Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 112, No. 099, Ed. 1 Monday, November 9, 2015 Page: 3 of 19
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STATE
3A
Denton Record-Chronicle
Monday, November 9, 2015
Bush
on Bush
State seeks deer
hunters’ help in
tracking disease
Former president talks
about dad with biographer
By Emily Schmall
Associated Press
DALLAS — Former Presi-
dent George W. Bush acknowl-
edged on Sunday he may have
downplayed how much he
sought advice from his father
during his presidency, a sign of
the influence George Herbert
Walker Bush still has over his
son.
George W.
Bush, left,
listens to
author Jon
Meacham
talk about his
biography of
Bush’s father,
George H.W.
Bush, on
Sunday at the
George W.
Bush Presi-
dential Cen-
ter in Dallas.
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SAN ANTONIO (AP)
Statt' officials are asking
hunters to provide samples of
wild deer they kill to check for
chronic wasting disease, after
it was detected in white-tailed
deer last summer for the first
time.
about eating venison.
In the absence of long-
term evidence on disease risk
to humans, the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and the
World Health Organization
recommend not consuming
meat from infected animals.
Hunters providing samples
will be given numbered re-
ceipts they can check at the
Texas Parks and Wildlife De-
partment website to see results
on their deer — though the lab
findings are expected to take
weeks, long after the meat may
have been eaten. Mitch Lock-
wood, the agency’s Big Game
Program Director, said about
1,500 samples had already
been collected, mostly from
roadldll and bow hunting.
‘We really think there’s a
very low probability that the
disease exists in the free-
range population, based on
our past sampling,” he said.
To safeguard the deer-
hunting industry — and its
estimated $2.1 billion annual
impact on Texas’ economy —
the state issued emergency
rules in August that tightened
regulations on the movement
and release of captive-bred
deer. A lawsuit was filed last
month accusing state officials
of overstepping their author-
ity and discriminating against
deer breeders.
It was a reminder the father’s
legacy could have a powerful im-
pact if another of his sons, Jeb
Bush, wins the White House.
George W. Bush made the
comments in a public forum
Sunday, talking about his fa-
ther’s biography with the book’s
author, Jon Meacham.
During their conversation,
Meacham recalled a conversa-
tion he’d had with George W.
Bush for the book: “I think you
downplayed at times how much
you talked to your dad.” The
younger Bush nodded his ac-
knowledgment.
The forum at the George W.
Bush Presidential Center in Dal-
las touched on the father’s early
career as a Navy pilot, his disap-
pointing loss to former Presi-
dent Bill Clinton in 1992 and his
reflections on his son’s tenure in
the White House. The talk came
two days before Meacham’sDes-
tiny and Power becomes pub-
licly available.
In the book, former Presi-
dent George H.W. Bush criti-
cized his son for setting an abra-
sive tone on the world stage and
failing to rein in hawkish Vice
President Dick Cheney and De-
fense chief Donald Rumsfeld.
That sensitive topic was not ad-
Wildfife officials hope to
screen the brain stems and
lymph nodes of 8,000 wild
deer this season by means of
roadside checkpoints set up
around the state to collect
Jeffrey
McWhorter/AP
dressed in the Sunday forum
where the younger Bush was
asking the questions.
The biography is the fullest ac-
count yet of the elder Bush, the
only modem ex-president not to
write a full-length memoir. It
draws on diaries George H.W.
Bush kept from the 1960s to the
1990s and interviews the author
conducted from 2006 to 2015.
On some days, he sounded
like he was “a step away from the
grave,” Meacham said, referring
to the exhaustive schedule kept
by Bush. Meacham praised the
elder Bush for his candor in re-
cording his own history.
“This is a man who turned on
the tape recorder and told the
tmth. Even when he was having
the worst possible day, he would
talk himself back into the game,”
Meacham added, citing Bush’s
discouraged but determined di-
ary entry on the evening he lost
his bid for a second term as pres-
ident.
