Podcast: Reviving the Mardi Gras Spirit | With Dancie Perugini Ware

J.R.: Today Galveston hosts the third largest Mardi Gras celebration in the United States, drawing in over 350, 000 visitors to the island every year. Mardi Gras celebrations in Galveston go back to the 1850s, with small private celebrations and masquerades. But those indulgent celebrations started happening in the streets of Galveston in 1871, with city wide Mardi Gras parades and festivals.

Much like New Orleans, Galveston's Mardi Gras was a huge draw for tourists. And the celebrations were so big and expensive, by the 1880s, Mardi Gras crews began to cut back on the extravagance. These celebrations continued until World War II. The war effort led to resource shortages and large public celebrations were scaled back or canceled nationwide.

So you may not know that these massive citywide celebrations we have today had to be resuscitated from dormancy.

Dancie: I'm Dancy Ware, a fifth generation Galvestonian, born and raised on the island. I still maintain my primary residence on the island in a historic neighborhood. And so Galveston is a very important part of my heritage.

J.R.: We talked a little bit about your role in bringing Mardi Gras back to the island after approximately a 40 year hiatus. Stopped in the 40s. What was the deal with bringing Mardi Gras back?

Dancie: It was a really big deal to bring it back. Of course, um, I, I, I want to certainly give credit to individuals who were having smaller parties of their own.

There was a Mardi Gras, of course, the old clubs like the Arturo Club consistently had Mardi Gras celebrations for their members. And there were some groups of Galvestonians who were interested, small groups who were having neighborhood parties, neighborhood parades. But the momentum was starting to build.

We need to bring back Mardi Gras. Prior to 1985, there had been local news percolating around the island. Why can't we bring back Mardi Gras? Let's think about this. Why bring it back in a grand tradition? For number one, from a standpoint of stimulated the islands. Midwinter economy, Galveston used to be pretty sleepy until spring, until summer, and now we're going to recreate a midwinter festival that literally, we imagined that it was going to fill hotels because when you work closely with people like Cynthia and George, they didn't want to do anything on a small scale.

They wanted the best. And so the best meant working to bring back The Big Night Parade. George had a wonderful recollection as a child of standing on 25th Street and catching beads as a child and seeing the Grand Parade march by and the bands. And so we had some wonderful enthusiasm from the Mitchells to help lead this, but we also started reaching out to members of the community across Galveston to get them engaged.

But it was with the impetus and the a generosity of Cynthia and George Mitchell that had got off in a big way. I had been working closely with them and all of their historic restoration projects. I had my own firm at the time. It was much smaller than it is today. Today, my firm is about 21. We have offices here in Houston, our primary office headquarters and an office in North Carolina.

We've been blessed to represent industry leaders around the country in their particular markets, whether it's hospitality or tourism or the focus is on health care. Folks like Texas Children's, we're very proud to say that we have had a long history of representing best in class corporations. We're sitting here today talking about the remarkable growth of Mardi Gras and Galveston.

It started with the Mitchells vision that they didn't want to just have a parade. They didn't want to just have a ball. They wanted to be all encompassing. Because the real goal was actually an economic one. And the goal was to bring back a midwinter. Celebration that would attract tourists, fill the hotels, also get people interested in the historic Galveston.

That really played the backdrop quite well to how to bring back Mardi Gras in a grand fashion. George Mitchell often said, we don't want to just do Mardi Gras, we want to create the golden age of Mardi Gras. was accomplished. For 10 years, I focused a great deal of energy, along with my staff, from the arts, the culture, the performing arts, the visual arts, every aspect.

The great Galveston Arches program, all of that was really intended to stimulate the economy and to attract people to the island and get the local community to participate. Totally embedded in bringing it back in a big way, and that was really the backdrop is to form the crews. It all started with the Knights of Molis, one of the oldest crews on the island that dates back to the 1800s and getting that revolved with a great group of civic minded men who were willing to come in and get involved and lead it.

And they did quite successfully. It's still the largest crew on the island. And then to encourage other people. Once we even had a crew for artists only. We had the crew of Regina, we had the crew of Requirius, the crew of Brew. The list goes on and on. And I think that's what stimulated folks to get on the board, get on board quickly.

