The Dedication of the new Calatrava bridge over the Trinity River was a grand affair. It began with an early morning run across the bridge. Later that Saturday there were two parades. The first was led by the Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava. He was followed by the workers who turned his architect’s blueprints into reality. This first parade began in downtown Dallas’ Continental Ave and marched across to West Dallas. The second parade began here in West Dallas on Singleton and marched across the bridge into downtown. The second parade was “our parade” as our Carmelite parish in Dallas is located on Singleton two red lights west of the bridge. The balcony of our rectory was an ideal place for watching the fireworks that night.

In the late 1930’s, our Dallas Carmelite friars were stationed at Guadalupe Church on Harwood. They inaugurated a ministry to the Mexican workers at the cement factories in West Dallas by establishing the mission church of Santa Teresita “en la Calle de Bedford” in 1928, and were now considering opening a parish in west Dallas. The man we chose to make it happen was Father Sebastian Vallés.

By 1941 he had secured a building on Chihuahua Street to serve as the first church dedicated to Santa Maria del Carmen. Randy Skinner is shown here in front of a church near that location. This first church was located on the north side of Eagle Ford Road which that year was renamed Singleton. It was next door to the home of José Martinez and his wife posing with a statue of Our Lady donated by the Carmelite nuns who fled to Dallas in 1927 from Tulancingo. The relocation of Santa Maria church to the corner of Vilbig and Singleton across from Wimpy’s famous hamburger stand was done to fulfill Father Sebastian’s dream of getting enough land to build the first Catholic school in west Dallas.

When west Dallas was given a zip code by the U.S. Postal system, it was the eleventh poorest zip code in the nation. It has been called the “forgotten step-child” of Dallas. There was no indoor plumbing. When it rained, the river flooded and families had to wade through raw sewage to get to the outhouse in their back yard. Dallas’ Mayor attended a Prayer Breakfast organized by Randy Skinner after the early morning run across the bridge. There Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson honored Norman Henry. Johnson was sworn into Congress next to a more famous politician from Chicago. Norman heads “Builders of Hope”, an organization that transformed West Dallas by buying nearly 300 slum properties of government housing between 2005 and 2008 to introduce affordable housing to the area. It was advantageous to land-owners in the 1950s to deny minorities homeownership. But if the poor do not own their homes, they fail to take care of them. The same principle applied to government housing projects. What Norman Henry and organizations like his and Habitat for Humanity have learned is that a safe crime free neighborhood depends largely on private home ownership.

One thing the two parade leaders have in common is that they were both born in Valencia, Spain: Santiago Calatrava in 1951, and Sebastian Vallés in 1905. Sebastian was actually born in Castellón. That is in the Carmelite province of Valencia. Sebastian died in 1985, but because of his great contribution to the development of west Dallas by building a school there to educate the young immigrant workers, he was chosen to lead the parade from West Dallas into downtown.

This was accomplished by an art contest featuring giant puppets of key figures of west Dallas’ history. It was dubbed “The Parade of Giants.” Here we see four generations of St. Mary’s students admiring Sebastian’s puppet designed by Junanne Peck. To the right of the student in the foreground is artist Jesús Moroles who began his fascination with work in granite living at a house on Vilbig Rd and Fort Worth Ave. Jesús gave a lecture on his sculptures Sunday afternoon at Habitat for Humanity following a presentation by renowed Dallas author John Neal Phillips on places in west Dallas where Bonnie and Clyde used to hang out. John is shown here with Fr. John Michael who encouraged him back in the 1970s to research our famous Dallas outlaws. The building a few blocks down Singleton from our church and school was a gas station run by Clyde Barrow’s father.