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Story by Norman Luther, Jr., from his
Autobiography
Edited by Joseph Neal Luther
© 2004
In 1931, Leland, my brother,
had reached maturity and my Dad made him
partner in a service station called “The
Wide Awake Garage” operated by H. N. Luther
& Son. It was located across the
San Antonio Road
from the main entrance to
Schreiner
College.
(Click here to see a photo of
“The Wide Awake Garage”)
Since we named the business
“The Wide Awake Garage”, it was necessary to
have a night man on duty, so that was
Leland. My job was to sleep in the office
and keep a light on outside. Anyone
wanting service would ring a bell. We had
to get up in the middle of the night on many
occasions to sell gas.
The one and only known
earthquake to hit
Kerrville
occurred one night when Leland and I were
sound asleep at the Wide Awake Garage. To
awaken to the sounds of an earthquake can be
most puzzling. On this night, we had been
in bed several hours when a parts rack –
consisting of about eight metal shelves
filled with auto parts and
accessories – began dancing
around the floor. This made an awful noise
as car parts began dropping on the floor,
scaring the devil out of two sleepy heads.
We did not have the slightest
idea what was going on since we had never
experienced anything like this before. We
imagined all sorts of things. We turned on
all the lights to look around for a
burglar. When we could not find the reason
or cause of this disturbance, we locked up
the garage and got the heck out of there and
went home “all shook up”.
The next morning we heard on
the news that
Kerr
County had experienced an
earthquake. The fault line was visible out
on
Tivy Mountain Road.
***********************************
Editor’s Notes
by Joseph Luther
The “fault line” that was
visible on
Tivy Mountain Road
was still visible in my youth as late as
1950. Today, I believe it was probably
a slope failure type of earth movement
rather than a fault line. It had the
appearance of a fault scarp on the north
side of
Cypress Creek Road
just before the turnoff to ascend
Tivy
Mountain. The vertical
displacement and lateral distance implied a
modest movement.
The verification of this
earthquake and its strength as felt in
Kerrville
can be found in the following publication:
Earthquake Information Bulletin, Volume 9,
Number 3, May-June 1977, by Carl A. von
Hake. This US Geological Survey
publication is available at
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/states/texas/texas_history.html
This is how Carl A. von
Hake’s report describes this earthquake:
”The 1931 western
Texas
earthquake heavily damaged many buildings at
Valentine. Also, many chimneys fell
(VIII). The shock occurred at 5:40 AM on
August 16; although people were panic
stricken, there were no fatalities and only
a few minor injuries from falling adobe.
Adobe buildings suffered most, and cement
and brick walls in many places were badly
cracked. Even though Valentine
bore the brunt of the shock, damage was
reported from widely scattered points
in Brewster, Culberson, Jeff Davis and
Presidio
Counties. Cracked walls
and damaged chimneys were reported from
several towns. The total felt area covered
about 647,000 square kilometers in
Texas and
New Mexico
and an estimated 518,000 square kilometers
in
Mexico.
The earthquake was accompanied by rumbling
subterranean sounds heard over practically
the entire affected area. The shock,
measured at magnitude 6.4, was strongly
recorded on all seismographs in
North America and at stations
all over the world. Numerous aftershocks
were felt in the epicentral region; the
strongest on August 18, was intensity V at
Alpine, Lobo, Pecos and Valentine and
intensity IV at
Carlsbad,
New Mexico. A
minor aftershock was felt at Valentine on
November 3”
While we may not think of
Kerrville as an earthquake-prone
location such as
San Francisco, the
community does have some potential for earth
movement as shown by the maps from USGS at
the URL shown above.
Joseph Luther, Ph.D.
Lincoln,
Nebraska
© 2004
About Joseph Neal Luther:
He was born in Kerrville,
Texas, in 1943, and graduated
from
Tivy
High School in 1961. He
was a combat veteran of the Viet Nam War,
serving in an air rescue squadron and in
aeromedical evacuation. He received his
Bachelor of Arts degree from
Eastern
Washington
University, Spokane,
WA, and his Master of Urban and Regional
Planning degree and Doctor of Environmental
Design degree from the
College
of Architecture
at
Texas
A&M University.
He taught at
Eastern
Washington
University
from 1974 to 1983 where he was Department
Chairman. He served as Associate Dean of
the College
of Architecture
at the
University
of Nebraska
from 1983 to 1994 at which time he returned
to full-time teaching. He was endowed
Professor of Community Planning and
Architecture and retired from the University
in May 2004 after 31 years of teaching.
He has received numerous
awards for his teaching, research and
service in the field of small town and rural
planning. He is a 32nd degree
Mason and has two children, Christopher Neal
Luther and Stephanie Lea Luther Dahmke.
***********************************
Beverly Ann Luther, sister of
Joseph Neal Luther, was also born in
Kerrville, in 1937,
and married Joseph Glenn Reagan, a
geologist, in 1958. He was killed in an
industrial accident on an oilrig in the
Gulf of Mexico in 1961. Beverly
died in 2002 at
Bryan, Texas.
Beverly and Joseph were the children of
Norman Luther, Jr., and Marjorie Neal
Luther.
(This information
is from the
Luther Family Genealogy compiled by
Joseph Luther – exerpts of which are found
in another section of “Kerr Photos & More”)
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