VOTER FRAUD TEXAS STYLE (PART I)
By Linda Minor © 2000
Isn't it intriguing that the voting boxes that determined
LBJ's election were controlled by a man who worked for the interests that
controlled our drug-running railroad in Laredo--the Tex Mex? Is it the same
drug network in Florida that controls those Broward County boxes?The same man was implicated in the death of the son of a South Texas attorney, alleged to have been killed by Mexican assassins mentioned in the Torbitt Document as having been involved in the Kennedy assassination.
DUVAL COUNTY
Duval County is in
south central Texas about fifty miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico and
seventy-three miles north of the Rio Grande. It is bordered by Webb, La Salle,
McMullen, Live Oak, Jim Wells, Brooks, and Jim Hogg counties. San Diego, the county
seat and most populous town, is on the Texas Mexican Railroad at the
intersection of State highways 44 and 359 and Farm road 1329, about fifty-two
miles west of Corpus Christi and eighty miles east of Laredo....
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| King Ranch and Mexican War--A Coincidence? |
The white influx led to the county's most enduring characteristic: a
vast Mexican-American majority held in thrall by a small but wealthy and
influential white minority. In the late nineteenth century Anglos made
up less than 10 percent of the county's population but controlled most
of the county's trade and politics. Ironically, it was an Anglo, a
former cowhand and schoolteacher named Archer Parr, who turned this imbalance to his advantage by soliciting the Mexican Americans,
whom his fellow Anglo politicians had traditionally ignored. These
people, many of whom were desperately poor, gave up their political
autonomy in exchange for county jobs and occasional cash disbursements
of questionable legality from the county treasury. This arrangement,
which one Duval County official called "frankly corrupt but fully
benevolent," allowed Parr, and later his son George B. Parr,
a free hand in running the affairs of the county, and became a way of
life there. Parr was elected to the Duval County Commissioners Court in
1898, but he did not become the dominant figure in local politics until
the assassination of the Duval County Democratic chieftain John Cleary
in 1907. By the time Parr was elected to the state Senate in 1914, his
control over the affairs of the county was virtually absolute. Yet his
power did not go unchallenged. Duval County lost a portion of its land,
including the town of Hebbronville, when Jim Hogg County was formed in
1913....
Duval County's reputation for political corruption peaked with Lyndon B. Johnson's election to the United States Senate in 1948. The famous Box 13, which gave Johnson his eighty-seven-vote victory, was actually in Jim Wells County, but the manipulation of the returns was almost certainly directed by Parr. In the 1900 presidential election Duval County went Republican, but since that time, thanks largely to the efficiency of the Parr machine and the customary tendency of Hispanics to vote for Democrats, the county has delivered majorities to the Democratic party on the order of 94 percent in 1916, 98 percent in 1932, 95 percent in 1936, 96 percent in 1940, 95 percent in 1944, 97 percent in 1948, and 93 percent in 1964. In fact, only once between 1916 and 1972 did the Democratic candidate receive less than 74 percent of the vote in Duval County; that year, 1956, a mere 68 percent voted Democratic. Even after the demise of the Parr machine in 1975 Democrats continued to dominate. In the 1988 and 1992 presidential elections 82 percent of the county's voters cast ballots for the Democratic candidate.
Duval County's reputation for political corruption peaked with Lyndon B. Johnson's election to the United States Senate in 1948. The famous Box 13, which gave Johnson his eighty-seven-vote victory, was actually in Jim Wells County, but the manipulation of the returns was almost certainly directed by Parr. In the 1900 presidential election Duval County went Republican, but since that time, thanks largely to the efficiency of the Parr machine and the customary tendency of Hispanics to vote for Democrats, the county has delivered majorities to the Democratic party on the order of 94 percent in 1916, 98 percent in 1932, 95 percent in 1936, 96 percent in 1940, 95 percent in 1944, 97 percent in 1948, and 93 percent in 1964. In fact, only once between 1916 and 1972 did the Democratic candidate receive less than 74 percent of the vote in Duval County; that year, 1956, a mere 68 percent voted Democratic. Even after the demise of the Parr machine in 1975 Democrats continued to dominate. In the 1988 and 1992 presidential elections 82 percent of the county's voters cast ballots for the Democratic candidate.
The remainder of Parr's political career was highlighted by
a seemingly endless series of spectacular scandals, involving election fraud, graft on the grand scale, and violence. His most celebrated scheme decided the outcome of the United States Senate race between Coke R. Stevenson and Lyndon
B. Johnson in 1948. With Stevenson the apparent winner, election officials in Jim Wells County, probably acting on Parr's orders, reported an
additional 202 votes for Johnson a week after the primary runoff and provided
the future president with his eighty-seven-vote margin of victory for the whole
state.
Amid charges of fraud, the voting lists disappeared. Even more sordid controversies followed. As strong challenges from the Freedom party, consisting mainly of World War II veterans, developed in several South Texas counties, including Duval, two critics of Parr's rule and the son of another met violent deaths. While denying Parr's involvement in two of the killings, his biographer, Dudley Lynch, concedes that the evidence against Parr in the shooting of the son of Jacob Floyd, an attorney for the Freedom party, was both "highly circumstantial" and "highly incriminating."
After this third murder, Governor Allan Shivers, Texas attorney general John Ben Shepperd, and federal authorities launched all-out campaigns to destroy the Parr machine. Investigations of the 1950s produced over 650 indictments against ring members, but Parr survived the indictments and his own conviction for federal mail fraud through a complicated series of dismissals and reversals on appeal. In the face of another legal offensive in the 1970s and a rebellion within his own organization, he finally relented. While appealing a conviction and five-year sentence for federal income tax evasion, the Duke of Duval committed suicide at his ranch, Los Harcones, on April 1, 1975. See also Boss Rule.
Amid charges of fraud, the voting lists disappeared. Even more sordid controversies followed. As strong challenges from the Freedom party, consisting mainly of World War II veterans, developed in several South Texas counties, including Duval, two critics of Parr's rule and the son of another met violent deaths. While denying Parr's involvement in two of the killings, his biographer, Dudley Lynch, concedes that the evidence against Parr in the shooting of the son of Jacob Floyd, an attorney for the Freedom party, was both "highly circumstantial" and "highly incriminating."
After this third murder, Governor Allan Shivers, Texas attorney general John Ben Shepperd, and federal authorities launched all-out campaigns to destroy the Parr machine. Investigations of the 1950s produced over 650 indictments against ring members, but Parr survived the indictments and his own conviction for federal mail fraud through a complicated series of dismissals and reversals on appeal. In the face of another legal offensive in the 1970s and a rebellion within his own organization, he finally relented. While appealing a conviction and five-year sentence for federal income tax evasion, the Duke of Duval committed suicide at his ranch, Los Harcones, on April 1, 1975. See also Boss Rule.
While you can't play "what-if" with any certainty,
you have to wonder whether the area from San Antonio and Corpus Christi south would have known the
same emptiness that prevailed in the in-between sections of Tamaulipas, Nuevo
León, Coahuila, and Chihuahua if the Anglos hadn't turned their particular
talents and drives Valleyward. It started as a land of great ranches, which in themselves invite sparse settlement, and it might have
remained as untaken as the country between Del Rio and Fort Stockton if Colonel Uriah Lott had not perceived that, with a railroad, the Valley could become a
year-round fruit and vegetable garden for much of the United States.
Lott buttonholed B. F. Yoakum, who at the beginning of the twentieth century sent Captain J. E. Hinckley reconnoitering through the Valley into Mexico to find a way of tapping the riches-almost entirely potential-on either side of the border. He enlisted the irresistible enthusiasm of Theodore Roosevelt, who envisioned a road that would eventually extend all the way through Central America, where he had designs on the Panama Isthmus. Anglo American survey crews came in, built a steel bridge between Brownsville and Matamoros suitable for locomotives or buggies, and began planning other routes that would connect such diverse places geographically as New Orleans, San Antonio, Memphis, and Chicago. Down in Mexico, President Porfirio Diaz, who welcomed yanqui development (translated sometimes as exploitation), encouraged Yoakum and his cohorts, and even offered to help underwrite the cost. Some of the Anglos backing Yoakum remain memorable names three-quarters of a century after the event--Robert J. Kleberg, Robert Driscoll Sr., John G. Kenedy, Caesar Kleberg, and John J. Welder--to name only a few. On January 12, 1903, they received their charter to do business as the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railway, to extend from Sinton to Brownsville, with reticulation of future roads to branch northward and eastward from there.
