Waco History Podcast
Dr. Stephen Sloan of Baylor’s Institute for Oral History teaches us about Waco’s known and unknown past.
Episodes
April 23, 2025 • 12 mins
Host Stephen Sloan and guest host Rick Tullis launch a new season exploring the top events, issues, and individuals from each generation of Waco’s History. They also debut the new song, Wacotown by Wes Cunningham.
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September 25, 2024 • 73 mins
Guest host Rick Tullis sits down with Dr, Stephen Sloan as they explore the long history of banks in town with fourth-generation Waco banker David Lacy.
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August 22, 2024 • 45 mins
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August 8, 2024 • 7 mins
During WWI in Waco, the puttering, sputtering sounds of biplanes filled the skies. The area around today's Extraco Events Center had been converted into an airfield to serve as a military training facility, and by the time the war ended, Rich Field had graduated some 400 flyers, many of whom served in France.
Lee Lockwood, the son of a Waco banker, remembers how the financial community, knowing the training center would be good for...
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July 24, 2024 • 7 mins
Numerous expressions exist about how much the devil loves to take advantage of the idle hands and minds of mortals. But while some people find trouble in their free time, or simply waste it, others use it in positive ways.
Frank Curre of Waco ended up with some downtime in June of 1945, when the escort carrier he was serving on was sent to the docks at San Francisco because of engine trouble. While the carrier was being overhauled,...
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July 17, 2024 • 7 mins
As the war in Europe was winding down in the spring of 1945, exhausted troops probably thought they were immune to being shocked. But knowledge of the atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps was on the horizon. Nothing could have prepared them for that.
Hank Josephs of Corpus Christi served in Intelligence & Reconnaissance during the war and recalls checking out reports of a concentration camp near the town of Dachau in la...
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July 10, 2024 • 7 mins
During cold weather, most people want to huddle inside around heat sources, but some jobs force people to brave the elements.
Waco businessman and historian Roger Conger delivered groceries for J. C. Crippen & Sons as a teenager in the 1920s. He recalls a winter delivery to Waco High English teacher Marie Leslie that can only be described as a learning experience:
"Her house was on the west side of North Eighteenth Street right acr...
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July 4, 2024 • 6 mins
Many memories from our youth are intertwined with those of school, the place where we were making friends and developing interests.
Waco native Helen Geltemeyer shares a treasured memory from her schooldays:
"My earliest memories of Bell's Hill is going to school, walking every morning and with our dog, Tex, following my sister and I and maybe my brother. And the dog would stand at the door of this far end, the east end of the scho...
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June 27, 2024 • 6 mins
Pawnbroking—or lending money on portable security—is one of the world's oldest professions. It can be traced back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire in the West and to China three thousand years ago in the East.
Hank Josephs of Corpus Christi remembers he got the idea to change his family's dry goods store into a pawn shop during WWII:
"Our sergeant would lend the guys five bucks on their watches, their service watches, and whe...
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June 19, 2024 • 6 mins
Some of the clearest memories from our youth usually include times we got in trouble.
Victor Newman of Waco grew up amidst cowboys in West Texas. In 1923, at the age of ten, he came to live at the recently opened Waco State Home. Newman explains how the home reacted to his cowboy ways:
"Well, every time I turned around, well, somebody would grab me up and give me a spanking because of something that I said. And so finally, well, on...
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June 12, 2024 • 6 mins
Bullies are people who try to harm or intimidate others who they perceive as weaker. It starts in childhood.
Maggie Langham Washington moved to Waco in the fifth grade and remembers how she was an easy target for bullies:
"If you were a minister's child that's new in a school, you saw hard time, a real hard time because kids would do things to you just because they felt like you weren't supposed to do anything back to them because ...
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June 5, 2024 • 7 mins
Swimming is a favorite summer activity in Texas, as it provides respite from sweltering temperatures.
Charles Armstrong grew up in the Bell's Hill area of Waco and describes where he and other boys would go to cool off:
"And from Twenty-ninth Street over where the Baylor stadium is now, there was a fence across there, and it wasn't anything but mesquite patch up there where the stadium is. And it had a little—back over there by the...
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May 29, 2024 • 5 mins
An annual tradition for many students and teachers is looking for summer employment. During the 1940s, these jobs were becoming easier to find, with a recovering American economy and the war overseas.
Jane Martin, former missionary in East Africa, lists a few of the summer jobs that she held in the 1940s to pay her way through Mars Hill College in North Carolina:
"I worked for the government at the Department of Interior, and I wor...
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May 22, 2024 • 62 mins
Originally Aired 06/2019
In this episode
In one afternoon, 114 people lost their lives and Downtown Waco’s skyline was forever changed. Eric Ames, Assistant Director for Marketing & Communication for the Baylor University Libraries and ITS, walks us through the day the 1953 tornado touched down. We talk about the damage the storm caused, stories of hope in the aftermath, and ways the tornado’s effects are still felt today.
You can...
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May 8, 2024 • 7 mins
Since its dedication in 1910, Waco's Cameron Park has grown from 125 to more than 400 acres, with land gifts from the Cameron family, and has provided children with countless hours of exercise and enjoyment.
Charlie Turner of Hewitt recalls playing in the park as a young boy in the 1950s and 60s:
"There were some little wading pools we would go play in, and then, of course, I would get in trouble every now and then because after I ...
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May 2, 2024 • 7 mins
Among southern states, Texas was a leader in the desegregation of public education. In 1964, Texas accounted for approximately 60 percent of integrated school districts in the South.
Robert Lewis Gilbert was the first black teacher to be hired in a white school in Waco and describes taking on that position:
"Everybody was telling me before I went, Well, you know, white kids, you're going to really have to do something to teach them...
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April 25, 2024 • 50 mins
Waco History talks with Justice Matt Johnson on the history of the McLennan County's Courthouse.
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April 10, 2024 • 52 mins
The mission of Historic Waco is to preserve the heritage of Waco and McLennan County, Texas for future generations and to present enriching diverse historical experiences for audiences of all ages.
Our mission is fulfilled through educational programming, community lectures, diverse exhibitions, and through our three interpreted house museums that are open to the public: Earle-Napier-Kinnard House, East Terrace House, and McCulloc...
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April 3, 2024 • 30 mins
Waco.. A Fantastical History with Ashley Bean Thornton
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March 27, 2024 • 35 mins
Dr. Sloan talks to Waco Civic Theater Interim Executive Director Kelly M. about upcoming and past events
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