Joe wasn't perfect, but when I was at the Today Newspapers group years and years ago, I considered the then mayor of Lancaster a personal friend. He did a lot of good for the city in many ways. I didn't know all the places he lived, let alone that his great-great-grandfather fought at San Jacinto. An interesting story.
It does leave me nostalgic about my time in Lancaster. The city park, with new library and main fire station, was arguably the best use of the land on North Dallas, even if the fire station part of it, especially, didn't quite fit the bill of original plans for the site.
The Dallas Inland Port and related things? Yes, it was in many ways the best use of much of Lancaster's land — at least, best use in terms of the current operations of the American economy.
I don't know how long he remained in the corner of the (in)famous Larry D. Lewis as Lancaster ISD superintendent after I left. However long he did, it was too long. That would be the one real blot on his escutcheon, to use the old phrase.
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Flip side? Even if a bit naive at times, like over the Ten Mile Creek flood, he had the city's best interest in other ways. That includes the school district under Lewis' predecessor, the widely perceived as racist Bill Ward, per this old Dallas Observer piece. (I recall the incident, the school board meeting, and the difficulty in getting anything close to a straight answer out of Ward.) Sadly, when doing teh Google earlier today, I came across a "Memories of Lancaster, Texas" Facebook group, where someone had posted his obit. One White commenter went racist by saying he turned Lancaster into a ghetto. While not saying said commenter is AS racist as white folks whose actions are noted in the Observer piece, she IS racist by what I see from that comment alone. And ignorant. (Said person, per her profile, now lives in Kaufman County. Sounds about right.)
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