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About Bill
Morgan
Courthouse Prowler to Courthouse Artist
BILL MORGAN is a fourth-generation Texan, or fifth, depending on which version
of the family's westward migration you accept. His interest in his state's
courthouses began in his childhood in the 1930s. He was raised in Laredo,
across the street from architect Alfred Giles' 1909 Webb County courthouse. For
Morgan and other neighborhood kids, it was a playground, the after-school
social center and a cool shady spot in the heat of a border town summer.
He says he never outgrew its inviting hospitality: "I was prowling
around old buildings before it got popular -- churches, schools, depots,
houses, outhouses, anything with character to it. And they tell me I was
drawing pictures on the walls of our house when I was three or four years old.
After about 60 years of those behavior habits, a couple of ideas finally came
to me -- one, courthouses were the most likely buildings to grab my attention
and, two, I ought to paint pictures of a few of them. I started with Dallas
County's 'Old Red' courthouse in about 1985 as a gift for my attorney daughter
and I never found a convenient stopping point."
That was toward the
end of his working life, most of it spent in the Dallas area after he graduated
from The University of Texas in 1953. He was variously a feature writer,
reporter and editor at The Dallas Times Herald, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and
The Dallas Morning News, spent six years with the Dallas Cowboys pro football
club and 18 with the old Southwest Conference. He illustrated college football,
basketball and baseball rules books for 15 years and his nationally syndicated
daily cartoon appeared in 20 to 30 newspapers for 3½ years.
"After 15 years of driving around the state and about 80 courthouse paintings,
I can't kick the habit," he confessed. "I'd lean on the hood of my car and
sketch. People would come by and tell me about their courthouse. They were all
so proud of their particular courthouse and their tales were so good that I
decided all that history needed writing down."
That led to five
self-published calendars (l995-99) that caught a publisher's eye. A
coffee-table book of 71 paintings and histories was published in 1999. It took
the calendars' name, "Old Friends: Great Texas Courthouses," and drew unanimous
acclaim from newspapers, magazines and television and radio programs.
La Venia and Bill Morgan celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in 2005 and
are the parents of three fifth or sixth generation Texans, again depending on
which relative is telling the story. "I've never called myself a historian,"
Bill added. "I just chronicle stories of courthouses I've painted. Besides, how
can call yourself a Texas historian when you don't even know how long you've
been a Texan?" |
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