Markers: A Shared History through Poetry

About the Author\nBorn in Fort Worth, Texas, Claire (Williams) Martindale counts Austin as her second hometown because of childhood and working years spent there. She earned degrees in history from Texas Christian University and The University of Arizona at Tucson. After a first career as a public school teacher, Claire joined the staff of the Texas Historical Commission from 1974 to 1982, serving as Director of Research. She left her career as a professional historian to work with Habitat for Humanity at the international headquarters in Georgia and in Virginia for the past 30 years. She has provided leadership for several non-profit boards and was a founding member of Austin Habitat for Humanity. Claire has written hundreds of Texas Historical Markers, speeches for Habitat groups, sermons, and essays. Her poetry also covers a wide spectrum and has received award recognition. Although she no longer pursues history professionally, she never lost her love of exploring roots, telling a good story, and illuminating places and people encountered along the way.\nDAN K. UTLEY, a native of East Texas, holds history degrees from the University of Texas and Sam Houston State University. A former public school teacher, he joined the Texas Historical Commission in 1979 and became Director of Research. He later worked as a freelance public historian and served as a staff historian with the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (University of Texas) and the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. He subsequently rejoined the THC, where he served as Chief Historian working on projects related to courthouse preservation, military sites, historical markers, and cemetery preservation. He retired from the THC in 2007 and recently retired as lecturer and Chief Historian of the Center for Texas Public History at Texas State University. He is the author of numerous books on Texas history, including From Can See to Can’t: Texas Cotton Farmers on the Southern Prairies (with Thad Sitton), History Ahead: Stories beyond the Texas Roadside Markers (co-authored with Cynthia Beeman) and Faded Glory: A Century of Forgotten Texas Military Sites (co-authored with Tom Alexander). He is a past president of the East Texas Historical Association and the Texas Oral History Association, a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association and the East Texas Historical Association, and recipient of the Thomas L. Charlton Award for Lifetime Achievement in Oral History and the Bryan Award for Leadership in Education Award (TSHA).\nMarkers is an exploration of friendship and personal journeys by two public historians who first met in 1979 as overseers of the Official Texas Historical Marker Program of the Texas Historical Commission. The “markers” they write about in this collection of reflective poetry speak to perceptions of place, memorable characters, life-changing encounters, quiet times, and shared perspectives of the past. These are the abiding landmarks of two friends who, after only three years as colleagues, traveled seemingly divergent professional paths that nevertheless crossed many times through the years, always in meaningful ways. Herein are some of the many stories they have shared along the way.