the utility fund.

However, one summer in the late eighties, we had a dilemma because it rained 60 inches that year instead of the normal 30. Well, we didn’t get as much electric or water revenue as normal. So we went through $3 million, almost all we had in reserves in the electrical fund, because of all the rain. That’s how dependent those systems were in those days.

It’s interesting, during that period of time in the mid-eighties, we lived in south town for much of that time, until ’86. The firemen would have to come ask us to turn off our sprinkler systems so they had enough water pressure out on the highway to fight a fire. That’s how little water reserves we had at that time – less than 350,000 gallons in water reserves. When I left office, we had almost 6 million gallons in reserve. So we worked hard to make sure we would not have a water problem again. That, along with equipment and training at the fire department, dropped our fire rating to a three. One is perfect, and there isn’t any city our size that has a three. They’re mostly higher. So we’ve done a really great job through the water system of solving that. It lowers your insurance payment on your house because we have a three rating, you know.

Tom Hamilton: I’m curious about one thing. How did… I can’t believe that any political entity, even in a small town, could manage to build up a $22 million war chest by not spending money. Political entities don’t save money normally.

David Southern: I know. But we just… The city manager was brand new – Bob Brockman – and Charles Baker was the new mayor. They both were real involved in, you know, making things in order. Charles was a banker, and he was really involved in getting things in order. In the seventies, when J.C. was the first elected council, he was one of the reformers. The state attorney general or secretary of state once told the city, if you don’t get your house in order… They were borrowing money from Brazos Utilities, who was our wholesale supplier in those days. They were getting advances from them to run the city. They were nearly bankrupt in the seventies.

So by the eighties, it wasn’t a lot better. It was better, but it wasn’t a lot better. We weren’t bankrupt, but we did see the need to save money. So between me and some other council members and the mayor and the city manager, we just determined we were going to save money. And we did. And that is what enabled us then, when our tax base had increased so dramatically, to build some of the parks and city hall and other things that you see today.

Tom Hamilton: I understand there was another story behind when our city went to home rule in 1988.

David Southern: Well, it was my idea. I didn’t get credit for it, and that was a good thing because it later presented some problems. But I had the idea we should go to home rule. We were around 5,000 people, and you have to be 5,000 people to become home rule. So I said to the mayor, all you have to do is declare that we’re at 5,000 people because the census isn’t for a few more years. And so we declared that we were at 5,001 people, and we did a home rule election and elected charter members. And they wrote us a home rule charter.

Now, what happened there is, when the 1990 census came out, we were under 5,000. Well, I said, you know, a lot of the construction of the plant had ended by that time. And some of these houses that had ten people living in them now have one or none living in them. I think we’ve just declined. But it didn’t matter because we’d already done it.

Charlie’s Barbecue out on the highway sued us and said we couldn’t annex them arbitrarily because we didn’t have the right to be a home rule city. Well, it went to Judge Walton’s court and Judge Walton ruled that you have 90 days from the election to object. And if you don’t do it in that first 90 days, it’s too bad. So we ended up being a home rule city when we may not have had 5,000 people in the city.

Tom Hamilton: That is a great story.

David Southern: We really wanted to be home rule because general law cities are like counties. They can only do the things that the state authorizes by law. Cities that are home rule can do anything that the state doesn’t restrict or the United States doesn’t restrict by law. So if the state and federal government don’t restrict it, you can do it.

Tom Hamilton: So that was the era right there, right soon after 1988, that we increased the area of the city limits.

David Southern: We started annexing. And the first thing we annexed in was the 377 strip. Almost none of that was in the city limits. Only, you know where the old K-Bob’s was, what’s there now? Some kind of department store. And there was an old supermarket there. That area was the only one in the city. And the reason they were is Jose’s restaurant was out there. And Jose had a well he was using water out of next to his septic tank. The health department was going to shut that restaurant down if they didn’t do something. So they asked to be annexed in. So that whole area, Durant Chevrolet, everything had to be annexed in. And so we annexed them in voluntarily. That was the only part of the 377 highway loop that was in the city limits. Basically, before that, it stopped at the iron bridge city limits.

Tom Hamilton: Speaking of the old iron bridge, there’s another story about replacing it. That almost was a disaster.

