De Leon Free Press (De Leon, Tex.), Vol. 123, No. 10, Ed. 1 Thursday, August 30, 2012 Page: 1 of 12
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Weekly Forecast
Partly Cloudy
through the week
Thursday: 94/72
Friday: 94/68
Saturday: 95/70
Sunday: 95/70
Monday: 95/71
Proctor Lake Level: 73.34%
Weekly Precipitation: 0.45”
Annual Precipitation: 27.55
2012 Texas Press Association award winner
De Leon
Football Contest
returns... pg. 6
%$ t.l89o
Thursday, August 30, 2012 12 Pages Seventy-five Cents Volume 123, No. 10 DeLeon, TX 76444
LIGHTING OF THE D. The DeLeon High School Class of 2013 was on hand Monday
night for the annual lighting of the “D” at Bearcat Field during Meet the Bearcats night.
The Mighty Maroon Band, Cubcat football and volleyball teams, middle school and
high school cheerleaders, the Lady Cat volleyball team, both girls and boys cross
country teams, and the Bearcat football team were introduced to the public. Several
hundred attended the event, where dinner was served and Bearcat merchandise was
offered for sale by the DeLeon Athletic Booster Club.
Miller and Mighty Maroon
continue banding together
By LAURA KESTNER
Editor
For the past 18 years,
DeLeon Band Director Chuck
Miller has spent the first week
of each school year introducing
a new group of students to the
“Mighty Maroon Band” experi-
ence - and this year has been no
exception.
And though it may take a
while for the youngest ones to
CHUCK MILLER.
appreciate it, their musical
future is in the best of hands.
Under Miller’s direction,
the Mighty Maroon Band has
won numerous “1st division”
ratings in marching, concert
and sight reading competitions,
as well as the coveted
“Sweepstakes” award - the
highest rating a UIL band can
receive.
There have also been
countless 1st place finishes at
UIL Solo and Ensemble com-
petitions, with many students
qualifying for the All State Solo
Festival.
Five of Miller’s students
have placed in the 1A, 2A and
3A All State Band - most
recently Wesley Wilkerson.
With 55 high school band
students, and 76 from junior
high, Miller is in for another
busy, exciting time this year.
“We will be performing at
every (Bearcat) half time,”
Miller said. “And we will spend
the first three Saturdays in
October in competition. On
Oct. 6, we will host the annual
BYOB (Bring your own Band)
competition here in DeLeon, on
Oct. 13, we will be in Glen
Rose, and then on Oct. 20, we
will have UIL competition in
Brady.”
Miller said this year’s
dmm majors will be Jordan
Coan and Hedit Hernandez,
and the theme for marching is
“Back to Jazz” featuring the
music of the Brian Seltzer
Orchestra.
Having graduated from
Sul Ross University last year
with a Masters in Education
Administration, Miller will also
function as the assistant princi-
pal at Perkins Middle School
this year.
“I completed my principal
certification in May of 2012
and am currently working on
my superintendent certification
which will be complete before
May 2013,” Miller said. “I am
attending classes through
Region 14 Education Service
Center in Abilene.”
Busy, exciting times
indeed.
Bearcats season starts
today with Roscoe High
By JON AWBREY
Publisher
The Bearcats may have
found a winning formula, at
least in preseason play, based
on their recent success in scrim-
mage against Brock and Perrin-
Whitt.
In the three-way scrim-
mage last Thursday, DeLeon’s
offense pounded Brock and
Perrin-Whitt for six scores,
while the Bearcat defense only
allowed a total of one score to
be made against them.
DeLeon Head Football
Coach David Yeager stated that
he thinks the Bearcats are
responding to his methods, both
to develop their athletic abilities
and their personal character.
“Our goal is to be a good
football team by the time dis-
trict starts,” said Yeager. “Of
course, we’d like to win them
all, but our goal is to be ready
when district [play] begins.”
Although last season
appears to have left a number of
unanswered questions, Coach
Yeager appears to have
answered, or at least debated, a
good many of them.
Of course, with any team,
challenges mount as the season
wears on.
For Yeager, those chal-
lenges seem to be related to
depth in many positions.
“I’d like to see more
depth,” said Yeager. “But what
can you do? We can’t recruit
players. I’d like to get a few
more kids out here.”
And, as always, there’s the
challenge of the season itself. In
a newly-created district in
which every member is either
coming off a recent string of
successes or has a tradition of
quality play, the Bearcats will
face tough games each week.
“My philosophy is that the
toughest game is the next one,
but,” Yeager added, “we are in a
tough 1A district.”
This year’s non-district
season begins today in
Sweetwater’s Mustang Bowl
against the Roscoe Plowboys.
Last year the Plowboys strug-
gled through a difficult season,
dropping close games to Roby
and Rotan on their way to a 0-
9 record.
On September 7, DeLeon
hosts Baird, who is coming off
a 1-8 season, with a win over
Ranger.
On September 14, the
Bearcats will travel to Tolar to
take on the Rattlers, who posted
four wins last year, including
victories over Millsap, Rio
Vista, and Maypearl.
On September 21, DeLeon
travels to Meridian to take on a
five win team from last year,
who lost in the first round of the
playoffs to a quality power in
Bremond.
