New Yorker praises Kilgore Christmas

Hank O'Neal, a New York City photographer with East Texas ties, plans to use this photo for his 2009 Christmas cards. Born in Kilgore in 1940, O'Neal will having a showing of his recent Highway 80 photographs in a show planned for July at the Longview Museum of Fine Arts.Courtesy photo by Hank O'Neal A New York City photographer "on assignment" in East Texas last month praised Kilgore's Christmas celebration for its simplicity and sincerity, saying it beats anything the big city has to offer.

Hank O'Neal wrote recently to Mayor Joe Parker extolling the Chamber of Commerce's "Mt. Kilgore Snow Hill Experience" festival (though he didn't know that is its title), saying next year if given the choice of walking from his home in Greenwich Village to Herald Square or flying to Dallas and driving to Kilgore, "I'll come and see what you do in 2009."

O'Neal explained he was born in Kilgore in 1940 but his family left in early 1942 when his father, the high school ROTC instructor, was called to active military duty. He further explained he hasn't lived in Texas since 1950, but he's returned to East Texas throughout the years, including in December when he journeyed to Dallas for a lecture at Heritage Auctions and to make plans for a show in July of his work at the Longview Museum of Fine Arts.

Hank O'Neal said he enjoyed the Kilgore Chamber of Commerce Christmas festival for its simplicity and sincerity, saying, "It wasn't a come-on. There was nothing to sell. It was just a party for those kids to have a nice time." He said he loves the expressions on these kids' faces as they watched their peers play in the "sumo wrestling" ring. Courtesy photo by Hank O'Neal That show will feature photographs taken along Highway 80, so he was in East Texas to check it out but he also wanted to take nighttime photos of Kilgore's replica derricks, lit up for Christmas, which he plans to turn into a personal Christmas card for 2009.

"I was just lucky, I guess, because the night I chose to take the picture was December 12th. I was surprised to see the streets blocked off, but I found a place to park, grabbed my cameras and went back to watch the kids on the train and the ski jump," O'Neal wrote to the mayor.

"I must say the simplicity and sincerity of what you and your associates arranged that night for the children of your city is one of the best Christmas events I've seen in a long time," O'Neal wrote. "It outshone all the glitz and zillion-dollar window displays on Fifth Avenue and the enormous tree in Rockefeller Center, because it was real. Nothing was contrived. There was no commercial anything, no one had to pay to slide down the snow chute or ride the train. It wasn't in a mall and nothing was for sale. The music was just old Christmas songs, Bing Crosby was singing White Christmas when I left."

Mike Coston, president of Kilgore Chamber of Commerce, said he was pleased Mayor Parker passed along the letter about the chamber event.

"This is our gift to the community and it's a way to bring in people who aren't familiar with Kilgore to see the wonderful community we have," Coston said. "We're glad someone outside our community felt so welcomed and found it so attractive."

This week in a telephone interview, O'Neal said he is "fascinated with Highway 80" and looks forward to his photography exhibit at the LMFA.

He said he would be pleased if Kilgoreites want to add him to their list of "famous people," though his time here was brief. His biography on www.wikipedia.com says: "Hank O'Neal (born as Harold L. O'Neal, Jr. June 5, 1940 in Kilgore, Texas) is an American music producer, author and photographer."

O'Neal's mother, Sarah Christian O'Neal, "was a musically and intellectually inclined housewife from Tyler" and his father, Harold Sr., was first a U.S. Army regular — he helped to build the state park facilities at Caddo Lake and Daingerfield, among other projects in these parts, before heading off to WWII — and then an educator, first in Texas and later in upstate New York.

Raised in Texas, Indiana and New York, O'Neal graduated from Syracuse University in 1962 and joined the CIA in 1963, working in Washington D.C. and New York City until 1976, while simultaneously serving in the U.S. Army from 1962-67.

Naturally, all that government work prepared him for his next life: producing jazz music records, writing books and taking photographs of famous people, including Jacquelyn Kennedy Onassis.

"Life's a funny thing," O'Neal said. "You meet a lot of people on the way and one person I met in the CIA was Squirrel Ashcraft, who introduced me to all the music people."

Ashcraft was O'Neal's senior officer and a serious jazz musician in his earlier life. He also loved recording music and made early tapes in his Chicago home in the 1930s of folks who would become well known. Among those was singer-songrwriter Johnny Mercer, who wrote numerous hits, sometimes with partners, including "I'm an Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande," "Hooray for Hollywood," "Jeepers Creepers," "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" and "Moon River." Mercer was also co-founder of Capitol Records.

Ironically, O'Neal is presently working on a project for the American Masters PBS series about Mercer, who received 19 Academy Award nominations and won four. The documentary's producer: Clint Eastwood.

While in the CIA, O'Neal began working with musicians, photography and writing books so he simply decided he wouldn't report to an official office anymore to make a living.

He purchased his first professional camera in 1969 to document recorded sessions and jazz concerts he was producing through his music recording company, "Chiaroscuro," (pronounced: "key + arrow + skew + row," meaning "the interplay of light and shadow on a surface").

Who is his favorite musician? That's hard to say since he loves music and has done records and concerts with hundreds of them. O'Neal has worked with so many famous people, it might be easier to list those he hasn't known.

"I've worked with some wonderfully, creative, nice people who make beautiful music," he said.

One of his favorites is Dave Brubeck, 87, whom O'Neal said is still performing hundreds of a concerts a year. Brubeck is the subject of a second documentary on which O'Neal is working.

"The first concert I ever saw, in Syracuse, was Dave," O'Neal said. "So here it's gone full cycle and I've written the script for the movie." Eastwood is the producer of that project.

Tony Bennett is among his favorites because, he said, "Tony is real.

"That's the reason I liked that event in Kilgore — it was real; Tony is real. He gets out there with a bass, a piano, a drum. He's real. There's no dancing girls, no light show. His shows are straight ahead, done well, done simply. And that's all you need if you have the goods," O'Neal said. "It's the same case with the Christmas show in Kilgore. It wasn't a come-on. There was nothing to sell. It was just a party for those kids to have a nice time."

And though jazz has been his vocation, classical music is O'Neal's passion.

"I've probably spent more time listening to classical music than jazz. I just realized I could produce good jazz concerts, records and festivals, but I would never undertake recording an opera," he laughed.

His first official photography show, in 1973, was entitled "Winona, Texas." He still has a couple of relatives in the Winona-Starrville area, including a 91-year-old aunt.

And through his trips to Texas for various reasons, he says he has found "so many things absolutely visually wonderful" about Highway 80.

For his upcoming Longview show, he has about 110 photographs stretching from Terrell to Hallsville (the furthest he has been).

"I have the most fun running up and down the highway, taking photos," O'Neal said. "This last time, about three different people stopped (when they saw him along the roadway) to ask, 'Are you okay? Is your car broken down?" (Perhaps O'Neal knows the word "Texas" comes from the Caddo Indian word "Tejas," meaning "friend.")

As for his recent trip to Kilgore, O'Neal said he visited the "beautiful public library" in search of a telephone directory from 1940 to find where his parents lived when he was born. He found, instead, a city directory that listed their address on Brook Drive.

"I went to look and that was a very fancy street," he said of the historical designations of various homes in the area. "Since my dad was a teacher and ROTC instructor, my parents were poor as church mice in 1940."

So, if any Kilgoreites remember Harold or Sarah O'Neal from 1940-42, or the location of the ROTC camp where he thinks they may have lived, give the News Herald a ring and we'll pass the information on to O'Neal.