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Sudden prosperity burdened county
Published November 9, 2009
Merchants benefited from the growing number of residents brought to the area by jobs offered by Dow in the 1940s — and from the overall increase in the county’s prosperity — and many new businesses opened to meet the demands of increased population and affluence.
The income of local taxing authorities was hard-pressed to meet the demands, however. Income to the county, cities and school districts tended to be at least a year behind the growth in population.
The spiraling increase in young residents meant school districts needed more teachers and more classrooms.
Taxes on new homes and businesses for the county’s newcomers could not be assessed until the beginning of the year after they were built. This meant the taxes to finance all demands on governmental entities were more than a year behind the actual need.
The same thing was true for the Dow plant itself — and in addition, the plant was located in the Freeport school district.
Even though that district was hardest hit, the student population in all the county’s other towns also increased apace.
Scores and scores of new students meant not enough classrooms were available. To make matters worse, there was a war going on in the early 1940s, and building materials were difficult, if not impossible, to obtain.
In third grade, which for me was the year of 1939-40, the kids in my class at Angleton’s lone elementary school were the same as those I had known in second grade.
This began to change the following year, with numerous additions to the number in our class, and by fifth grade, the school had grown to the point that some of the lower grade levels had to be divided into two classes or even three.
Of course, this meant more teachers, and consequently more salaries. Some of the additional classes were housed in the cafeteria, which meant we had to bring our lunches instead of having hot meals.
Fifth grade brought more of the same — additional students and more crowding. For me, this was the year of 1941-42, and I most clearly remember hearing a radio broadcast of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech the day after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and his announcement the country was now at war.
Our class had been looking forward to being the “big kids” on the elementary campus the following year, when we would be in sixth grade. This wouldn’t happen.
The combination of Dow’s initial construction, then its additional plants and production of goods for World War II meant even greater local growth.
By the 1942-43 school year, the drastic increase in student population in the lower grades was too great to accommodate six grade levels in the lone, two-story Angleton elementary school that dated back to my father’s day.
Somewhere about this time construction began on a one-story building around the east, north and west edges of that elementary campus.
That construction was made possible by a federal program that recognized the local problem was one that had to be solved because of the need for ever more Dow employees involved in producing products needed for the war.
Even so, the new classrooms weren’t finished in time to keep my sixth-grade class where it should have been. Instead, we were moved to the “high school,” which until then had housed grades seven through 12.
There, we were considered “babies” and given considerable grief by the high school students who felt — probably correctly — that we had no business crowding their facilities.
I remember some of them delighted in making our lives miserable, while others just ignored us, which was almost as demeaning.
The older students had basis for their resentment. Some of their classes had to be held in the school’s science lab, others met in the auditorium and a few even in a hallway.
The local school district was “hurting” financially. I remember one occasion when Bobby O’Bannon, who was then in seventh or eighth grade, was sent downtown to buy a box of chalk from Key’s Variety Store. The fiscal crunch had led to an insufficient supply having been ordered, and teachers had none to loan one another.
But despite these problems, everything in Brazoria County speeded up to meet the demands of the time and the situation.
In his book, “Episodes, Texas Dow 1940-1976,” Bill Colegrove told of the construction of the Dow Hotel.
From the conception of the hotel by Dr. A.P. Beutel of Dow in May 1940, with a directive to Neil Warren, an architect, over a cup of coffee, Colegrove said that Warren “pulled out a scratch pad and scribbled down the layout of a 23-room hotel.”
With Beutel’s nod of approval, the project went forward on greased skids. “The hotel was built in three weeks from notebooks and field sketches,” Colegrove wrote.
On another occasion, during the time when the only road from Freeport to the Dow plant site crossed a railroad turn bridge, a boat got stuck in the opening, a mishap that closed the road.
Realizing no one could get from Freeport to the plant the next morning, Dr. Beutel “called Harland Sherbrook and told him to build a road across the dam at the end of the harbor that night,” Colegrove wrote. “Sherbrook did it, and the road was ready by morning.”
Some of the men who lived in the barracks managed their lives in creative ways. When they left their beds in the morning, they made their own breakfast, using a makeshift “stove.”
This was an open gas burner inside a metal box, designed to provide heat for the barracks. The innovative residents realized, however, that the top was hot enough to be used for frying eggs, heating water for coffee, and even opening and heating a can of beans.
Those who lived in the county in those days have recollections of many different changes in the area.
Pat Stoltenberg of Lake Jackson remembers the construction of Highway 288 leading from Angleton to Freeport — a project she said seemed to take forever — totally changed the area’s landscape.
She also remembers when work began toward building the new town of Lake Jackson. When she rode to the end of that portion of the highway that had been completed, she looked across what had been wilderness to see the swath of timber that had been cut to gain access to the planned city.
Soon after the first houses were built in Lake Jackson, a stuffed wildcat was on display in Lake Drug Store, mute evidence of the changes that had been brought to those woods.
Next week: Freeport residents make adjustments.
Marie Beth Jones, a published author and freelance writer based in Angleton, is chairwoman of the Brazoria County Historical Commission.
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