Texas Could Have State Heroes Park
that Offsets Trump Garden Omissions

Capitol Inside
July 3, 2021

Governor Greg Abbott could use a special summer session to create a new state park that would be a scaled-back version of the National Garden of American Heroes that Donald Trump unveiled at Mount Rushmore on the eve of Independence Day last year.

With Saturday as the first anniversary of the Trump hero garden that died officially in May, Abbott could follow the ex-president's lead with an executive order ready to go if the Texas Legislature refused to go along with a plan to establish a State Garden of Texas Heroes.

Abbott could take a page from his own playbook on the border wall with the unveiling of a state statue park based on the Trump model in conjunction with the expansion of the special session call to legislation designed to protect historic monuments from being removed or relocated.

The special session that gets under way on Thursday would give the Republican governor an opportunity to give Texas lawmakers a chance for input on a hero park that could be controlled by the State Preservation Board. Abbott and GOP legislative leaders on the SPB demonstrated their dedication to protecting Texas history the way they learned it with an abrupt decision this week to cancel an event the Bullock State History Museum that would have explored new theories on race and slavery as driving factors at the Alamo.

A state-sponsored sanctuary for Texas hero worship would give Abbott and the Republicans here a chance to correct the Trump garden snub of some of the Alamo's most famous defenders on the Texians side. GOP loyalists in the Lone Star State might not realize that Trump had expanded the list of guaranteed statues at the new national park from 31 to 244 two days before leaving office in January.

Tennessee's Davy Crockett had made the original automatic monument admissions list that Trump had featured in an executive order that he issued before the Mount Rushmore speech that he used to portray a nation ablaze with leftist mobs and Antifa radicals on a historic monument destruction binge.

But the final Trump hero list in an executive order on January 18 didn't include anyone else in the Alamo cast - no Jim Bowie or William Barret Travis - no major supporting players like Juan Seguín or Susanna Dickinson - two of the few people who lived to tell the story of the battle at the Spanish mission in San Antonio.

Trump had the poet Emily Dickinson qualified for the inaugural lineup at the Trump national park garden inaugural statue roster had 52 women and 192 men with household names like Sitting Bull, Kobe Bryant, Buffalo Bill Cody and no shortage of entertainers from Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Johnny Cash.

Trump had at least two native Texans on the original hero garden list with former Houston congressional Democrat Barbara Jordan and Galveston product George P. Mitchell - one of the giants of the energy industry in America. Trump reserved a spot for a statue for Sam Houston, a Virginia native who arrived in the Mexican territory of Tejas four years before the revolution that set the stage for the Republic of Texas.

There was no mention of anyone named Bush in the Trump executive order that created the National Garden of American Heroes exactly one year ago from today. The official statue list that Trump assembled in his final days in the White House was truly bipartisan nonetheless - with former Democratic presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Grover Cleveland and John F. Kennedy as well as fellow Republicans such as Calvin Coolidge, William Howard Taft and William McKinley.

Trump went 0-3 in terms of presidents before him from Texas - however - when Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush were all no shows in the national statue garden orders. Stephen F. Austin received the national hero garden cold shoulder as well.

Trump's expanded order for the new national park had token woke representation with Steve Jobs and at least one former draft dodger in former heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali. Dr. Seuss was included in the second executive decree for the hero garden park along with other marquee names from American literature including Ernest Hemingway, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and Mark Twain. Trump had his own version of the Dalai Lama with American mystic, monk, writer and social justice activists in Thomas Merton, a Kentucky native who was a major authority here on Buddhism, Taoism and Confucius.

Several foreigners who'd been American allies like Albert Einstein, Marquis de Lafayette and Andrew Thaddeus Bonaventure Kosciuszko would have been original entrants in the Trump garden of heroes. The Trump list featured movie stars from the past like Jimmy Stewart, Frank Sinatra and John Wayne. With Crockett as an exception, Wayne was the closest thing to an Alamo hero in the Trump park final cut. Wayne starred as Crockett in the movie that he directed and released in 1960.

Abbott could find plenty of Texas heroes that Trump overlooked if he decided to pattern a state park after the national garden that Democratic President Joe Biden allowed to hang in limbo for several months before repealing the executive decrees that specified the initial entrants. Abbott might want to select 31 Texas heroes - give or take - who will be assured of admission - the number that Trump picked for his first official statue list just one year ago. The governor could have the first group of monument designees spread proportionally over politics, entertainment, sports, medicine, science, literature and racial lines. Here some possibilities for a State Garden of Texas Heroes.

Texas A-List: Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, LBJ, Barbara Jordan, Jim Bowie, William Barret Travis, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Stephen F. Austin

Second Team: Bob Bullock, Ann Richards, Willie Nelson, Emily Dickinson, Juan Seguin, Lady Bird Johnson, Janis Joplin, Darrell K. Royal, Quanah Parker, Emily Morgan, Earl Campbell, Tim Duncan, Gregg Poppovich, Hakeem Olajuwon, Joaquin Jackson, Rick Perry, Miriam "Ma" Ferguson, Ben Hogan, Denton Cooley, Jerry Jones, John Tower, Henry B. Gonzalez, Oveta Culp Hobby, George Strait

Honorable Mention: Chip and Joanna Gaines, William Wayne Justice, Howard Hughes, Senfronia Thompson, Tom Craddick, Pete Laney, Joe Straus, Beyonce, Larry McMurtry, Roger Staubach, Ben Crenshaw, Matthew McConaughey, Buddy Holly, Ben Barnes, Bill Clements, William McRaven, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Selena, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker, Hondo Crouch, Sylvester Turner, George P. Mitchell, Dave Campbell, Tony Parker, Eva Longoria, Tilman Fertitta, George Jones, Miranda Lambert, Larry Hagman, Mirabeau B. Lamar, Lorenzo de Zavala, Woody Harrelson, Dan Moody, Carol Burnet, Joan Crawford, Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater, Carl Lewis, George Gervin, Dirk Nowitski, Kelly Clarkson, Molly Ivins, James Baker, Selena Gomez, Bob Wills, Richard "Racehorse" Haynes, Red Adair, Henry Cisneros, Angelina Dickinson, Shelley Luther, Karl Rove, Laura Bush, Jenna Bush, Barbara Pierce Bush, W. Lee "Pappy' O'Daniel, Chris Kyle, Roy Minton, James Barclay Armstrong, José T. Canales, Katherine Anne Porter, Frank Hamer, Steve Martin

Potential Trouble: James "Pa" Ferguson, Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, Albert Sidney Johnston, John Wesley Hardin