The foundation of the paper work for connecting the Valley with the United States and Texas had been laid.
Actually, the Anglos had been in the Valley since the period of the War against Mexico. They had been slow to arrive because the area from the Nueces River to the Rio Grande was disputed. Mexico had refused to accept Santa Ana's cession of the region to Texas, which meant that an enormous region in truth belonged to no one. Or worse, to whoever could take and hold it. It would have been comparable to a modern Lebanon except that fortunately it was empty of people.
Then developers brought in the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railway. The year was 1903, two decades after Texas had shut down land grants to railroads [as a result of the graft involving the International and Great Northern land giveaways]. No help would come from that source. Rumors of incoming railroads had been spread before, but no rails or locomotives had been seen. But like the neglected maiden who suddenly has three suitors, Brownsville began to be courted by the Southern Pacific and the Frisco-Rock Island, as well as the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico railroads. The town fathers voted to raise a bonus of 12,000 acres on either side of the projected road to the distance of four miles, plus $40,000 in cash, and forty to fifty acres within Brownsville itself for depot grounds plus twenty more acres for shops. The list of endorsers reads like a Who's Who of Texas for the first half of the twentieth century.
Up in St. Louis, another syndicate of almost a hundred business leaders were banding together to see that the railroad got underway. The bulk of the capital would have to come out of Missouri.
Ironically, the railroad that brought in the Yankees and the high-gear economy to the Valley went into receivership in 1913, a condition brought on largely by insufficient freight. When the Valley began its boom in the 1920s, the railroad came back, only to run into the growth of the trucking industry.
Lott buttonholed B. F. Yoakum, who at the beginning of the twentieth century sent Captain J. E. Hinckley reconnoitering through the Valley into Mexico to find a way of tapping the riches-almost entirely potential-on either side of the border. He enlisted the irresistible enthusiasm of Theodore Roosevelt, who envisioned a road that would eventually extend all the way through Central America, where he had designs on the Panama Isthmus. Anglo American survey crews came in, built a steel bridge between Brownsville and Matamoros suitable for locomotives or buggies, and began planning other routes that would connect such diverse places geographically as New Orleans, San Antonio, Memphis, and Chicago. Down in Mexico, President Porfirio Diaz, who welcomed yanqui development (translated sometimes as exploitation), encouraged Yoakum and his cohorts, and even offered to help underwrite the cost. Some of the Anglos backing Yoakum remain memorable names three-quarters of a century after the event--Robert J. Kleberg, Robert Driscoll Sr., John G. Kenedy, Caesar Kleberg, and John J. Welder--to name only a few. On January 12, 1903, they received their charter to do business as the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railway, to extend from Sinton to Brownsville, with reticulation of future roads to branch northward and eastward from there.
The foundation of the paper work for connecting the Valley with the United States and Texas had been laid.
Actually, the Anglos had been in the Valley since the period of the War against Mexico. They had been slow to arrive because the area from the Nueces River to the Rio Grande was disputed. Mexico had refused to accept Santa Ana's cession of the region to Texas, which meant that an enormous region in truth belonged to no one. Or worse, to whoever could take and hold it. It would have been comparable to a modern Lebanon except that fortunately it was empty of people.
Then developers brought in the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railway. The year was 1903, two decades after Texas had shut down land grants to railroads [as a result of the graft involving the International and Great Northern land giveaways]. No help would come from that source. Rumors of incoming railroads had been spread before, but no rails or locomotives had been seen. But like the neglected maiden who suddenly has three suitors, Brownsville began to be courted by the Southern Pacific and the Frisco-Rock Island, as well as the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico railroads. The town fathers voted to raise a bonus of 12,000 acres on either side of the projected road to the distance of four miles, plus $40,000 in cash, and forty to fifty acres within Brownsville itself for depot grounds plus twenty more acres for shops. The list of endorsers reads like a Who's Who of Texas for the first half of the twentieth century.
