Author: Howe Enterprise

The ‘junk market’ is hot thanks to cable television shows that gear towards the ability to ‘pick’ from places such as salvage yards that are thought to hold rusted piles of unusable items. However, local picker Debbie Wallis has found a niche in North Texas and had made a business out of junk in Howe for two years. Her business named Salvage Junky has done well in the local Howe Market.

While Wallis has homed in downtown Howe for the two years of her operation, she has moved to the more spacious location at 200 S. Denny Street. The location, across from First Baptist Church gives her more options such as the idea of starting a farmers market on her site. She is currently seeking those that want to participate in a community farmers market.

“I like the amount of traffic on Hwy 5 and I like still being close to the four-way stop (at Haning and Denny Streets).” said Wallis.

It took two years for Denison to get their farmers market started, but Wallis thinks that Howe could possibly get that done much quicker.

The Wallis family has completely renovated the building, which used to house Advantage Business Machines before they moved into the historic Chisum building. They’ve painted inside and out and have installed a rustic tin ceiling.

Wallis says that they have a current special going on that will save customers 20 percent if they wear their ‘Gone Junkin’ shirts.

Wallis travels to trade shows frequently and will be in Granbury, Texas next Friday and Saturday and will be closed due to that. She does several road shows each year including ‘Junk Hippy’, ‘Old Glory’ in Colorado and ‘Loot.’

“I’m preparing for Roundtop and if that works out I’ll do that show twice a year in the spring and the fall.” said Wallis.

Salvage Junky’s hours are Tuesday through Friday from 10am – 6pm and Saturdays from 9am – noon.

 

The Howe Fire Department has decided that they want to be the final show of the 4th of July weekend as they have chosen Sunday, July 5 to hold the 5th Annual Fireworks Show that serves as a major fundraiser for the organization.

“We’re going to have booths, games, live music, dunking booth, and Chill Out snow cone stand there.” said Howe Fire Chief Robert Maniet.

The Fire Department will sell hamburgers and hot dogs with chips and drinks. They will also sell glow sticks and glow bracelets for the kids.

“All the money goes towards the fire department equipment and the purchase of next year’s fireworks.” said Maniet.

The show should be about an hour long show that will start right at dusk.

After 25 years, a headstone has finally been put in place for Chris Gray after a fundraising effort by fellow classmates. Gray was a Howe resident who died in late 1990 from heart complications that he had suffered through since early childhood.

This project was initiated by classmate Laynie Williams who was in Howe showing her children where she was from. Williams, cited being led by God to the cemetery, noticed that letters were missing from Gray’s 25-year-old temporary marker. This led her to contact the family and ask if she could do a fundraiser to get a permanent headstone in place for her friend.

“I don’t want this to be about me at all.” said Williams. “I want to give God the glory for this.”

Williams visited with Elisha Tomberlin Bidwell in Austin they decided to contact people from their class and their community to raise funds for the project. It started with a Facebook page dedicated to the project which quickly stirred up emotions from not only classmates, but from neighborhood childhood friends of Gray such as Todd White. A GoFundMe account saw the $600 quickly raised. “It all just fell in to place.” said Williams.

“I don’t feel like I chose to do that. I feel like I was led to do this. I think we’re all led. We just have to listen. I’m just glad I heard Him.” said Williams.

Williams contacted Love Monuments of Sherman to get an estimate of the headstone that was needed so that they would have a goal to raise. The goal turned out to be $600. The final bill was $596 and the headstone was put in place on Thursday late morning at Hall Cemetery.

 

Last Tuesday night at First United Methodist Church, a Great Days of Service meeting took place and most of the meeting was dedicated to the discussion of whether or not to spend volunteer hours and funds on the beginnings of a complete rehabilitation of the old First Christian Church on the southeast corner of Denny and O’Connell Streets. The Great Days of Service committee chairs Clyde Hepner and Bruce Evans had previously met with Keep Howe Beautiful President Monte Walker to lay out a plan to complete the restoration in several phases. Due to support from the Great Days of Service committee, the first phase will be completed this weekend.

The old church will get new paint and the windows and doors will be covered temporarily until phase two begins. All of the weeds, trees and brush around the structure will be removed and the landscaping will be beautified by Keep Howe Beautiful.

The window coverings to protect the interior will be painted to simulate windows until the new glass is ready to go in. The City of Howe obtained two quotes for renovation back in 2009 and 2010, but both estimates were over $450,000 and the highest was $693,000. $11,500 was factored in to the remediation of the removal of asbestos from the outer layer of the shingles. These estimates were to completely renovate the building to one of the finest structures in the city.