David Southern: Yeah, we really tried to save it. But when we realized we couldn’t save it, we worked very hard to get staged construction. Back in those days, you could do that. You could go to the highway commission and make your argument that this is going to ruin the town. We had an economic study from Ray Perryman that said 60% to 70% of the economic value in Granbury would be eliminated for four years while they were going to build this bridge.

Through the bank, First National Bank got behind it, and the Merchants Association and the Chamber, and we finally got the city behind it. That was the story – one of the bankers there, well, the owner of the bank, Johnny Luton, asked me if we had the votes and I said, “No, sir, we don’t have the votes to vote on that. I’m sorry.” And he said, “You let me take care of that.”

David Southern: Yeah, we really tried to save it. But when we realized we couldn’t save it, we worked very hard to get staged construction. Back in those days, you could do that. You could go to the highway commission and make your argument that this is going to ruin the town. We had an economic study from Ray Perryman that said 60% to 70% of the economic value in Granbury would be eliminated for four years while they were going to build this bridge.

Through the bank, First National Bank got behind it, and the Merchants Association and the Chamber, and we finally got the city behind it. That was the story – one of the bankers there, well, the owner of the bank, Johnny Luton, asked me if we had the votes and I said, “No, sir, we don’t have the votes to vote on that. I’m sorry.” And he said, “You let me take care of that.” So he called in the father of one of the council members, I mean, of one of the bank loan officers in his bank, and said, “You know, we’re not going to need nearly as many loan officers around here if that bridge is taken out without that staged construction.” And the next night, that person voted for it when he was not going to before that. So that’s how we got the votes to get that across.

Tom Hamilton: Very good. That’s great. So, let’s move over to — you know a lot of history about Granbury, even though you didn’t grow up here, but give us a little history of the city hall and its different locations. And then the new one.

David Southern: When I moved here, they were still using the original city hall. Well, I say original. There had been a log cabin type city hall, but the first masonry city hall was built just behind the square on Houston Street on the south side. It’s a law office now, but it was a little building originally. It had the fire trucks there, too, out front, covered like a carport kind of thing. And it had big pillars and everything. It was only about, oh, I’d say it was less than 1,000, maybe 1,200 square feet. They were still using that when I moved to town.

Then about the time I went on the council, they had just renovated an old furniture store that sat in the parking lot where city hall is today. It was an old furniture store that they renovated, and it never was very functional. In fact, the council chambers where we went to discuss items off the record, you know, in closed session, was upstairs and it only had one exit and there was only one room. It did not meet fire code at all. And we had to all trundle up there to have executive session meetings.

The city council chambers, they made pretty big, but we gave those up later because we needed more room for community development and the police department. So we gave up the council chambers there and met for several years, well, a few years at the school district’s old meeting room. Then when we bought the American Legion hall, which we renamed American Town Hall, we met in there for a few years. Then the new city hall, of course, we finally got really nice chambers. I served half my time as mayor in the new city hall and half my time before the new city hall.

Tom Hamilton: Well, that was quite a fight, getting the new city hall built. And then there were some problems with the construction.

David Southern: Yes, the building was… well, one thing we wanted to do when we built the building was have a park behind it. And there was already a Shanley Park Association that was really the bicentennial commission from when they celebrated the bicentennial, and they had not kept up their incorporation. So we could have actually taken that land by title, but we didn’t do that. We contacted the people and told them they needed to get their stuff up to date. And then they gave us an easement for the hike and bike trail, which we planned as part of the city hall construction, although it came just after city hall.

Although we didn’t have to have a vote because of all the money we’d saved over the years, we could pass a bond with no tax increase. And when you don’t have a tax increase, people have to petition if they want an election on it. Well, nobody petitioned. So we authorized the bonds for the new city hall. Of course, people at the time, some of them called it the “Southern Palace.” Some of them called it “King David’s Palace.” You know, there was a variety of comments made during that time because it was much larger. I mean, it was two and a half times the size of the old city hall, but we knew it was going to be the permanent city hall for at least the rest of the 21st century.

Although it would change in who was there based on administrative needs and other things, like now we’re building a new police station, which we designed with a visitor center. We designed it to eventually be moved to other locations to provide more administrative space because as the city grows… Well, the census from last year is going to come in right under 12,000 people for the city of Granbury. And the income level is what’s amazing. The per capita household income in 2010, they only did it by zip codes because we were not 10,000 people. So 76048 had like $42,000, 76049 had like $47,000 or $48,000. The city of Granbury this time is coming in with household income done just for the city at $103,000 per household.

