(Also) Kin to a Corpus Christi Mayor!

Twelve years ago, I wrote about how I was kin (by marriage) to a Corpus Christi mayor - Abraham Albert Lichtenstein Jr., (of the Lichtenstein's department store family), who served from 1953 until his resignation in 1954.  Recently I learned that my husband, Mark Gresham, is related (also by marriage) to another Corpus Christi mayor - and he would get a kick out of this, since they served the City at the same time:

This is Jason Milus Luby (1929-2012), who was mayor of Corpus Christi from 1973 until he was forced to resign in 1978 when he made an unsuccessful run for Congress.  Mark started as Corpus Christi's Budget Director in April 1974, and he had a lot of interesting stories about Jason.  

Jason is in the center of the photo below, which comes from the Corpus Christi Public Libraries' Digital Archives, specifically La Retama's General Photograph Collection, with a description that reads, "Choke Canyon Dam Water Development Board.  Mayor Luby and four unidentified men.  The mayor holds a check.  A handwritten insert with the photo reads, 'City accepting check from Texas Water Development Board for second payment of loan for Choke Canyon.'"  I can tell you that the man in the darkest suit is R. Marvin Townsend, City Manager in Corpus Christi at the time.

So how is Mark related to Mayor Luby?  Well, Luby's wife was Elizabeth "Betty" Willene Lowman (1929-2024), pictured below.  The photo comes from the funeral home website ...

... where I also found a photograph that included her mother, Marguerite Maude Mew Lowman (1906-1996), pictured below.

Marguerite was the oldest child of Charles Arthur Mew Sr. (1884-1927), whose photograph below is from page 20 (image 26 here) of the 1919 La Gaviota yearbook of Corpus Christi High School, when he was serving as vice-president of the school board (and interestingly, while A. A. Lichtenstein, father of the Corpus Christi mayor I'm related to, was serving as president of the school board).

Charles was a younger half-brother of Benjamin George Mew Sr. (1879-1949), Mark's "Uncle Benny," who made him a belt and belt buckle when Mark was little.  The photo below, taken in 1919, is from page 137 (image 201 here) of the Journal of  Letters & History of George W. K. Mew by Judith Whipple, and it was probably provided to Whipple by ...

... Ben's wife, Mark's aunt, his mother's older sister, Ivis Moore Mew (1905-2004), who was one of the first (in 1930) graduates of the Spohn School of Nursing.  Ivis was a nurse in Corpus Christi and Duval County (the latter from about 1941 to 1949, nursing her husband Ben, who suffered from pernicious anemia, at their ranch near San Diego).  In 1963, she moved back home to Marlow, Oklahoma, to take care of her aging parents while continuing her career.   

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

Nineteen Years Ago Today - Texas Library Association Conference

Nineteen years ago, Mark went with me to the 2007 Texas Library Association Conference, held April 11-14 that year in San Antonio, Texas.  The only picture I have of the two of us together on this trip is this one, from the University of North Texas School of Library and Information Science (now the College of Information) Alumni dinner at the Tower of the Americas observation deck on April 12:

Above: Amanda Pape and Mark Gresham at the Tower of the Americas, San Antonio, Texas, April 12, 2007.  Photo by Poom Sunhachawi-Taylor, used with permission.

As I wrote in my (online)  LiveJournal, 

I had to work Tuesday night [April 10] and did not get home until 10:30 PM, so Breathless and I did not leave until 10 AM. ... The trip down (mostly on US 281) was lovely – lots of bluebonnets and other flowers. We met Mom and Dad for lunch in Marble Falls at the famous Blue Bonnet Café.

Breathless and I shared the Wednesday special, which was meat loaf. Not as good as my Mom’s, but pretty good. Shoulda gotten the pot roast that Dad had. Mom & Dad shared a piece of coconut pie (with whipped cream topping, as the meringues are HUGE at this restaurant), and Breathless and I shared a piece of peanut butter pie drizzled with chocolate sauce. Yum.

