A man-eating alligator, baby Jesus and a kind cop brought international attention to Orange County in 2015. But for local residents, the closing of the hospital and layoffs at Invista affected more lives.
Good news came at the end of the year with a state football championship. The West Orange-Stark High Mustangs won the title trophy after fielding three teams in three state championships within 12 months. The WO-S football team lost a heart-breaker in the championship game in December 2014. Then in June, a young Mustang baseball team climbed up through the playoffs to make it to the title game. Unfortunately, they came in second. On December 18, however, the football team beat Celina 22-3 to finally win the top.
The biggest news story from Orange during the year began in the early morning of Friday, July 3, on a long holiday weekend. An 11-and-a-half-foot alligator killed 28-year-old Tommie Woodward when he jumped into Adams Bayou at Burkart’s Marina on Mississippi Street in the Cove. The marina had signs posted “No Swimming Alligator.” International news media picked up the story as Woodward’s death was the first Texas alligator death in almost 200 years.
Orange police later reported Woodward’s friends at warned him about the large alligator before he jumped into the water at 2:30 a.m. The New York Daily News had a headline “Man mocks alligator before fatal attack in Texas bayou.”
Then on Monday July 6, a large alligator was found dead on a boat ramp at Burkart’s. The Texas Parks and Wildlife game wardens investigated the unlicensed kill and later decided not to file charges. TP&W decided not to file charges because the alligator would have had to be killed because of its aggressiveness. Harlan “Bigfoot” Hatch of TV’s “Swamp People” took the alligator carcass and confirmed it was the creature that killed Woodward.
Lieutenant Eric Ellison with the Orange Police Department had gained international headlines at the end of the May by showing his heart to a teenager whose parents were lost in a freak motorcycle accident the evening of May 24.
52-year-old Riley Portie and his wife, 50-year-old Emily Portie, were enjoying a motorcycle ride on their Harley-Davidson and traveling westbound on Park Avenue in the Old Orange Historic District. A Dodge 2500 pickup truck speeding westward on Park Avenue went airborne at the railroad tracks in the 1100 block of Park. The airborne truck landed on top of the Porties.
Lieutenant Ellison had to tell the Porties’ 18-year-old son, Kazzie, his parents were gone. Kazzie was scheduled to graduate six days later during Little Cypress-Mauriceville High School ceremonies. He didn’t want to go. The kind cop convinced him to get his diploma. When Kazzie walked across the stage, Lieutenant Ellison, wearing his full dress uniform, greeted him with a bear hug.
The photograph of the hug went viral and appeared on websites, radio and television stations, and newspapers around the world.
Travis OBrian Collins, 29, of Orange has been indicted for two counts of intoxicated manslaughter in connection with the deaths of the Porties. His trial is pending.
In February, Baptist Hospital of Southeast Texas announced the non-profit corporation would close the former Orange Memorial Hospital, which Baptist had operated since 1988. The company reported the hospital had been losing an average of $1.8 million a year for 11 years on the Orange hospital. The hospital in May 2013 had quit delivering babies. Baptist left the full emergency room running at the hospital along with a number of out-patient services. However, all overnight stays ceased in May.
In response, a group of cities, led by Orange, hired a research group to get statistics to help attract a new hospital. In December, Pinehurst City Administrator Robbie Hood announced the report shows the ideal site for a small hospital would be in the area of FM 1442 near Interstate 10.
Other major stories for the year in Orange County included the deaths of a young mother her 6-year-old daughter as they crossed MacArthur Drive the night of November 2. 25-year-old Ava Nicole Lewis and LaMya Newhouse were killed by a small car that hit them and then drove away.
Their deaths led to the public questioning the lighting on the seven-lane thoroughfare and the safety of pedestrians.
The day after the accident, 53-year-old Carl Broussard went to Orange Police. Broussard was a teacher-coach at West Orange-Stark High School. He was arrested for two counts of leaving the scene of an accident involving death. He had a $400,000 bond set and bonded out of jail. Broussard also resigned his job with the school district.
