Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 112, No. 090, Ed. 1 Saturday, October 31, 2015 Page: 3 of 26
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Denton Record-Chronicle
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Alamo undergoes repair work
Character parade
By Will Weissert
Associated Press
SAN ANTONIO - Centu-
ries of rainfall and punishing
Texas sunshine are slowly doing
what cannon fire and barrages
of Mexican bullets couldn’t back
in 1836 — disintegrating the
Alamo.
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That’s why the shrine is un-
dergoing $5 million in emergen-
cy repairs, part of a sweeping,
state
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Legislature-approved
$31.5 million makeover that
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maybe one of the site’s most am-
bitious since Davy Crockett’s
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Kristen Watson/DRC
Third-grader Kaylie Wilson walks during the Story-
book Character Parade at Hattie Dyer Elementary
School on Friday in Krum. This was the ninth annual
character parade, which is designed to emphasize
the importance of literacy among second- and third-
graders.
day.
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San Antonio, the state’s Gen-
eral Land Office and corporate
interests are creating a master
plan they hope will be ready next
year. It will provide a road map
for restoration of the Alamo and
a face-lift for the surrounding
grounds crammed into Ameri-
ca’s seventh-largest city’s down-
town.
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Photos by Eric Gay/AP
Master stone mason Miroslav Maler uses materials as close to the originals as possible to
make repairs to the Alamo on Wednesday in San Antonio.
rations relied on newer materi-
als that sometimes produced
unwanted results. In the 1930s,
the Alamo church’s facade was
repaired using a concrete mor-
tar that eventually gave off a
pinkish hue — rather than its
original gray-white color. The
Colonial Revival-style bars that
adorn the windows of the
church, meanwhile, are not orig-
inal and were likely added
around the 1940s — but remov-
ing them now could harm the
surrounding stone.
The experts also uncovered a
hole measuring about 2 feet on
the church’s south facade. Myjer
said he believes Spanish and In-
dian masons created it while
building the Alamo to help an-
chor temporary scaffolding.
Nearby, there’s something far
less historical: a drainage pipe
inserted into the stone to accom-
modate an early air conditioning
system.
The Alamo is the best known
of five Spanish missions estab-
lished by the Franciscans. It was
first built as Mission San An-
tonio de Valero in 1718 and was
moved to its present location six
years later.
The original plans included a
church with a three-story fa-
cade, but the roof was never
completed before the famous
battle on March 6,1836, when
Mexican troops lay siege to
Judge denies appeal
from Utah inmate
facing firing squad
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An additional $17 million in
future promised municipal
funds will eventually push the
total cost to nearly $50 million.
Already, the state is buying three
historical buildings across the
street from the Alamo that now
house such attractions as Rip-
ley’s Haunted Adventure but
could one day contain a muse-
um and expanded plaza.
While future plans are being
readied, two experts have spent
more than six hours a day for the
past month perched atop a
crane, studying crumbling areas
of the Alamo church’s mold-dot-
ted facade.
In places where deterioration
is especially bad, they carefully
created stone replicas and jig-
sawed those into place using
crushed limestone mortar con-
sistent with construction mate-
rials available when the Alamo
was first built in the 18th centu-
ar
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immediately return a message
seeking comment. He is likely
still years away from a possible
execution date.
Utah is the only state that al-
lows executions by firing squad
if lethal injection drugs aren’t
available. State lawmakers said
the approval was a practical
matter of choosing a backup
plan to the drugs that have come
under increasing scrutiny.
Lafferty is the longest-serv-
ing death row inmate in Utah
and one of the inmates who is
closest to a possible execution
date. He was convicted in the
1984 deaths of his sister-in-law,
Brenda Lafferty, and her baby
daughter.
He claimed the killings were
directed by God because of the
woman’s resistance to his beliefs
in polygamy.
Ron Lafferty’s firing squad
arguments came in a federal
court motion asking a judge to
put his case on hold so he could
pursue complaints about evi-
dence handling and testimony.
By Lindsay Whitehurst
Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY
judge denied an appeal Friday
from a Utah death row inmate
who argued that his sentence of
death by firing squad is cruel
and unusual punishment.
U.S. District Judge Dee Ben-
son wrote in his ruling that the
U.S. Supreme Court has never
overturned a state’s chosen
method of execution as cruel
and unusual, though he said in-
mate Ron Lafferty can still press
his claims in Utah state court.
Utah recently approved the
use of a firing squad as a backup
if lethal injection drugs are un-
available.
Lafferty, 74, had argued that
the firing squad would cause a
lingering, unnecessarily painful
death. He chose to die that way
when he was sentenced 30 years
ago and such a choice was avail-
able, but his lawyers now argue
that he wasn’t legally competent
to do so.
Attorneys for Lafferty did not
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Ivan Myjer, a stone conservator based in suburban Boston
who has helped restore historic sites around the world,
makes repairs to the Alamo on Thursday.
around 180 Texas defenders.