Up in St. Louis, another syndicate of almost a hundred business leaders were banding together to see that the railroad got underway. The bulk of the capital would have to come out of Missouri.
Ironically, the railroad that brought in the Yankees and the high-gear economy to the Valley went into receivership in 1913, a condition brought on largely by insufficient freight. When the Valley began its boom in the 1920s, the railroad came back, only to run into the growth of the trucking industry.
Dutch-born Uriah Lott, who had secured the financial
assistance of Mifflin Kenedy and Richard King in the building of the Texas-Mexican Railroad to
Laredo, was also hoping to give the Lower Valley the same access to the
"outside world." A railroad to the Lower Valley would also give
Corpus Christi another rail outlet. In 1889, consequently, Lott received a
charter to build the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway. A.M. French,
chief engineer on the project, ran several different lines to the river, but
eventually agreed on a road that would join the Texas-Mexican Railroad some
fifteen miles west of Corpus Christi at what is today Robstown. After sod was
broken on the line on July 26, 1903, sweaty laborers set out hacking a
right-of-way through the brush south toward the Lower Valley.
A native of New York and a steamboat pilot and captain by
trade, King came from Florida to Texas and the Rio Grande in 1847 for Mexican
War service. Commanding the steamboat, Colonel Cross, he served for the War's
duration, transporting troops and supplies for the United States Army. He
remained on the border after the Mexican War and became a partner in the
Brownsville steamboat firms of M. Kenedy & Company (1850-1866) and its
successor, King, Kenedy & Company (1866-1874). The principal partners were
Richard King, Mifflin Kenedy (1818-1895) and Charles Stillman (1810-1875). These firms
dominated the Rio Grande trade, on a near monopolistic scale, for more than two
decades.
Between 1862 and 1865 Stillman, King, and Kenedy transported
Confederate cotton to Matamoros under contract for payment in gold. Stillman
bought much of the cotton and sent it to his textile complex at Monterrey, but
he sold even more of it in New York through his mercantile firm, Smith and
Dunning. The United States government was a major purchaser. On one sale at
Manhattan Stillman netted $18,851 on a gross of $21,504. His cotton buyers in
Texas included George W. Brackenridge, and one of his major suppliers was
Thomas William House [father of Col. E.M. House]. By the end of the war
Stillman was one of the richest men in America. He concentrated his investments
in the National City Bank of New York, which his son James later controlled, and
supplied Brackenridge with $200,000 in the 1870s in order to establish the San
Antonio National Bank. Stillman married Elizabeth Pamela Goodrich of
Wethersfield, Connecticut, on August 17, 1849. He built a notable home in
Brownsville in 1850 and lived in Brownsville and New York City until 1866, when
he moved permanently to New York. He died there in December 1875.
Henrietta King
In 1854, King had married Henrietta Maria Morse Chamberlain, a Presbyterian missionary's daughter. Her father had been educated for the ministry at Middlebury College in Vermont, intriguingly the college where Ruth Hyde Paine studied Russian the summer before she moved to Texas.
In 1854, King had married Henrietta Maria Morse Chamberlain, a Presbyterian missionary's daughter. Her father had been educated for the ministry at Middlebury College in Vermont, intriguingly the college where Ruth Hyde Paine studied Russian the summer before she moved to Texas.
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| Hiram Chamberlain, father of Henrietta Maria Morse Chamberlain |
King Ranch Archives describe Henrietta King as
mild-mannered with an iron will which carried her through the prolonged
absences of her husband. She had been well-schooled, and was known to give
polish and luster to her well-known, generous husband. She also proved she had
fortitude, when, pregnant with her fifth child, she was present at the Ranch
when the Union cavalry raided Rancho de Santa Gertrudis in 1863. Although the
family moved to San Antonio following the raid, she moved them back in 1866 to
continue the King family's ties to the land.
Upon her husband's death when she was 53, Mrs. King controlled a vast area of South Texas and a business that was immensely successful, but not without problems. She immediately turned to Robert J. Kleberg Sr., a young lawyer who had been involved in the Ranch's legal business for several years. She appointed him business manager on Jan. 1, 1886; six months later, he became her son-in-law when he married the youngest King daughter, Alice Gertrudis.