Walker, who is also the Director of Economic Development is putting together a committee to start phase two of the project which is to renovate the building with a price tag that is a fraction of the previous quotes. He has recruited local pastors and members of each local church to start a community rally effort to “Save the Church.” After talking with the leaders of Great Days of Service and the agreement was made for phase one, Walker scheduled estimates from three foundation companies to fix the flooring, which would make the rest of the restoration feasible.

“I would like this to be a community vested project. It’s already being jump-started by one of the best community-based groups – Great Days of Service.” said Walker. “I’m envisioning a rally of “Save the Church” with fundraisers such as t-shirts sold, engraved bricks and other ideas to raise the funds necessary to get the old building back to being structurally sound and ready for use for various different ideas.”

Walker sees the building used for shared church needs as well as Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, weddings, rehearsals, dinners, civic clubs, or even private businesses such as florists or coffee shops.

“This will involve sweat equity from community members as well as monetary donations from community members. We hear and read about people’s frustrations with the current status of the building and now is their opportunity to help. ” said Walker.

Great Days of Service is looking for volunteers to help with various projects this weekend.  Several sponsors have donated money to the project such as SmithGarner, PC, AAAA Automotive, Baker Heating and Air, GCEC, Howe Family Dentistry, Sonic, Neil Plumbing, Number 1 Fitness and James W. “Dub” Hall.

The work will start on Thursday and go through Saturday with a breakfast each morning to start the day.

The committee has identified several homes and yards that need cleanup and will be working in these locations on these days. In order for Great Days of Service to consider a project, it must meet their criteria of a non-rental property. It also has to be someone in true need of help outlined by the organization guidelines.

The organization started in 2005 and have had over 200 projects since then. It has been under the leadership of Don Hurst for the past six years, but he has stepped aside and now is a committee member while Hepner and Evans lead the efforts.

“I don’t think you can drive on a street in Howe that we haven’t worked on.” said Hurst at last year’s closing luncheon.

The organization patterned themselves after Sherman, who had a Great Days of Service organization. The First United Methodist Church of Howe had a minister who was interested in the program and chartered Howe’s group and created an alliance with the First United Methodist Church in Sherman.

Great Days of Service raises all of their own funds. They don’t ask FUMC to support them, but they do have a lot of contributors from the church.

“As far as the jobs, the person must be physically or financially unable to take care of their place. A lot of these jobs are given to us by the code enforcement office here in Howe.” said Hurst. “The reason they give us these jobs is that the office feels that the people are worthy of receiving help or needing help. The city is not interested in fining the residents, but rather helping them out.”

The organization is looking for younger help as the majority are 65 and older. One man of 82, did most of the brushwork on last year.

For the past several years, Great Days have been building wheelchair ramps that have to be built to standard code by the American Disabilities Act. They are now constructing aluminum ramps and they can be transported and re-used when the house no longer needs the ramps.

Hurst says that the most rewarding project he ever worked on was on Duke Street on a house owned by widowed Dorothy Emmons.

“The roof was completely gone. Buckets were everywhere and the floor was caved in and the ceiling was about to collapse.” said Hurst. “She was such a jewel. I approached Lone Star Roofing in Van Alstyne and because we were with Great Days of Service, they put a new roof on for her. They did everything and it was at least $8,000 of work. But just to see her happy was worth everything.”

Hurst says that the only way the organization will survive is to get some new people involved and in particular, young people. They are looking for 30-50 year-olds to help.

Howe ISD has contracted a local business, Everclean Home and Business, to pressure wash nearly 50 years of dirt and grime from the vanilla colored brick.  The entire campus is scheduled for the summer bath including Charles R. Thompson Gymnasium, which already has seen the trimming of the large trees in the front.

On Tuesday night at First United Methodist Church, a Great Days of Service meeting took place and most of the meeting was dedicated to the discussion of whether or not to spend volunteer hours and funds on the beginnings of a complete rehabilitation of the old First Christian Church on the southeast corner of Denny and O’Connell Streets. The Great Days of Service committee chairs Clyde Hepner and Bruce Evans had previously met with Keep Howe Beautiful President Monte Walker to lay out a plan to complete the restoration in several phases.  Due to support from the Great Days of Service committee, the first phase will be completed this month by their volunteer organization.

The old church will get new paint and the windows and doors will be covered temporarily until phase two begins.  All of the weeds, trees and brush around the structure will be removed and the landscaping will be beautified by Keep Howe Beautiful.