So what’s happened is the city has become even wealthier than the county, and it has become more Republican than the county. And that was not the case. It was just the opposite when you and I moved here. There was no Republican primary, and so it’s just the opposite from what it was. And that all went together in building the new city hall. But, you know, after we opened it, we opened it on Pearl Harbor Day 2002. It’ll be 20 years old next year.

Tom Hamilton: Excuse me.

David Southern: Nobody complained about it after it opened. They didn’t have any nicknames for it. Nobody’s ever said anything bad again about it once it opened. So sometimes it’s just the idea that gets stuck in people’s heads that’s negative and not the results.

Tom Hamilton: Let’s take a break for a second. Thank you.

[This interview continues in David Southern Part 3.]

Part 3. David Southern As Interviewed By Dr. Tom Hamilton:

Listen Here:

Tom Hamilton: Dave, continuing with our interview today, I know you have some interesting stories about the tourism bureau.

David Southern: Oh, yes. The first night I was on the council, they had expanded the bed tax from 3% to 7%. This funded much of what the chamber did. Bobby Jordan, the Chamber director then, said she and Mary Lou Watkins had traveled to every visitor’s bureau in the state to distribute Granbury brochures. With the increase to 7%, they had more money to spend.

At the next meeting, I volunteered to be the council’s representative to the Chamber, which was going to run the tourism department and open a Visitors Bureau. At our first meeting, we discovered the director, who was apparently a son of one of the chamber board members, had been arrested the night before for DWI, so he never showed up to work.

The second director was Mary Saltarelli, who did a very good job in tourism. We had several good tourism directors. Charlie McIlvaine was excellent, and our new director, Tammy Dooley, is really good. I often call her Pam because Pam Summers did a great job in tourism here. She’s the one who got CNN to feature Granbury for the 2000 New Year’s Eve broadcast.

That evening, I was supposed to be interviewed on one of the balconies on the square. However, I was preempted by coverage of the Queen going to the Millennium Dome. I thought, if that’s the worst preemption I ever face, I’m good.

We went through many tourism directors, switching between the chamber, the city, and independent management. The most significant incident occurred around 1997 when a city council member wanted to be the tourism director as well. I objected, citing a conflict of interest, but every other council member and the mayor saw no problem with it. So, he was hired as the tourism director under an independent authority.

About a year and a half later, I received a call from the District Attorney, Richard Hattox. He alerted me to problems at the tourist bureau and suggested I investigate. I spoke with Lisa Johnson, who later became mayor pro tem. She had been doing their accounting for free and discovered the director was embezzling a substantial amount of money.

I made a decision, backed by the council, to approach Mark McCowan, the head of the independent Visitor Center board. I told him they needed to vote to turn management back to the city, and they could serve as an advisory board. If they didn’t agree, we’d take it back anyway without an advisory board.

Then I spoke with the DA, who said if the tourism director wanted to avoid jail, he needed to repay the money, resign his job, and resign from the council. We also discovered he hadn’t been paying his electric bill at home or for a business he owned with a partner.

This was all quite shocking because this individual was very charismatic, and I had considered him a friend. But I had always thought it was a conflict of interest for him to serve in both capacities.

Tom Hamilton: Switching gears a bit, somewhere around this time you purchased the Carmichael house.

David Southern: Yes, in 1986. We had our business here for six years and lived in the Southtown development. A college friend of mine, John Duty, and his wife had a restaurant in the Carmichael house and needed to sell. I offered to trade my house in Southtown because I didn’t have enough equity to buy the Carmichael house outright. With some help from First National Bank, we were able to purchase it.

We actually named it the Baker-Carmichael House when we applied for the historical markers. It’s the only building in town that has a city marker, a state marker, and a federal marker.

Tom Hamilton: Why did you want to get that designation?

David Southern: Well, it provided some tax relief. You could get income tax deductions for money spent on rehabilitating the house. We only lived upstairs and ran the restaurant for three years. After having another child, we decided we couldn’t manage both businesses while working six days a week with different days off. So we closed the restaurant, but we still couldn’t afford to live in the whole house ourselves. Southern Concepts’ administrative offices moved downstairs, and we lived upstairs until 1992.