During the summer, a miraculous tale involving a young man from Orange held the attention of people here and on social media. On June 11, Aaron Rose was on a mission trip in Honduras with his parents the Reverend Daniel and Mary Beth Rose. Aaron, who had graduated a couple of weeks earlier as salutatorian of Little Cypress-Mauriceville High School, decided to take a kayak into the ocean to watch the sunset. He didn’t return.
After spending the night at sea, a search helicopter found him alive and brought him to his parents on land.
There have been many recounts in elections but very rarely does it change the outcome. In fact we cannot recall the last time it has happened. But that changed in May when Pat Pullen won a seat on the Orange City Council after he defeated Deborah Mitchell following a recount.
It was one of those “you don’t realize how much you miss it until it’s gone” moments, Blue Bell Ice Cream was taken off the shelves in April.
No one seemed to care why it was taken off the shelves (several listeria cases) they just wanted to know when it would be back. Blue Bell truck sightings had their own facebook page.
While Southeast Texas was still in the BB no-fly zone in August, people from SETX were willing to drive to Baytown just to get the frozen treat when it returned to that market in the fall. Finally Blue Bell returned to Orange County stores in December.
Also during June, the city of Orange once again was included in national news stories as many parts of the country started taking down confederate flags. The Confederate Memorial Park at the I-10 and Hwy. 62 intersection, owned by a private group caught the nation’s eye during the heat of the debate. But the park has seen very little progress over the years while confederate flags saw a big boost in sales.
Invista, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, had been part of the original DuPont Sabine River Works, which opened in 1946. In early October, the plant announced 75 or more employees would be laid off. On October 20, word came that 110 employees had lost their jobs and the company was closing the old adipic acid unit. Adipic acid is a precursor to nylon.
Invista had bought the DuPont fibers business 12 years ago. Now, people in Orange are bracing for a major change as DuPont and Dow corporations in December announced a merger to form a company known as DowDuPont. The deal has not been completed. As the year ends, no one knows what effect the merger will have on the Sabine River Works DuPont plant. Some former employees already started taking photographs of DuPont signs knowing that soon the name will be part of history.
Saturday, July 4, came as a slow summer day with the county abuzz about the alligator attack death the night before. In Orange, people were ready to celebrate fireworks back in downtown for the first time in almost a decade. The Orange City Council had voted to pay for fireworks and entertainment on the river.
But people gathering in boats in the river and along the downtown streets saw a fire display shoot in the air from the Old Orange Historic District. A vacant two-story house, about 110 years old, was engulfed in fire. By the time the flames were out at the house at 602 West Cypress Avenue, nothing was left but pieces of walls and rubble.
The next night, firefighters went to another fire at a vacant house, a smaller house on Eighth and Sholars.
While firefighters were there, the alarm came about another historic district fire. A train temporarily kept firefighters from getting to the house on the west side of the tracks on Park Avenue. A two-story house built in 1920 by a prominent local architect was destroyed. The house was vacant and had in recent years been used for drug rehabilitation and a homeless shelter.
Orange Fire Marshal John Bilbo and Orange police detectives determined the fires were arson. They tracked down the arsonists to three girls and a boy, all juveniles under the age of 17.
In August, Bridge City saw the Cow Bayou Bridge reopened while the Rainbow Bridge is down to one lane because of repairs. Bridge City officials also cut the ribbon on the county’s first splash pad. Orange will open one in 2016.
In September there was a lot of reminiscing and even some tears with the ten year anniversary recognition of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
At the end of October, Orange police worked with Texas Rangers to file rare charges of felony criminal solicitation against a man and woman living in Roselawn. Police said the couple was trying to hire someone to kill three men who invaded their house two weeks earlier.
Police first went to 314 Bridal Wreath at 12:40 p.m. October 13 after neighbors heard gunshots. Detective Captain Cliff Hargrave said two men invaded the house and beat up the man inside. The invaders were scared away after the resident got a gun and fired it.
