Born in Houston
Austin musician Doug Wilson’s life began in a Space City suburb
My brother, Doug Wilson, started the day with a workout. He lived with his wife, Abby, in a house in Austin that they both loved. Around 7 a.m., he started running on his new treadmill. He collapsed. Abby found him, but he was lost forever at age 51.
When I spoke at his funeral in August, I was still in shock, a place I might inhabit for a while.
After all, Doug was in excellent health. He could run for miles, and he ran like a gazelle. He was blond, handsome and newly married. He had so much future in front of him. If we were all in high school, he would be voted “Least Likely to Leave Us.”
I thought I had more time with him. A lot more time.
Doug and I grew up in Clear Lake City, a suburb that always reminds me of the genius of Texas: If you have a cow pasture, you can build a subdivision. No one can stop you.
I felt special being his big sister. Sometimes, my job was to hold his hand since he liked to run off. My mom would try to read books to him, but he would wriggle away. Now I am grateful we didn’t have cell phones and video games to fry our minds. Sometimes we would get on the backyard swings and fly into the air, landing on the Pampas grass my dad had planted in lieu of a fence. We would get scratches all over; we didn’t care. We were having fun.
Our parents built a screenedin porch so we could play outside without burning up. We built Lincoln Log Cabin settlements. We built Tinker Toy towers that looked like they were from Dubai. We played this game we made up called Henry and Shadow in which one character would rescue the other until someone would have to take a nap.
I know everyone says the suburbs are boring. But I don’t remember ever being bored. There was something predictable about the grid of the streets that made you feel safe, and sometimes I think that is the best place for an artist to flourish. Maybe you don’t need Los Angeles or Chicago or New York. Maybe you need concrete and sun and safety to feel like you have a foundation so your imagination can take off, just like the spaceships at NASA. Just like the flights at the old Ellington.
When Doug was in elementary school, we moved to northwest Houston, to the subdivision magically named Greenwood Forest, where we eventually attended Klein Forest High School. We had the luxury of walking or biking to our schools and hanging out with other kids in the neighborhood. There is a reason people live in the suburbs. You can do things you can’t do in every city. You can have a yard. Swim at the community pool. Play guitar in someone’s garage.
Doug developed a love of athletics. I remember once when he was in Little League he was running to home plate, and he turned around to look at his family and gave us all a little wave. He played soccer for a team called the Orange Crush, and they really did crush the other teams. He loved to run, even up to the day he left us. What can I say? He had so much life in him, no matter what suburb we were living in.
As I moved up to high school and got involved in debate, he began his journey as a brilliant musician. My mom once said she hardly ever saw Doug without his guitar unless he was going to take a shower. He loved playing that much. I loved words, he loved sounds. I left for college, and he played the guitar so well he would be the featured soloist at school recitals, often barely remembering to mention it to my parents. That is how it is with artists: They sometimes forget to advertise their talents because they are so focused on the playing itself.
Doug eventually studied music and business at the University of North Texas. He played with multiple bands, most notably Sounds Under Radio, whose songs played on the “Spiderman 3” soundtrack, the “Vampire Diaries” series and even those ads for “American Idol.” He also was stellar in the business world, where he was often recognized as the most valuable team player, no matter where he was working. Before he died, he was thriving in the cybersecurity industry. Doug was always optimistic, whether on stage or not, and people loved being around him. He traveled the world, but Texas was home.
Wherever Doug went, people were drawn to his ability to connect with them in a way that was uplifting and memorable. He was an inspiring presence to others in every phase and category of life and left countless positive memories with those who knew him. You don’t see that every day.
There are many Houstonians who might, if we were all only our résumés, have a similar outline to our lives: We grew up in a suburb, attended a good school, went to a university in Texas, moved on.
But Doug’s life defied all of the narratives we are fed about how boring, limited and stifling the suburbs are. Whether on Clear Lake City Boulevard or FM 1960, Doug and I grew up in places where anything felt possible. In Houston, we started our stories about how we could be, and they were like the city and its suburbs themselves: expansive, unlimited, not one thing.
I just wish his story had not ended so abruptly, but continued like the beltways that circle the city, leading you into town, or back home, to the suburbs, where it all began.