In the beginning, the first parade, and this is the first flyer from 1985, and already it says, Mardi Gras Galveston, February 1985, a week long celebration of a 118 year old Galveston tradition. And believe it or not, these were the many events, including the Grand Night Parade, which had 19 Floats, all designed by the famous float maker, Blaine Kern, from New Orleans.

So I went over and met with a number of float makers with my friend, Weeze Daugherty, and her family from New Orleans introduced us, and without a doubt, Blaine was the best. He did all the big parades in New Orleans, and loved the challenge. He became our mentor. He told us about doubloons. He told us about how to have cast iron beautiful medallions made.

So he was a great guide to bringing it back so quickly. And then Galvestonian Rudy Teitman brought his barges over to New Orleans, and we had the arrival of the gods. Because that first theme, were the, obviously Greek gods, because we had a Greek patron behind it. But then that led to, and I want to emphasize the importance of arts and cultural performances, visual performances.

We're meant to be the backbone of the revival. Yes, we wanted a great parade. Yes, we wanted wonderful bands. In the beginning, we had seven college bands marching.

J.R.: You were inspired by something you came across while doing research at the Rosenberg Library, right?

Dancie: Yes. I preach that to the team here constantly at my firm. Research, research. And we're fortunate in Galveston in that we have probably one of the finest collections of historical research about Galveston as well as Texas history. And the library has a whole team of wonderful curators and historians to advise. I was certainly no exception. In the early days when we were just talking about bringing Mardi Gras back in a grand way, I certainly believe that it's all based on history.

And the key is authenticity. We don't want to go and just replicate what New Orleans did or what Mobile, Alabama was doing with their Mardi Gras. Our Galveston Mardi Gras had to have a real basis on the way it originally was. At least from my perspective and the Mitchell's perspective. I spent so many hours there and combing through old invitations and articles and photographs of the origins of Mardi Gras Galveston.

Back from the 1800s. So, months and months of research resulted in learning about the original crews, learning about the, the night parades. During the research in the library, I came across this fascinating photograph. Casey Green, the curator at the time, and quite knowledgeable. And he said, Nancy, that's a stereopticon photograph.

I had to look through special binoculars to get the 3D effect. It was a shot of the historic Strand. With beautiful iron front buildings, the cast iron buildings in full display, and these ceremonial arches, much like you'd see throughout Europe, when Napoleon would return from a victory, they'd construct a famous arch.

They were temporary arches, they were obviously made of temporary material, and I said, why were these constructed and when? And Casey said they were constructed for Saengerfest. Saengerfest was a German singing club. Galveston was a gateway to the south, and so immigrants came from all over the world. It was a very strong German population, just as there was in Italian and Greek, and so forth.

And the German group, the singing group, they traveled around the state to compete with other groups. Singing groups. Our Galveston group was called Saengerfest. And they traveled to New Braunfels to compete and won the contest. And the prize was you could return to your city and two years thereafter you would be the host.

Like the World's Fair. The prize is you get to be the host city. So Galveston went all out. So here we have historical precedent. Basis of what this was all about. Go back to something that was authentically Galveston and then take it to a different level. And that's what we did. So that's when I took the photograph and showed it to the Mitchells.

Cynthia and George Mitchell loved the idea. And of course, they were instrumental in putting up all the support to getting Mardi Gras rekindled on a grand fashion. And all along, it was Cynthia Mitchell's encouragement of me to make it as artistic as possible. The architects was yet just one more element of that.

And so here we were moving into 1986. This would have been in 1985. The sesquicentennial of the state. I thought, this photograph can be replicated. I had already had relationships with some of the greatest architects in our country. Because I've always had a fabulous interest in architecture. It's a big part of my DNA.

And, uh, I approached a number of them over the course of about four months. Showed them the photograph from the 1800s, and I said, we're going to do the modern day. And every of these notable architects were willing to design and donate all of their drawings, everything. And the macaques, but with one proviso.

They had to be built, and they did. And so the architects all flew in for opening night. When the arches would be unveiled, they sat atop a double decker bus, zoomed around The Strand and Mechanic Street, and each one would talk about their arch and what they loved about it, and they were very enthusiastic.