Under Mrs. King's and Kleberg's guidance, cross fences were built to divide the sprawling acres into manageable pastures. They embarked on a brush control program. They suffered through South Texas' most crippling natural occurrence, drought. They helped to build the town of Kingsville in 1903-04. And continuing Captain King's prowess in diversifying, the Ranch became involved in banking, lumber, leather goods, newspapers and publishing, retail businesses and dairy farming.
Under her leadership and that of Robert Kleberg, the Ranch's South Texas holdings had grown to 1.2 million acres, 94,000 head of cattle, 4,500 horses and mules, and 1,000 sheep and goats. Estate taxes, operational debt and lawsuits challenging the estate's division caused uncertainty. In her will, she stipulated a 10-year trust to give her heirs time to settle differences and arrange her affairs and assets. Her ultimate goal was to preserve the King Ranch as a single entity according "to my wishes and the wishes and views of my late husband, Captain Richard King."
In response, Alice King Kleberg, Henrietta's youngest daughter and Robert's wife, consolidated much of King Ranch by buying out other heirs. Thus, in 1934, Mrs. Kleberg created King Ranch, Inc., and it was this entity that inherited Alice's part of the Ranch as well as the other property which she had purchased. She sold stock in the new corporation to her five children, and descendants of Robert and Alice Kleberg are the 60-some shareholders of today's King Ranch.
Upon her husband's death when she was 53, Mrs. King controlled a vast area of South Texas and a business that was immensely successful, but not without problems. She immediately turned to Robert J. Kleberg Sr., a young lawyer who had been involved in the Ranch's legal business for several years. She appointed him business manager on Jan. 1, 1886; six months later, he became her son-in-law when he married the youngest King daughter, Alice Gertrudis.
Under Mrs. King's and Kleberg's guidance, cross fences were built to divide the sprawling acres into manageable pastures. They embarked on a brush control program. They suffered through South Texas' most crippling natural occurrence, drought. They helped to build the town of Kingsville in 1903-04. And continuing Captain King's prowess in diversifying, the Ranch became involved in banking, lumber, leather goods, newspapers and publishing, retail businesses and dairy farming.
Under her leadership and that of Robert Kleberg, the Ranch's South Texas holdings had grown to 1.2 million acres, 94,000 head of cattle, 4,500 horses and mules, and 1,000 sheep and goats. Estate taxes, operational debt and lawsuits challenging the estate's division caused uncertainty. In her will, she stipulated a 10-year trust to give her heirs time to settle differences and arrange her affairs and assets. Her ultimate goal was to preserve the King Ranch as a single entity according "to my wishes and the wishes and views of my late husband, Captain Richard King."
In response, Alice King Kleberg, Henrietta's youngest daughter and Robert's wife, consolidated much of King Ranch by buying out other heirs. Thus, in 1934, Mrs. Kleberg created King Ranch, Inc., and it was this entity that inherited Alice's part of the Ranch as well as the other property which she had purchased. She sold stock in the new corporation to her five children, and descendants of Robert and Alice Kleberg are the 60-some shareholders of today's King Ranch.
From a Family Business to
a Corporate Environment
The last quarter of the 20th Century has brought further changes to King Ranch. Since 1977, all overseas ranching operations except for that in Brazil was sold. The King Ranch's Corporate History statement credits James H. Clement and his successor John B. Armstrong with guiding the Company to eliminate debt and "...through the difficult Texas business environment of the 1980s and (they) oversaw the painful, and sometimes stormy, transition from a family business enterprise to the present corporate structure with outside directorship and professional management." Since 1988, the King Ranch Chief Executive Officer has not been a King family member, although the corporate board of directors still includes some descendants.
By the early 1970's, King Ranch holdings totaled, worldwide, approximately 11.5 million acres. In 1974, with the death of Bob Kleberg and Dick, Jr., in poor health, the Family selected James H. Clement, Sr., the husband of King's great granddaughter Ida Larkin, as President and CEO. Together with successor John B. Armstrong (husband to King's great granddaughter, Henrietta Larkin), Clement steered the Ranch though the difficult Texas business environment of the 1980's. They also oversaw the transition from a Family business to a modern corporate structure -- based primarily on the lines of business established in the early years. Eventually, many of the foreign operations were liquidated as the focus shifted back to the traditional domestic lines of business.
