San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
ALAMO BATTLE STARTS AS CROCKETTS ARRIVE
Descendants plan to weigh in on plans for the plaza
Several times a year, Errol Flannery dons his coonskin cap and buckskins to portray his ancestor, the Alamo’s most famous defender, for fourth- and seventh-grade Texas history students in his hometown of Granbury.
“I’ve been referred to as the Lion of the West and King of the Wild Frontier, and my name’s David Crockett,” he says to them in a homespun southern accent to open his 20minute monologue.
Crockett’s lineage and legacy are what drew Flannery and about 165 other descendants of the American folk hero to San Antonio for a reunion over the past few days.
It’s no accident that the “Direct Descendants and Kin of David Crockett” — not Davy, by the way — would decide to gather at the Crockett Hotel on Crockett Street, next to
the Alamo.
But what is peculiar is the timing. Flannery calls it “fate.”
Unbeknownst to the Crockett relatives when they planned it more than a year ago, their reunion — the first in San Antonio in 20 years — coincided with the public unveiling Thursday night of a new draft plan for Alamo Plaza, a transformation of the place where Crockett and all the other 200 or so defenders died in the momentous battle against Mexican troops in 1836.
About two dozen descendants, some noticeable in their coonskin caps or blue, customembossed Crockett T-shirts, were in the audience for the presentation of the $450 million plan, which already is stirring passionate debate.
It includes: tripling the size of the plaza and making it more like a shaded park, closing sections of three streets, constructing a museum, relocating the 1930s Cenotaph south by 500 feet, and demolishing as many as four buildings along Alamo Street, thereby ousting various amusement businesses.
Flannery, 40, who is just completing his two-year turn as the descendants’ president, said the group will weigh in about the proposed changes.
“There are a lot of opposing sides. We’d like to be a voice of reason,” Flannery, a direct descendant of Crockett and his second wife, Elizabeth, told family members Friday.
He hopes to make sure that any modifications to the plaza will bring reverence to the site where Crockett likely was executed after the early morning battle of March 6, 1836.
“Ultimately, he sacrificed his life for freedom. We feel like the Alamo is one of those locales that adds authenticity to David Crockett’s legacy,” said Flannery, who has attended the reunions since he was 12.
Long overdue
The descendants, with about 250 active members across the country, last year issued an open letter “To All Texans & Americans in the World,” calling for conversion of the bustling plaza to “a pedestrian space for preservation” and free of “irreverent behavior, degrad- ing public displays and nonstop commercial clutter.”
“A significant transformation has long been overdue,” the letter stated.
Without exception, Flannery said, the group favors closing streets in the plaza in order to silence the loud rumblings of cars, trucks and buses. It also advocates for the installation of outdoor replicas of portions of the 1836 Alamo’s exterior walls, as well as the palisade — a row of upright posts by the church that Crockett and other Tennessee volunteers with rifles defended in the battle, he said.
The group also opposes the “carnival atmosphere” created by T-shirt shops and amusement attractions on the battle site, Flannery said.
“We feel very strongly that that needs to go,” possibly to a downtown entertainment district planned by the city, he added.
The group has not yet taken a position on other controversial elements of the draft plan, including the razing of buildings and moving the Cenotaph.
Flannery said the descendants believe the Alamo should be remembered in a way that is more dignified, not just in regard to Crockett and the other roughly 200 defenders, but the estimated 300 to 400 Mexican soldados killed or wounded in the battle, and the indigenous people and Spanish friars of the Mission San Antonio de Valero who had lived there in the
1700s.
“We believe the siege and battle (are) a world event in our history, not just a Texas event,” he said. “Our family organization wants the whole story told — the truth, with all points of view. We understand that we’ve got to make compromises.”
Flannery said he likely will be the one representing the descendants as the Alamo plan is firmed up and taken to a final design phase. Public meetings are scheduled June 18-21, with a vote by the City Council possible by fall.
Chris Daigle, the group’s board chairman, said he wants
his four children, ages 6 to 11, to understand that their ancestor “was a leader in his own way.” He sees the latest draft of the Alamo plan as a “great beginning.”
“It’s a work in progress, but they’ve come a long way in four years,” said Daigle of White Castle, Louisiana. “It’s going in a better direction now.”
Not ‘Davy’
The descendants, who organize a reunion every two years, either in Texas or Crockett’s home state of Tennessee, are as intensely proud of their forebear’s life story as they are keenly interested in the Alamo itself.
The connection of the battle to Crockett long has been a driving force in popularizing the Alamo as part of American culture.
Before the battle, tall tales of his exploits as a hunter, sharpshooter and storyteller in published almanacs had already contributed to his legendary status.
His persona was the model for the lead character, Nimrod Wildfire, in James Kirke Paulding’s 1831 play, “The Lion of the West,” and for the Disney television series, “Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier,” of the 1950s. John Wayne played Crockett in the 1960 movie,
“The Alamo,” that Wayne produced and directed.
But his descendants cling to the real-life Crockett, who nev- er was known to call himself “Davy.”
“That’s kind of a nickname, and it fits better in a song. I call it Hollywood hype,” said Carolyn Cotton, a descendant who lives in Clifton and is a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, the organization that maintained and operated the Alamo for more than a century.
The Crockett that she and other descendants celebrate played hooky from school and was often in debt.
“He was an interesting man from Day 1,” said Joy Bland, another descendant living in Paris, Tennessee, and one of eight people who formed the kinship group in 1981.
Crockett hated school and hid from his father but had the intelligence to become a leader, Bland said. He was elected to several public offices.
In “Three Roads to the Alamo,” about Crockett and Alamo commanders William Barret Travis and Jim Bowie, author William C. Davis wrote that Crockett’s prolific hunting kills of bear and deer might have kept his mind off of his political and financial troubles.
Bland said Crockett and his family ate the meat and used or sold the skins of his prey.
“His wife, Elizabeth Patton, said their cabin just smelled like bear, and it was not a good smell, because they cooked so much of it,” she said.
‘I will go to Texas’
The descendants believe it was his benevolent stances about the treatment of Native Americans, in opposition to government action to remove them from their lands, that ultimately cost Crockett his seat in Congress representing Tennessee in 1835.
He wasn’t just out for himself,” Cotton said. “If a neighbor wanted help, he would help them. He didn’t think it was right that the Indians were made to move and suffer.”
After his political defeat in Tennessee, Crockett sought to settle in the Red River Valley of Texas, which he had heard was good farmland, then relocate his family.
He was quoted at a farewell party in Memphis as saying, “… You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.”
After he arrived, Crockett got caught up in the movement of the Texas Revolution against Mexico, Bland said.
He found himself less than four months later at the Alamo, firing his flintlock rifle alongside men who were outnumbered by Mexican forces at least 10-to-1.
On Friday, the descendants toured the Alamo and listened with rapt attention to a detailed telling of the story of Crockett’s death at age 49. Filmmaker and historical re-enactor Gary Foreman said Crockett was one of several men captured, then executed right in front of the iconic church that for many is a symbol for sacrifice and freedom.
According to one account, Foreman said, as the few remaining Alamo defenders were cut down with swords and bayonets under orders from Mexican Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna, Crockett “had his arms folded and presented himself like a lion.”