I think many of them were surprised they actually got built. Although, that was the demand. It has to be built. We'll do all this work, but we want to see them up. But the fact they all came, and they came from all across the country, From Connecticut, Cesar Pelli, from Chicago, Jan Entigerman, from, from New York, Michael, New York and Connecticut, Michael Graves.

Many of them were the deans of the architecture schools where they actually lived. Graves had been the dean of Princeton's architecture school, Pelli, dean of Yale's school, Charles Moore was dean at the University of Texas. We had, The A list, and it was really a remarkable experience. Charles Moore, he was the only architect who wanted to engage the local community.

He wanted school kids making sea life out of cardboard and paper mache. They were actually displayed, and he had his students hang them in nets, and that was graced right in front of the opera house. Aldo Rossi. I met Aldo in New York at the Plaza Atene with his associate who was fluent in English, a young architect.

So we reached out to him, showed him the other architects that are already displayed. Instant response that he would do one. He was, and I had seen his work in Venice because he had created a fabulous floating theater. In Italian, I wish I could say it better, but it was a floating barge and it had a theater on it.

Incredible. I knew that he was, he had a sense of magical in his mind, and of course he jumped in, loved it all, came here for it, we have a photograph of him with his headpiece that matched his arch, and he wore it, uh, at Mardi Gras, and so he wanted lighthouses, because he wanted it to have the port feeling, he even created bleachers in between the arch, because he imagined the public sitting in the bleachers to watch the parade. The arch became totally interactive. His was the most interactive.

J.R.: I love how they're all so unique.

Dancie: Yes, there, no one, and no one saw the design of the other ones until the font. The exciting things about the Arches is that they lived in the inspiration for many years thereafter. Till today, people talk about the great Galveston Arches.

Then we, one, moved on and the Arches were so successful and had received such attention nationally and internationally. I approached the director of that time of the Galveston Art Center. His name was Bill Robinson. Bill introduced me to a phenomenal woman at the Cooper Hewitt of Design, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Design in New York.

I brought this type of book with drawings, sketches, and maquettes. Her name was Lisa Taylor. I asked if they would consider exhibiting any of this work. And she said, absolutely. All of this had to be shipped to New York. The models, the maquettes, the architect's vision, and it was displayed at the Cooper Hewitt, which is the National Museum of Design, in New York for about three months.

And the exhibit was called Archers for Galveston. It was a wonderful exposure for the island. It was just a phenomenal experience. Of course, George being an astute businessman, he was always interested in ways to rekindle interest in Galveston and to attract people. It was all part of the greater good of how to build up Galveston as not only a destination, but to create an economic driver.

And Mardi Gras, indeed did that. To go from the seawall to the strand because it was important to link the key areas of the island. Absolutely. And, and that worked out beautifully. And to also go down one of the most beautiful streets in Galveston, a residential area. The first year I realized it was going to be off and running. But even now, I'm surprised we have so many crews and it's sustained over the two weekends, which was originally our plan as well.

J.R: What is your one favorite memory from those early years of getting Mardi Gras back up and running?

Dancie: There'd probably be two. One was standing in front of the Tremont with my parents and seeing the illuminated night parade roll by because they're both Galvestonians, so they remember Mardi Gras.

The first thing was the great night parade. Thousands of people everywhere. The city kept saying, where did all these people come from? The city was overrun. You've seen the photographs. The next moment was the arches. Not only in Galveston, but at the Smithsonian. Wasn't my name up there on the highlights.

J.R.: Yeah, let's do it for your city, your island. These arches were built to be temporary. The Powell Arch, standing for nearly four decades, is the last remaining of the 1986 Mardi Gras arches. Yet another reminder of Galveston's international and multicultural influence. And people like George and Cynthia Mitchell and Miss Dancy Ware, along with countless other people, are yet another example of how Galvestonians reinvent, reinvigorate, and revitalize the island's community and economy after inevitable events like storms and war.

Without the efforts of these Galvestonians back in the 1980s, would we still be waiting for someone to bring back one of the largest festivals and economic drivers to Galveston Island today?