Texas Highways – September 2019

SEPTEMBER 2019 11

Rangerette Roots

“When I was in high school in Houston,

I kept hearing about the Kilgore Ranger-

ettes. My drill team director handed me

several college brochures and pointed

to the one for Kilgore. ‘This is where you

belong,’ she said. I just completed my

26th year as the assistant director and

choreographer.”

Taking the Field

“Our founder, Gussie Nell Davis, was

trained as a pianist. In the late 1930s,

Miss Davis was sought out by Kilgore

College President B.E. Masters, who told

her, ‘I want something to keep people in

their seats at halftime of football games.’

What Miss Davis created was precision

dance, now a worldwide phenomenon.

In the past two summers, we’ve been in-

vited to Switzerland and Italy for perfor-

mances. Our history is on display at the

Rangerette Museum on campus.”

College Life

“Kilgore College is not just the Ranger-

ettes—absolutely not. Our photo journal-

ism department is top notch, led for years

by O. Rufus Lovett. Raymond Caldwell

was director of the Fine Arts Division

when he founded the Texas Shakespeare

Festival, which has the only professional

theater company in East Texas. Our foot-

ball team has won the national junior

college championship twice, and Evelyn

Blalock coached women’s basketball for

20 years, winning three national titles.”

World’s Richest Acre

“The first things you see coming into Kilgore

are the oil derricks. My husband is in the

downstream side of the petrochemical in-

dustry—working the refineries and chemical

plants—so he’s usually not affected by the ups

and downs of the upstream side of the busi-

ness, where they pull raw crude and natural

gas out of the ground. For the longest time,

Kilgore’s economy was driven solely by the

upstream side—great for two years, just okay

for a while, then two years of no hope. Though

it’s not as big as it was in the 1930s to ’50s, oil

and education are still the two biggest por-

tions of our economy, so much so that our

campus includes the East Texas Oil Museum.”

Culturally Speaking

“A lot of it goes back to oil. The annual Pipe

Organ Festival is quite an event. We have

beautiful pipe organs in our largest churches,

and oil fortunes were part of that. On our

campus is the Van Cliburn Auditorium. Van

Cliburn’s father was in the oil business and his

mother was a piano teacher when they moved

here when he was 6. He graduated from

Kilgore High School.”

J.R.’s for Short

“Our favorite restaurant is J.R.’s—that’s Jack

Ryan’s Steak and Chophouse—but we shorten

names in Kilgore. The owners are culinary

geniuses. They trained in the big city and

brought ‘upscale’ home to East Texas. There’s

also The Back Porch close to campus. It brings

in singers like Ally Venable, who is going to be

somebody, from right here in Kilgore.”

P

eople automatically associate Kilgore with oil and Rangerettes,” says Shelley

Wayne, who should know. Wayne’s husband works in the petrochemical busi-

ness, her daughter was a Rangerette, and Wayne herself was a member of Kilgore

College’s world-famous drill team before becoming its choreographer. But she

adds, “There is much more to this town.” Founded in 1872 by the Great Northern Railroad,

Kilgore changed dramatically with the discovery of oil in 1930. Derricks soon crowded

downtown, comprising the “World’s Richest Acre”—today a collection of restored derricks

along a manicured downtown strip. Kilgore College opened in 1935, and in 1940, the newly

formed Rangerettes took the field at halftime of Kilgore Rangers’ football games, establish-

ing a precedent for drill teams and precision line dancing. After serving as captain of her

high school drill team, Wayne arrived as a freshman in 1985. “Everything I am as a profes-

sional was shaped by my being here,” she says.

TOWN

TRIVIA

POPULATION:

14,

NUMBER OF

STOPLIGHTS:

16

YEAR FOUNDED:

1872

NEAREST CITY:

Longview, 12 miles north

MARQUEE EVENTS:

East Texas Oilmen’s

Chili Cookoff,

Oct. 24;

East Texas Pipe

Organ Festival,

Nov. 10-14;

Rangerette

Revels, April;

Texas Shakespeare

Festival, June-July.

MAP IT:

Rangerette Museum,

1100 Broadway Blvd.;

East Texas Oil Museum,

1301 S. Henderson Blvd.