Frank
David QuinnFrank
David QuinnFrank David Quinn (1894-1971) received the Pugsley Bronze Medal in 1951 for “service to City, State and National Parks generally and for preservation of historic sites in Texas, especially San Jose Mission, Goliad, Gonzales, Indianola, and Old Port Isabel Light House.” His father was a pioneer settler of Ackerman, Mississippi, and lived all his subsequent life there. He owned the community’s primary merchandise store; the established weekly newspaper, The Ackerman Enterprise; and was the mayor for 14 years.
During his grade school years in Ackerman, each day under his father’s supervision Quinn delivered the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper, which was the South’s most read newspaper. In high school, he became janitor for the First National Bank which his father had helped found and of which his father was president.
Quinn was an avid baseball player in his youth and believed he had a chance to play the game professionally. While only 16, he became second baseman for an amateur team in neighboring Eupora which traveled all over the state playing games. However, his passion, commitment and enthusiasm for baseball alarmed his father, Quinn later recalled, “My father was a good man, but he thought all baseball players were bums.” When he finished high school in Ackerman in 1911, Quinn had the opportunity to attend the University of Mississippi on a baseball scholarship, but his father opposed him spending so much time playing baseball and insisted that he prepare himself for a business career.
Thus, in the summer of 1911, three months were spent learning shorthand and typing at Macon and Andrews Business College in Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis was 120 miles from Ackerman, but it was the closest large town and was where his father went to purchase supplies for his merchandising store. He was following the path that his older brother, Timms Quinn, had taken five years earlier. He continued on that path when, like Timms, he then returned to Ackerman to work for L. J. Alford Lumber Company as a stenographer, bookkeeper and lumber checker.
In 1913, Quinn was employed briefly by the May Brothers Lumber Company, but returned to Alford Lumber later that year when they offered to raise his salary from $60 to $75 per month. However, soon after he moved to Scott, Mississippi, to become stenographer and bookkeeper for L. K. Salsbury, who was the president of Delta Pine and Lumber Company which was known as “the world’s largest cotton plantation.” Salsbury was one of the South’s leading businessmen, with ownership interests in a host of retailing, banking and agricultural enterprises in addition to the 35,000 acre cotton plantation in Bolivar County.
Quinn was given increased responsibility in running the plantation by Salsbury. Soon he was extending his role by traveling the state to recruit labor to work on the plantation. Ultimately, he became manager of the plantation. In 1927, when Salsbury relocated from the plantation to Memphis in order to give more attention to his other business interests, he invited Quinn to move with him and to be in charge of all his personal affairs and business interests. Salsbury described Quinn as “thoroughly competent, with great energy and ability. I consider you one of the most intelligent and best workers I have ever had in my employ.”
In 1931, Salsbury organized the Salmar Oil Company and based it in Tyler, Texas, to capitalize on the booming East Texas oil business. He invited Quinn to be a part-owner and appointed him to manage it. After Salsbury’s death, Quinn’s ownership share of the company increased to one-third. Soon after, the company moved to Seguin, near San Antonio, where they drilled 13 dry holes. Quinn later reflected, “That’s when I decided I was not an oilman, so I took a job with the Seguin Chamber of Commerce” which he headed from 1934-1939. During this period he promoted the construction of Max Starcke Park. His passion for baseball also led to him being appointed by Governor Allred in 1937 to encourage and sponsor major league teams to engage in spring training in South Texas.
In 1939, at the age of 44, Quinn was appointed executive secretary of the Texas State Parks Board. However, he retained his business interests, noting in a letter to his father while in this position, “I always find time to look after some of my own business regardless of anything else.” These business interests included retaining his ownership share of Salmar Oil Company, and continuing to manage the Salsbury estate in Mississippi and a lumber firm he had established with his brothers in Memphis.
In his time at Tyler, he had become acquainted with Tom Bearchap who was a ten year veteran of the Parks Board and in 1939 was named secretary of state in Texas. After 1934 when he moved to Seguin, Quinn also developed friendships with power brokers in the San Antonio region. It was these network contacts who suggested to the board that he would be a good fit for the executive position, and his effective development of Max Starcke Park reinforced the credibility of his appointment. His first major task was to renegotiate concessions agreements in the parks so the state received a greater share of the revenue. This was controversial, but he accomplished it successfully. He was similarly successful in brokering the agreement between the NPS and the Catholic Church which resulted in San Jose Mission on the San Antonio River becoming a National Historic Site. This was the first permanent NPS area established in Texas, and the first national historic site west of the Mississippi River.
A major challenge during Quinn’s tenure was to acquire the land which would subsequently become Big Bend National Park. Before the NPS would accept it, Texas had to acquire title to the land. In 1942, the Texas legislature appropriated $1.5 million towards this end. Accordingly, Quinn opened an office in Alpine to take charge of the purchasing of 675,775 acres which it was anticipated would become Big Bend National Park.
The existing state park at Big Bend totaled 112,907 acres and had been assembled incrementally from 1933. Quinn’s title was changed temporarily to director of the Big Bend project, and an assistant was appointed as acting executive secretary in his absence. By November 1942, Quinn was able to report that all property within the described national park boundary had been purchased, with the exception of 13,316 acres and the total proposed Big Bend National Park boundary incorporated 712,000 acres.
