This plaque was made by Chum (Elmer Everett Moore, Daw’s father and Mom’s grandfather) when he opened his blacksmith shop. It showed customers how he could custom-make horseshoes and fit them in many different styles. (Per Aunt Mary (Moore) Coots, Daw’s sister)
Today would have been my grandfather’s (“Daw” as we called him, or “TM” to others) 99th birthday, so here’s the last of four posts about him. I’ve tried to do justice to Aunt Kathy’s work — as well as Daw’s propensity to save every scrap of paper which now fill boxes in my closet. I realize I have choices: I can toss it, ignore it, or try to digitize and share it. I’ve chosen the latter, so far. I guess I have a little (or a lot) of him in me.
The story picks up after he helped Dobson design the new A-frame shape that Whataburger restaurants used for years afterward; Dobson asked him to go to Odessa to build the first one in 1959. Business was slow at Moore’s Welding, so he agreed. While he lived in a rented room in Odessa for nine months, Billie (Mema) stayed home with 14-year-old Kathleen in Corpus Christi and ran the welding shop, although she visited Odessa on occasion. She wrote Kathleen in February 1961, “Daddy looks fine and is so very proud of his building it’s almost worth having him away from home. The building is pretty and very modernistic looking. That high sloping roof is orange and white striped.”
TM began to work exclusively for Whataburger, Inc. helping more orange-and-white striped triangles pop up (building new franchises) in the early 1960’s in Pensacola, Pasadena, Houston (Longpoint Road), and Abilene, to name a few.
Kathleen went off to the University of Texas in 1963 (my mom was already graduated and had my sister), and the Moores sold most of their welding business equipment. In fact, while Daw was out of town, Mema accidentally sold his father Elmer’s blacksmith anvil, a mishap which Daw lamented for the rest of his life.
TM was unhappy with his handshake arrangement with Dobson; he felt he had been promised more. He pushed the issue, and the businessman offered him a raise, which felt like a slight, so TM quit. At 51, he bought another welding machine and got a new welding certification card for his wallet from Humble Oil. For most of 1965 he worked for Olsen Engineering in Houston, earning half as much as he did working for Whataburger.
Good thing Dobson was forgiving, if not persistent. The two apparently needed each other, and in 1966 TM was back as Whataburger’s Construction Superintendent, though he still wasn’t happy. In 1967, he wrote Billie in frustration over money. “I asked Mr. Garrison about the $500. Mr. Dobson the S.B. said no.” His frustration was understandable; Kathy was still in college, Billie needed money to keep the house, and he was paying for his own out-of-town expenses. TM further wrote that George Garrison, Dobson’s accountant, told him not to go to Dobson anymore about finances and he would “help him make it up on the job.”
Shortly after this letter, on a fateful day in 1967, Dobson had flown with Victoria’s franchise-owner Luther Sneed from Victoria to Baytown and then to the airport near Pasadena, where they spent the day with TM visiting the new Pasadena Whataburger site. They were leaving Pasadena to return home when the crash occurred. The Corpus Christi Times reported that Harmon A. Dobson, 53, founder of Whataburger, and Luther John Sneed, operator of the Victoria, Texas, Whataburger franchise, died at 4:28 p.m. at the La Porte, Texas, Airport. Dobson, who had been a professional pilot in the 1940’s, was piloting his Cessna Skymaster, a private plane with propellers in both the front and the rear, when it made an unusual engine noise, nosed down, and crashed just after takeoff.
“The sense of loss was unbelievable.” Billie wrote. “This dynamic man had changed the lives of everyone with whom he came in contact, and we were all better off for having known him.”
Dobson’s will gave his wife, Grace, the choice of his assets. She chose the business. The Dobson Children’s Trust was established for the children, Thomas E. Dobson, Hugh Dobson, and Mary Lynne Dobson.
Consumed by grief, Grace frequently telephoned TM late at night crying in the months following Harmon’s death. Faced with mourning children, conflicting demands and advice, forced to make difficult financial and staffing decisions under great pressure, the woman who had worked with Harmon in the 8 X 10-foot building made by TM in 1950 turned to him for an understanding ear in 1967.
Grace named former CPA George Garrison as President. He aimed to grow the business rapidly, and made TM general construction superintendent based at headquarters so multiple stores could be under construction or remodeled at once. Garrison was “also a very dynamic man and never let the company slow down….[He] wanted TM to come back to the home office and work from there. … it was nice to settle down again,” Billie wrote. TM supervised as many as nine projects simultaneously, hiring general contractors and traveling from job to job to oversee the work. He supervised the building of Whataburger stores in Houston, Bryan, Pasadena, among many others.
In 1969, TM purchased the Whataburger No. 75 franchise for $500. His first store, at 3319 Hansboro, in Dallas, opened in 1970.
During the first two years of his franchise-ownership, TM continued working from his office in the company’s new headquarters in Corpus Christi, which was named the Dobson Building.
The Dallas restaurant’s gross receipts in 1970 were $166,589.57. Net profit was $15,161.41. His superintendent salary earned him another $21,514.
