Heath history, vintage photos topic of reporter’s first book

3349HEATcvr.indd — The cover photo, courtesy of Fay Lofland, features the Isbell home, 1911. M.K. Isbell owned a general mercantile store in Heath. Image reprinted with permission from Images of America: Heath, by Austin Wells. Available from the publisher online at arcadiapublishing.com or by calling 888-313-2665.

(HEATH, TX – Jan. 25, 2016) This good news just in: by the time you read this, my book, the one on Heath history which I’ve been working on for about a year and a half, will be published!

Let me backtrack to the summer of 2014, when I was first contacted via email by an editor from Arcadia Publishing asking if I knew of anyone local who would be interested in writing a book on Heath history for their number one series titled Images of America. This was back before I joined the Blue Ribbon News team, when I was still writing for the Herald-Banner, and as I recall I had just written a column about the rock wall for which the city of Rockwall is named. I figured, that’s most likely the reason they would contact me, since I was a reporter covering the Heath area and had just written about a very important piece of Rockwall County history.

USE_Page 29 (1) — Circa 1913 image of the early school at Heath, established in 1902. It was located west of the present-day site of Heath City Hall and taught students in first through tenth grade. Photo courtesy of Heath City Hall; reprinted with permission from Images of America: Heath, by Austin Wells.

Honestly at first, I wasn’t sure how to reply, as I really didn’t know many writers or historians in the area at the time. Then I started thinking, wasn’t one of my goals in life to become a successful author? Why can’t I be the one to write this book?

So without thinking too much about it I wrote back and told the editor that I’d be happy to take on the project. I’m going to take a moment to cringe right now, because oh how naïve I was to just accept a project of this magnitude without knowing as much as I probably should have about the publishing company or its acclaimed series. And little did I know just how much hard work and time I was going to need to complete the book.

USE_Page 47 (1) — John H. Hall and his wife, Mary Jane Seay, came to Texas on a wagon train. The Hall family settled in the Heath area in 1886. Photo courtesy of Patsy Stodghill; reprinted with permission from Images of America: Heath, by Austin Wells.

Several months into the project, I thought things were going very slowly. Yes, I had collected a handful of images that I thought would make the cut for the book. But when I was told I would need 200 images, I began to panic a little. I wanted the book to have vintage photographs of people or places related to Heath and only Heath. I soon found that would be nearly impossible for me, considering I’m no historian and at the time had little to no idea who I was going to contact outside of the Rockwall County Historical Foundation for photos. With the deadline for my first chapter coming up much too quickly, I felt I was walking down a long dark tunnel with seemingly no end in sight.

But then God sent me my saving grace in a local historian and writer named Patsy Stodghill.

I had corresponded with Patsy’s daughter Sheri Stodghill a couple times through my work with the paper, and knew she had written the book on Rockwall forArcadia, and that she was a most accomplished author and renowned historian. However, Sheri was battling cancer at the time, a fight she would sadly lose, and it wasn’t until sometime after her death that I was able to work closely with Patsy. But I’m so thankful I was, for without her knowledge of local history or her connections with several longtime Heath residents, this book might not have been. Patsy grew up in Heath and attended the old two-story Heath school, parts of which were used to buildHeathCity Hall, and it was through her that I came to realize that many of the folks she went to school with still reside in Heath. These are the folks who so graciously lent their old family photographs for this project which can be seen in the largest chapter of the book titled Ancestries of Heath.

Patsy and I spent many, many hours on this book – including an all-nighter – organizing all the photos we had collected into chapters, identifying faces in the photographs, and going through the Rockwall County Historical Foundation’s big brown book on Rockwall history (the Bible of Rockwall County history, we called it) to provide the very facts found in my book on Heath, written in my own words of course.

Through those long hours we spent pouring over photographs, I developed a special type of bond with Patsy, one that has really blossomed in the weeks after the book was finally finished. You see, she’s adopted me as her grandson in a way, and I have gratefully adopted her as a grandmother. I can’t thank her enough for helping me gather enough images for the book, a task I admit I didn’t believe possible before I met her.

What a way to ring in the New Year! It really is hard to believe this book is a reality. As I sit here flipping through its contents, I can’t shake that surreal feeling or slow the beating of my heart, knowing that this is something I made – and at the age of 27 yet! Thanks so much to all who contributed to this book. I look forward to seeing the community come out to my first ever book signing, and proudly sharing this work that I believe is truly a collaborative effort of the longtime families of Heath.

By Austin Wells, Blue Ribbon News staff writer. Images reprinted with permission from “Images of America: Heath” by Austin Wells. Available from the publisher online at arcadiapublishing.com or by calling 888-313-2665.