The Huntwick Story
The Story Behind “The Huntwick Story”
Who Is The Writer Chuck Moore?
I am part of the “FM 1960 in 1970” group when my dad relocated with Marathon Oil to 5215 Lookout Mountain Drive at the end of August 1970. Prior to Huntwick was a fair amount of traipsing around as did a lot of other energy families. Was a sophomore at Cy-Fair High School, built in 1942 at 290 and Telge involving a 40 minute bus ride. After college, was an Air Force officer, ran a small oil production company then tried computer programming. Enjoy listening to music with a digital collection of almost 90,000 recordings to chose from (love Glenn Miller). Still buy old vinyl records and digitize them. In the garage is a 1971 Chevy Camaro being rebuilt. Most enjoyable gig was 4 months of summer in Colorado (2009-2015), at 8,000 foot elevation in the town of Marble. Up there I drove off-road jeep tours up the mountains to 11,500 foot elevation. While in Marble, I rebuilt their museum for I am a historian at heart.
How Did He Come To Write “The Huntwick Story”?
The genesis for this undertaking came from the Harris County Appraisal District. I kid you not. I was appealing the HCAD 2016 house valuation and needed information to support my position. In doing so I looked at Lookout Mountain Drive over in Champions. The differences I found raised my curiosity about the overall composition of our neighborhood so I compiled a Excel file of HCAD data for all 830 houses Interesting what I found which lead to further HCAD additions including the date built. Seeing 30 years of building dates started my thinking about Huntwick in historical terms but only in a vague way.
A defined focus came about while talking with a neighbor about our HCAD valuation protests. During one chat we wound up talking about the early years when he brought up the Huntwick Bank and it being blown up during an attempted robbery. This got my attention for I did not remember the event (was away at college at that time). My historical side was now up and running so I wrote an article about this event which was printed in the November 2016 Huntwick Herald.
I enjoyed writing the first article and immediately started a second about the first three houses built in Huntwick. During the second article my historical side came on full force and I needed something more than just historical articles in the Herald. This lead to my undertaking a complete history of Huntwick. What started as an HCAD protest morphed into a historical obsession.
About The Content
Ok, my passion is going full force but where do I get the information to put the history together? I certainly didn’t have it. The first idea was to contact Huntwick “old timers”. Sounded simple but I had reservations for while many knew my mother Eunice, I was not much more than a name to most them. But went ahead and started making some cold calls and knocked on some doors.
Right off the bat two critical sources came about. First was meeting one of the developers, Mr. Bob Cochran at his home. I did not know he lived in Hutwick until Ann Con- rad told me. From Bob came a tremendous wealth of information about the development that could not have come from anyone else but him. The other was Maidie Phillips and the use of her 454 issues of the Huntwick Herald, a treasure trove of history. The issues were the result of her being contacted by Lynn Berryman after I asked Lynn for help finding information.
How did I decide what to write? I didn’t make the decision because it was made for me by the obtained material. At the beginning of the project and through its completion, I did not know what would be found so I cast as wide a net as possible. Did not want to eliminate anything. Information has its own way of showing you how to assemble it. Felt like a historic Sherlock Holmes in the process. Also got a lot of enjoyment with each new discovery and pleasure talking with Huntwick folks.
The content was written with depth and breadth, no veneer treatment. The content is a mix from many sources and includes events in the immediate area outside Huntwick that directly affected life inside Huntwick. Many story items had bits and pieces from many folks which was critical for a complete telling. A lot of memories both short an long. The 454 Huntwick Heralds provide good stories plus dates that helped identify when other events occurred. (Many of the 454 Heralds have been digitized with the goal of all being so copied and available to anyone). Several subdivision maps visually show the building history along with many tables of data. Even data without narrative can be interesting. Several subjects have some controversial aspects but they are part of the history.