In 1971 the gross receipts of the Dallas Whataburger restaurant grew to $270,446 and net profit more than doubled, to $37,304. His superintendent wages were $20,718. The Moore’s sold their home in Corpus Christi and moved into an apartment, readying to move to Dallas.
In 1972, TM resigned from Whataburger, Inc., took a lump sum distribution in his profit-sharing trust account, incorporated his business as Whataburger of Dallas, Inc. and opened a second A-frame store, No. 90. From then on, his tax returns had the word “Executive” next to “wages,” and showed profits (“subfranchisee fees”) from his own company. He’d come a long way from washing dishes in Uncle Todd’s restaurant as a 7-year old.
During the 1970’s and 80’s, the Moore’s visited their grandchildren in Florida frequently (or flew them to Dallas), and enjoyed travels to places like London, Switzerland, the Caribbean, and Hawaii.
TM was close to his daughters. He helped Linda purchase a home in Austin in 1982, when she found herself suddenly divorced with three school-age children still at home, and helped Kathleen raise Chris after she was divorced.
He always loved sports, and maintained an impressive golf score his entire life. He won a Pro-Am tournament in Corpus Christi in 1953, and shot his age in 1991 (78 at 77).
He joined Brookhaven Country Club after moving to Dallas, taught grandson Chris to play at age 6 and provided him with golf clubs and equipment throughout his youth. After he retired, TM often played with his three white-collar retiree golfing buddies: Don Fleming, John Harrison, and “Doc” Collinsworth, each of whom bought an annual senior’s membership card. However, he maintained his Brookhaven membership, hosting the retired fellows every now and then.
TM and Billie attended Dallas’s Park Cities Baptist Church for years, formally joining in 1984. TM’s Sunday School class was very important in his life. Especially after his retirement, it gave him an outlet for conversation and friendship with other men. He was also a lifelong Shriner and Master Mason (perhaps the subject of a future post).
In March 1999, he and Billie celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary.
In April 1999, three decades after purchasing his own franchise, four decades after building the first A-frame, and almost fifty years after meeting Harmon Dobson, TM was recognized along with four other “Whataburger pioneers” at the Whataburger Convention in Dallas, Texas. There was a moving opening ceremony recognizing “the five pioneers,” the first to receive the Whataburger Legacy Award.
Daw passed away suddenly on June 12, 1999, a few weeks before his 85th birthday.
Happy birthday, Daw. Love, Valerie
A little over 9 years ago, in 2014, I got a letter from a John C. Vance who had seen my genealogy site. He said he was also descended from Andrew Milton Vance (1804-1868) who settled in Paris Illinois; he even has the family Bible. In 2014, my son Brian was in the throes of cancer and I was far from doing any genealogy research … then Brian died, and I was in the wilderness for years. But I kept John’s letter in my ‘To do’ box, and it turned up recently. I must be feeling the freedom to revisit old hobbies, because I called him, and low and behold, he still had the same number! We had a nice visit (he will turn 80 this year), and he said he would send me his data. It got me looking at the Vance line again. I even joined the Vance Family Association.
My new friend John C. said, “you can join the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution).” “Cool,” I said. I think I have another connection but didn’t know about one in the Vance line. Apparently, Lieutenant William Blackburn, who died at the Battle of King’s Mountain, is our ancestor. (His first child, Mary, married Samuel Vance in Abdingdon, Virginia. Mary and Samuel gave birth to Andrew mentioned above in 1804, and later they all migrated to Paris, Illinois.)
Kings Mountain was a famous battle considered by many to be the “turning point” of the American Revolution. It only lasted 65 minutes but the Loyalists suffered 290 killed, 163 wounded, and 668 taken prisoner, while the Patriot militia suffered 28 killed and 60 wounded.
One of the 28 who sacrificed their lives that day was our ancestor, the lieutenant William Blackburn. If you click on his name above it’ll take you to another site like mine; Vicki Seibel has already compiled some interesting information on Lt. Blackburn. I guess Vicki and I are (very) far-removed cousins. You can see William Blackburn’s name on the monument below. (Oh, and just as an aside, Brian’s middle name is William. It came from both sides. ❤️)
I’m grateful for all those who gave their lives for our freedom, for those who fought alongside them, and those who have served or currently serve (like my nephew Gavin) to keep our freedom safe. Happy Memorial Day.
I left off in 1950 when my grandfather TM Moore met Whataburger founder Harmon Dobson in Corpus Christi, which changed his life.
What we know is that Dobson showed up at Moore’s Welding (my grandfather’s welding shop) and asked him to build some hamburger joints. What we don’t know is exactly when this happened and what occurred shortly thereafter. One version, Whataburger’s Crew News (April 1979), says that in the restaurant’s founding year 1950, Dobson walked into Moore’s metal shop and said he had “a plan.” In this version, TM recalls, “He said he was going in the hamburger business and had some construction projects for me if I wanted them.”
But the book “Whataburger: The Tale of a Texas Icon,” by Greg Wooldridge (Dobson’s son-in-law), says an Aransas Pass welder built the first “few” hamburger stands before TM got involved.