My wife, Claudia, really wanted that house. She thought it was the prettiest in town and wanted to live there until she went to the cemetery. Last year, we had to install an elevator to enable her to continue living there, as per her neurologist’s recommendation. It’s amazing how much more room that left in the kitchen when we took out the stairway.

In 1998, we turned it into a bed and breakfast. We also bought the house next door, which was a tea room and bed and breakfast. We ran those for a few years before needing more office space for Southern Concepts.

Tom Hamilton: Now, almost across the street from you, Granbury acquired a lot of land. Can you discuss the land acquisition and the building of the city beach and convention center area?

David Southern: That land was part of a superfund cleanup due to benzene pollution. It was a five-year process to clean it up. It had originally been Durant’s auto dealership, and later a marina. The Brazos River Authority already owned the beach property and gave it to us. We then bought the land for the hotel and conference center.

There’s an interesting story about the acquisition. The property was marked for foreclosure, to be sold on the county courthouse steps. The city manager and city secretary signed a check for me to go buy it. However, the sale didn’t happen that way because the owners declared bankruptcy.

One of the lawyers on the city council called me to his office and questioned my intention to buy the land without council authorization. I told him if they hadn’t authorized it, I would have bought it myself, resigned as mayor, and sold it back to the city for twice the price. He seemed satisfied with that explanation.

We couldn’t develop the land for another two or three years due to the cleanup process. The city manager wasn’t keen on developing it, and he and the city attorney told me the EPA wouldn’t allow us to build a hotel and conference center there. I called the EPA directly, and they said it was actually the best containment we could do, as long as we weren’t letting kids dig in the sand.

Sometimes staff doesn’t want to do what the council wants, and they have ways to accomplish that if you’re not vigilant. I’m not saying it’s always a bad thing, but there are occasions when they don’t want to pursue something that’s in the best interest and vision of the community. Managers, especially, are known for not staying long in cities. Sometimes the mayor and council have to show the staff the vision we need for our community.

We had developed this plan in a long-range study when I first joined the council. We surveyed citizens and formed a committee to determine what our community needed. One identified need was a conference center. Our research showed that if you don’t build a hotel next to a conference center, it won’t be successful. So we did that, and it’s worked out really well.

I was recently in McKinney for a wedding, and despite being a city of over 225,000 people, they don’t have a Hilton Garden Inn yet. The best hotel they have is a Hampton. We have a Hilton Garden Inn, which is a big accomplishment for a city our size.

Tom Hamilton: Speaking of land acquisition, the city was in dire need of downtown parking, and you got into some controversy about that.

David Southern: Yes, we had looked at buying the land adjoining city hall to the west. At the time, it was a School’s Out building. It’s a retail store now. Then there was the building that the health department is in on the corner of Travis and Bridge. The owners of that property were very resistant to selling, hiring the best condemnation attorney in Dallas. Our attorney advised that we could end up spending three to five million dollars on that deal.

We ended up buying the old First Methodist parking lot instead. Unfortunately, the way the motion was worded, it authorized me to finalize the sale or purchase of the parking lot. This could be interpreted differently by different people. What they voted for was to authorize me to sign on the dotted line. The owners had originally wanted $3 million for the property. I got them down to a million, but the local paper took issue with this and decided to run with it. They called me a lot of bad names, even calling me a crook in print. The paper single-handedly defeated me in that election. It wasn’t about my opponent; it was about me.

There are 74 spaces in that lot, which came out to about $15,000 or $16,000 per space. For comparison, Tarrant County was building a new parking lot on land they already owned up at Will Rogers Center that was going to cost them $30,000 a space. So this was actually a bargain, but the paper didn’t see it that way.

Today, when I invite people to my house, I tell them, “There’s not parking at my house. Just park in my million-dollar parking lot across the street.” Tammy Dooley, the new tourism director, once said she wished we had three more of those lots because we needed them so badly.

It wasn’t my proudest moment, but I’m not ashamed of the fact that we went ahead and bought that lot.

Tom Hamilton: Well, it fills up every weekend.

David Southern: I know, and even some during the week. In fact, my daughter-in-law once met someone on the square who criticized me for buying that “million-dollar parking lot without authorization.” She asked them where they were parked, and they admitted they were parked there.

Tom Hamilton: Now, let’s backpedal once again to Southern Concepts. I don’t think most of us in the community realize just what a large entity that became. Could you run through some of that and the size and number of employees you had?

