San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Landmark was part of home sales promotions
The Windcrest Candle is getting new LED changeable lights. There’s lots of history about it but never sure how much is true and how much is urban legend. Many would like to know the true story.
The Windcrest Candle had the same original purpose as the municipality’s now-legendary annual home lighting displays — marketing.
Before Windcrest, an independent city within Northeast San Antonio, became an annual mecca for light-seers, it was agricultural land on the hilltop that suggested its name to developer Murray Winn Jr. (1915-2003). As the son of Murray Winn Sr., founder of
Winn’s variety stores, the younger Winn had joined his father’s business in 1935 and became assistant general manager, in charge of advertising.
After the 12-store Winn Stores chain was sold in 1947, father and son started Murray’s Candy Shop in 1948 at 507 E. Houston St. — the first in what was intended to be a chain of deluxe candy stores, known for fancy stock and full air conditioning to preserve the upscale product. Another opened at 1813 Fredericksburg Road before the elder Winn died in 1950. The sweet shops were soon shuttered, and the young heir looked for a new enterprise on his own.
That turned out to be development of a planned community on an initial 77 acres of agricultural land at Austin Highway and what became Loop
410 (whose origins were discussed here July 9, 2016). Acting as sole homebuilder for the first several years, Winn and his wife, Barbee, who assisted with design and decor, helmed the enterprise.
Windcrest, outside the San Antonio city limits, grew from 1955 onward as an exclusive neighborhood of larger, allmasonry houses with three or four bedrooms, living and
family rooms, patios and attached garages, all with central air conditioning after the first phase of 200 homes. Incorporated in 1959 just before San Antonio passed a sweeping annexation ordinance, the new city of about 300 residents was at first proudly tax-free, deriving its income from the utilities it provided.
The young community soon had its own landmark — a water tower holding 250,000 gallons of artesian well water that was visible from miles away. Marketing materials, including advertising in both local daily newspapers, typically ended with “Look for the big Windcrest water tower.”
Windcrest’s other marketing effort, the holiday light extravaganza now known as Windcrest Light-Up, didn’t happen organically.
In 1959, the Winns bought 300 strings of colored lights, selling them to residents at the wholesale cost they had paid. The custom of decking the houses with brightly lit outdoor Christmas decorations grew from there, nudged during the first few years by a Winn-run contest with multiple prizes ranging from small cash purses to TV sets.
The development’s ads
around the time urged homeowners to come out and see the Christmas lights during the holiday season, when model homes would be open for evening viewing. From the early 1960s, Windcrest homeowners’ participation was advertised at 90% and above.
As “the best-lit suburb,” according to the San Antonio Light, Dec. 28, 1965, “Windcrest even attract(ed) the attention of passengers in planes approaching the San Antonio airport.”
The 100-foot water tower highlighted the event when it was repurposed in 1960 as “the Windcrest Candle,” often described as the “tallest candle in Texas.” Strings of lights hung vertically gave the illusion of a white candle. For the first few years, the flame at the top was a real one.
The Winns sold the Windcrest Development Co. in 1966 for a reported $1 million. With new management and new builders involved, the community kept growing and adding amenities, such as a nine-hole golf course. The Windcrest Candle also came in for an upgrade.
Originally, the candle was topped with a 25-foot-high gas flame, emanating from a torch
burner installed by City Public Service, or CPS. Unfortunately, strong winds often blew it out. This is where “the story of the candle (took) on legendary proportions.”
Instead of expecting someone to climb a 100-foot ladder, says the Light, Dec. 8, 1968, the community turned to resident LeRoy Kratochvil (1915-2002), a longtime bow hunter, to relight the not-so-eternal flame from the ground. Using arrows tipped with leftover Fourth of July sparklers, Kratochvil drew a crowd as he shot arrows at the burner. “I had to make four or five attempts,” he told the Light, “but I succeeded.”
The next year, the burner was modified with “a short length of four-inch pipe … inserted at a right angle” on a swivel powered by a metal fin that was supposed to ensure that the flame was always downwind. But the flame was extinguished again in 1961, and Kratochvil was called back, this time relighting it with his second flaming arrow.
By the third year, the gas burner was replaced with electric lights on a frame shaped to resemble a flame, and archery skills no longer were needed to keep it burning. Yet Kratochvil’s role “is retold again and again each Christmas time,” said the
Light.
So did this really happen? It could have. Barbee Winn told the same story (wind, Kratochvil, arrows, sparklers) in the San Antonio Express, Dec. 16, 1965, noting that “now we don’t have that problem because the flame of the candle is electric.”
Public records and other newspaper stories show that Kratochvil lived in Windcrest and worked for Winn before going out on his own as a builder. He grew up in rural Kansas, and he and his wife, Jeni, moved here in 1959 from Racine, Wis. Jeni Kratochvil became president of the Windcrest Women’s Club, which helped to promote the Christmas lighting event at the time.
Then known as the Windcrest Garden Club, the group co-sponsored the contest with Winn. Members of the club formerly judged their neighbors’ displays and went to the winners’ homes to notify them, says current President Patricia Mowery. Now the club “invites guest judges from the community, not affiliated with or living in Windcrest.”
Today, the city’s Parks and Recreation Department handles most of the Windcrest Light-Up, including announcing the themes and category awards.
This year, the theme is “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” in honor of the 200th anniversary of Clement Clark Moore’s poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” said Scott Lee-Ross, vice chair of the Windcrest Parks Commission and Light Up coordinator. Participants are all over Windcrest, and volunteers will be out on the roads providing maps with locations of homes entered in Light Up judging.
“Windcrest residents create their over-the-top displays in order to share the Christmas spirit with all of Texas,” LeeRoss said. The Women’s Club will host a Winners’ Dinner in January.