I have found this stack of photo albums while spending time with my parents at their home, in Chappell Hill, Texas where I grew up from the age of 12 and although I knew that I was born at Heights Hospital in Houston, Texas and remember my own experiences growing up in The Houston Heights, I did not know there was 100 years of history with my family in this place. In the same home sometimes housing as many as 5 families during World War II with more than a dozen people living under the same roof sharing one bathroom, and if you listen to my father he swears that nobody ever fought about anything. There was no a/c or television or many distractions at all for people during that time so what I see in pictures is a pack of people that loved life, lived it to the fullest, traveled up and down the train lines to Kansas and down to Galveston for day trips at the beach.
Along the way they made these families that all made their lives in the Houston Heights and started businesses and had babies while wives were widowed and soldiers died in the war never to be seen again, they are the face of the place that was and is today a great place to be.
These people are not the rich and famous that put the land together to make The Houston Heights. They are the people that stomped the grounds making a living doing trades they were taught in a much different America. They are the bus drivers, your plumber, carpenters, machine shop metal workers, grocery store clerks and ticket takers. One thing for sure is they took a lot of pictures and way back over a hundred years ago that took an effort. I feel lucky to be able to look at these pictures and put together a story about my ancestors and hopefully bring a much richer history to The Houston Heights.
Sharing this with the public in a manner that is truthful and historical is my goal for this category of my blog. Please join me in going on this century long journey of pictures I will be posting and writing about. Thank you and welcome to a bit of American history.
About the title picture; All it says on the back is Heights High School 1917 written with what looks like pencil and in cursive. I originally assumed it was Reagan High School which is now Heights High School. I was informed by my father Robert C. Keaton that it was in fact not Reagan High where he graduated at all but the original which burned down and is now the site of Milroy Park. I immediately knew this picture might be the only one of its kind in existence and have yet to find another to date to confirm that this indeed is a picture of Heights High School in the Houston Heights. Anyone?