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HomeMy WebLinkAboutFitch, William D. Bio.William D. Fitch “Mr. College Station” (1921-1997) by P. G. Pete Normand 11 December 2024 In 1995, College Station Mayor Larry Ringer signed a proclamation designating April 12, 1995, as “W. D. ‘Bill’ Fitch Appreciation Day.” The city councils of College Station and Bryan, as well as the Texas State Legislature passed resolutions naming Bill Fitch as “Mr. College Station.” The proclamation signed by Mayor Ringer recognized Mr. Fitch as “the first major developer in College Station;” as an “innovative and visionary leader” in influencing more than three decades of planned growth and development of the city; as being a strong proponent of paved streets, drainage, curbs and gutters, and high construction standards; for contributing to “the education of our youth” by serving on the board of the College Station Independent School District, and by being “instrumental in the location and construction of the present A&M Consolidated High School;” and by serving as an elected official of the City of College Station. At the time of his retirement, one-third of the city consisted of land developed by Bill Fitch. In many ways, that sums up Bill’s career and his service to the ordered growth of our community. But it doesn’t really tell us a lot about him, and I suspect that we were asked to make this presentation in order to give more personal insights into the life of Bill Fitch. FITCH FAMILY ORIGINS: A number of years ago, we dug into the genealogy of the Fitch family. In 1788, after the end of the American Revolution, one of Bill’s early American ancestors, Salathiel Fitch, packed his wife and newborn daughter in a Conestoga wagon and traveled from Baltimore, Maryland, over the Allegheny Mountains to the Monongahela River in Western Pennsylvania, where they traded for a flatboat and floated down the Ohio River to Kentucky. There, other Marylanders had built a stockade fort to protect them from Indian attacks. But, in a very telling decision, Salathiel Fitch, rather than “fort up” with the other Marylanders, chose to strike out into the Kentucky wilderness, where he eventually settled in present-day Fleming County. (We have no record about how Mrs. Fitch felt about this.) Chapter four of the history of Fleming County, Kentucky, is devoted to Salathiel Fitch, a resourceful and very independent pioneer. If you knew Bill Fitch, you would recognize that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. EARLY YEARS: Over the next four generations, the Fitch family moved to Missouri, Oklahoma, and eventually to Dallas, Texas. In 1919, Bill’s father, Jim Fitch, had been designated as the head Scout Executive for the new three-state Region Nine of the Boy Scouts of America. The three state region included Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Bill was the middle child with two sisters. He was born on 25 September 1921 and grew up on Bryan Parkway, in the Swiss Avenue neighborhood of northeast Dallas. With his father as the head Scout Executive in Texas, it is understandable that Bill Fitch was an active and enthusiastic Boy Scout. On one of his very first weekend campouts, his troop went to Camp Wisdom, southwest of the city. Several parents made the drive to the camp on Saturday to see how the troop was doing. As it was almost dinner time, the boys in Bill’s patrol were preparing something, and several of them were gathered around the pot, stirring, tasting and probably arguing about how much salt or pepper to add. Meanwhile, a few yards away, Billy was busy preparing his own dinner on a separate campfire. Concerned that Bill was not participating in what Scouts call the “patrol method,” Mrs. Fitch asked Bill why he was off cooking by himself. He calmly replied, “You don’t think I’d want to eat anything that those birds would cook?” That was a story told and retold many times in the Fitch family. In Bill Fitch, the independent genes inherited from his pioneer ancestors, remained undiluted over the generations. Like his father, Bill excelled in Boy Scouting and rose to Eagle Scout rank. He was always quick to let you know that he was an Eagle Scout. Not that he HAD BEEN an Eagle Scout, but that he WAS an Eagle Scout. During his teen years, large parts of his summers were spent with his maternal grandparents, Will and Kate Kidd, on their farm near Boyd in Wise County, 30 miles northwest of Fort Worth. Bill learned a great deal from these grandparents, who were pioneers in their own right. They had participated in the Oklahoma Land Run in 1889. Bill would explain in great detail the process of how his grandfather slaughtered a hog, or how his grandmother made biscuits. The farm at Boyd remained in the family, and became a pleasant refuge – a place where Bill would return again and again throughout his life. Bill graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School with the Class of 1938, and enrolled at the A. & M. College as a member of the Class of 1942 in “C” Battery Field Artillery. In those “old army days,” his field artillery training at A. & M. prepared him for his assignment to the Field Artillery Branch of the U.S. Army. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor interrupted Bill’s senior year at A. & M. Nearly all the members of the Senior Class of 1942 left school and joined the military. Bill Fitch was among them. WORLD WAR II: He was first sent to Camp Gruber, near Muskogee, Oklahoma, where one weekend he met a local school teacher named Gail Todd. Bill must have been really impressed with Gail, as he went home to Dallas the following weekend and announced that he had met the girl he intended to marry. They married on February 12, 1944, six weeks after their first date. He was commissioned a Second Lieutenant at Camp Carson, Colorado, was sent to Fort Ord, California, whence he departed in August 1944 for Bombay, India, and the China-Burma-India Theater of operations. He served in the 612th & 613th Mule Pack Field Artillery Battalions of the MARS Task Force, the successor to Merrill's Marauders. Both battalions were armed with portable 75-mm howitzers that could be disassembled and transported by mules. From Bombay, their mission took them up the Burma Road, as the mission of the Task Force was to get behind Japanese lines. After a year and a half in Burma and China, Bill was awarded the Bronze Star and four combat ribbons. He departed India for the U.S. in early 1946. During the War, Gail taught school at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, home of the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb. Upon his return to the U.S., Bill and Gail spent the summer of 1946 at the sprawling Philmont Scout Ranch, near Cimarron, New Mexico, where Bill's father had become the General Manager. The ranch had been donated to the Boy Scouts in December 1941 by Oklahoma oilman, Waite Phillips, one of the founders of the Phillips 66 Oil Company. COLLEGE STATION: After their belated honeymoon in New Mexico, Bill and Gail moved to College Station, where Bill planned to finish his degree in Civil Engineering. That was his plan, but making a living got in the way. He purchased land from Mr. A. P. Boyett in the Northgate area, and built several duplex units around the corner of First Street and Church Street. It was at that time that he also built the first College Station City Hall on Church Street. This venture was successful enough that he was encouraged to purchase a stretch of land in Bryan a block south of Sulphur Springs, just off Highway Six (or what we now call Texas Avenue), develop a street with utilities, and build a number of duplex units on what is now Mary Lake Street. After this initial introduction into the construction business, Bill became a homebuilder in College Station. Today, there are large number of homes, built in the mid-century modern style, scattered around the older neighborhoods of College Station – Oakwood, College Park, Leacrest, Ridgefield, Woodson Village, Dexter Village, and College Hills. About 1970, he developed Holleman Drive, naming it for his good friend, Nikki Holleman, a professor in the college of architecture. Bill went on to develop the West Knoll and South Knoll subdivisions, Glade Street and the Glade subdivision from Holleman Drive South, as well as Bee Creek and Southwood. During the 1950s, three children were added to Fitch family – Laura, Todd and Austin. About 1960, Bill purchased one of five houses on Throckmorton Street, on the A. & M. campus, where the Koldus Building parking garage now sits. It was a large two-story house with four upstairs bedrooms. On moving day, large parts of south College Station came to a halt, traffic was diverted, utility lines were lowered, and trees were trimmed to make room as the large white house slowly made its way from the campus to the south end of Glade Street. This was the home at 1712 Glade Street, where the Fitch children would spend their formative years. Behind their home, a two and a half acre tract became the offices of Bill's development company, Area Progress Corporation, and his street building company, Tiller Corporation. Bill Fitch had a vision of what the south end of College Station would look like one day. When his development reached the end of Glade Street, he knew that a large crosstown street would be needed to carry traffic east and west. So, he paved a wide three-lane right-of-way for a block or two east and west of the end of Glade Street. At that time, this was beyond the end of town, so a