Regardless of whether Daw built that very first Whataburger pictured on the wall of every restaurant, he ended up building a ton of them, and was involved very early on. I remember the first version above being told in my childhood.
Above: TM in white hat. Photo from “Whataburger, Tale of a Texas Icon.”
Below: One of the box units TM built at his shop, “#18 . . . moved to Pasadena, Tex.” (from our photos).
Mema also told us that Harmon showed up on Christmas Eve in a bundle of excitement, saying he wanted to make the restaurant bigger and more noticeable from the highway, at which point he and Daw “drew up the A-frame design with chalk on the floor of our garage” — which became the Whataburger restaurants with broad orange and white stripes visible from miles away.
I always thought they “drew it up” right there, but the Whataburger book says that Harmon already had a scale model of it and went to ask TM to build it.
Prior to that holiday meeting, Moore had gone back to supervising the construction of a refinery, partly due to the strain traveling had on his family and partly because Dobson was not building enough stores to keep him busy. Welding oil field equipment was his work before meeting Dobson a decade earlier.
(from Tale of a Texas Icon): “Harmon was a bold business man,” Moore remembers, “and he was willing to try everything. But he was cautious when it came to building stores and adding franchisees. He didn’t want people deviating from quality. He was very strict about that; if you forgot quality, you would destroy the product. It was the same with buildings. He wanted them to go up right the first time.”
“When Dobson pulled into the driveway of Moore’s home on Christmas Even of 1960, he wasn’t alone.
“There was a knock on the door and it was Harmon, with little Hugh in his arms,” Moore recalls. “He wished us a Merry Christmas and told me to come by the office and see him the next afternoon, that he had something he wanted to talk about.”
That something was the A-frame, an entirely new construction challenge. When he returned from the meeting, Moore was a Whataburger man again.
Again, while the stories differ slightly, we know that in 1961 TM Moore built the first A-frame in Odessa, and eventually many more.
Page 92 of Whataburger : The Tale of a Texas Icon
And that Crew News article says TM Moore “had a hand” in construction of 84 units. Here’s his log book in which he personally logs about 56 of them – probably the “new” stores that he supervised building.
Let’s pause here for now, but more is to come. Life has turns and twists, and one was soon to come for the Dobson’s and the Moore’s. To be continued…
Think of my grandfather, TM a/k/a “Daw” next time you stop by Whataburger!
Read all about Daw’s wartime contribution in Part 2: the Wartime Years and beyond. Compilated boxes of notebooks and files brought to life with the photos and my own research. I hope you enjoy it.
Love, Val
Hey gang, I’ve updated the site with the following obituaries:
Linked above as well as descendants on the Reverend Ferdinand Heisig page.
Love, Val
I’ve published the “first installment” about Daw (my grandfather, Thomas Martin Moore). Either click on link here or find it under Moore in the menu. A product of the Depression, he kept records of all of his work. I hope you enjoy it!
p.s. Mema and Daw in Hawaii 🙂
Love, Val
Hey folks,
I noticed some old pages were missing photos, probably due to transfer back to WordPress, so I’ve spent some time refurbishing and just fixed Rev. Ferdinand Heisig’s page, my great-great grandfather. What an interesting chap and what it must have been like to leave Germany in the 1800’s, marry a French-woman in London, then take the family of 10 to Galveston with the goal of carrying German Baptism to Texas!!
The Reverend’s first wife Elisa Marie (CT’s mother) is buried not far from where I live now, out near Brenham. I would love to know more about her. For awhile Scott and I were shopping for property out there. We had a dream of having a place in the country. What if we’d bought something near Independence where he started that first church.
One of my genealogy contacts sent me this photo back then, care of Washington County Genealogical Society. Maybe one day I will go out there and try to find it. I may have to knock on someone’s door so I don’t get shot!
Enjoy re-reading about the good Reverend, and please let me know if you like the site! It helps to know even one person is reading to keep me going. 🙂
I need to fix more pages but for now I think I’ll head back on over to the Moore side. Love to all.
I’m back on the job after a long (8 year) break, and starting to add the branches from our maternal grandparents, Thomas Martin Moore (b. 1914) and Willie Jeanette Polk (b. 1918).
I’m starting with the Moore side. I have a stack of boxes containing our Mom and aunt’s pre-internet research. We were brought up being told about our ancestors, especially on holidays. I was told to be proud to be a 5th generation Texan, or to have a Chief Justice (Ohio Supreme Court) in my heritage. One grandfather built 81 Whataburgers. It’s my goal to deepen the research and make the stories available here for our own children and beyond.
I’m trying to re-learn WordPress and the new editor, so it’s going to be a learning curve getting it to look like I want.
Here’s my first new page, about the first native Texan in our family, Evalyn Alice Freeman and her husband Thomas M. Moore the elder.
(p.s. my work from 2012 is still here on our paternal grandparents, Andrew Milton Vance and Helen Ruth Heisig. In 2012 I added most of the photos and research on the Vance, Scott, Heisig, and Young, branches. I need to go back and add some (it’s lacking Justice Josiah Scott and maybe some others) but you can still enjoy what’s been done so far.)
Let me know what you think!
Geneagenie 