Police later said the couple in the house looked to pay someone to kill three men who had been involved in the home invasion. 44-year-old Samuel Clark McLellan and 32-year-old Ann Marie Gilbeaux were arrested and charged with criminal solicitation along with two counts of felony drug possession. Police reported finding methamphetamine and cocaine, plus guns in the Bridal Wreath house.
Even in December, the year wasn’t over, yet, for the world to get headlines about Orange. Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus were kicked off the Orange City Hall lawn and moved about 100 feet west to the private Stark Park.
The move came after the group Orange County Atheists asked the city to display a Happy Holidays banner with symbols of different religions on the lawn by the city’s traditional nativity scene. City officials in a media release said the manger scene would be removed rather than put up the banner from the atheists.
The Stark Foundation allowed the nativity scene to be installed in Stark Park, next to city hall.
The Stark Foundation contributed to the good news for the year. In December, the foundation held a ground-breaking ceremony for construction of an addition to the Stark Museum of Art. The 15,000 square foot building will cost between $7 million and $8 million.
The foundation’s Shangri La Gardens and Nature Center spread holiday cheer to thousands of people with the annual Christmas night strolls. Each year, Shangri La has added thousands of lights and figures to its display. The strolls drew up to a 1,000 people a night to see the lights and give them a chance to see a snow flurry from a machine.
A quick run-down of some other events of the year begins on January 1, 2015, when Brint Carlton took office as county judge, replacing Carl Thibodeaux, who had held the seat for 20 years. Thibodeaux chose not to run again for county judge, but couldn’t stay out of politics. In May, he ran successfully for the West Orange City Council.
The West Orange-Cove school board, after spending weeks of meetings to discuss how to hire a new superintendent, decided on Rickie Harris from the Cedar Hill ISD in Dallas County for superintendent. He started work at the end of March.
In Bridge City, school patrons rejected a bond issue to for school building additions and improvements. Later in the year, Superintendent Mike King announced he would leave the position for a job in private business. The Bridge City school board is currently in the process of hiring a replacement.
In Pinehurst, the city council hired Robbie Hood to serve as city administrator after Joe Parkhurst, who had served in the job for about four years, decided to retire.
The City of Orange annexed the International Paper mill north of town because of a request from the company. The company had been paying sales taxes on products sold from the plant for five years after the Emergency Services District No. 3 in Little Cypress implemented the sales tax. The company had been paying about $400,000 in the sales tax each year.
Members of the ESD No. 3 complained about the annexation, saying 6,000 people in Little Cypress would lose services because of the loss in taxes.
Under the city’s economic development agreement for the annexation, the sales tax is waived. The city also negotiated property tax agreement with the company. Under a long-time agreement, the city had provided fire and police service to the plant.
Also during the year, several prominent citizens died. Dr. Howard Williams died in January at the age of 89. Dr. Williams was a local legend for practicing medicine and preserving history. He was a native of Port Arthur and a World War II veteran. He and his wife and 9-day-old son moved to Orange in 1953 after he graduated from medical school. One time he estimated he delivered 3,000 babies. He never quit seeing patients until his last few days when he suffered an illness. In addition, Dr. Williams collected and researched local history. His collections were gathered into two books about Orange County’s history.
Grady Johnson, another local legend, died in August at the age of 90. Johnson was a Pinehurst businessman with extensive holdings who was dedicated to his city. He had led the move to incorporate the town in the 1950s and served as mayor in the 1980s. His nickname was “The Governor” of Pinehurst.
Also in August, Alfred Flies, the founder of Pineywoods Winery died at the age of 92. His winery off Interstate 10 was a popular tourist site for many years and his old-fashioned fruit wines had won medals in competitions.
Dr. Steven Mazzola, an Orange native who had a medical practice specializing in internal medicine for 32 years. He was 61 years old when he died in June of cancer.
We don’t believe there is any doubt that at the end of 2016 one of the top stories will be looking back at how the open carry law effected Texans.
Also in 2016 we’ll be dealing with the reconstruction of the busy 16th Street at I-10 intersection. And we’ll learn if the rumors about a new HEB, Chick-Fil-A and Starbucks coming to Orange are true.
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