See: King Ranch Website (Legend has been changed to Legacy).
Armstrongs mix gentility, old-fashioned Texas ranching
Cowboys and candidates, princes and presidents have visited over the years
By Mary Lee Grant © July 13, 1999
Caller-Times
ARMSTRONG -- In the brush country south of Sarita, a few miles east of U.S. Highway 77, sophistication and political power have mixed with the independence of Texas pioneers.
Here, 6-foot-4-inch Tobin Armstrong, the descendant of a Texas Ranger and a Yale scholar, and the petite brunette, Anne Armstrong, former U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, hold court.
Guests at the 50,000-acre ranch have included former president George Bush; his son and presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush, the Rockefellers and Prince Charles.
Armstrong Ranch still is an old-fashioned Texas ranch, run by Tobin Armstrong, who oversees it by Suburban and mobile telephone. A colony of cowboys who live in houses surrounding the big house work the 2,500 Santa Gertrudis cattle while riding thoroughbred horses, the Armstrong version of cow ponies.
"One of the best things about this ranch is that it is a grandchild magnet," said Tobin Armstrong, who has five children and 12 grandchildren, who visit the ranch frequently.
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| Did Armstrong capture John Wesley Hardin? |
The Armstrong Ranch was purchased in 1852 and settled in 1882 by John
Armstrong III, a Texas Ranger from Tennessee. He had come to South Texas
to clean up the border and became famous for capturing the notorious
outlaw John Wesley Hardin [killed in 1874].
The Armstrongs were instrumental in bringing polo to South Texas, and when Prince Charles came to visit, Tobin arranged a match for him on the ranch's polo field.
"I never rode a bought horse," Armstrong said. "I raised and trained my own thoroughbreds."
Tobin Armstrong was tutored at home until he was 9, when he was sent to private school in San Antonio. He attended the University of Texas and Texas A&M University.
Ties between the Armstrong Ranch and the King Ranch always have been close.
Tobin's older brother, John Armstrong, married the King Ranch's Henrietta Larkin, great-granddaughter of the King Ranch founder, Capt. Richard King.
~~~~~~~~~~~
| A question of good will Decades after heiress dies, fight for control over her Texas foundation lives on Victoria Loe, Staff Writer 27 May 1996 The Dallas Morning News |
|
Texan Sissy Farenthold was in Rome in 1963 for the coronation
of a pope, spending time in the company of cardinals, and all
anyone could talk about was: What was happening with that estate
battle down in South Texas? The fight was over a will left by ranching heiress Sarita Kenedy East, who had affronted half the powers of South Texas, including her own Catholic bishop, by leaving the bulk of her immense fortune in the hands of a roving Trappist monk. Even worse, the monk, born Christopher Gregory but known as Brother Leo, insisted that Mrs. East had wanted him to disburse it not in Texas but among the poor of Latin America. |
|
Thirty-five years have passed since Mrs. East's death, but the
fight for control of the charitable foundation that she left in
Brother Leo's care refuses to die. This month Attorney General Dan
Morales sued to remove the bishop of Corpus Christi as president of
the John G. and Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation. The intervening years have been a chronicle of greed - for both money and power - with few rivals, even in the anals of Texas. The struggle has been as convoluted as it has been lengthy, producing a welter of shifting alliances among East Coast tycoons, Texas ranching barons and potentates of the church. Control of the oil-rich foundation - worth more than $150 million today and much more when oil prices peaked - has revolved like a carousel, with first one group, then another seizing power through finesse, chicanery or raw power politics. "We've come full circle," said Corpus Christi lawyer Marshall Boykin, who once represented Brother Leo. "We'll always be in this circle." The question ostensibly at the heart of the legal wrangling - Whom did Mrs. East intend her foundation to benefit? - has been so obscured it is practically moot, Mr. Boykin said. "I hear the bishop and others say, `We only want to follow Mrs. East's desires,' " he said. "Baloney. They don't know Mrs. East's desires. I don't know Mrs. East's desires." A ranching empire Sarita Kenedy East was the granddaughter and last direct descendant of Mifflin Kenedy, an Irish steamboat captain who, with his partner, Richard King, built South Texas' two greatest ranching empires. A photo of Sarita as a young woman shows her in full cowgirl regalia, complete