Great Days is seeking many volunteers to help on various projects as well as the church.  For those interested, please contact Clyde Hepner at 903-814-5753 or Bruce Evans at 469-951-6042.

Phase two is planned as a community involvement project with a number of local church leaders serving as committee members.

Full story in this coming week’s Howe Enterprise.

 

He’s the mayor of the city that has the most known professional football team in the universe. One of the star players on the Dallas Cowboys is veteran Jason Witten who wears the jersey number 82 and is one of the most known players in football history. But Arlington, Texas Mayor Jeff Williams once wore the number 82 and played his games, not at the new legendary Cowboys Stadium, but at one of the oldest football stadiums in all of Texas – Bulldog Stadium in Howe.

The Leon and Linda Williams family lived in the north edge of Sherman for a specific reasons so that their three boys and a daughter could attend Howe schools. Jeff Williams, the oldest of the four started school in Howe in the fifth grade in 1970.

Williams’ class of 1977 was the first to start the tradition of the ribbon-cutting ceremony which is still a part of outgoing senior activities at the end of each year.

“Our class was really close.” said Williams. “We did a lot of good projects and actually helped start the fall festival. We also raised money to put a marquee sign in front of the high school. My dad was on the school board at that time and that was a special memory. We set records for the amount of money that a class would raise.”

Four teachers at Howe High School stood out to Williams as being major influences at his time there. Janie Finney, Pat Stewart, Bettye Mullins and Norman Bennett.

“Those are just some of the examples of the quality teachers that we had.” said Williams. “When I left Howe and went to Texas Tech, I didn’t know hardly anyone, but they had prepared me very well. That was a big step to go from 48 in our graduating class to go a university of 24,000.”

Williams said that being in a small school meant that almost everyone was involved with a lot of projects and activities, which made everyone feel needed.

“I think that translated into our lives realizing that we needed to contribute to the community and the schools for our kids.” said Williams. “It taught us a lot of responsibility.”

Williams went to state in UIL speech and served as class president for several years. Those leadership skills that would later make him mayor of a major city were being honed and developed in Howe. While at Howe High, he took a test that would tell a student what they might be suited for in a career field. Williams tested high for becoming an attorney. His score was so high in math, that the school counselor, Norman Dickey, told him to consider getting an engineering degree before law school.

Williams, with his family deeply trenched in the construction business went on to get his civil engineering degree from Texas Tech and while there was elected vice president of student body.

“The reason I ran for that instead of president was because the vice president was the student lobbyist said Williams. “So I spent my senior year in Austin and Washington D.C. a whole lot.”

Seeing so much corruption in both of those high-powered capitol cities soured him in politics. But he wasn’t soured by a girl he met that year that eventually became his wife.

Soon after college, he was recruited by several engineering firms and while wanting to get married, took a job and fell in love with engineering and the building communities.

Williams had his civil engineering fingerprints on projects such as The Ballpark in Arlington (now Globe Life Park) and Cowboys Stadium (now AT&T Stadium), Southlake Town Square, Park Central at US75 and 635, Parks Mall in Arlington. He’s also done parks projects such as River Legacy Park in Arlington and numerous others.

“I just really enjoyed it and enjoyed working with the communities and design things.” said Williams who decided not to go to law school and instead focus on his engineering career.

That career began with the Arlington based company called Graham Associates in 1984, which he later purchased in 1988. Williams has expanded locations to Frisco and Fort Worth as well as Arlington where he still gives strategic direction even while serving his term as mayor of Arlington.

It is most common for a mayor to be elsewhere employed while holding office. Former mayor of Arlington, Richard Greene, was the manager of Vandergriff Acura while serving as mayor from 1987-1997. It was Greene who reached out to Williams to recruit him along with dozen community leaders to provoke him to run for mayor of Arlington.

Williams took a few weeks to chew on the idea of whether or not it would affect his engineering firm. With the life expectancy now going up, it was a major consideration and factor of whether or not this would affect his life beyond the mayor’s office.

“I’m not interested in making a career out of being mayor.” said Williams. “I want to come in and help my community and get us moved to another level.”

Williams says that Arlington is not in bad shape, but is not to the high level that they need to be and want to be in his opinion.

“We have incredible attractions and venues here in Arlington with Six Flags, Globe Life Park and then the greatest special events center anywhere in AT&T Stadium.” said Williams. “But yet we have not attracted other entertainment venues or other businesses so to speak of to add to that and that’s been very frustrating to the leadership in Arlington. I think they thought that when AT&T Stadium was built, that they would come. And you just can’t sit back and wait on that. Other cities are too aggressive.”

