My Texas Publishes 100th Story
The TSHA's My Texas Web site has reached a major milestone with the publication online of its 100th story since debuting in February 2004.
My Texas is a place where everyone can share personal reminiscences about Texas history—stories drawn from their own experiences or told to them by others. TSHA editors link the stories selected for publication to the relevant scholarly entries in the Handbook of Texas Online, thereby creating a people's history of the Lone Star State unprecedented in its depth and richness. Through My Texas, the TSHA has published some remarkably compelling personal stories of Texas history, running the gamut from the dramatic to the humorous.
Lowell Ray McCormack in 2005. Photo courtesy Lowell Ray McCormack.
 |
Lowell Ray McCormack of Gainesville, Texas, whose "How Times Have Changed" is the 100th story to be published, has been among the most prolific My Texas contributors, with fourteen stories published thus far. She is a natural storyteller, though she had no particular background as a historian or writer. She retired from a career as an accountant in Dallas and in 1992 earned an associate of arts degree from North Central Texas College in Gainesville.
Among the courses she took there was one about writing memories. Her grandchildren asked her for stories of their grandfather, who died from cancer when their mother was three years old. In writing that story, Ms. McCormack became interested in genealogy and joined the Cross Timbers Genealogical Association in 2003.
At the first meeting she attended the speaker was Jerry Lincecum, an English professor at Austin College and himself the author of four My Texas stories, who provided a systematic approach to writing personal history via the college’s "Telling Our Stories" project. (Other "Telling Our Stories" participants who have submitted stories include Barbara Pybas, Shirley Clark, Eleanor Monroe, and Julie Morris.) McCormack enrolled in his course, in which he introduced his students to My Texas. The rest, to coin a phrase, is history.
It is entirely appropriate that Ms. McCormack should be the author of the 100th story published, as she and Alma Iris Ramirez, a native of the Rio Grande valley who now lives in Australia, lead all My Texas contributors with fourteen published stories apiece.
Other "serial submitters" include Chuck McCarthy of Austin, with seven published stories; Jean Heide of San Antonio, with six; and Barbara Pybas of Gainesville, with five.
We invite you to visit My Texas, read the stories submitted by others, and then submit your own. It's an easy way to share the real history of the Lone Star State, as told and experienced by real people!
 |
Lowell McCormack (right) and her parents,
Orianna and Lowell Coney, in a car he built in 1925.
See her My Texas story "1925—What a Year!"
Photo courtesy Lowell Ray McCormack. |
|
