Cable news would have loved this.
Bonus: I’m having a challenging day. My car died over by Hobby Airport and I wound up having to leave it in a parking lot not far from the intersection of Telephone and Airport. When I went inside the building to let them know why my car was there and that a tow truck was coming for it, they could not have been any kinder. It turned out to be the apprentice training facility for the Steelworkers and I noticed that the building was named after someone: Deke Bullen. Well, I couldn’t help but be curious about this fellow. I couldn’t find too much but what I did find is very interesting. Deke Bullen was the construction supervisor on the San Jacinto Monument. Here’s a Houston Chronicle article about the design and construction of the star, and here’s a picture from the article with Bullen on top of it. He’s on the right and that’s the architect, Alfred Finn, on the left. Here’s a Rice connection—if you read the article, it mentions sculptor William McVey, ’28, who did the reliefs on the monument.
