What we'll do is send Malcolm McLean and his wife, Margaret Stoner McLean, two of our people who helped open the San Jacinto Monument in 1939 a half-century ago, on April 20-21, 1939.  These two can give behind-the-scenes history of the opening days and the first years the monument and museum, built 20 miles east of Houston to mark the concluding military event of the Texas Revolution of 1836.
 
Actually, three people with direct connections to Uvalde went to handle the operation:  Ike Moore, now deceased, was director, Malcolm McLean, assistant director and archivist, and Margaret Stoner McLean, receptionist and first postmaster at the monument.

On a recent visit to Uvalde County to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, the McLeans recounted the unique experience of opening the Monument Museum and operating it during its first three years.
 
"We went to work at San Jacinto Monument on our honeymoon," the McLeans said in beginning the story of their 50-year marriage.

They had become acquainted in Austin while both were completing degrees at the University of Texas.  After their marriage ceremony in the Montell Methodist Church on February 11, 1939, they caught a bus to Houston, where Malcolm continued his work with San Jacinto materials the following Monday morning.
 
Several weeks earlier, Ike Moore of Uvalde had been hired to be director for San Jacinto and had taken Malcolm with him as assistant director and archivist.
 
The two knew each other from student days in Austin, followed by work together in San Antonio, where Moore was state director of a project called the Texas Historical Records Survey and McLean was field editor for Spanish translation of records for the entire state.

Margaret McLean gave her view of those first days in Houston.  "On Monday, February 13, Malcolm reported to work at the temporary headquarters of the San Jacinto Museum, on the third floor of the Houston Public Library.  I trailed along.  I thought I might be able to assist in some way in the monumental task for three staff members to prepare for opening ceremonies at the San Jacinto Monument by April 20, 1939."
 
The three staff members, Moore and the McLeans, continued to work in Houston until they could get the equipment to go out to the monument,  taller than the Washington Monument, but standing empty after it was completed as a Texas Centennial project in 1936.

Malcolm said of the work, "When we arrived in 1939, we had to order every piece of furniture, hire every additional employee, and install display cases.  I received every item that came in for three years, issued receipts, wrote the description and placed it in the case."

George A. Hill, Jr., president of the Houston Oil Company, and the Houston Pipeline Company, was the one who really started the museum,  according to Malcolm.  Hill was president of the board of trustees and had drafted the legislative act creating the museum for Texas.

Before visitors could enjoy the site, there was work to be done.  Margaret became an employee instead of a volunteer when Hill checked her handwriting skill and hired her to address several thousand invitations to go all over the world.  She was paid ten cents per invitation.

"Then, when time came near to open the monument, they realized they'd have to have somebody to receive visitors," Margaret said. "So they hired me as receptionist, to take care of the sale of souvenirs and elevator tickets and to answer visitors' questions.  When a newspaper reporter came for a story and couldn't find the director, I was the one who had to get a pistol from one of the display cases and pose for a picture.  I worked there three years for $60 a month."

Getting the building ready was not a simple matter.  For instance, one staff member noticed that the great bronze doors, already three years old, had the hand prints of the installers etched into the bronze by the moist sea air.   Malcolm remembers, "We had to get paint remover and cut the bronze down to base level and seal it over.  When the fellows didn't get through one Saturday, however, they left a bucket of battleship paint remover sitting on the floor.  When we came to work Monday morning, the floor had an inch-deep indentation that had to be resurfaced."

The staff didn't open those bronze doors until April 20, 1939. Instead, everyone entered through the large windows on each side of the monument.

The few visitors who came in those days also entered through the windows.  When the world premiere was scheduled for "Man of Conquest," a movie about Sam Houston, movie stars Richard Dix, Gail Patrick and Joan Fontaine knocked on the window and asked to see the museum and use it as background for photographs.

Because most of the displayed items came from Hill's collection, he frequently drove out in his Cadillac, loaded with books and other valuable items from his Mexican collection, all for Malcolm to carry in and catalog.

"One day Mr. Hill drove up with a rolled canvas from Mexico, a painting of Fr. Antonio Margil de Jesús," Malcolm said.  "Fr. Antonio founded San José‚ Mission in San Antonio and the East Texas missions.  His portrait had been cut out of a frame in Mexico.  We hired a restorer, and I watched as he laid this valuable painting face down on the museum kitchen table, sprinkled rosin all over the canvas and ironed the back of the canvas in order to correct the problem with flaking paint.  Then he turned the canvas right side up and used a paint brush to fill in the cracks in the paint."

Malcolm enjoyed working with Hill and with others of that generation whose families had priceless items from early Texas and Mexico:  descendants of Houston, Sherman and Lamar, and various other members of the Sons or Daughters of the Republic of Texas.

