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Galveston’s
Song: I Shall Survive
Galveston has a history of colorful characters and
lenient cops
by Craig Thistleton
In
the summer of 1969, I was on break after my sophomore
year in college. It was a giant year for rock music
and I was listening to Joplin, Hendrix, and the Doors.
In the midst of all this came a country pop gold record
by Glen Campbell about a mythic-sounding place called
Galveston. I remember asking someone, “Where the
hell is Galveston?” and the reply came, “Somewhere
in Texas, I think.” Later, I got the atlas to look
it up and there it was on the Gulf of Mexico. Men walked
on the moon that same summer, and for a kid from New
Jersey, Galveston seemed just about as far away. But
as fate would have it, a short six years later I was
standing on her mighty wall and, as the song says, “looking
out to sea.” Exactly a decade after that, when
I bought my turn-of-the-century cottage on Ave Q 1/2
and started doing research on my house, the extraordinary
history of this most intriguing island began to come
into focus.
Many who come to Galveston become armchair historians,
since the island has ghosts that practically sit in
your lap as you read. Discerning the presence of gay
history is often a matter of informed speculation and
hunch, since such matters were not discussed openly
until recently. But through years of talking to friends
on the island, doing research in the excellent island’s
Rosenberg Library, and reading books, especially Gary
Cartwright’s excellent Galveston: A History
of the Island, I have been able to piece together
some likely stories about the long-standing presence
of gay citizenry on the estimable and eccentric island
just 50 miles to the southeast of Montrose.
Thirty-two miles long by one and a half miles wide,
this sandbar has seen it all; from the cannibalistic
Karankawa Indians, to New Year’s Eve 2000 fireworks
over the water. In between, there were French explorers,
Spanish explorers, pirates, civil war, fires, yellow
fever epidemics, and riches beyond belief. After the
war for Texas independence, Galveston was the Republic’s
first capitol. General Santa Anna was held prisoner
on the island after he was captured at San Jacinto.
Galveston had the first and finest of everything west
of the Mississippi. The Strand was called the Wall Street
of the West. And then it all came crashing down on September
8, 1900.
The hurricane that hit Galveston that day is still the
nation’s worst natural disaster. But the city is
more a lesson in survival than in catastrophe. Against
all odds, it’s still there. Maybe that’s the
kinship that many in our community feel with the island.
It welcomes anyone who is strong, independent, and resilient.
It doesn’t seem to judge you on any other basis.
It was in this laissez-faire atmosphere that some of
the most colorful characters in Texas history were able
to develop.
The pirate and privateer Jean Lafitte was the hero of
the War of 1812, and the country really didn’t
care that he plundered the enemy ships after he defeated
them. But after the war, piracy was not as politically
correct, so he was forced to set up shop outside the
U.S. He picked an island in the Gulf under Mexican rule
called Campeachy, later to be named Galvez Town after
the Viceroy of Mexico, Bernardo de Galvez; in time the
name mutated into “Galveston.” Lafitte spent
almost 10 years in Galveston, living most of his adult
life with a man named Pierre. It was said that
Pierre was his half brother, but Jean never confirmed
that and there is nothing to suggest they were related.
They built a large house, entertained lavishly, and
were connoisseurs of fine food and wine, antiques, art,
and fashion. They ordered their clothes directly from
Paris through New Orleans. There is no evidence that
I could find that Lafitte ever had a long-term relationship
with a woman.
Then there was BOI (Born On the Island) Miss Bettie
Brown. Miss Bettie, as she was always called, was the
socialite daughter of James M. Brown, one of Galveston’s
wealthiest businessmen. Even though Galveston was quite
laid-back for its Victorian times, Miss Bettie managed
to raise eyebrows. She traveled all over the world alone
or with a female companion, and owned an apartment in
Paris. She drank, smoked, crashed parties unchaperoned,
and drove her own carriage, again according to Cartwright.
She would engage the men in races up and down Broadway.
She had a black team of horses for day and a white team
for night. Apparently she saved quite a few people during
the great storm of 1900 by driving her buggy through
the flood waters picking them up and bringing them to
her opulent mansion, the Ashton Villa, which survived
the hurricane and is now on the National Register of
Historic Places. Miss Bettie never married, and island
society speculated about her “unconventional”
lifestyle. She died at home in 1920, but her ghost is
said to haunt the place to this day.