On September 28, the
Bearcats host Hamilton, a team
that won six games last year,
and advanced to the second
round of the playoffs with a vic-
tory over Henrietta before los-
ing to Idalou.
On October 5, for home-
coming, DeLeon will host
Texas Wind, a group of gridiron
homeschoolers out of Abilene
who appear to be new to organ-
ized 11-man football this year.
This year, Texas Wind’s sched-
ule includes DeLeon and Cross
Plains, and a number of
See Bearcat Football page 4
County residents riled
about rising taxes
By SARAH AWBREY
Staff Writer
On Monday, August 28,
Comanche County
Commissioners met in a regu-
larly scheduled meeting to dis-
cuss the proposed tax increase
and a new employee for the
constable’s office.
Michael Detzler, resident
of Lake Comanche and presi-
dent of the Lake Comanche
Property Owners Association,
came to court to voice his dis-
pleasure on the county’s pro-
posed tax increase.
Detzler said he built his
home at Lake Comanche in
2004 and the next year he
retired and moved in.
“Every year my taxes are
going up. In seven years they
have gone up $1000,” said
Detzler.
Detzler said that if he had
to cut back on the things that he
wants to do because he can’t
afford it, then so should the
county.
“When it comes to proper-
ty taxes, I have no control.
When it comes to my money
you can get into it any time. It
seems there’s never an end to
the taxation,” stated Detzler.
Precinct 3 Commissioner
Sherman Sides informed
Detzler that cuts from state and
federal funding are an addition-
al burden to the county. The
county is trying to balance the
budget with a $500,000 deficit
and the county has to dip into
their overflow fund by
$150,000 a year, said Sides.
To help balance the budg-
et, salary increases have been
denied for employees and offi-
cials for the last two years.
Detzler stated that all the
roads and the bridges in the
Lake Comanche Community
are maintained by money that
comes from the residents and in
ten years they haven’t raised
fees, and the community cur-
rently has roads that need to be
worked on.
“We don’t do anything
unless we have the money to do
it. We’d like to have the main
road seal coated but we don’t
have the money to do it,” said
Detzler.
Laura Detzler added that
everything is going up, includ-
ing groceries, gas, and living
expenses.
“It’s not America like it
used to be. Pretty soon we’re
going to be drowning,” she
said.
Sides responded to the
couple by saying that the coun-
ty didn’t raise taxes last year.
“It’s impossible for the
appraisal district to look at us
with a straight face and raise
our taxes,” said Detzler.
The couple stated that their
house wasn’t worth here what it
is in Austin, but that they are
taxed like they live in the city.
Emergency Management
Coordinator Ray Heiberg then
addressed the court.
“I enjoy the services from
the county,” Heiberg said.
Heiberg stated that even
though the cost of fuel, road
materials, and transportation of
road materials is increasing the
county still has to have money
to operate services that resi-
See County page 8
The Free Press Office will be closed Monday,
September 3, in observance of Labor Day.
Mystery museum belle
calls out from the past
By JON AWBREY
Publisher
Tucked away on a south
wall of the Comanche County
Museum is a black and white
photograph of a woman in a
bonnet.
There is nothing to identify
the woman except a name and a
story from the far-off old state
of Georgia.
There is nothing to say
why her photograph hangs on
the Comanche County
Museum wall, or even if or
when she ever lived in
Comanche County.
She is a mystery - a mys-
tery woman in a old fashioned
white bonnet.
It might be hard to believe
that she was the daughter of a
Revolutionary War hero and
general, the sister of a congress-
man and lieutenant governor of
Mississippi, and the aunt of a
governor of Alabama and a
lieutenant governor of the
infant state of Texas.
But she was. And she was
an early resident of the Leon
River country who spent her
final years in Comanche
County.
Her name was Martha
Easley Dickson McConnell,
but her father called her Patsey.
Martha was bom Nov. 30,
1805, almost certainly in
Jackson County, Georgia, to
General David Dickson and
Anne Allen Dickson. Her father
was 55 years old when she was
bom.
Martha was the eleventh
child of thirteen bom to General
Dickson by three wives. By the
time General Dickson was 46,
he had buried his first two
spouses.
When not burying wives
and fathering children, General
Dickson, who, during the
American Revolution had
enlisted in 1775 and fought
through the duration at San
Augustine, Florida, and on the
southern frontier, was an active
citizen of his newly bom coun-
try.
Before Martha was bom,
her father had served as a
Georgia state representative for
Greene and Hancock counties,
as well as a justice on several
courts. The year Martha was
bom, he was finishing a term as
a Georgia state senator for
Jackson County.
His public service seems
to have abated somewhat dur-
ing the years of Martha’s youth.
However, her older brother
David Dickson, Jr., 13 years her
elder, took upon himself his
See Mystery page 2
MARTHA DICKSON McCONNELL.
McCONNELL HOUSE. The McConnells built this ante-
bellum house in 1837 in Chattooga County, Georgia.
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Kestner, Laura. De Leon Free Press (De Leon, Tex.), Vol. 123, No. 10, Ed. 1 Thursday, August 30, 2012, newspaper, August 30, 2012; De Leon, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth787237/m1/1/: accessed June 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Comanche Public Library.