In the book, Meacham por-
trays the 41st president as the
epitome of gentility and grace,
bred for power but also hum-
bled by it. In contrast to Ronald
Reagan, for whom Bush served
eight years as vice president, or
Richard Nixon, whose patron-
age he enjoyed, Meacham said
Sunday that Bush saw politics as
a noble undertaking, in the
mold of Theodore Roosevelt
and Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
“where public office was an ex-
tension of yourself”
In 1965, after losing an elec-
tion to the U.S. Senate, Bush, at
41 years old, declared his inten-
tion to become president.
“He had a sense of destiny, a
sense that he was meant to do
great things,” Meacham said,
adding that Bush’s father and in-
laws had both predicted his rise
to the White House.
“When you write the book on
me, you’re not going to find any-
one predicting I’m going to be
president,” George W. Bush
quipped.
Toward the end of the discus-
sion, Bush and Meacham
turned to former President
George H.W. Bush’s reflections
on his son’s presidency.
In the book, Bush says one-
time Pentagon chief Donald
Rumsfeld “served the president
badly” when George W. Bush
was in the White House and that
former Vice President Dick
Cheney “built his own empire”
and asserted too much “hard-
line” influence.
He worried about his son’s
“cowboy image,” Meacham
writes.
samples, the San Antonio
Express-News reported Sat-
urday.
The neurological disorder,
which is fatal to deer, prompt-
ed tight monitoring at breed-
ing ranches and a mass eu-
thanasia at one ranch where
the disease was found.
Chronic wasting disease is
believed to be spread through
deer urine, saliva and feces. It
was first detected in the state
in 2012 in free-ranging mule
deer in West Texas. Since last
June, five white-tailed deer
tested positive for the disease.
“There’s no evidence to
suggest transmissibifity of
CWD to humans,” wildlife
specialist with Texas A&M
University John Tomacek
told a San Antonio audience
of about 25 at a briefing
Wednesday.
He sought to allay anxiety
“I do worry about some of the
rhetoric that was out there —
some of it his, maybe, and some
of it the people around him,” the
elder Bush said in the book.
The elder Bush was a far
more emotional person than the
image he presented publicly,
Meacham said.
Touch of whimsy or dark reminder?
arillo planner Jennifer Evans-
Cowley, who is now vice provost
for capital planning and region-
al campuses at Ohio State Uni-
versity, and colleague Jack
Nasar, professor emeritus in the
city and regional planning de-
partment at OSU. Their study,
“Amarillo Yard Art,” was pub-
lished in 2004 in the Journal of
the American Planning Asso-
ciation. It identified 2,311 signs
and included interviews with
more than 1,000 residents.
“There was a distinctive dif-
ference with people who had the
signs and their neighbors,” Ev-
ans-Cowley said. “People said
that the signs helped echo them-
selves. But some parents didn’t
want their children reading the
signs because they didn’t want to
explain what they meant or oth-
ers said they were traffic safety
hazards.”
Most people enjoy the signs
on their property, Evans-Cowley
said.
Paul Harpole. ‘As mayor, I am
concerned about the legalities of
any action we take and my per-
sonal feelings stay out of it. We
have sworn to uphold the city
charter and the Constitution,
and that’s what we do.”
The city currently views the
signs as noncommercial signs
and does not regulate them as
long as they are on private prop-
erty, according to municipal
code.
Amarillo public art
project sparks
challenge over
patron’s misdeeds
m
f*
,
’ W w.
By Aaron Davis
Amarillo Globe-News
AMARILLO (AP) - The
stark white form of a mythical
winged horse stands out against
a faded blue background on a di-
amond-shaped sign in front of
an abandoned house in the San
Jacinto neighborhood, one of
hundreds of quirky, seemingly
meaningless traffic signs posted
throughout town.
Financed by capricious bil-
lionaire Stanley Marsh 3, the
fake traffic signs might be the
largest public art project in the
nation. But they are not without
critics, and now a group is call-
ing for their removal in the wake
of the sexual assault allegations
brought against Marsh 3 at the
end of his life. The polarizing
prankster and philanthropist
died June 17,2014, and the crim-
inal sex abuse charges brought
against Marsh 3 in 2013 were
dismissed a month after his
death.
