Writing Samples

Surfing through Carol Guzy’s Facebook page, I notice posts about her achievements and reposts about journalists in war zones. I also see that she loves animals.

“Oak Cliff derives its name from the massive oaks that crown the soft green cliffs” (Elliott). This advertisement from the earliest days of the emerging community rang true for over one hundred years. People who live in Oak Cliff are intentional residents. We have mature trees and great swaths of green spaces that provide habitats for a diversity of wildlife. We choose to live here because of the affordability and small town feel that has made our area different from others in Dallas.
That uniqueness is a result of city negligence for decades. Oak Cliff, beginning as an elite development in the late nineteenth century, was once a jewel south of the Trinity River. In the aftermath of the 1893 financial crisis, economic hardships persisted and a new trolley line opened that sparked property sales to the working and middle classes. Residents voted to annex Oak Cliff into the City of Dallas in 1903 (Nall). White flight of the desegregated 1970s and misconceptions of racial influences regarding safety and blight led to declined property values. By the 1980s, Oak Cliff was the most ethnically diverse community of Dallas, but it was not predominantly white. So most Caucasian Dallasites, scared for their lives, stayed away and left us alone to live our preferred small-town existence within the city.

Writers are like butterflies. During our developing larval learning stage, we devour as much as we can of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary. As pupae, we wrap words together on pages to create cohesive expressions, learning about diction and style.

When Waco High School student Ann Willis attended Texas Girls State and later Girls Nation in 1949, little did she realize that one day, forty-two years later, she would become an actual Texas governor, the second woman ever to be elected to that office.