San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Readers can help with unanswered questions
Though the global pandemic has had much worse consequences, closures — temporary or semipermanent — of archives and museums to the public and furloughs or layoffs of their employees has shown how valuable these institutions and their staffers are to local history research. Many thanks to all who were able to help with readers' questions once normal service was restored or by going into the office to find facts or photos while still working from home. … Best wishes for a safe and happier 2021!
As in every year, even in the best of the Before Times, there are always some questions that don't get answered by the end of the year. As always, it's time to turn them over to the readers.
I recently came across a little cookbook I have entitled “Joske’s Great American Cookbook.” It contains 14 pages of assorted recipes with an introduction by Mary Mora, editor. Unfortunately, there is no date of any kind on the cookbook. I know I inherited the cookbook from my mother. Having enjoyed many of Joske’s delicious brownies and many meals in the (store’s) Camellia Room, I was wondering if Ms. Mora had some connection to the bakery or restaurant. I am hoping someone can provide a date or at least a general idea of when the cookbook may have been published.— Dixie Foster Bane
From the 1920s-style cover font and patriotic title, I'd guess it was published in the 1970s, the decade of the Bicentennial celebration (1976) and “The Great Gatsby” movie remake (1974) that inspired a Roaring '20s revival. But that's just a guess, because this little cookbook left light footprints.
Joske's Camellia Room restaurant — known for fashion shows, light lunches and heartier dinners, and its role in the integration of San Antonio's public spaces — was a successful part of the downtown department store for decades.
Joske's ran cooking demonstrations, a “Bride's School” to introduce young wives to basic techniques and kitchen ware, cookbook-and-author events (including appearances by Mary Faulk Koock of Austin's Green Pastures and by Helen Corbitt, former director of the Garden Room restaurant in Joske's Houston store) and once advertised “163 different cookbooks” in its book department. But if the store publicized this little book, the title doesn't come up in a newspaper search. The San Antonio Public Library doesn't own a copy, and it's not among the Joske's Quarter Century Club ephemera kept by veteran employees and donated to the UTSA libraries' Special Collections.
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Readers with a Joske's connection or a good memory of where your copy came from may contact this column to add the missing ingredients.
I found your column in the Express and was wondering if you would know anything about the young man in this photo, taken by the Lewison Studio — not sure when but clearly a while ago. I assume the Lewison Studio is long gone. Looking for his identity and the year it was taken.
— BerylWolfe The Lewison Studio was established in 1895 by
Marks Lewison, a former traveling photographer originally from Uvalde. While still in his early 20s, he started what became one of the oldest businesses in San Antonio in a tent on Alamo Street next to a streetcar stop, moving on to several addresses on West Commerce Street, ending at 107½ W. Commerce — advertised as “one block west of Joske's” department store — from the early 1940s until the owner's death in 1966. The company was a full-service photo studio, offering wedding and children's photos, family portraits taken at home, holiday photos, framing services and from the early 1900s onward, graduation photo packages.
Some of Lewison's photos of the DunWong family are on loan from the family to UTSA libraries' Special Collections, including an undated “student portrait” of Sam Y. Wong that makes use of the same table and background as your picture. Other photos in this group were taken in 1928 and 1930.
If anyone recognizes the young man in the unidentified Lewison portrait, contact this column. All responses will be shared and may be featured in a future column
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Ira Lee Road runs from the Austin Hwy bridge to the Loop 410 access road, between Oakwell Farms and vacant land, the equestrian center, and the Tobin Trails. Who was Ira Lee? Was this person a Tobin relative?
— Carolyn Tolar “Ira Lee” was a common combination of first and middle names in the early 20th century, and the street first appears around 1940, but if there was a Tobin family member or a local dignitary by that name, they're not easily found. The street is not one of those traced in “Place Names of San Antonio,” by David P. Green, the standard reference on local toponyms. Readers, if you know this road's namesake, contact this column to share information.
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YOUNG PIONEERS:
Several readers wrote to share their experiences as test subjects in the polio vaccine trials of the early 1950s, including the 1954 “polio prevention program” covered here last Sunday.
Local civic activist and author Taddy McAllister took part in an earlier trial as a Polio Pioneer in second grade in 1952 at Cambridge Elementary School. “The researchers needed blood, and I was one who gave,” she wrote. “I got a little diploma from Dr.
Jonas Salk stating I was a Polio Pioneer. Later, of course, I got the shots along with everyone else.”
Robert Craig, who went to elementary school in Dayton, Ohio, sent a photo of his Polio Pioneers pin, dated 1954, depicting a scientist looking into a microscope and bearing the name of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, better known as the March of Dimes, its fundraising campaign for polio research including the vaccine trial. Craig's father “was one of the physicians vaccinating students at my school and gave me my injection.” Unlike San Antonio trial participants, “unfortunately we didn't have the same program to see a movie, (although we also) raised money for the March of Dimes.”
Pete Siegel and his two sisters “were the first to receive the Salk vaccine when it was released, as well as other vaccines. My dad was ‘just a simple country doc from central Missouri,' as he was fond of saying. When we were asked to come to the clinic after school, we knew needles were probably involved.” Siegel is now a member of Rotary, “and our big international project, started in 1985, is eradicating polio. ‘End Polio Now' is getting closer to the goal. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has matched our fundraising contributions two for one.”
“Ira Lee” was a common combination of first and middle names in the early 20th century, and the street first appears around 1940, but if there was a Tobin family member or a local dignitary by that name, they’re not easily found.