Sears

1943: After the disastrous 1935 flood which indundated the previous location at Montrose and Allen Parkway, Sears moved their store to this location well outside the usual shopping district [See Chronicle Blog]. It was a courageous move and expressed a corporate faith that Houston would develop into a major market and an important American city. Houston's first escalator is still working to bring customers down to the basement level, a brass and steel jewel of technology and a marvel of maintenance and polish.

2015: This location was once the flagship store for Houston, the central location where corporate offices were located on upper floors inaccessible to shoppers [and where in 1976 this author worked as a proofreader in the Advertising Department]. It was from this location that the suburban stores were launched that ultimately sapped the strength from the mother store. The decline of the neighborhood eventually forced the complete closing off of the display windows more appropriate to a pedestrian district, futilely displaying splendors largely lost to the automobile-commuting pool of buyers.

To: Mr Mrs Jack Smith
Box 163
Hale Center
Texas

Postmarked: Houston, Texas 4 April 10, 1943
Stamp: 1c Bright Green Industry-Agriculture for Defense #899

Message: Smith my darling Why havent you ans my letter are you sick or Working to much to Write to me I havent been feeling very well for about 2 weeks had a cold but is better now Douglas is still home recon he Will be going soon sure hate to see him go but he is not any better than any body else son Will dear Will you Please Write to me and tell me What is the Matter love your old Pal Stearns

“Smith, my darling,” she calls him before gently berating him for not having written. She signs herself “your old Pal Sterns.” She mentions Douglas, and seems to be dreading that he would be leaving home soon. In 1943 this can only mean that he was soon to be off to war. He was, as she puts it, “not any better than any body else son.” The war drew everybody in and all Americans felt the pull of duty, whether to serve or to stay home and possibly mourn.

To be eligible for service in 1943, a young man would have to be about 18, that is, born in 1925. Finding out the identity of “Pal” Sterns involved looking at the birth records in that year for a Sterns baby son. Douglas Ryan Sterns was born 17 December 1924, the child of Philip Blessing Sterns, a 42 year old Houston carpenter, and Bell Clara Ryan, a 40 year old housewife. The certificate was attested to on 21 September 1942, just shy of her son’e 18th birthday, perhaps in anticipation of his military service. Since Belle signed this document herself, she provided a perfect match to the postcard penmanship. Douglas enlisted less than three months after the postcard, on July 1, 1943, and survived his WWII military service by nearly 40 years.

They were living at 6905 Bonham, a street just a block south of Lathrop and Lyons in Houston’s fifth ward. When built in 1940 there was no interstate to bisect the neighborhood, but now Belle’s old home is perhaps uncomfortably close to freeway traffic.

“Papa Jack” Smith, of the panhandle town of Hale Center north of Lubbock, where in 1943 he was manager of Jack’s Café and Domino Parlor. He had not lived in Houston since 1910 when he was a resident of the Heights. He moved later to Delta County, TX northeast of Dallas before moving to Hale Center. He was about nine years older than Belle, but the nature of their relationship can’t be understood without more personal information.