San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Pigeon racers flocked to Plaza Hotel in 1954
My daddy, Joe J. Tymrak, played the push-button accordion and had his own band that played Czech oompah and Western swing music. On or about Oct. 21, 1954, they played at the Plaza Hotel for a national pigeonflying convention, back in the days when the (hotel’s) underground tunnel was still in use. Mother would tell us stories about that night at the
Plaza and that underground tunnel — a highrise building with a tunnel was a big deal to country folks.
When you wrote a column about the old Plaza Hotel and mentioned that the tunnel had been walled off, that just made her day. Mother passed your article around to us because it validated her story, and she even said something about writing you a letter asking about that convention in 1954. I encouraged her to do that but never knew if she did. If so, it would have been written on ruled notebook paper with beautiful handwriting from Jourdine Dornak Tymrak, Jourdanton, Texas.
I am wondering if there would have been any mention of that pigeon-flying convention in the Light or the News or the Express back then. Yes, I am old enough to remember three newspapers in San Antonio. There would be no day in the Joe and Jourdine Tymrak household or place of business that started without reading the newspapers. We had a store and cafe in Jourdanton, and Mother and Daddy subscribed to all three (then two) newspapers (and finally one) until Mother’s death in 2016, and
Three local newspapers — the San Antonio Express, the Sunday San Antonio Express and News and the San Antonio Light — covered the Oct. 21-23, 1954, annual meeting of the American Racing Pigeon Union, or ARPU, which drew 600 members and spouses from all over North America to the city. It was the 44th annual ARPU convention and the 10th for its women’s auxiliary.
San Antonio had long since taken a fancy to pigeons, going back at least to the 1890s when interest in breeding and racing homing pigeons first was reported. The state’s first bird-racing organization, the Lone Star Homing Pigeon
Club, was founded here
Jan. 22, 1900, according to the Light, Feb. 18, 1900.
Within a few decades, the city had “develop(ed) into one of the pigeonracing centers of the United States,” said the Light, May 21, 1939. At the midcentury peak of interest, there were at least eight San Antonio clubs, with many more in Central and South Texas.
Local papers covered pigeon racing regularly in their sports sections, publishing the results of weekend meets.
The racing season began in March and followed a schedule of clubsponsored weekend flights, building up from 100 miles to 600 miles, with some of the most popular national and international meets covering distances of 1,000 miles or more.
While it didn’t work as
a spectator sport — pigeons are released, then make their own way back to their home lofts — the top 10 finish times were published, as were fourfigure prize awards and auction prices for the best avian athletes.
During the first half of the 20th century, San Antonians also were aware of working pigeons ( covered here Nov. 23, 2017). Trained birds whisked film with photographs of sporting events to newspaper offices in the 1930s, as their direct flight at about 40 mph was faster than cars of the time could cover the distance.
Pigeons also aided the military with confidential communications. In 1916, on the eve of World War I, the War Department sent letters to pigeon fanciers, asking them to
contribute birds. By World War II, the Army’s Pigeon Service consisted of 3,150 soldiers and 54,000 pigeons, and Fort Sam Houston was one of only four breeding bases nationwide.
The Plaza Hotel ( covered here July 25, 2013; Nov. 24, 2018; and Dec. 2, 2018) opened in two phases, 1927 and 1928, convention-ready with 500 guest rooms, a coffee shop, restaurant, roof garden and ballroom.
The underground tunnel your mother remembered connected the hotel with the Smith-Young Tower, renamed the Transit Tower by the time your parents visited and now the Tower Life Building. The same developers built both the hotel and high-rise office building across the street. The tunnel provided an allweather connection for office workers who lunched in the hotel’s coffee shop and hotel guests who shopped in the Tower’s retail stores.
While the ARPU members were in town, they were based in the hotel, where their business meetings were held, but according to the press coverage, they didn’t stay cooped up there after arriving on Thursday,
Oct. 21, 1954.
On Friday, Oct. 22, 1954, after committee meetings, sightseeing tours and a “ladies’ luncheon,” there was “loft visiting and a pigeon display (of local birds) and auction in La Villita,” says the Express, Oct. 23, 1954, where “Western night,” 6 p.m.midnight, was the day’s closing highlight. That sounds like a likely event for your father’s Westernswing band to have played, but it wasn’t in the Plaza.
The following day, conventioneers were back in the hotel’s Walnut Room for an auxiliary business meeting, a men’s meeting on the roof garden and a “final banquet and installation of officers in the Crystal Ballroom.” Maybe your mother was invited to one of the ladies events — a tea party, luncheon and breakfast — and got to see the luxury hotel as a guest? Or did your father’s band play the banquet?
The organization returned for another convention Oct. 11-13, 1962, held at the same venue, by then known as the Grenada Hotel (later the Grenada Homes).
The ARPU is still active, as is San Antonio’s Lone Star pigeon club.