Many involved in the Amaril-
lo art scene agree the first dia-
mond-shaped art sign in Ama-
rillo was the “Road Does Not
End” sign Stanley Marsh 3 put
up in his front yard sometime
around 1992 after seeing a sign
that said “Road Ends 300 Feet.”
After this, another sign say-
ing “Marilyn” appeared in a yard
on Monroe Street, and then one
with ablue dot on it was planted.
Dynamite Museum mem-
bers said people started calling
them for signs in their yards.
Residents could choose from a
fist of signs and phrases. City of-
ficials were not aware of the
signs until they had spread, Dy-
namite Museum members said.
The city discussed them and de-
cided they were not going to re-
strict them, according to Kelly
Shaw, city planning director.
Marsh 3, who died last year
at age 76, said money never
changed hands for the signs, and
he financed the entire project.
There were no contracts that
outlined how long the signs
.; ,:J*J
mm
sS
Sean Steffen, The Amarillo Globe News/AP
Matthew Williams, an art instructor at West Texas A&M University and a former Dynamite
Museum member, talks about his collection of public art signs that he has recovered and
preserved in Amarillo. Williams has catalogued more than 1,500 signs.
Stacey Hamlin has a sign
that says “Whatever Floats Your
Boat” at her home on South Ala-
bama Street.
“I’ve been saying that phrase
since junior high,” Hamlin said.
“I jumped up for joy when I
heard that I was getting a Marsh
sign.”
month that the signs triggered
crippling memories.
Some have suggestive phras-
es such as “They didn’t have on
any underpants at all’
“There’s good times coming
boys.”
said they make Amarillo unique
and point to examples such as
the “No two signs are the same”
pair, or one with a poem from
18th-century pastoral poet Oli-
ver Goldsmith that claims it’s
from the 20th century.
Friends and colleagues said
Marsh 3 never revealed the ex-
act number of signs placed
through the city, but Cher
Krause Night, an author who
studied the signs for a book ti-
ded Public Art: Theory, Prac-
tice and Populism, estimates
the number at 5,000.
Marsh 3 never clearly stated
his reasons for creating the
signs.
makes Amarillo a little more
fun.”
In a 2010 interview, Marsh 3
discussed the dual interpreta-
tions of the signs.
“The signs always come as a
surprise to you. It’s like an Easter
egg hunt,” Marsh 3 said. “And no
two people are going to see the
same sign the same way.”
Revett’s colleague, West Tex-
as A&M assistant art history
professor Amy Von Lintel, said
the signs can be considered con-
ceptual art or anti-elite art.
“I think they’re all this kind of
ironic approach to art,” she said.
“Marsh’s infiltration of art in the
urban space in Amarillo was an
innovative idea, subverting the
traditional and authoritarian
nature of the gallery.”
Von Lintel teaches begin-
ning-level art students about
Marsh 3’s art projects. She said
that, like many famous artists,
Marsh 3 was deeply flawed. For
example, the Italian painter Mi-
chelangelo da Caravaggio killed
a romantic rival in a failed cas-
tration attempt, and French
painter Paul Gauguin took three
underage Tahitian brides,
abused them and infected them
with syphilis, she said.
“Do I think Gauguin’s art
should be thrown out of the can-
on? No,” Von Lintel said. “It’s a
profound ethical question. Cen-
sorship to me is really destruc-
tive. This is in the public sphere
now and it’s bigger than Marsh.”
A study of the public percep-
tion of these signs was undertak-
en in 2004 by former city of Am-
or
“Some of those signs, without
knowing anything else, seem
fairly innocent,” said Wayne
Dolcefino, a Houston-based in-
vestigator who has launched the
“Erase the Marsh Madness” so-
cial media campaign urging
people to remove the signs.
But the signs take on a more
sinister tone for those who allege
they were sexually abused by
Marsh 3, Dolcefino told Xhe Am-
arillo Globe-News.
Dolcefino and attorney Chad
Pinkerton represent eight plain-
tiffs in a civil suit filed against
Marsh 3’s wife, Gwendolyn
‘Wendy” Marsh; son, Stanley
Marsh IV; longtime associate
David L. Weir; former employee
Drew Mason; the Marsh estate;
McCartt & Associates and Ama-
rillo Protective Services LLC.