David Southern: When we opened in 1980, we had one home for eleven people, which we later expanded to accommodate 13. We had about five or six employees. Over the years, we kept expanding. At that time, the state had a three-mile rule, which wasn’t about intellectually disabled people but about funding. They didn’t have enough funds, so they put in this six-bed, three-mile limit.

We couldn’t get three miles away from that house within Granbury city limits at the time, so we put our second home in Tolar and our third in Glen Rose. Then we bought a couple of group homes in Fort Worth. We also went into the home and community service program, which involves mostly three and four-bedroom homes, foster care, or living in your own home, depending on your level of need.

By the time we finished, we were larger in Fort Worth than in Granbury. We had about 225 employees, more than the city had at the time, and we cared for about 200 people. We were doing over $10 million a year in revenue when we sold the business. We were actually one of the largest employers in Granbury at the time, though people didn’t realize it.

We ran the business for 36 years before selling to a larger company. They kept the name, and we kept our real estate. All the homes we owned were in our name, which we then rented back to the company. We still have all that real estate that we continue to rent to that entity, but they run the business now.

One reason we sold was that the state was moving to managed care in Medicaid, which essentially means less care. We didn’t want to operate the homes the way we knew they would have to be operated under that system. We preferred a “Cadillac model,” while the new system was more of a “Plymouth or Volkswagen.” So we decided it was a good time to sell and retire. I was 65, and Claudia was almost 64 when we retired in April 2016.

Tom Hamilton: That’s amazing. I never understood that you had such a large business. It’s incredible how much time you spent in your position as the mayor while running that large business simultaneously.

David Southern: It was a lot. I didn’t realize until I left the mayor’s job how much time I was spending. My wife ran the program end of the business, while I handled the administrative and financial aspects. In later years, I also conducted psychological and intellectual assessments.

When I left the mayor’s office, I realized I’d been spending 30 to 40 hours a week at city hall and working another 30 to 40 hours a week when I got home at night on business matters. When I lobbied for the legislature, I did so for both the city and my company. It wasn’t official lobbying; it was more about educating the legislature on the needs of people with intellectual disabilities, which has been a lifelong task of mine.

I was also able to do a lot of good for the city regarding grants and other matters. In fact, the last thing I worked on for the city was a bracketed bill for Granbury. Bracketed bills are written so narrowly that they only apply to one location, without explicitly naming it. For example, when we built our conference center, I had a bracketed bill that allowed open container laws in our bar, permitting people to walk in and out of the bar right into the historic district.

Tom Hamilton: As we wrap up this interview, you’ve obviously been a very influential citizen in Granbury for a long time. Could you share with us some of the other folks that you felt were most influential in the last ten years or so?

David Southern: Ben Macon was a big influence on me. When I became mayor, he said, “You’re going to be the mayor that builds the City Hall,” and I agreed. J.C.  Campbell has always been a big influence because he was the longest-serving council member before me. I’m now the longest-serving council member and mayor in the city’s history.

Charles Baker, though initially not in a positive way, later became influential as we learned to work together and accomplished some good things for the city. Sissy Wilson (Cynthia) was my first mayor pro tem and did a great job. Lisa Johnson was another influential mayor pro tem who shared a similar vision for the city.

My wife has been a strong influence as well. She’s a good listener and counselor, and she helped me understand how to motivate people. Interestingly, when I took an aptitude test in college, it suggested I would be best as a social worker or a preacher. Midway through my term as mayor, I realized I was doing both jobs, as you sometimes have to preach and sometimes have to console and motivate people.

As Mayor, I only voted twice in 15 years because I didn’t have a regular vote. You had to lead by leadership, not by voting. I prefer this system; I’m not a proponent of the Mayor being able to vote. I think it’s better for the Mayor to lead the city without creating potential animosity through voting against council members.

It was a great run at city hall. I enjoyed it most of the time, though there were a few challenging moments. Overall, it was a rewarding experience serving the community of Granbury.

Tom Hamilton: Mayor Southern, this has been a pleasure. I’ve always felt you have been one of the great visionary citizens of Hood County and Granbury. We appreciate all you’ve done.

David Southern: Thank you, I appreciate that.

Tom Hamilton: All right, thank you.

David Southern: Thank you.