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George Dahl was one of the architects who built Dallas. He was undoubtedly the driving force behind Fair Park, leading the planning and construction of 26 Art Deco-style buildings in advance of the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition. He divided the park into four sections, centered on the 700-foot-long Esplanade, which leads to the ornate State Hall.
Neiman Marcus Building, Bank of America Building, Statler Hilton Hotel, Old Town downtown dallas morning news “Stone of Truth” Building information’ The new addition to the old library, the low-slung modern building of WFAA next door—it’s all Dahl.
That’s part of the reason the magazine commissioned writer David Bauer to track the tumultuous family saga that ended his life. In 1978, his daughter Gloria and her husband Ted petitioned the court for custody of the 83-year-old architect. The Adkins did not believe in his ability to manage his finances and other business affairs, and feared that his decision to marry the young Joan Renfro was prompted by her manipulation. Dahl argued that his family came to obtain a trust for his late wife, of which he was the sole trustee.
The Elkins wanted the court to remove Dahl as trustee, but ultimately failed. The lower court upheld the decision. Ten years ago, when we were doing this article as part of our 40 Greatest Stories package, my former colleague Jason Heid dialed up Dahl’s son-in-law, Dallas attorney and judge Ted Arkin. Akin’s phone number.
He called the verdict “one of the most tragic miscarriages of justice” that “changed precedent in England since 1750”. The ruling resulted in the trust being dissolved and Dahl taking control of millions of dollars in the trust. Akin argued that the justices were constrained by a Supreme Court ruling that “makes it easier for plaintiffs’ attorneys to bring similar lawsuits in the future than the true substance of the case.”
In the years after Ball’s story was published, Jason summed up the end of Dahl’s life this way:
George Dahl died in July 1987 at the age of 93. Ted Akin said Dahl’s new wife, Joan, isolated him in the years before his death, especially after he suffered a second stroke that left him frail and in a wheelchair. So there was never any reconciliation. . “You can’t fix things if the person is locked up somewhere you can’t access or even see,” Akin said. Dahl’s family learned that Dahl had been hospitalized at Methodist Hospital just days before his death, and Gloria and their son George were able to get there and see Dahl for the first time in years. During that visit, he mistook his daughter Gloria for his granddaughter Laurel.
Arkin offers a very different perspective on the events described in Ball’s story. He still insists Renfro was only in it for Dahl’s money and that in the end, she got it all. The Elkins received only family photos as their inheritance. (Renfro died in 1996.) He was convinced the jurors at Dahl’s mental competency hearing had been rewarded. He is convinced that the famed architect was a changed man after Dahl suffered his first stroke in 1966, which led to their disagreements over the tax liability of withdrawing funds from the family trust and Dahl’s later doubts about his family’s motives. doubted.
“This is a tragedy,” Akin said. “We lost all the way.”
Nonetheless, this story is one of the 50 greatest stories we have ever published, and you can read it here.
author
Matt Goodman
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Matt Goodman is D Magazine. He writes about a surgeon who kills someone, a man…
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