‘Gates of the Alamo’ Author Addresses San Jacinto Dinner

A childhood passion for the television series featuring the coonskin-cap-wearing Fess Parker as Davy Crockett grew into an adult obsession for understanding the Alamo for Stephen Harrigan, author of The Gates of the Alamo. Harrigan will be the featured speaker at a dinner commemorating the 166th anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto. The San Jacinto Museum of History Association’s annual San Jacinto Dinner will be held on Wednesday, April 17, 2002, at the Houston Country Club, 1 Potomac Drive.

Upon a base fortified with painstakingly thorough historic research, Harrigan wove fictional and actual characters together to portray the story of the Alamo in a new light, one that focuses on the people involved. “One of the myths of the Alamo and the Texas Revolution is that all these colonists rose up as one against the tyranny of Santa Anna, but, as anyone knows who has studied the period with any care, there was considerable divisiveness and ambivalence,” Harrigan related to Stephen L. Hardin, Ph.D., in an interview for Alamo de Parros.

The difference individuals make on history is a reoccurring theme of this year’s commemoration of the Battle of San Jacinto. A full-day symposium on Friday, April 19, 2002, will focus on Personalities of San Jacinto. Harrigan’s remarks at the San Jacinto Dinner will address “Historical Fictions, Historical Falsehoods: A Novelist Confronts the Reality of the Past.”

An Oklahoma City native, Harrigan planted his roots firmly in Austin as soon as he entered the University of Texas, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. The long-time writer for Texas Monthly penned several books prior to The Gates of the Alamo. In 1980, The New York Times selected Aransas as a notable book of the year, and The Washington Post and The Dallas Morning News named Jacob’s Well one of 1984’s best books. Two collections of his essays have been published, A Natural State and Comanche Midnight. His versatility as a writer is further demonstrated by his involvement with screenplays and teleplays ranging from Rin Tin Tin to The Donner Party and from Laura Ingalls Wilder to O.J. Simpson.

A 1977 Dobie-Paisano Fellow, Harrigan also has been honored with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Sundance. The former president of the Texas Institute of Letters maintains membership in the Philosophical Society of Texas, and his writings have appeared in such notable periodicals as Atlantic, Esquire and New Yorker.

The San Jacinto Dinner is co-chaired by Ann H. Kelsey and Betty A. Conner. Tickets for the dinner benefiting the San Jacinto Museum of History Association start at $250 per person. Table rates are also available. For reservations or more information, contact Rebekah Clark at 281/479-2421.