Houston Post

Garner's move from Beaumont to Houston has always been shrouded in mystery.

Who taught him these barbecue techniques? Why did he move here? An interview with his wife and daughter in the February 3, 1963, issue of the Houston Post fills in the blanks.

Garner died in 1945.

In Beaumont, we lived next door to a man who ran one of the oldest barbecue places there, said daughter Beulah.

That was in September 1972.

By '73, um, we ran a advertisement in the Houston Chronicle, in the Houston Post that we were gonna schedule a mass at the Whitehall Hotel in downtown Houston.

A priest who was an associate of Father F- Fenton, uh, a collaborator, Father Daniel Jones, came, and he offered that first mass for us, public mass.

And of course, the diocese was fuming mad.

That was all she knew.

And I had already been, I had already been clued into [laughs] Cardinal Siri by my grandmother in 1957.

She, and, uh, I think I've sent you a copy of this, she sent-- she gave me, on the 27th of March 1957, she gave me a copy of the Sunday pull-out section from the Houston Post, the American weekly magazine, and there was an article in there called The Next Pope by, uh, Jim Bishop, who was the author of the famous book, The Day Christ Died.

And he profiled Cardinal Siri, and also Cardinal Spellman, and also Cardinal Ruffini, and, um, basically, um, uh, gave, um, every indication that Siri was the most likely cardinal to succeed Po- Pius XII should the pope die.

While the lawsuit was pending, the remains identified as Betty and Charlie Thomas were removed from the Haneys' yard.

A 1985 report from the Houston Post said they were transferred to a perpetual care cemetery, and court records confirm that Purcell requested and paid for that relocation.

Moving those two remains didn't answer how many other people might still be buried beneath Newport.

After the trial judge ruled that they would receive none of the damages recommended by the jury, the Haneys appealed.

Then the Las Vegas Review-Journal in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Then the Houston Post in Houston, Texas.

All of this before I got to Washington.

Working in local journalism taught me so many things, and it let me know communities.