A Conversation with Arlington Heights Native Brice Evans
INTRO: Arlington Heights native Brice Evans has lived within a 15-block area almost all of his 77 years. His first home was at 4700 Lafayette. In 1933, he moved with his parents to the 4900 block of El Campo until 1935. Following his parents’ divorce, he moved in with his grandparents, Minnie and William Wilson Brice who lived at 4605 Pershing when his mother, Lida, moved to San Antonio to work.
In 1936, Brice moved to 3612 Harley St. with his grandparents. He attended South Hi Mount Elementary, Stripling Junior High and is a 1949 graduate of Arlington Heights High School. For two years, he was a student at T.C.U. where he studied ballet under David Preston in the inaugural year of the T.C.U. Ballet Department. Fellow students included Ed Holleman, Kathryn Horn and Patty Carr who remained life long friends. As a group, Brice and company were auditioned and hired by the Houston Light Opera in 1951 to dance in summer productions of “Brigadoon” and “Irene”.
He left for the Great White Way where he studied a wide variety of dance styles and landed a job in the chorus in a road production of “Finian’s Rainbow” which included an equity contract for $45 a week out of which he had to pay his own room and board. In 1953, he joined the Navy during the Korean War. When he was discharged in San Diego he got a job teaching ballroom dance for Arthur Murray Studios. In 1955, he transferred to Dallas and finally returned to Fort Worth in the early 1960s to open his own studio “Brice Evans Teaches Dancing” on the southwest corner of Camp Bowie and Merrick. His studio sign featured two left feet. He taught all ages and performed in ballroom dance competitions and for several years taught on the national tour of Dance Caravan teaching professional and student classes in over thirty states.
Since 1969, he has taught debutantes how to maneuver their curtsies in big ball gowns and has been a party designer for the last 25 years. He closed the studio in 1981, but continued to teach informally. Today, he runs estate sales and operates several booths at an antique mall in Dallas and still loves to dance with Tango Argentino Fort Worth.
Brice was a founding member of the original Arlington Heights Neighborhood Association which was organized in 1970s to deal with the Interstate 30 expansion. He has watched Fort Worth grow and our neighborhood develop from its infancy.
We moved to 3612 Harley St. in 1936. At that time, there were only eight or ten house houses on Harley, Washburn and Crestline west of Montgomery St. and down towards the Museum of Science and History. The De Gunia family, Carl Graves, the Waddells, the Smiths, the Fulbrights, the Evanses and the Clarks The rest was all vacant lots and Trinity Valley Steel. I don’t remember any houses over there at all because I walked to school that way. To the south of Harley over towards Byers and Bryce there was nothing at all, period, exclamation point.
I lived on Harley from the time I was five until I was 28. That was my bringing up house. The house was just torn down. It’s a terrible feeling when they tear down your childhood home. Your past just goes right in front of your eyes.
On top of the hill on Washburn, Harley and Lafayette that was where Boswell’s Dairy kept their horses. During World War I, gun emplacements for Camp Bowie had been there. The cavalry practiced on the hill right in front of where my house was. And there were big stone horse barns for the cavalry down on Montgomery St.
On Byers, in that low part at the very bottom, there was a creek that ran through there, it was actually a swimming hole. We used to go crawdading, in fact the whole family used to go crawdading. There was also a runoff creek between where the Museum of Science and History and the Community Arts Center are today. Matter of fact, some of those big mesquite trees were there when I was a child. That was all play ground, that whole side from Camp Bowie all the way down to Crestline, because houses started on Crestline. There were three houses on Crestline. Miss Clark was at the corner of Montgomery and Crestline and she had a cow and we got buttermilk from her. We had chickens and we traded chickens for buttermilk. Behind Miss Clark, there was a family named Evans and that turned out to be Melvin Evans who was a big landowner and “one of the boys”, but no kin to me at all. I think Miss Clark was his mother-in-law.
Progress was very, very slow. Harley was an unpaved street until after the war. We began to get houses across the street from us when the city started moving some houses from the east side of Montgomery up the hill to Harley. There was corner mom and pop store where that funny airplane fuselage is today. Every corner had a store where you’d get milk, little stuff, because you only went to the grocery store once a week because you didn’t have a car. For groceries we went up to Clyde Eddins, it was a big grocery store up where Bluebonnet Bakery is. There was also a big grocery right across from where the Kimbell Art Museum is now, where Eckerd’s used to be. And there was also a huge watermelon garden. What they called a watermelon garden was nothing but a great big shed with tables with newspaper on them where you could go eat watermelon. It usually had a great big tank full of ice with watermelons in it and they’d slice them and you’d sit there and spread out newspaper and you eat it there.
July 25, 8:00-11PM: Tango Argentino de Fort Worth
Tango Argentino de Fort Worth is a social dance event, open to the public for a fee of $10 per person. Interested parties are welcome whether they know how to dance or not. Short free dance lessons will be offered at 8:30PM. Leather-sole shoes recommended; semi-formal dress attire, please. Location: Back Gallery
Brice Evans with his mother, Lida Brice Gatewood, in front of 4605 Pershing Avenue in 1935.
3605 Harley in 1936 looking south
Brice Evans & grandmother Minnie Brice in 1951 at 3612 Harley
Brice Evans & grandfather William Wilson Brice in 1933 at 4605 Pershing
Brice Evans in 1949 at 3605 Harley
Brice Evans in Brigadoon in 1951
Brice Evans & Marion Mayo 1970s
Brice Evans & Raydene Hands early 1960s
Katherine Horn, Brice Evans, Patty Carr 1950