Mr. Fort Worth

As publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Amon G. (for Giles) Carter, devout Texan, found it easy to explain his paper's success. "We get out a newspaper," he said, "that fits our city." Carter's formula, while it did not make the Star-Telegram a famous daily, made it a good one. But his rare combination of showmanship, artful buffoonery and open-handed generosity virtually made Cow-Town Fort Worth a city. Dressed in his ten-gallon hat and cream-colored polo coat, Amon Carter sang Fort Worth's praise all over the world, while passing out silver dollars, hats, 100-lb. watermelons and boxes of pecan nuts for remembrances as he went along. On his Shady Oak Farm, he often had as many as 2,000 guests as an audience for his salesmanship. Outsiders half-seriously began to call Fort Worth "Cartersville," with some justification; fully a fourth of the city's 300,000 population work in factories, businesses and offices which have moved to Fort Worth as a result of Carter's coaxing.

The West Begins. Even in Texas, where local pride and hospitality are an article of common faith, no one could match Carter's. Once, inviting a group of out-of-towners to visit Fort Worth, Carter wired with typical hospitality: "Carry only what money you need before you get to Texas. You will not be able to spend a dime in the state."

Carter's devotion to the Star-Telegram and its city was matched only by his scorn for Dallas, 30 miles away. Nothing pleased him more than his slogan for Fort Worth ("Where the West Begins"), especially when he could add that Dallas was really for effete Easterners. Carter always refused to buy anything in Dallas, including food; on his rare visits to Dallas he proudly carried a box lunch. To make Fort Worth an aviation center, he became the largest single stockholder in American Airlines, moved its headquarters from Dallas to Fort Worth. The name of

Fort Worth's new $12 million airport: Amon Carter Field. Dallas took Carter's gibes in good humor, thought (as did Amon Carter) that the competition was good for both cities. Said the Dallas Morning News: "Carter punched Dallas like cowboys are wont to do slow steers in a shipping chute."

Have Another Drink. One punch Carter struck was against a plan to build a new railroad terminal for Fort Worth that was no better than Dallas'. Carter stoutly opposed the plan, one evening got a call from Railroad Magnate Matthew C. Brush in New York, who said: "Well, we've just voted to build your damn Union Station. We're going to put up $11 million for the biggest station and shops and terminal in the Southwest. And now we're all drinking to your health. What do you say about that?" Amon Carter promptly replied: "Have another drink."

After listening for hours to Carter eloquently describe a project to make Fort Worth a seaport by dredging the often-dry Trinity River the 350 miles from Fort Worth to the Gulf of Mexico, his good friend Will Rogers gestured for silence and whispered: "Listen! I hear those seagulls now." Once Carter emerged from an all-afternoon session with President Franklin Roosevelt and announced triumphantly: "I got my five feet." Carter had talked F.D.R. into adding five feet on to the Government's proposed mile-long Convair plant, because Tulsa was about to get an aircraft plant a mile long and Carter wanted Fort Worth's to be bigger.

The Dry Holes. Amon Carter was born in a log cabin at Crafton, Texas, the son of a blacksmith. At twelve he left home and took a job as a dishwasher in a boarding house. His extraordinary salesmanship showed itself early when he began selling gilt-edged picture frames, soon had a staff of salesmen working for him. In 1905 he went to Fort Worth for the first time, rented a typewriter for 50-c- a month, and had business cards printed that said: "The Texas Advertising and Manufacturing Co." But his most impressive piece of business equipment was a $2,000 diamond ring, which was easy to pawn to finance new ventures. Two budding newspaper publishers, D. C. McCaleb and A. G. Dawson, who were starting the Fort Worth Star in the city, hired Carter as their ad manager. He soon bought out the partners and borrowed enough money to buy out the Star's opposition, the Telegram.

As the Star-Telegram grew, so did Carter's enthusiasm for Fort Worth. He once talked so eloquently about the city's future to Publisher William Randolph Hearst that Hearst bought the only morning daily in the city. Hearst was sorry; in less than four years Carter's competition was so tough that he sold out to Carter, leaving only the small (cir. 52,393) evening Scripps-Howard Press to compete with the Star-Telegram (combined morning-evening circ. 246,354). For $300 Carter bought a radio station (which later became the paper's profitable WBAP-TV), then branched out into the oil business. After drilling 99 dry holes, Carter struck a rich oilfield and sold part of it for $16.5 million to set up the Amon Carter Foundation, a charitable organization that has helped build many of the city's schools, universities, museums and parks.

Until three years ago, Carter kept a tight rein on the Star-Telegram. Then he turned over the paper's operation to his able, Texas-loving son Amon Jr., onetime artillery officer, who was captured in North Africa, spent 27 months in a German P.W. camp during World War II. Early this year, slowed down by three heart attacks, Publisher Carter made his last public speech at the opening of the 1955 Stock Show. Last week, at his home in the city that is a monument to his energy, showmanship and imagination, "Mr. Fort Worth," 75, died of uremia resulting from arteriosclerosis.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.