The site later served as a military
garrison for Confederate and
U.S. Army troops, who built the
first permanent roof.
Alamo Director Becky Din-
nin said at least two major mas-
ter plans for restoration com-
missioned since the 1970s
stalled.
ended its contract with the
Daughters of the Republic of
Texas, which saved the Alamo
from being torn down in 1905
and managed it for more than a
century.
Granted UNESCO World
Heritage status this summer, the
Alamo attracts more than 2.5
million visitors annually.
“There are so many people
who feel so close to this place,
they’ve actually kind of loved it
to death over the years,” said
Gene Powell, a prominent devel-
oper serving on a special endow-
ment board Bush created to
raise money for Alamo restora-
tion.
ry-
“We don’t want to lose details
while we’re sitting around talk-
ing about what to do next,” said
Ivan Myjer, a suburban Boston-
based stone conservator who
has helped restore historical
sites around the world.
Myjer and master stone ma-
son Miroslav Maler use materi-
als as close to the originals as
possible because previous resto-
“This is an opportunity
where everything is coming to-
gether in a way that’s not hap-
pened before,” Dinnin said.
Last fall, George P. Bush,
whose father, Jeb, is running for
president, was elected land com-
missioner. In March, the state
assumed Alamo operations and
Poll: Clerks must
issue licenses for
gay marriages
Safety
First 9n
Halloween
A
i
i
with religious objections should
be exempt from issuing mar-
riage licenses to same-sex cou-
ples and 47 percent said they
should be required to issue
them.
By Laurie Kellman
and Emily Swanson
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
Massey opposes gay marriage.
But she was incensed last sum-
mer to see that Kim Davis, a
Kentucky county clerk, was re-
fusing to issue marriage licenses
to gay couples.
“If the government says you
have to give out those marriage
licenses, and you get paid to do
it, you do it,” says the 64-year-old
retiree from Lewiston, Michi-
gan. “That woman,” she said of
Davis, “should be out of a job.”
Americans like Massey are at
the heart of a shift in public
opinion, an Associated Press-
GfK poll has found. For the first
time, most Americans expect
government officials to issue
marriage licenses to same-sex
couples, even over religious ob-
jections.
It’s partly a matter of expect-
ing public servants to do their
jobs. But more broadly, the issue
touches on a familiar dispute
over which constitutional value
trumps which: religious free-
dom, or equality under the law?
The question in recent
months has entangled leaders
with political sway, among them
Pope Francis and the 2016 presi-
dential contenders.
But it’s not a new conflict for
a nation that has long wrestled
with the separation of church
and state.
Where Davis’ answer was the
First Amendment’s protection
of religious freedom — and she
served jail time to back it up — a
majority of respondents don’t
buy that argument when it
comes to public officials issuing
marriage licenses.
That’s a shift since an AP-
GfK survey in July, when Amer-
icans were about evenly split.
Then, 49 percent said officials
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Now, just 41 percent favor an
exemption and 56 percent think
they should be required to issue
the licenses.
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That shift was especially
stark among Republicans. A
majority of them —58 percent
— still favor religious exemp-
tions for officials issuing mar-
riage licenses, but that’s down 14
points since 72 percent said so in
July.
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Halloween is a fun time for kids and parents
alike. You can make sure it’s a safe Halloween
for your children by remembering these
simple safety tips:
/
The timing of the surveys is
important, coming during rapid
developments in the politics of
gay rights and religious free-
dom.
ft
Public opinion has favored
same-sex marriage in recent
years and some politicians —
President Barack Obama, 2016
presidential contender Hillary
Rodham Clinton and some
members of Congress among
them — have come around to
that view.
In June, the Supreme Court
effectively legalized gay mar-
riage nationwide.
The cultural change has in-
fluenced the governing bodies of
some of the most conservative
religions, including the Catholic
Church under Pope Francis and
the Mormon Church, which last
week called for compromises
between protecting religious lib-
erties and prohibiting discrimi-
nation.
Both institutions are trying
to accommodate society’s shift-
ing views while keeping a firm
grip internally on their own doc-
trines against gay marriage and
homosexual activity.
And both churches steered
clear of the appearance of back-
ing Davis.
• Send your children to trick-or-treat early, while there’s still some daylight
Make sure they have a working flashlight to use at night
• Have your children travel in groups with an accompanying adult
• Turn on outside lights to welcome trick-or-treaters to your house.
• Reflective material sewn into costumes can be a life saver.
• Masks can obscure vision. Exercise a bit of creativity and use nontoxic
makeup instead.
• Check all treats before they’re eaten. For even more safety, throw out fruit
and any candy that isn ’t wrapped.
Have a happy and safe Halloween!
em/y
2025 W. University • Denton, TX • (940) 383-4200
www. deberryfuner aldirectors. com
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 112, No. 090, Ed. 1 Saturday, October 31, 2015, newspaper, October 31, 2015; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1124580/m1/3/: accessed June 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .