The Dean Highland Neighborhood Association has partnered with Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History and seeks to collect stories and history from the Dean Highland area.
These recorded interviews will be preserved, transcribed, translated, and publicized by the Institute for Oral History at Baylor, so that we can remember the people of this neighborhood for generations to come.
If you would like to be interviewed, or know somebody who you think should be interviewed, please contact Brandon Christensen via email or you can text him: 530-748-7566. If you would like to know more about why we are doing this, please continue reading below:
Dean Highland is one of Waco’s more densely-populated neighborhoods and has lots of history, lots of potholes, and some important city institutions. The neighborhood is rectangular-shaped and it stretches from McFerrin Ave in the north to Bosque Blvd in the south, and from MacArthur/33rd Street in the west to 25th/26th Street in the east:
The neighborhood is as diverse ethnically and financially as it is historically vibrant. To fully capture this richness of life would be impossible, but nevertheless, we believe that capturing snapshots — in the form of formal, recorded interviews – of Dean Highlander’s voices will greatly enrich our city, our families, and our ability to govern ourselves. “Voices from Dean Highland,” which is being done with the guidance and full support of the Institute for Oral History at Baylor University, has three main purposes:
1) It’s an attempt to bring neighbors together through the medium of stories; to remind us, as Dean Highlanders, that life is a beautiful thing and neighbors are an integral part of it. The bringing together of neighbors will also tie in to the Dean Highland Neighborhood Association’s efforts at recruiting more Dean Highlanders to join it and thus to participate in the all-important practice of self-government.
2) It is also a glimpse into the relationships between historic institutions and people in the neighborhood. The history of Dean Highland is the history of important city institutions. The neighborhood’s center is the old Hillcrest hospital complex (the red square in the map below), which has since been torn down, and, in the southern end of the neighborhood (the other red shape), Highland Baptist Church, a large, century-old congregation:
At the northern end of the neighborhood is Zion Hill Baptist Church, an old African-American church that welcomes all through its doors:
Notched into this intricate weave of dense housing that showcases both prizewinning century-old homes and tracts that were built during the postwar boom of the 1940s and 1950s, prominent and well-respected religious institutions, and the ruins of a massive and vital medical complex, is the 10-story headquarters of the Waco Police Department:
By bringing the perspectives of residents into the historical picture we can help to better assess the importance of long-standing institutions to our lives and the lives of those who came before us. When told through the eyes and memories of Dean Highland’s residents, we can better gauge just how important these institutions of religion, government, and medicine are (or were) to the people who actually live in Dean Highland.
3) The third purpose is more quixotic than realistic, but there may be policy implications for this interview series. As the world continues to urbanize, city governance is necessarily going to have to become more complex and sophisticated. In a society such as ours, where self-government is the stated aim, neighborhood associations and universities are going to have to step up and take a hands-on approach in how policy is decided and executed. This interview series, these “Voices from Dean Highland” that you lend to the public square, could thus be considered a form of policy experimentation and, as such, we are grateful for your involvement.