Above:  Geraldine Margaret Guokas Pape, Amanda Pape, Frederick Henry Pape, outside the Blue Bonnet Cafe in Marble Falls, Texas, April 11, 2007.  Photo by Mark Gresham / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

We got into San Antonio about four, so we stopped by the convention center first (parking - $8 – ouch!) to pick up our badges and other registration material. Registration would close at 4 and the badge was needed to ride the shuttle bus to the Welcome Party at 6:30 PM at the San Antonio Museum of Art, built in the old Lone Star Brewery. This was VERY nice. It had a fiesta theme and of course Tex-Mex food – chips and queso sauce, taco shells to make your own with beans, beef, guacamole, and salsa, and real tamales in corn husks. Piñatas and other colorful decorations hung from the live oaks and pecan trees on the grounds, and you could eat there or in the courtyard. A string ensemble played in the latter, and a samba band was inside along with Mexican dulces (desserts). The best part was having the run of the museum – we were only able to spend time in parts of the American and Latin American collections, which were awesome. Definitely a place to revisit.

Between stopping by the convention center and the Welcome Party, we of course checked into our hotel, La Mansion Del Rio, and a room with a River Walk view.

I attended a lot of sessions the next day, April 12.  I'm not quite sure what Mark did all day, but I wrote in my LiveJournal,

From 11:30 to 2, we did some more trolling through the exhibits and had lunch at Casa Rio on the River Walk (more Mexican food ... we ate here because Breathless was STARVING and he gets cranky when he is hungry, and it was the first restaurant we came to while walking from the convention center).

And...

Breathless met me in the Exhibit Hall for the "Rush Hour" from 4-5 pm, when the exhibitors also foot the bill for some snacks. ... this year all I could find was Fritos and peanuts, but some very yummy fudge brownies and blonde brownies [aka blondies] too. We bought a few books ... [and went to the] Alumni Dinner ... at 6:30 PM.

On Friday the 13th, I think Mark mostly hung around the hotel, while I went to lots of conference sessions.  But ...

Breathless and I had lunch at a restaurant just off the River Walk, in Rivercenter Mall, called Steers & Beers. We shared a hamburger and fries that was actually quite good and reasonably priced. We wandered around the mall a bit, buying some new CDs.

We had dinner with Breathless’ son [Drew] and son’s girlfriend [now wife Carolyn] at Joe’s Crab Shack on the River Walk. Yeah, a chain, but said son loves king crab legs, and the mojitos come in little plastic garbage cans. It was starting to sprinkle as we left the restaurant and walked back to the hotel, and son & girlfriend got away just before a big thunderstorm cut loose.

The conference ended Saturday April 14 at noon.  

[We] went to eat at the restaurant in the hotel, Las Canarias. We ate outside under a bright yellow umbrella and shared a bowl of their signature squash blossom roasted corn huitlacoche soup with crème fraiche (very good!), and some so-so quesadillas. Then it was off to Canyon Lake.

We stayed at the Rockin’ MJ Ranch Bed & Breakfast [now called Moe and Jo's Haus], a place we had originally planned to stay during our Spring Break vacation in March before Breathless got sick. It’s on the north side of Canyon Lake, not far from the Marina of the same name where Breathless’ son has moored the 22’ Catalina sailboat Breathless and I used to sail 25+ years ago in Corpus Christi. The plan was to go sailing on Sunday.

However, said son [Drew] had taken the boat out a couple weeks before and busted the outboard motor. He told us Friday night that was in pieces in his apartment, but he should be able to get it fixed in time. Alas, he called us Saturday night and that did not happen. Probably just as well, as it was too windy to sail on Saturday afternoon, and there was no wind AT ALL on Sunday, so we’ll have to try another time.

We ate dinner at Papa-Docks at the marina; the food and the view were marvelous ... The B&B ... location was really pretty ... we walked up to the pens to look at the baby Boer goats the owners raise, and were treated to a golf-cart ride over some of the 200+ acres to the top of 1000-foot Mount Baldy, which had an impressive view of the lake. 

There was also a nice patch of bluebonnets ... :

Above: Amanda Pape by a patch of bluebonnets outside Moe and Jo's Haus at Canyon Lake, Texas, April 15, 2007.  Photo by Mark Gresham / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

Happy Easter - in 1968!

My family at Easter in 1968, which was April 15 that year, probably in the backyard of the home of my maternal grandmother, Sara Melzina Wolfe Guokas Archibald (1907-1997), at 1118 Bay Oaks in Houston, Texas.  Standing in back are my maternal aunt Sister Jean Marie Guokas (1930-2024), my mother Geraldine Margaret Guokas Pape (1928-2019), and my father Frederick Henry Pape (1929-2017).  In the middle are my sister Karen and me, and in front are my three youngest siblings, Mark, Brian, and Mary.  We girls are all wearing dresses Mom made for us.

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!