An early pioneer named J.C. Street came up with the title in the mid-1800s, long before aviation was common. So, how did he know from horseback these hills resembled a five-pointed star? And who can blame some curious kids for taking a look-see?
After they taxied down the football field, which also served as a runway, the Goode boys must have got carried away circling the rugged hills that rise about 1,700 feet above sea level.
“We ran out of gas,” the 77-year-old Billie, now Mrs. Day, said. “Had to land on the highway, and as we taxied up the highway, parked under Herman Lee store was my mother and daddy. My father said, ‘I’ll be damned, you did it anyway.’”
After attending Star School in the same building for 12 years, young Billie graduated and later met a Camp Hood soldier. They moved to the Rio Grande Valley. Fifty years later, she returned home. And about 10 years ago, she and her husband, Bobbie, bought a shuttered old gas station for $1 and opened the non-profit Star Historical Museum. She operates on a shoestring budget. Insurance, utilities and repairs keep the museum in “desperate need of funds.”
Mrs. Day is worried Star’s light will soon burn out. Empty buildings - sagging, leaning, falling - rival in number the occupied ones. Only a few businesses are left from a thriving downtown that once had a bank, mercantile and cotton gin. And there’s big cities luring the restless youth.
Across the street from the museum, the blonde post mistress Kay Sutherland runs a lost and found, delivers mail curb-side to old folks who have trouble getting out of their cars and trucks, and keeps up with who’s sick, or may have passed away. She looked back five years ago, when she first came to Star from Goldthwaite, the county seat 15 miles west.
“When I first came here, they had a bench on the front porch, I could not hear what they were talking about, but the laughter came all the way through the building,” Ms. Sutherland described the group of good old boys who used the post office for social gathering. “But all those guys are passed away now.”
The post office attracts some interesting mail during Christmas time. Ms. Sutherland said people go out of their way to mail their Christmas cards and letters to Santa from her post office. They like to get “Star” postmarked on the envelope.
The information on a flyer stapled to the post office wall sounds foreboding. A public hearing this week will address possible consolidation with a nearby community - Evant. The school’s $1 million school budget is in jeopardy of being slashed in half. Today, 73 are enrolled, up from 63 in August. But that may not be enough. The state pays on a graduated scale tied to enrollment. More students mean more money. Star needs both.
Walking down the same wooden floors that Billie Soules traveled in the 1940s, superintendent Barbara Marchbank points out the lockers that line the hallway are not locked. Don’t need them here, she says. Nobody steals.
Ms. Marchbank believes small class size facilitates learning. The football coach, Rafael Andrade, says that’s what helped him graduate - Star class of ’95 - and become the first in his family to earn a college degree. After graduating from Tarleton State University in Stephenville, he returned to Star.
A former halfback on the six-man football team, Andrade last year led the Tigers to the state quarterfinals. He said he’s always heard talk that Star might close, but somehow they always got by. Now things seem more dire.
“Now it just feels a little more real,” Andrade said. “It’s just sad to me because this is home. Little schools like this are the heartbeat of America.”
Billie Day agrees. She knew one day she would return to her humble hometown, situated near the Hamilton-Mills County line, about 65 miles west of Temple. As for the near-disastrous plane ride, she says looking down she indeed saw a star-shaped mountain.
“I sure did. We flew all over it. It’s pointed like a star,” Mrs. Day said. “It was true.”
Star on the Web: www.startexasmuseum.org and www.texasescapes.com