Malcolm related a turn of events that has had a continuing influence on the lives of both McLeans.  "Soon after we arrived at San Jacinto, Mr. Hill said that every one of us had to learn all about the Battle of San Jacinto,  and damn quick, because this was February and we had to open in April."

While researching the battle, Malcolm saw that his own ancestor, Sterling Clack Robertson, made significant contributions to Texas history at the time of the battle.  From that study of family history, an idea began and later developed into the 15 volumes of significant Texas history under the title "Papers concerning Robertson's Colony in Texas."

"As we arranged the museum, a visitor would walk through the door into an entrance lobby and would see the elevator lobby straight ahead," Malcolm said.  "On the right was the room that covered the Spanish-French-Mexican period.  The Anglo-American period up to the Civil War was on the left side.  Across the back was an exhibit of Thomas W. Streeter's  bibliographical material, printed items about Texas from 1785-1845."

Hill was concerned that the monument wouldn't be ready for the ceremony, but Moore was the kind of person who would work slowly until just before the deadline, Malcolm remembered.  Materials had been placed in the display cases, but actual arrangement in the cases was put off until the last hours.  Moore and Malcolm spent most of the night working frantically  on arrangements before the April 20 opening.

Margaret had gone home at the usual time to get some sleep and to return to work at 8 a.m. on the morning of the opening.  So when the time came to open this important museum, the director and assistant director were still asleep.
 
The only people at the museum were Margaret and the elevator operator.  It was up to them to open those bronze doors for representatives from the government, the Vatican, the John Carter Brown Library, and other cultural institutions.  The French minister, with frock-tailed coat and top hat,  gloves, spats and cane, was there.  The Sons and Daughters of theRepublic of Texas, the Texas Folklore Society and other historical societies, various  state and local dignitaries, all arrived to be entertained, but there were no others to greet them.
 
"Ike Moore and I finally did get there, though," Malcolm said.  "I  arrived in time to see Sam Houston's son, Andrew Jackson Houston, with a great flourish, present a gardenia to Margaret.  He was Honorary Caretaker of the Park, and had visited us periodically."

Malcolm also met Thomas W. Streeter.  That meeting developed into later work for Malcolm, translating numerous Spanish documents, locating and describing Texas materials for the Streeter collection.

A typical day at San Jacinto?  "Every day was different from the preceding one, except that we went out early every morning and stayed late at night," Margaret said.  "Before we left each evening, there was the counting of all the money and all the souvenirs -- we always lost some souvenirs to visitors.  An average of 1,000 people came each day, with as many as 4,000 visiting some days."

"I counted the money for over three years and put $100,000 in the bank for the State," Malcolm said.  "The monument was definitely a paying proposition."

The McLeans remember the day they looked at the signature on the registration book and saw "Walter Disney of Baltimore, Maryland." It was the famous Walt Disney, actually from Hollywood, and he spent two hours in the museum, quietly reading every label in every case.
 

Because of their years at the monument, the McLeans understand the problems that have developed with the structure that sways in the wind and  tilts from side to side as the sun warms it each day.

Even in 1939, there were lots of problems with the building.  It wasn't  air-conditioned, and the humidity was a major problem.  Hot air loaded with moisture came through doors and windows on the two lower floors, went up the 489-foot shaft to the observation floor, then condensed and sent water running back down the steps.

Most of the water went to the main floor vault, where valuable documents were kept.  Coffee cans which caught the water had to be emptied each day.
 
The power frequently went off during thunderstorms, which meant that even the ventilation fan couldn't work, and mildew and mold would grow even faster.
 
According to Malcolm, lightning rods were attached to each point of the star at the top of the monument.  Two cables came down opposite sides of the monument and grounded, always attracting the lightning and knocking     out the power.  A man from Houston would be called to drive out to the monument, walk up to the top of the monument with no ventilation and reset the brushes on the elevator motor.
 
If visitors were caught on the observation floor when the power went off, they would have to walk down the steps of the tower.  That walk was especially terrifying to area people because of the belief that ghosts of all the Mexicans killed at San Jacinto haunted the tower.

Suddenly in 1941, the opening of World War II ended the work of Moore and the McLeans at San Jacinto Monument.     Moore was called into service, leaving his wife, Elizabeth, alone to await the birth of their child.  The young mother died when their son Henry was eight days old, and Moore himself was killed in the Pacific during a  kamikaze raid on his ship.
 
Soon after Pearl Harbor, Malcolm McLean received two telegrams in one day, one offering a job in censorship in San Antonio, and the other offering work with military intelligence in Washington, D. C.  He chose Washington.
 
Margaret served only a month as the first postmaster at the monument,  then left to join her husband.