1922: Radio broadcasting comes to South Texas
On this day in 1922, WOAI-San Antonio, the first radio station in South Texas, began broadcasting. The station, founded by G. A. C. Halff, had an initial power of 500 watts. It grew to 5,000 watts by 1925–considered powerful at that time. On February 6, 1928, WOAI joined the world’s first communication network, the National Broadcasting Company. It eventually became a clear channel operating with 50,000 watts. WOAI was one of the first stations to employ a local news staff. One of its greatest achievements was a regular Sunday broadcast of “Musical Interpretations,” featuring Max Reiter, conductor of the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra.
1874: West Texas’s first professional woman artist dies
On this day in 1874, Louise Heuser Wueste, the first professional woman artist in western Texas, died in Eagle Pass. Wueste, born in Germany in 1805, studied portraiture at the Düsseldorf Academy before marrying in 1824 and had three children before her husband’s death. Thereafter, she resumed her art career as a teacher of portraiture. In 1859 she followed her son and two daughters to Texas and opened a studio in San Antonio in 1860. During the Civil War she moved to Piedras Negras, Mexico, to live with her son. She received few commissions for work during her first years in North America. After 1865, however, she found many opportunities for painting and teaching. Louise Wueste periodically left San Antonio after the mid-1860s to live elsewhere in Texas with her children, including her son, Daniel, an Eagle Pass merchant. Her later work reflected an interest in the people and landscapes along the Rio Grande. Her work, possibly numbering in the hundreds, has never been cataloged. Most of it is held by descendants and private collectors. The largest public collection of her output is owned by the Witte Museum in San Antonio.
1867: Goodnight, Loving!
On this day in 1867, legendary cattleman Oliver Loving died of gangrene at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Loving was born in Kentucky in 1812 and came to Texas in 1843. By 1855 he had moved to the future Palo Pinto County, where he ran a country store and ranched. In 1866, having heard about the probable need for cattle at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where some 8,000 Indians had been settled on a reservation, Loving gathered a herd, combined it with that of Charles Goodnight, and began a long drive to the fort. Their route later became known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail, although it had been used by other cattlemen. In the spring of 1867 the partners began a new drive, on which Loving received his fatal wound in an Indian attack. Before Loving died Goodnight assured him that his wish to be buried in Texas would be carried out. After a temporary burial at Fort Sumner, while Goodnight drove the herd on to Colorado, Goodnight had Loving’s body exhumed and carried home. Stories differ as to who accompanied the body back to Weatherford, but he was reburied there in Greenwood Cemetery on March 4, 1868.