On a less proud note, one of the town’s not-so-favorite
sons was Shearn Moody Jr., whose decadent escapades
were notorious around the island, and even discussed
in Cartwright’s book. Heir to the enormous Moody
fortune (until he was convicted of embezzling from the
family foundation and jailed for several years), his
clothing-optional swim parties in the 1960s and ’70s
gave rise to rumors we care not to report.
The first week I was in Houston in 1975 I was told that
if I really wanted to have a great time, go down to
the island, that the police didn’t raid the bars
or the baths (as they were doing quite regularly in
Houston). A friend told me a story about being in a
compromising position with another man on the beach
below the seawall late one night. It was fall and there
were few people around. Suddenly, a light shown down
on them from the top of the seawall. It was a city cop.
A voice said, “Is everything OK down there?”
When my friend replied in the affirmative, the man in
blue called out, “Just want to make sure nobody’s
gettin’ hurt. Have a nice night!” And then
he was gone.
In the 1950s, gay men and women would go to Sunday tea
dances at the black clubs on the island, according to
Hank Hinkle, a friend of mine who used to travel to
Galveston from Houston to attend the dances. At the
gatherings, there was both same-sex and interracial
dancing—which was pretty unheard of back then in
pre-Civil Rights south. Another friend Gigi Desoto,
who grew up in Galveston and graduated from Ball High,
told me that Splash Day in the ’50s and ’60s
was so popular with the gay community, who would pour
over from Houston for a day in the sun to be themselves,
that one year state police and the Texas Rangers closed
the causeway, saying the island couldn’t hold an
y more people.
So the next time you load up your car and head for Stewart
Beach, remember this: Through all her triumphs and tragedies,
Galveston has remained a complete original among cities.
For many years the town was referred to as “the
Free State of Galveston” because she was so unlike
the rest of Texas. But isn’t a state of freedom
where we all want to live? In his book chronicling the
1900 hurricane, Galveston: The Horrors of the
Stricken City (rushed into print just months
after the storm), author Murat Halstead bestows the
title on Galveston of “The Queen City on the Gulf.”
I guess that about sums it up.
Ray Hill Reminisces about Galveston
in the ’50s and ’60s
To some beach boys and leathery lesbians Galveston was
the summer haven. They would go there in May and stay
until October and become unnaturally brown spending
most daylight hours on the beach working beach jobs
if they could find them. For the rest of us there was
Splash Day, which was part of the Grand Tour. GT began
in New Orleans at Mardi Gras, next went to Fiesta in
San Antonio, then on to the opening of the beaches at
Ft Lauderdale. The GT continued with Splash Day in Galveston,
Mission Days in San Diego, and closed with the Texas/OU
game in Dallas. Gay men if they could afford the GT
went to all these events and found companionship easily.
Back then, Galveston for most of the summer had only
enough gay/lesbian population to be adequately served
by two or sometimes three bars. The bars in Galveston
were a better mix of men and women than the bars in
Houston which were more numerous and could easily be
divided into men’s and women’s.
During Splash Day weekend a dozen or more bars were
needed to accommodate the influx from all over the country.
The owners of Houston bars would rent warehouses and
meeting halls that became gay bars for the weekend.
Out on West Beach where the cops were not likely to
bother people, they converted black bars to include
gay/lesbian crowds and would serve liquor all night.
The beach-front hotels were full of gay people as well,
especially the lower-priced ones. The Buccaneer, now
part of the convention center, was especially gay-oriented
and no one knew who lived in what rooms and most doors
were just not locked all weekend. I got picked up in
the Stewart Beach Bath House (a public place to shower
and put on or take off your bathing suit) every year
from 1957 to 1964 and have many happy memories from
that era.
You can see Ray talk about Splash Day, plus many
other facets of local gay history in his latest play/monologue,
Outlaw: Queer Like Ray Hill, playing Thursdays and Saturdays
at the Ashland St. Theatre, 2610 Ashland, 713/426-3019
thru July 15.
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