One-time paratrooper comes of age in move to MP

Picture above: Parks Director Ricky Harris’s team at Oaklawn Park, where their work is the backdrop for the new Pilgrim’s Community Center that opens September 7. From left are: Dawrin Gonzalez, Luis Gonzalez, Gustavo Galindo, Garrett Houston, Chris Barboza, Ricky Harris, Brandon Green, Noel Harrison, Chris Stevenson, Daniel Carrol, Brad Lennox.

Before construction began, architect’s renderings provided a framework for Parks Director Ricky Harris to envision a panoramic view of Oaklawn Park from the plate glass windows of the newly-completed Pilgrim’s Community Center, named for the company that triggered construction with a $1.2 million grant. Opening ceremonies begin at 4 p.m. September 7. The facility fronts on the park’s south border along West Pecan Street.

Overlooking a walkway wending into the storybook-groomed forest bordering the Union Pacific Railroad on Oaklawn’s east side, the panoramic view from the facility’s meeting room “is my favorite view of the park,” said Mr. Harris, whose three-year record here spoke for itself in July, when he was promoted to Assistant City Manager.

At the same time he’s managed projects and crews following orderly park maintenance and construction schedules, “Ricky has assisted me by taking on responsibilities beyond the scope of his duties under Parks and Recreation,” said City Manager Ed Thatcher. A 40-year veteran of city administration in Texas, growing up as the fourth generation of a family farm and dairy operation in Idaho, Mr. Thatcher’s education in operations, management and planning began there.

“The way you break a young horse to plow, is to harness him with an old plow horse,” Mr. Thatcher said. “We have a number of great projects underway and for some time I’ve felt the need for an Assistant City Manager to ensure that we as a staff manage effectively and efficiently.”

Mr. Harris earned his first command experience as a staff sergeant in the army. He was a paratrooper. He parlayed his service years into plans completed as he GI-billed his way through a Bachelor of Science degree from Texas A&M-Commerce, his hometown.

He studied kinesiology, before his hometown became the first to sign him up as its director of Parks and Recreation in 2009. In 2016 he moved to the Metroplex as Parks and Recreation Operations Manager in Rowlett, running a full-time crew of 40 plus as many as 75 summer part-time workers manning three divisions including a city water park.

 

In Mt. Pleasant, he’s planned, coordinated and managed park operations, activities and maintenance plus Civic Center operations, Main Street and Special Events. He opened the Mt. Pleasant Sports complex where the previous administration began construction and was he was responsible for oversight of construction of the new community center at Oaklawn Park.

His long view of the town has been shaped by a newly completed city plan guiding future development, while being tempered by a growing understanding of the history of forces shaping the community.

Industrial-scale poultry processing here began with a self-styled industrial foundation of local businessmen who dug in their own pockets and borrowed to finance construction of the plant that in the 1960’s became a part of Pilgrim’s Pride. Company patriarch Bo Pilgrim impacted America from Wall Street to the backstreets of the West Side Community sandwiched between the chicken plant and Oaklawn Park when it was an open expanse with baseball diamonds when the city bought the property, built a swimming pool and declared it the town’s second park.

With the arrival of the chicken plant, full-time production line work replaced day labor employment for residents of the historically black West Side. Growing up there, City Councilman Jerry Walker can tell you how steady paychecks changed lives there, Mr. Harris said, and how Bo Pilgrim became a patron whose rise to become for a moment the largest chicken processing industry in the nation was accompanied by local contributions underwriting everything from public school projects and medical facilities to Heritage Park.

A decade ago, Brazilian-based JBS, the largest meat-production enterprise in the hemisphere, bought the Pilgrim poultry facility in Mt. Pleasant.

“The opening of the community center is another chapter in an ongoing story about the relationship between community and industry,” said Mr. Harris, whose fortunes now include playing a part in the story’s city administration backdrop.

The run up to the opening of the Pilgrim’s Community Center included an intensified work schedule at Oaklawn while maintaining the town’s other 15 parks through the height the summer season. Meanwhile, the new assistant city manager / parks director has been thinking ahead to the next project on the books.

Dellwood, the oldest and most storied of the town’s parks, is up, next in line, but also part of the backstory of Mr. Harris’s early days in town. The same as each of his parks, work at Dellwood began almost at once with tree crews cleaning and pruning back grand examples of oaks and cypress shading playgrounds and walking trails.

 

In terms of city history, it’s a continuation of development dating back to 1948, when the city council bought for a park the ghost of a failed efforts of the Red Mineral Springs Development Company that in 1909 began development of Dellwood as a resort.

The resort went belly up in 1911, followed by a boys school that moved into its grand hotel, then closed when the hotel burned.

“Here’s something,” smiled Mr. Harris, and produced a news account of the municipal golf club that in 1924 met at city hall before securing a three year lease for development of a nine hole course that never came into being at Dellwood.

The new assistant city manager’s question would be, what happened that a plan wasn’t seen through?

He’ll continue as parks director as he moves into the traces alongside an older Texas city manager warhorse better knowing the ropes.

Additionally, he’s enrolled in the Texas Certified Public Manager Program at Texas State University that begins in January.