His commitment to park and conservation was fierce:
It is up to us to be zealous and eternally vigilant—sometimes to the extent of being belligerent. We must work and fight to keep what we have…I have heard the question has been asked, “Why is Frank Quinn such a controversial figure?” I guess it is because I am always in the middle of any fight to conserve our natural resources, park and historic sites.
Despite his avid stance as a conservationist, the lack of resources from the state treasury forced Quinn to occasionally compromise that belief in situations where he believed it would be in the long term interests of the state park system. Two examples illustrate this. He agreed to lease a 1000 acre state park in Tyler for oil drilling in return for a lease fee of $250,000 which he stated “saved our entire system maintenance-wise.” He went on to report, “Three wells were drilled - - all dry - - fortunately. But we figured that we could take the chance of damaging one park for the benefit of all others.” The second illustration was in Huntsville State Park where the dam creating the lake was breached and for 15 years no appropriation was forthcoming to restore it. Hence, he authorized selecting sales of timber using trees that could be removed without hurting the park, and used the revenues to restore the park.
In 1944, Quinn became increasingly frustrated with what he considered war time abuse of the state parks, ranging from pressures to force more grazing and oil exploration to an attempt to house mental patients in abandoned CCC barracks in some state parks. He was also frustrated by his stagnant, mediocre salary. He was paid $300 a month and had been earning $500 a month 17 years earlier when employed by Salsbury in Memphis. However, his salary per se was not the issue since Quinn had other sources of income from his outside business interests. Clearly, he was doing the job because of his passion for parks and not the remuneration that was offered. It was the symbolism of the low salary which he found irksome because it reflected the legislature’s indifference to the notion of having an excellent state parks system. Quinn was persuaded to remain in the position but he requested “an indefinite leave of absence” and finally resigned in 1945.
The frustrations associated with Quinn’s position were captured in a 1945 newspaper editorial commenting on his resignation:
No other state with a parks system even approaching the extent of Texas’ pays such a miserly stipend. Other states are proud of their parks realizing not only their asset as a morale builder at home, but their actual dollars and cents value as tourist magnets. In Texas, some persons, disregarding the real potentialities of park development, have advocated diversion of the areas to other uses, even to livestock, instead of the people. Other states are increasing substantially their appropriations for park developments. A few members of Texas’ last legislature attached a rider to the state parks appropriation which actually limits the operations to such an extent that the Secretary-Director felt unwilling to carry on. This rider slipped by without much notice and was passed- -and THIS while states all around Texas are planning big post-war improvements.
Texas has been fortunate the past six years in having a man of Quinn’s imagination and foresight to see their possibilities as state recreational centers and the energy and ability to develop them…If the short-sighted policy on the part of the powers-that-be which cause good men to leave state service is to continue, Texas may well take her seat at the back of the theater of progress…The salary of the Executive Secretary-Director is $300 per month while the little state of New Jersey- -about the size of a Texas county- - pays $500 a month.
After his resignation, Quinn expanded his business interests. He invested in a new truck dealership in Austin, the Austin Motor Truck Company, and became its general manager. In 1947, he organized Superior Stone Products in Round Rock, near Austin, a company that processed local supplies of limestone for the feed, fertilizer and chemical industries.
When he departed from Texas State Parks, he informed the board, “I expect to become a permanent resident of Austin and my service will be available to the Board without cost at any and all times.” Hence, he was given the title of “consultant” by the board, and for the remaining quarter century of his life he zealously sought to help the state parks system. He was also a long-time member of the city of Austin’s Park and Recreation Board from 1947 to 1965, including a period as chairman.
As an influential private citizen, Quinn pushed the state legislature to conserve Padre Island, which ultimately became a national seashore under the jurisdiction of the NPS, and to preserve Port Isabel’s historic lighthouse. During the 1949 legislative session, Quinn was the driving force behind the legislature’s decision to transfer to the State Parks Board most of the state’s historical parks which were previously under the jurisdiction of the Board of Control.
In 1949, Governor Shivers appointed him to the State Parks Board and he remained on it until 1961. At the time of his appointment, the San Antonio Express opined, “The State Parks Board never had a sturdier friend or an abler and more effective advocate than Frank Quinn. He became the board’s chairman in 1951. From 1946-1950 Quinn was vice-president of the National Conference on State Parks. He served two terms as president from 1950 to 1952 and subsequently became chairman of that organization’s board from 1960 to 1962.
In 1952, Quinn used his parks experience in the state and his success in business as a platform for his candidacy as a Democrat for the state Senate, but lost in a spirited campaign. His passion for baseball was manifested in his leadership in attempting to attract a major league baseball team to the city of Austin, and in arranging for the Pittsburg Pirates to hold their spring training there in 1954. Thereafter, his energies were focused on increasing funds for state parks, maneuvering a $25 million bond bill through the legislature in 1955. The governor signed the bill, but the attorney general would not authorize the sale of the revenue bonds.
When Quinn’s final term on the State Parks Board expired in 1961, an editorial in the Houston Post commented:
One of Texas’ longest-serving unpaid officials, if not the longest, has retired, leaving an unsurpassed record of accomplishment for Texas parks…Through the years he must have given half his time from his businesses and other affairs to the state parks. And the only compensation he has received- -except for the time he was full-time executive director- -was reimbursement for travel expenses…Relatively few of the general public are aware of the magnitude of his contributions to the development and operations of Texas State Parks. It is a contribution of which all Texans may be proud.