Enduring women of Texas

By: Aaron Brand - Texarkana Gazette

DeKALB, Texas—Anyone fortunate enough to take a slow drive through the Sulphur River Bottomlands with Shirley Shumake as tour guide can easily sense her love for the land.

Even on a relaxed Friday afternoon following a winter morning rain, a feeling of peace pervades the landscape as the river noses and bends its way between parcels and plots of land, oaks of all sorts stoic against the sky.

Easy to sense, too, why someone would settle here to make a life for themselves and for family, or even preserve life here for others now and in the future.

Reverence for the land inspired Shumake’s participation in the fight against establishing a Marvin Nichols Reservoir in the area where her family has farmed for generations. They’ve worked the land here for about 175 years.

Her family, truly, has endured, farming and ranching the land for years. She took up as her cause making sure the land itself endures.

Shumake has now been honored for her dedication to preserving the land as part of a new exhibit at the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.

“Enduring Women” honors several contemporary women who show a deep commitment to maintaining Texas’ land, their stories told through oral history and photography.

Shumake, one of a dozen women honored, went to Austin early this month to participate in festivities honoring these women important to Texas life and history.

“St. Edward’s University was commissioned by the Texas State History Museum to do an exhibit on women shaping Texas. They had people in the political field, people in the environmental conservation field, and what I’m in is women enduring on the land,” Shumake said. “Women ranchers is what the 12 mostly were.”

They’re women who’ve maintained ties to the land for years, persisting through “the hardships and the trials and tribulations of keeping their land,” Shumake said. Being included in this group surprised her.

“What’s this all about?” was her first reaction, she admits, then noting the attention the Marvin Nichols issue raised in Austin. “We realized in 2001 that we were about to have a lake built on top of us. We immediately became politicians.”

To Shumake, not only is the Sulphur River important to her livelihood and family’s history, but she understands water is a valuable resource now. She also has a keen eye for the politics of it all.

“Water is the oil of this century,” she says. And here’s her take on the efficacy of building a new dam right in the middle of this land: “Reservoirs are designed to hold water. They do not make water.”

The “Enduring Women” exhibit grew from a project that partnered St. Edward’s University with the museum. Charles Porter, a history professor, and Mary Brantl, an art history professor, worked with undergraduates to tell the stories of how each chosen woman influences Texas life.

“As part of their course work, students conducted extensive research related to the women’s history, relationship to the land, and individual challenges that ranged from drought to eminent domain,” Brantl said.

Two students visited Shumake. They took photographs and gathered oral history, both of which are included in the exhibit.

Her history here stretches way back. It’s like following a river to its source. Shumake says her family came here from Alabama and established themselves in the area by the third decade of the 19th century.

“They had two land grants—each, the son and the father, got a land grant. The land grant was in ‘41, and the land office in Austin told me if the land grant was in ‘41 that means they were there in ‘38 because you had to be on it and do improvements to it for three years before they’d give you the grant,” Shumake said. “We know they were there in 1838.”

She believes they cut timber and had a sawmill, plus the farming. She says they would have cut roads, too—wagon roads. The promise of free land was enticing to folks, as were the watery resources to be found.

“The reason they stopped in that part of the country was a good supply of water,” Shumake said, adding, “The 21st century comes on here. We get going in it good and the same thing that caused our people to stop here could be the same thing that takes us away.”

As someone dedicated to preserving the land, she’s mindful of these resources. That extends to the trees, species such as white oaks, red oaks, willow oaks, sweet gum and elms.

“Of course, our dad was the go-to man in this part of the country if someone wanted a horse or a mule,” Shumake said. Her family’s involved in horse racing, and at one time she was a horse identifier at Louisiana Downs.

She still brands her cattle with her granddad’s branding iron. He died in 1922.

To endure on the land, “you have to multi-task. You have to be able to get something from your timber. You have to be able to get something from your cattle. You have to do some side jobs in between, if you need to,” Shumake says.

She studied at Texarkana College and then worked for an agricultural engineering company for a little while. She did some substitute teaching.

But more than anything, she enjoys being out on the land, saying, “I just love the outside, always have.”

Jane Morris, a member of Friends United for a Safe Environment who spoke at Marvin Nichols hearings and meetings, is among those who stood with Shumake in opposing the reservoir. She appreciates Shumake’s relationship to the land and her grass-roots role leading the fight to preserve the area’s ecology and water resources.

She calls Shumake a “true Texas woman who lives her Texas heritage.”

Morris points out that Shumake farms the land her grandfather farmed and lives in the 100-year-old home he built. This year is the home’s centennial.

“She loves the land and the people of the land and she is devoted to her family, her friends, her neighbors and her community,” Morris said. “She carries on a multi-generational tradition of living on and serving the land.”

Jim Presley, president of FUSE, believes Shumake and her pioneer spirit are a “fitting symbol of the best in Texas women who made the state and the region remarkable.”

He sees her as a proper role model for contemporary times.

“Shirley is not only an enduring—and endearing—person, she comes from an enduring family that stretches back to the days of the Republic of Texas and, I’m sure, beyond,” Presley said. “She has the tenacity of a frontier mother protecting her young—and her turf. Her turf—that land around the Sulphur River in both Bowie and Red River counties—is precious to her. She does not take kindly to unwarranted encroachment on it.”

“Enduring Women” is displayed in conjunction with a larger exhibit, “Women Shaping Texas in the 20th Century.” They are on display at the Bullock Texas State History Museum through May 19.

To see Shumake’s oral history piece for the exhibit, search for the Bullock Museum page on YouTube.

(On the Net: TheStoryofTexas.com)

Published: 02/24/2013

Video of Shirley and her land: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6qt26z23uM

(Sgt Bob Note: I first met Shirley in 2000 when covering the proposed Marvin Nichols Reservoir. Shirley and her brother Max were instrumental in fighting the reservoir, which was backed by Dallas-Fort Worth interests and most elected officials in Northeast Texas. Big-city water users and politicians paid no attention to land owners whose family farms, ranches and woodlands would be flooded, 62,000 acres plus mitigation land. Save Our Sulphur (SOS) won the fight, for now. But you can bet your boots Dallas and Fort Worth people who want nice green lawns in the hot summers will continue to try and flood parts of Northeast Texas.)