with rope. She was a lively, uncomplicated woman who loved ranching and especially the family's 400,000 acres, most of it in the La Parra spread south of Kingsville. She was also extremely devout; the La Parra headquarters looked out over a small chapel and a replica of the grotto at Lourdes. By the late 1950s, Mrs. East was a lonely widow, brooding over the fate of her fortune and nursing tumblers of scotch. Neither she nor her brother, long dead, had been able to have children; there were no young Kenedys or Easts to perpetuate the dynasty. Meanwhile, she was growing richer by the moment. The discovery of oil had sent her land's value soaring into the tens of millions. Mrs. East's first will, drafted in 1948 when she was 59, gave most of her half of La Parra to two cousins. In addition, the Catholic Diocese of Corpus Christi was awarded several thousand acres, as were the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, whose circuit-riding priests had long served the Kenedy family. Desire for foundation As the years passed, however, Mrs. East conceived an increasingly sharp desire to put the bulk of her estate into a foundation that would sustain her favorite charitable causes. No one seemed to take her wishes very seriously - until Brother Leo came on the scene. The monk, whose job was to raise money to build Trappist monasteries, first visited La Parra in 1948, the year Mrs. East wrote her will. A decade later, he was a frequent and keenly attentive visitor. In her final years, he arranged several joint trips to South America, where he persuaded her to underwrite a new monastery and showed her the plight of the poor. In 1960, just a year before her death, Mrs. East at last established her foundation, named for her parents. The documents, plus a new will leaving most of La Parra and its oil to the foundation, were drawn up by lawyers for shipping and manufacturing magnate J. Peter Grace. Mr. Grace was a fervent Catholic who saw charity as a way to foil communism in South America, thus protecting his holdings there. He, like Mrs. East, was among Brother Leo's string of wealthy donors. The Kenedy foundation's mission was left rather vague; the articles of incorporation specified only that the money would go to "religious, educational or charitable purposes by such agencies and means as may from time to time be found appropriate."  The final document, signed on her hospital bed when the cancer that killed her was far advanced, made Brother Leo the sole member of the foundation upon her death. It was an outcome that pleased almost no one, least of all Bishop Garriga, who had been heard to refer to La Parra as the diocese's "patrimony." At her funeral, rather than eulogizing her, the bishop delivered a stinging rebuke that left his listeners aghast. From that day to this, contestants in the case have debated not only Mrs. East's intentions but the extent and nature of Brother Leo's influence over her. Differing responses Even now, the monk - reportedly living in seclusion in Argentina - inspires wildly different responses. "He was a very insistent, very persuasive, very charming fellow," said Fort Worth lawyer Joe Day, who represented several of Mrs. East's relatives. "She fell in love with him, but his feelings were all ulterior: to get that money for his order." Ms. Farenthold, who joined with Mr. Boykin to represent the monk, saw a different man. "He's no Rasputin," she said. "He's sort of childlike. He's a very charitable person." The Rasputin scenario - that the monk had either literally or figuratively seduced an ailing, elderly woman into doing his bidding - was the centerpiece for a series of legal challenges to the 1960 will. The nominal plaintiff in the first lawsuit was Mrs. East's second cousin Lee Lytton Jr., but the suit was engineered by her lawyer, Jake Floyd, who also represented the Alice National Bank, the repository for the estate's assets. Mr. Floyd, sometimes known as "The Dry Snake," repeatedly outmaneuvered the monk and Mr. Grace, with their silk-stocking East Coast lawyers. It didn't hurt that the litigation took place in South Texas, giving the Floyd-Lytton contingent an insurmountable home-field advantage. "It's a feudal world," Ms. Farenthold said. "Those New York lawyers didn't know what hit them." The Diocese of Corpus Christi entered the suit on the Texans' side, with Bishop Garriga energetically digging up dirt about Brother Leo. "Every bishop in the country wanted that money," said William R. Joyce, another of the monk's lawyers. The Vatican, appealed to by both sides, tried mightily to broker a settlement and avert a public airing of church dirty laundry. Mr. Grace's brush with South Texas justice had left him open to compromise, but Brother