street of that width, extending only one block east and west of Glade Street, seemed illogical. Who needed it? Who would ever use it? During the summer, in the evenings, people from all over town would drive down to the end of Glade Street, stop, look east and west at this folly. They must have thought that Bill Fitch had lost his mind. Today, we can only wonder why he didn't make Southwest Parkway wider. SOUTHWOOD VALLEY: About 1970, after the development of the Southwood Subdivision, Bill put together a group of local homebuilders, including Don Cain, Larry Landry, and George Green. They formed Southwood Valley, Incorporated, and purchased the land south of FM 2818 that is now Southwood Valley, Southwood Terrace and Southwood Forest. Much of that land had been part of the dairy farm of Mr. C. M. Deacon. At this same time, new offices at 2108 Southwood Drive were built for Bill's companies, and they remained at that address until his retirement. Prior to the development of Southwood Valley, the two Fitch boys, Todd and Austin, spent a lot of time roaming the woods and creeks in the area south of FM 2818. Before they had driver's licenses, they had a jeep that they could drive from their home at the end of Glade Street, across Bee Creek, and across FM 2818, through the gate in the barbed wire fence, and off into the woods along the jeep trail that Bill later named Brothers Boulevard. Some of the first streets in Southwood Valley were named for the two boys – Todd Trail and Austin Avenue. In previous years, he had already named Laura Lane for his oldest child. Hawktree Drive was named for the tree that always had a redtail hawk perched in it. In their teen years, the Fitch brothers built a huge treehouse that was supported by the branches of at least three trees, and is now commemorated by Treehouse Trail. In 1975, Bill continued naming streets for family members, his grandchildren, daughter-in- law and son-in-law. In 1975, while I was serving in the Air Force, I was surprised to learn that Bill had named Normand Drive here in College Station, in a town where I never thought I would ever return for anything more that football games. But two years later, when Laura and I moved to College Station, I began to realize that having a street named for you was not such a good idea. Mail addressed to me my home at 2902 Brothers Blvd, was often misdelivered by our dyslexic mailman to 2902 Normand Drive. One day, sitting in A. C. Vinzant's barber's chair at Redmond Terrace, I heard some college professor seated next to me announce that the street he lived on had been named by some guy named "Normand," who, he said, must have a huge ego to name a street for himself. As I sat up and started to correct the man, and let him know that I had no input on the naming of that street, A. C. patted me on the shoulder and whispered, "Let it go, Pete. Just let it go." Eventually, development continued west of Rio Grande Boulevard. So, it seemed like it was time to start giving streets names from New Mexico. Cimarron Court and Rayado Court were borrowed from Bill's memories of Philmont Scout Ranch in northern New Mexico. NATURALIST AND CONSERVATIONIST: Always the Eagle Scout, Bill was a naturalist, and knew the names of every kind of tree and shrub in the area. Much of what I know about different varieties of oak trees I learned from Bill. He was a conservationist, and would go out of his way to curve a street in order to save an oak tree. It was a sore point for Bill that college professors who couldn't tell an oak tree from light pole, would accuse him of having no regard for the land he was developing. At the corner of Brother's Boulevard and Treehouse Trail, Bill purposely curved the street to the west in order to save a magnificent old oak tree at 3001 Brothers. But, sometime around Christmas that year, one of the local residents took an axe and cut a deep circle around the base of the tree, about four feet off the ground, effectively killing the tree. Bill was heartsick at this wanton waste. He remarked that the person that did it wasn't even a very good woodsman, as he only killed the tree and was unable to finish the job. Over the years, Bill's companies paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes on vacant lots and vacant land that we held in inventory. So, naturally, Bill was very protective of his property, which he paid for again and again. One year, a couple of weeks before Christmas, he saw a man with his two sons returning to their home dragging a cedar tree they had cut down on one of the vacant lots. Bill stopped them and spoke to them in a conversational tone, asking them about the tree they had cut. He asked them if they had permission to cut trees on the property, and the man responded, "Oh. Nobody owns that