Williams as an engineer with a leading engineer firm, has been asked to recruit businesses from other large cities. One of those that he just finished was Nebraska Furniture Mart in The Colony. He says it will be the largest retail store in America. Williams did all of the civil engineer work on property.

“We were also there to help sell them on the land that The Colony was wanting to locate.” said Williams.

The 1.9 million square feet project was a Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway project which in comparison is larger than the 1.2 million square feet Stonebriar Mall. By the way, IKEA is a trifling 200,000 square feet.

“They will draw around ten million visitors a year and will become the top tourist attraction here in the metroplex.” said Williams.

After a 400 acres purchase, Williams’ company put in all of the infrastructure so that it is ready for a future town center and a small community in itself. Nebraska Furniture Mart took up 100 acres leaving the 300 acres ready to make The Colony set to become one of the largest tax-toting cities in the country.

The Colony, with a premier piece of land, recruited Buffett to invest in their city so that they would have better police, fire and all that comes with a larger tax base.

All of those dealings and relationships, Williams found himself in attracting city leaders to recruit him and his expertise to be the front man for Arlington. After a successful campaign, he was elected mayor on May 9 and defeated incumbent Robert Cluck 10,161 votes to 7,119.

“We will be becoming very aggressive in going after businesses and bringing in jobs here to Arlington.” said Williams. “Also, we want to create more attractions in the entertainment district to once again become ‘The Entertainment Capital of Texas.’ We have the best geographic location being in the center of the metroplex and right at the entrance to DFW International Airport. All of that factors in.”

Williams also says that he wants to partner with all of the educational institutions from The University of Texas at Arlington to Tarrant County College to the school districts and private schools.

“Great cities have education as their foundation and we have let that slide and I would like that to be back on the front burner.” said Williams.

Williams also wants to partner with other surrounding cities due to the fact that North Texas is one of the top places for people to live work and play.

“The projections are that we will have three million people moving into the metroplex over the next 12 to 15 years, so that provides great opportunity.” said Williams.

As impressive as the mayor, the first lady of Arlington is also a community leader. Karen Williams is a PTA Lifetime Achievement Award winner and headed up many organizations in the school district. She’s been the president of the Arlington Martin High School Choir Booster Club as well as heading up the Education Foundation events. The family attends First Baptist Arlington and she’s been a 20-year Bible Study Fellowship leader. For the past 15 years, she has headed up the women’s ministry.

As now ’empty nesters’, Jeff and Karen Williams have three children, Natalie Pollitte, Suzanne Taylor and Ryan Williams. Oldest daughter Karen is a teacher at Wylie ISD, while Suzanne is the Director of External Affairs at Texas Tech. She was the president of the student body and was recruited to come back to Tech for the position she holds. The youngest Ryan, is a senior at Tech and will graduate this August. He was president of president select which was over the academic and athletic recruiting.

As the Howe High School Class of 2015 walked off the stage on Saturday, one can only wonder which student just might be headed for tremendous success after leaving this village on top of the hill. There have been some very impressive students graduate from this small school in North Texas, however, none have gone from Bulldog Stadium to AT&T Stadium or Haning Street to Nolan Ryan Expressway.

 

A leap of faith, blind luck and a craving for salsa, Darrin Savage and his family have gone from making a batch of salsa just for kicks to finding out that their sweet peppered surprise will soon be on the shelves at 144 Kroger locations in Texas and Louisiana. Back in the summer of 2011, Savage having never made salsa before started throwing around some recipe ideas and made a batch that he says that accidentally turned out really good. After eating it at their house, they decided to take it to a church luncheon where they attend at the Howe Church of Christ. He and wife Amber didn’t say anything to anybody about the salsa at the Mexican food luncheon. It wasn’t long before everyone started talking about it and wondering where it came from.

“I was shocked because I didn’t know what I was doing. It was just luck.” said Savage.  “We told them (at the church) that we made it and then we started getting people calling us wanting orders.”

It was taking Savage two hours to make three jars after buying the ingredients, cooking it and letting it sit. He began to stay up late every night making salsa due to the demand from friends. Upon doing some research, he found that it was illegal to make it and sell it out of his home, so he decided to try to rent space in a restaurant to use their kitchen to make the salsa there. Without luck from that angle, Savage discovered copacking. A copacker is a company that manufactures and packages foods or other products for their clients. To market and distribute, a copacker works under contract with the hiring company to manufacture food as though the products were manufactured directly by the hiring company. Savage used County Fair Foods from Arlington as their copacking company. Later, they went with Renfro Foods out of Fort Worth.