Leo, whether from conscience or stubbornness, balked. After countless stops and starts, Mr. Grace settled for $14.4 million to start his own foundation, leaving the rest firmly in the hands of Mr. Floyd and the Alice bank. Bishop Garriga got a permanent membership for himself and his successors in the Kenedy foundation, plus a stipulation that all its money would be spent in Texas. A subsequent settlement guaranteed the diocese a healthy chunk of all the foundation's revenues. Brother Leo got nothing but dismissal from the Trappists. He spent the next two decades trying unsuccessfully to revoke his signature to the original settlement document. A second lawsuit filed by various factions among Mrs. East's extended family tied up the estate into the early '80s but did not materially affect the shape of the foundation. Jake Floyd had died in the meantime, but under his successor, Kenneth Oden, the Alice bank continued to profit handsomely. It paid no interest on some foundation accounts and received hefty fees for managing monies that were frozen as long as the will was contested. "The foundation was pretty much being run for the benefit of the Alice National Bank," said Amie Rodnick, who, as a novice assistant attorney general, drew up a lawsuit in 1983 against Mr. Oden, alleging mismanagement of the foundation's assets. She still sounds incredulous as she recalls foundation board meetings at which members fell asleep, and Mrs. East's elderly sister-in-law, Elena Kenedy, signed the tablecloth rather than the documents before her. Enter new bishop Just as Ms. Rodnick was compiling her case against Mr. Oden, the diocese of Corpus Christi got itself a new bishop - and the foundation got itself a new board member. He is Rene Gracida, a former World War II bomber pilot and, by all accounts, no shrinking violet. "He doesn't shy away from a controversy," said Ms. Rodnick, adding that at the time she viewed the bishop as a welcome addition. "He is a very forceful man," said Richard Hatch, who for years served as counsel to both the diocese and the foundation and is now one of the bishop's chief critics. When a meeting of the foundation's board coincided with a court appearance by Mr. Oden in Austin, Bishop Gracida adroitly secured a letter of resignation from Elena Kenedy, who was board president, and a proxy from the fourth board member, Mr. Lytton. As the only voting member present, the bishop named himself president and elected several new members. "Gracida seized control - and I use the word advisedly," said Ms. Farenthold. And that, these dozen years later, is the nut of yet another lawsuit by the people of Texas against the board of the Kenedy Memorial Foundation. Bishop Gracida is now the one accused of running the foundation primarily to benefit his own constituents - in this instance the diocese of Corpus Christi. All told, Mr. Morales' suit says, the foundation has given out about $150 million since the court thawed its assets in the mid-1980s. About two-thirds of that has gone to the diocese, according to the lawsuit. The bishop, through his lawyers and in a countersuit against Mr. Morales, vigorously defends his stewardship. He has always "discharged his duties and responsibilities in accordance with" state laws, court settlements and the foundation's own bylaws and policies, his suit says. Bishop Gracida is seeking to have the matter tried in South Texas; Mr. Morales' suit was filed in Austin. The foundation's list of outlays for one recent year reflects scores of grants, mainly in the $1,000 to $25,000 range, to educational and charitable entities in or near Corpus Christi. But Mr. Morales' suit alleges that foundation funds also have gone toward the purchase of the city's Fox affiliate TV station - a violation of the foundation's rules against supporting for-profit ventures. The bishop's chief accuser is his own onetime legal counsel, Mr. Hatch. Last year, the lawyer raised the alarm with the attorney general's office, which is charged with ensuring that charitable foundations operate as they should. Mr. Hatch was not alone in his displeasure with Bishop Gracida: Other Texas bishops have grumbled for years that they were not seeing their fair share of the foundation's bounty. Those complaints have not met with much sympathy in South Texas. "Charity begins at home," Bishop Gracida told a reporter for a Catholic newspaper in 1990. The bishop's defense - that the foundation is legally bound to distribute its money "within Texas" but not throughout Texas - may fail. But even if Mr. Morales succeeds in booting him from the foundation board, Ms. Rodnick said, given the foundation's history, a larger question remains: "Who are you going to put in charge of it? Who can you trust?" |
