Docents of the Governor’s Mansion February 2018 new year and a new beginning. The Docent Newsletter is designed to keep Docents informed of opportunities and events related to Texas history and to aid Docents in their service to the Governor’s Mansion. Your input is important. Please send your items for the newsletter to: Jo Betsy Norton | 611 Westbrook Dr., Austin 78746 | 512-879-8995 | [email protected] Nancy Jo Spaulding |3921 Myrick Dr., Austin 78731 | 512-346-9211 | [email protected]. Welcome from Our 2018 Chair, (hope to see you on the trip to Bayou Bend). Our Garden Party Chair is working to make this year’s Jill Brown event especially memorable. What a great turnout for our January 23, 2018 meeting. Our speaker, Elizabeth Whitlow, 2018 Executive Committee was mesmerizing and so Chair: ........................................................................... Jill Brown interesting as she shared the Chair-Elect: ........................................................... Sara Conley history and insights about Secretary:............................................................... Linda Amey Lucadia and Elisha Marshall Treasurer:..................................................... LeAnne Skinner Pease. We could have spent Immediate Past Chair: ................................. Cindy Mitchell many more hours listening to Education Co-Chairs: ........................ Kay Harvey-Mosley Elizabeth and look forward to Candace Hunter her upcoming book when published. Meetings Chair: ............................................ Susan Peloquin I am grateful to our Executive Committee for Communications Co-Chairs: .................. Jo Betsy Norton agreeing to serve our organization and share their Nancy Jo Spaulding talents. I consider it an honor and look forward to Program Co-Chairs: ............................................ Jeani Smith serving as your Chair for 2018. Please feel free to Gale Webb call with any suggestions to make us more effective Membership Chair: ........................................ Louri O’Leary as a group. I appreciate all of you and your Historian: ............................................................. Alison Suttle willingness to dedicate your time with this Garden Party Chair: ....................................... Martha Coons wonderful organization—the Docents of the Advisor: .......................................................... Nancy Prideaux Governor’s Mansion. It was a pleasure to recognize Ex-Officio: ........................................................ Erika Herndon our 2017 Chair, Cindy Mitchell, at the meeting for her leadership. Elsewhere in this newsletter, you will see a 2017 Recap of the hours served by 2018 Nominating Committee Docents, the number of Mansion events, and the Chair: .................................................................. Cindy Mitchell number of guests who attended the events. Executive Committee Member: ................ Louri O’Leary Additionally, looking forward, we have many Member-at-Large: .........................................Joanie Bentzin exciting opportunities planned for 2018. Our Member-at-Large: .................................................. Kay Berry Program Chairs and Education Chairs are working Member-at-Large: ............................................... Jeani Smith to provide extraordinary experiences for the group Rita Clements and Governor Bill Clements were my mentors and friends. I met Rita in Dallas when Bill Clements decided to run for governor in 1978. After his historic win, I moved to Austin with my husband who joined his administration. Seeking something interesting to do in my new hometown, I contacted Rita Clements and volunteered to do anything she needed to support her goals for the Governor’s Mansion. Knowing our shared interest in volunteerism and historic preservation, she immediately responded that she had a task for me, to set up a tracking/curatorial system for the historic furnishings that had recently been removed from the Mansion to begin construction work. This task had not been done in the past and many of the pieces once in the Mansion disappeared over the years. My “office” was the floor of Mansion Administrator Joann Cook’s office, where I spread out the sparse records and used an IBM typewriter to type inventory cards that consolidated the information we could find. I was a volunteer and rarely saw Remembering Rita Clements Rita in that office since her focus was the by Dealey Herndon restoration itself, but I understood what she expected. Her concern was that important pieces First Lady Rita Crocker Clements’s remarkable life be preserved, tracked, and protected for future came to an end on January 6, 2018. She was governors and the public. When I later became responsible for the magnificent Mansion interiors the first administrator of Friends of the Governor’s that we, as Docents, interpret today. Mansion (FGM), I applied her goal to the FRIENDS collection – preserve, track, protect. Rita Crocker was born in Kansas in 1931, and moved with her family in 1942 to Brady, Texas. I came to know Rita’s commitment to excellence in She was raised in a ranching family, loved horses, all that she did, and her passion for Texas and the and had Texas small town values. She was a good Governor’s Mansion. When she arrived in Austin student, attending Hockaday School as a boarder as First Lady, she and the Governor were appalled and making lifelong friends. She attended at the condition of the home of Texas governors. In Wellesley College and The University of Texas, typical Rita fashion, she immediately developed a where she graduated in 1953. She served two vision and a plan to achieve it. As one of the most terms on The University of Texas System Board of historic in the country, the Texas Governor’s Regents. Her memorial service was held in Dallas Mansion needed to be restored, furnished with at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church. historic furnishings, and then routinely maintained going forward. When I think of Rita Clements, I think of her close partnership with Bill Clements and her pride in her Rita realized that the home itself would not reflect four wonderful children and her grandchildren. I the Texas they loved without furnishings that were also think of her many friendships, both personal of a quality and historic relevance that the house and professional, with whom she accomplished deserved. As each Docent has learned, the great things for Dallas, for the country, and contents of the home varied from administration to certainly for Texas. Above all, she was a good administration, with most of the furnishings going person. home with the governor who brought them. In many cases, especially in the 19th century, only a Rita and Bill Clements loved Texas history and handful of pieces were state owned. With a few historic buildings. In Dallas, Bill Clements saved outstanding exceptions – most notably Sam the old Cumberland School and meticulously Houston’s bed and portrait, Stephen F. Austin’s restored it as his company’s (SEDCO) desk, Ima Hogg’s dining room table and server, and headquarters. It is still used today as one of the Memento Collection – the furnishings in 1978 Dallas’s more significant restored buildings. Rita were of inconsistent historic value, quality, period, and Bill Clements bought and preserved a and condition. Rita’s vision was to identify a beautiful early home in the Virginia countryside period of fine antiques that were still available on when they lived in Washington. the market that would make the Mansion a magnificent and educational home. Rita and Governor Clements had decided not to manual for the new Docent organization that Linda move into the Mansion, but instead to address the Gale White began, and then moving on to the first critical need for renovations. The plan to fund guidebook. Working with that first board was their vision was to use state appropriations, seamless since they knew and respected Rita and balanced with privately-raised funds, for the shared her goals. We all knew what Rita had interiors. The Clements committed $100,000, and envisioned and believed it was both important and then called on close friends and fellow possible. During this time, Rita and I did not talk philanthropists who loved Texas history. The first about FGM. To her great credit, she respected the 10 private donors gave $100,000 each in 1979. fact that Linda Gale While was First Lady. This $1,000,000 was the initial funding of the non- Governor Mark White and Linda Gale were profit Rita Clements incorporated in 1979 (FGM) constant supporters of FGM and established the to purchase, own, and then conserve the new precedent for treating the contents of the Mansion collection, which was to be composed of early as a Texas treasure while enjoying it as their family American-made antiques, and Texas furnishings home. FGM became independent, there to support and fine arts. the elected governor of Texas while conserving and interpreting the Mansion Collection. The Governor leveraged this commitment of private funds to win support for a then unheard of In 1987, Bill Clements was reelected, and they $1,000,000 state appropriation to bring the home spent four years appreciating living in the beautiful up to modern standards. This was the beginning Governor’s Mansion that they had made possible. of almost four decades of ongoing preservation and It was truly their home for the first time. Rita restoration of one of the most significant state- Clements strongly supported