eorgia Caraway slides a manuscript as thick as a phone book across her desk. Not many people have seen this, she confides with a wink. Yellow sticky notes with corrections written in red cursive jut from the pages like bookmarks. A manicured fingernail drums the top page two or three times to draw attention to the sepia photograph destined for the front cover. In it, seven businessmen, dressed in work hats and holding hoes, sit in a wagon, smiling for the camera. An open umbrella hangs from the side with the words “DENTON BOOSTER” in capital letters. The men are headed toward a local farm to volunteer for farm work to help alleviate the absence of farmers fighting in World War II.
The cover picture is for Images of America: Denton, the new book about Denton’s 150-year history, from its founding in 1857, when it was named after pioneer preacher John B. Denton, to famed modern-day inhabitants such as singer Pat Boone (in the ’50s) and Miss America Phyllis George (in the ’70s), as well as current-day nuclear polka band and Grammy Award winners, Brave Combo. The book, officially launched in November 2009, is part of Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America historic photography series. Georgia Caraway, in her role as executive director of Denton County Museums, co-authored the book with Kim Cupit, the curator of collections, and together they did all the archival snooping, selecting over 225 photos from thousands over two intense months.
Thanks to their detective work, Images of America: Denton features some never-before-seen photos (Boone on the set of the movie “State Fair”) as well as shots of the city’s iconic architecture, from the turn-of-the-century Courthouse-on-the-Square to O’Neil Ford’s Denton Civic Center and its ceiling designed like a bicycle’s hubbed wheel. Both universities – the University of North Texas and Texas Woman’s University – star in the book as do businesses such as the 7-Up Bottling Company (founded in 1926, in Denton, to sell Mission Rootbeer and NuGrape along with its namesake 7-Up).
“People are really curious about this city,” says Georgia, referring to the evolution of Denton from an agricultural town to an intellectual, arts and musical destination, with two universities, top-notch arts and jazz festivals, and a burgeoning indie music scene. Written for those who have lived in Denton their whole lives (there will be surprises, even for them) and for newcomers wanting to learn more about their new home, “this is the perfect kind of book. It gives the reader history, and it is also entertaining,” says Georgia.
Inside Georgia’s courthouse office, the two co-authors kneel in front of a row of cardboard boxes filled with manila files – “their archives.” Their treasure trove includes photocopied pages out of books, newspaper articles, laminated photographs … and a cricket crawling on a folder until Georgia cups it in her hands and sets it free outdoors. From the archives, they pull photos – black and white ones, photos in sepia tones, wallet-sized personal photos as well as official-looking ones fit for 8x10 frames. They spread these out on an old wooden table. There are stacks and stacks of them. Ask Georgia and Kim how many photographs they sifted through for the book and Georgia takes a deep exhale. “Thousands,” she says. “No,” says Kim, “it was tens of thousands.”
The two women searched through the archives of the Denton Record-Chronicle, the Denton Public Library, and the Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square Museum, and they pride the book on having rare pictures, not the usual images that come to mind when thinking of Denton landmarks or famous Dentonites.
“We did have to compromise on some of the popular photos of the Courthouse-on-the-Square, but I think we did a really good job of finding unique depictions in photographs of other things we wanted to feature,” says Georgia. For instance, they were able to pull a photo from the Denton Record-Chronicle of a very young Pat Boone (who got his start singing with The Aces of Collegeland at North Texas State University), laughing and looking away from the camera while taking a break on set in Denton for the 1962 movie, “State Fair.”
Georgia, editor of the University of North Texas Press for five years, says working on the book made her nostalgic for Denton in the ’50s. “I would have liked to have been in Denton for the 1957 Centennial celebration,” she says, wistfully. For that celebration, the men in Denton grew beards to look like the city’s founding fathers back in 1857. “They were called the ‘Brotherhood of the Brush,’ and if you didn’t grow a beard, you were fined,” she says. “Reading about that event, writing about it, looking at the photographs, it is just one of those special periods, the ‘Beaver Cleaver’ era. Those were kinder, gentler days.”
Georgia and Kim hope the book brings similar nostalgia for readers, too.
by corrie dimanno