property." Bill would tell that story a number of times over the years, especially when it was time to pay our ad valorem taxes. Bill's developments were the product of a team of people, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention David Mayo, who did the survey work on many of Bill's developments. One of the things I learned about Bill was that he was never interested in getting rich. He was content to make an honest living, provide for his family, and purchase a bit of land for his next project. This, of course, was a source of frustration for Mrs. Fitch, who remembered the hard times of the 1950s, after the closing of Bryan Air Force Base, when the economy in the area was at a low point. But Bill was only interested in pursuing and perfecting his chosen career. In many ways, he was like a Zen master, striving for the perfect drainage system, the perfect concrete curb and gutter, a parking lot that did not have standing puddles of water. During Spring rains, when it was pouring down water, Bill would be out cruising the subdivision, critically observing how the creeks and drainages handled the downpour. Over the years, Bill donated a number of tracts of land to local churches, and for city parks, including Bee Creek Park, Brothers Pond Park and Georgie K. Fitch Park, named for Bill's mother. He donated the land for the David A. "Andy" Anderson Arboretum. At one point, there was proposed legislation that would require land developers to donate a set amount of parkland for every so many acres of land developed. A newspaper reporter from the Bryan newspaper contacted Bill to get his reaction to this legislation, expecting that Bill, a land developer, would be against it. But, Bill replied that it would have no effect on his developments, because he was already donating twice the acreage of parkland required by the proposed legislation. Why would he not do that? He wanted his Southwood Valley to be the nicest neighborhood in town. Bill donated the land for Texas Avenue Baptist Church. And years later, he donated the land for the Brazos Valley Masonic Library and Museum on Longmire Drive. New employees of the city's planning department, were often treated to a day spent with Bill. Once Bill had them in his truck, a big brown Chevrolet Suburban, they were trapped. And Bill would take them on an hours-long tour of the south end of town, rambling over vacant fields, and down dry creek beds, showing them all the ideas he had for developing the area. I suspect that more than a few of these unfortunate passengers experienced the worst kinds of sea-sickness from these wild rides. I think the senior members of the city staff used this as a form of initiation for new employees. FINAL YEARS: In the late 1980s, Bill started his last development, the Pebble Creek subdivision. Bill's wife, Gail, who probably deserves a front row seat in heaven, died on May 9th, 1989. After that, Bill seemed to lose interest in development, sold his interest in Pebble Creek, and started spending more of his time at the family farm near Boyd, northwest of Fort Worth. He raised a few cattle, and returned to the place of so many boyhood memories. He came home for the "W. D. Bill Fitch Appreciation Day" in April 1995, and then returned to farm at Boyd, where he died on February 2nd, 1997. After the creation of Highway 40 around the south end of College Station, the city council asked for input to help decide on a name for the new highway. Several names were suggested, but in the end, the city council decided on the name "William D. Fitch Parkway." The inside joke around town was that highway 40 could be called "WD-40," a reference to the fact that Bill, or "W.D." as he was known to many, always had a can of the stuff rolling around in the back of his truck. One of Bill's longtime friends, Travis Bryan, Jr., used to say that Bill Fitch was a visionary. He had the uncanny ability to look decades into the future and see the ordered growth of College Station, and then be a part of that growth. -----§----- Pete Normand Pete Normand is a Brazos County native, but spent his early years in Fort Worth. He is an Eagle Scout and a 1971 graduate of Texas A&M. He claims that the smartest thing he ever did was marry Laura Fitch, the daughter William D. "Bill" Fitch, the subject of this presentation. After graduation from Texas A&M, Pete served several years in the U.S. Air Force, earned the Vietnam Service Medal, and eventually returned to College Station, where he and Laura raised their two children, Adrienne and Travis. From 1977 to 1993, Pete was a vice-president of Area Progress Corporation and ran the sales office for Southwood Valley, Inc. For the past 25 years, he has been the librarian and archivist of the Brazos Valley Masonic Library and Museum.