His research began with a simple internet search and County Fair Foods were one of the few copackers that had a website, so Savage became familiar with the program.  Savage had to visit the Arlington company and do several ‘recipe runs’ to make sure his recipe was precisely duplicated by County Fair Foods. After a month of tweaking, they sent the salsa off to a lab to verify its acidity to make sure it was shelf-stable and see how long it is shelf-stable. Once that was all approved, it was time to start ordering.

Savage, a Howe native who went kindergarten through graduation in Howe ISD, tipped his salsa hat to his roots and named the product Summit Salsa.

“When Howe was first found, it was named Summit and we really wanted somehow to include our town in our name to include in our branding. Howe Salsa just kind of sounded weird.” Savage joked. “We went with Summit Salsa Company. The people that aren’t from around here expect to see mountains on the logo, but for us locals, we all understand what that’s about.”

Summit Salsa Company has two different products available. It is a sweet salsa that has a lot of green bell pepper that makes it stand out from the others that flood the southwest salsa market. They currently offer sweet hot or sweet mild salsa, both of which are going on the shelves in the Kroger locations. Summit Salsa Company products were originally on the shelves at Diamond Food Stores and then Green Market stores.

With Savage using Renfro Foods as a copacker, he does have a nondisclosure agreement with them that protects him from anyone else copying his ratios of ingredients for the salsa.

In a unique industry, Summit Salsa Company’s customer is the distributor (which is Jake’s Finer Foods of Houston) and not the grocery store although they want to interact with them as they are.

“We sell at wholesale price and they cut us a check.” said Savage. “As far as receiving revenue, that’s where it ends for us.”

The distributor will put a 13 percent markup on it and sell it to the grocery store, who will put their markup on it to sell it off of the shelf.

“We will work with the grocery stores to do coupon runs and in-store price reductions.”. said Savage. “We have to pay for all of that.”

When asked whether this is a highly profitable business, Savage laughingly said that he would highly discourage anyone from getting in to it.

“When I got in this, I just thought you dropped off big quantities at grocery stores and everyone is happy.” said Savage. “It’s not like that at all, but we will become profitable with this. Maybe not in the first six months to a year, because any profits made will go back into the in-store marketing, but probably starting next year, we will be profitable.”

While the salsa is exactly the same lucky mixture that was served at the Howe Church of Christ back in 2011, everything is now outsourced. Savage does however do some store deliveries to local Diamonds and Green Market stores, but for the product that will be going to Kroger shelves, he won’t see the salsa made or hauled out of the warehouse to the distributor.

“Our goal one day is to bring it back in-house, but for me being a one-man-show, this works out the best.” said Savage.

The Kroger story began with a trip to Houston by Savage and his family. They stayed there overnight and met with the buyer for Kroger. After touching base several times without trying to be too pushy, Savage went for a month without hearing anything. Recently, while sitting with his family at restaurant in Sherman, he received an email with a purchase order from the distributor. With that, he knew Kroger had bought in.

“I kind of did a little ‘woo hoo’ in the restaurant and everybody looked at me funny.” said Savage. “I didn’t care. I was excited.”

He says that his wife has been fully supportive throughout the process and it’s been a leap of faith for her wondering how long he was going to sink money into the salsa dream.

“This was validation for us that we have a good product that people like.” said Savage. “It’s not just friends and family trying to make you feel good saying we like your salsa. It’s a good product and a good price.”

The good news for The Summit Salsa Company is that once product hits the shelf and sells, it will stay on the shelf for an extraordinary amount of time.

The system is set up to weed out guys like Savage – the ‘mom and pops.’ Most people in his situation don’t go for copackers that do bigger batches so they’re not able to get their cost down. Those end up hand delivered to specialty stores. But Savage’s dream is to be a large manufacturer one day with Summit Salsa all over the country.

“We’ve got other recipes that we’re working on, but we wanted to wait until we were with a big chain to bring them to market.” said Savage. “We’ve been patient. We’ve played the game and got our cost down. We can’t compete with Pace on cost, but we can compete with anyone else.”

Summit Salsa Company is getting very close to being available in two other big named grocery stores in the south. But for now, if anyone is interested in purchasing the hometown sweet salsa, it is available at Diamonds in Van Alstyne or Green Market in Sheman.

Getting a salsa company on the shelves in the south is like trying to get wine on the shelf in Napa Valley. Everyone has a salsa or a barbecue sauce that claims to be different than the rest. Distributors and grocers have become deaf to those two products in particular. However, Savage’s product seems to be rising to the summit.