The suit claims they played a
role in facilitating the sexual
abuse of teenage boys, or should
have known what was going on.
Pinkerton previously worked
with Houston attorney Anthony
Buzbee in a similar lawsuit filed
against Marsh 3 by 10 men in
2012. That case was settled out
of court in February 2013.
The Amarillo Police Depart-
ment also recently has con-
firmed it reopened the investiga-
tion into the case more than five
months ago.
Plaintiffs represented by Pin-
kerton said in an interview last
What’s next?
The “Erase the Marsh Mad-
ness” group is calling on the
mayor and City Council mem-
bers to ban the signs, but it did
not specify a
path to that end.
‘You could
put some re-
strictions as far
assize and loca-
tion, and that
might be possi-
ble. We do have
restrictions for
all signs, but not
those specific
signs,” said
Kelly Shaw,
planning direc-
tor for the city
of Amarillo.
Shaw said
the city historically has not had
any form-based codes, which
regulate the physical form or im-
age of buildings and property.
‘As far as sign regulations go,
you try to make sure as best you
can that your ordinances are
content-neutral or you get into
free speech issues,” Shaw said.
On South Prospect Street,
there is a sign with the full text of
the First Amendment.
“I personally think [the
signs] are horrible, but it’s a pri-
vate property issue,” said Mayor
“Imagine if you were a victim
of sexual assault and every day
you have to see pictures or mem-
ories of the person who did it
staring you in the face,” Dolcefi-
no said. “If the Marsh family
wants to have a museum and
must stay
posted in the
resident’s
yard.
put it behind closed doors, fine.”
In 2012 — after Marsh 3 had
been ruled incapacitated by a
court and his wife was made his
legal guardian — police recov-
ered 17,600 tabs of Viagra and
computers with pornography on
them during a search of Marsh
3’s offices, according to police re-
“It’s a profound
ethical question.
Censorship to me is
really destructive.
This is in the public
sphere now and
it’s bigger than
[Stanley] Marsh
The project
lasted eight
years, and
Marsh 3 end-
ed it in 2000.
Matthew
Williams, an
assistant art
instructor at
West Texas
A&M and a
former Dyna-
mite Museum
member, has
catalogued more than 1,500
signs and has identified the art-
ists behind most of them. More
than 100 artists worked on the
signs, he said.
The project is likely the larg-
est public art project carried out
in the U.S., Williams said. He es-
timated there are about 3,000
“It is intentionally ambigu-
ous to make you wonder, create
and discuss art,” said Jon Revett,
who helped design and install
the signs and is now an assistant
professor of painting and draw-
ing at West Texas A&M Univer-
sity. ‘We would tell people a vari-
ety of reasons that we did it.”
Revett and others were
ports.
“Anybody who went into that
police property room and
looked at the evidence would be
[31.
— Amy Von Lintel,
art history professor
disgusted at Stanley Marsh’s be-
havior,” Dolcefino said. “I call on
the mayor and the City Council
to immediately take action so
that these images are taken out
of public view so the victims
don’t need to look at them.”
Kelly Utsinger, a lawyer at
Underwood Law Firm and a
representative for Wendy Marsh
and the Marsh estate, did not re-
spond to three phone calls and
an email seeking comment for
this story. Additionally, Bill
Kelly, an attorney for Marsh IV,
declined to comment on the sign
issue.
members of the Dynamite Mu-
seum, an Amarillo art collective
of which Marsh 3 was a member
and patron. Revett painted and
placed many of the signs.
The signs spur discussions of
the relationship between the
artist and the public, an artistic
concept called relational aes-
thetics, he said. He disapproves
of removing the signs.
“It’s kind of insulting to me
because it was a group of artists
that did the signs,” Revett said.
“People from out of town see the
signs as very interesting, and it
signs.
“The project was made to
give people a sense of excite-
ment and adventure when you
go out on your everyday activi-
ties,” Williams said.
Those who support the signs
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 112, No. 099, Ed. 1 Monday, November 9, 2015, newspaper, November 9, 2015; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1124600/m1/3/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .