Maybe things had gotten just a little too boring after the excitement of World War II. Maybe some prankster had slipped something into the city water supply that made everyone a little loopy. For whatever reason, members of the Sidewalk Cattleman’s Association had a unique idea to stir up some publicity back in 1948. The Madisonville, Texas-based business organization decided to sponsor a nationwide contest to find the American veteran who harbored the most hatred for Texas. The group then would bring him here, all expenses paid, to change his mind.

To find their winning sourpuss, the association solicited letters from veterans who had spent time in Texas during the war, explaining in detail why they hated the Lone Star State. After poring over the entries, the group selected 26-year-old Ohio native Ray Halloran.

Halloran, a member of the U.S. Army Air Corps during the war, was sent to Texas to learn how to be a navigator on B-29 bombers. He received his initial training at Sheppard Field in Wichita Falls. He also was stationed at airfields in San Antonio and Houston before finally receiving his navigator’s wings in Hondo.

Halloran then was sent into the heat of battle in the Pacific, flying bombing missions over Tokyo. On his fifth mission, his plane was shot down over Tokyo. He spent the next seven months in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. His daily food ration in camp was a golf ball-sized serving of rice and one radish.

You’d think that living in a POW camp might top anyone’s list of regrets, but not Ray Halloran. According to the war veteran’s prize-winning letter, he seemed to harbor the most regret not for the time he spent in that Japanese hellhole, but for the time he spent in Texas.

“I often wondered why the Army selected such a miserable place [as Texas] as a training ground for so many service men,” Halloran wrote in his letter. “As the hardship of prison life mounted, it was then I discovered the purpose of Texas and I appreciated it. I appreciated it because it instilled confidence in myself. I continually consoled myself with the thought that if I had survived the terrors of Texas, I could certainly carry on under less adverse conditions in my new abode — Barracks No. 2 at Omori POW Camp.”

Compared to Texas, conditions in a Japanese POW camp were less adverse?

To leave no doubt about where he stood on the issue, Halloran wrapped up his letter by writing, “Time has erased most of my memories of the unpleasant hours spent in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, but eternity will fail to blur my wretched recollections of Texas.”

In his letter, Halloran, a bachelor, also confessed to somewhat less noble complaints such as his inability to find any beautiful Texas girls, although “believe me I tried hard enough.”

Officials of the cattleman’s club agreed that no man could have a worse opinion of Texas, so they invited Halloran to accept an all-expenses-paid tour in May 1948. They scheduled visits to a number of cities, winding up with a big barbecue in Madisonville. (I’m not sure they clarified beforehand whether Halloran would be a guest at the barbecue, or the main dish.)

How does Waco fit into all this? Maybe it was a cockeyed sense of optimism or latent masochism on a slow news day. Whatever the reason, newspapers in Waco heard about Halloran and decided to send him a telegram asking what he thought of Waco. So far, he had been mum on the subject. The response, dripping in Halloranish invective, no doubt caused a few mouthfuls of coffee to be spewed down at the Waco Chamber of Commerce:

“I am glad to report I have never had the misfortune to be stationed in or visit Waco. I used to fly over your city quite frequently while training as a navigator in the air forces, and from the air Waco appeared as a blemish on the earth’s surface. Friends who visited Waco furnished me only bad reports. Feel certain your city received its share of the atrocities that plagued Texas — that is, dust storms, rain, wind, biting cold, and unbearably hot weather; nothing scenically or historically worth while and very few beautiful girls, if any. Sincere sympathy to the unfortunate citizens of Waco.”

A blemish on the earth’s surface? Them’s fightin’ words. The citizens of Waco decided they’d just have to bring Ray Halloran here and change his mind.

First, though, the sourpuss veteran had to run the gauntlet through a few other Texas cities. Before hitting Waco, Halloran visited Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and Wichita Falls. Press reports said he usually was met by shiny convertibles, ate steak dinners and was “welcomed by so many beautiful girls that he says the lipstick is getting thick on his cheeks.”

There were some rocky moments. In Dallas, Halloran was a special lunch guest of the infamous Bonehead Club. At the end of the meal, club members placed him in a cell at the county jail with a “crazed narcotic prisoner” who later was revealed to be a deputy sheriff playing the part.

In Wichita Falls, Halloran seemed to have fared a bit better. He was so taken with a 6-foot-tall brunette that he went to church with her Sunday morning. That prompted an offer from a Wichita Falls retailer to outfit the entire wedding party if they got hitched. A Waco florist — name not recorded — offered to supply free flowers. Alas, the wedding never came to be.

Payback time, Waco-style, began about 5 p.m. on Monday, May 24. A crowd that gathered to watch Ray Halloran’s grand arrival. Instead of riding into town in one of those shiny new convertibles, though, the Ohio veteran was “riding in a wagon drawn by several not-so-shiny donkeys.”

After that initial dose of forced humility, it appears that Wacoans treated Halloran pretty well during his evening in town. He fielded a lot of phone calls in his hotel room from well-wishers and local vets, including a fellow prison camp inmate. A local radio station put him on the air, and he was the guest of honor at a big Texas buffet.

But as you’d expect, a few people decided to have just a little fun with him. Police Capt. Jess Gunterman “arrested” Halloran after supper and released him only after he received a formal warning to watch his behavior.

It’s not recorded whether Halloran knew about another law enforcement-related activity that occurred in Waco that afternoon. Former McLennan County deputy sheriff Freddie Hyde decided to phone Thomas Herbert, governor of Halloran’s native Ohio, to give him a piece of his mind. Hyde even had the gumption to try calling collect, but when Gov. Herbert wouldn’t accept the charges, Hyde was forced to pay for the call himself.

“I was stationed in Steubenville, Ohio, during the war,” Hyde said, “and that is the worst place I have ever been.”

Asked later about his night in Waco, Halloran was complimentary. “That was a unique reception,” he replied. “I believe I could win the governor’s race if people everywhere met me like they did in Waco.”

If Monday night gave Halloran warm and fuzzy feelings about Waco, the next morning should have sealed the deal. He was awakened in his hotel room by Will Holloway, a masseur from the local YMCA, and given an invigorating rubdown. Then, a smiling Baylor coed, Mildred Cook, served Halloran breakfast in bed.

He played a few holes of golf at a local club and made another radio broadcast. Then he was invited to a private lunch at Baylor’s Burleson Hall dining room — just himself and 200 coeds. At some point, he posed with a group of Baylor bathing beauties. Wearing just his swim trunks and a smile, he looked like anything but a man who couldn’t stand his surroundings.

Ray Halloran spent part of his time in Waco in the company of bathing suit-clad Baylor coeds.

So it appears that Ray Halloran just might have changed his tune about Waco. His good time here hopefully sustained him during his next stop in Austin, where police escorted him to the state hospital for the insane and he was kindly disinfected. He then was put back in swimming trunks, locked inside an “oversized birdcage” on the back of a truck and paraded around town accompanied by five University of Texas coeds. After the truck stopped, Halloran was removed from his cage, handcuffed, and led through the lobby of his hotel.

An unexpected postscript

When I first decided to write this column, I planned a light, funny ending. But plans sometimes have a way of changing.

The Austin visit by Ray Halloran is where the 1948 newspaper accounts ended, but he survived his final stop in Texas — the barbecue in Madisonville. When I was doing research for this story, I discovered that Halloran not only was still alive, but he maintained his own website (www.haphalloran.com). 

The website doesn’t mention his time in the spotlight as a Texas-hater, but it does detail his wartime experiences and horrifying treatment in the Japanese POW camp. He appeared to brush off that trauma quite easily in his newspaper quips in 1948. On the website, however he tells how he was brutalized and forced to remain silent in a “cold, dark cage” on the campgrounds. He was allowed to speak only during interrogations.

At one point, Halloran said his captors took him to the Ueno Zoo, stripped him naked and put him on display in a tiger cage so Japanese civilians could view the hated American B-29 bomber crewman.

Halloran said he suffered through almost 40 years of nightmares after the war. In his first years of freedom back in America, most likely during the Texas-hater contest, he “tried to wipe out all those bad memories of my time in Japan (but) I failed.”

The website then describes how Halloran finally traveled back to Japan in 1984. Over the course of seven more trips there, he apparently was able to exorcise some of his demons. He met and befriended Japanese citizens, including a former guard at the POW camp. He even met the Japanese pilot who shot down his B-29 bomber, and they eventually became good friends.

Halloran in later years traveled the country and talked about his time in the service, wrote a book titled “Hap’s War,” and was interviewed for a network news documentary. Near the end of his website narrative, he has this to say:

“There isn’t a day that goes by that my memories do not flash back and recall events of those long ago days ... I appreciate and love Freedom. I appreciate even the simple things in life. I know how fortunate I was to survive and come home.”

There is an e-mail link on Halloran’s website, so I told him I wanted to talk about his Waco visit in 1948. He responded favorably, so I called him at his California home. He was preparing to leave and was only able to talk for a minute. But he wanted to convey the great warmth he’d received from the people of a city he’d once demeaned.

“I remember how good people in Waco were towards me, and how they took me to a private party with a lot of the local highfalutin people there. They were just great to me,” Halloran told me. “My memories of Texas, and specifically Waco, are of kind people treating me very nice.” And with that, our brief conversation ended.

Mr. Halloran, thanks for all you did for America. I’m glad you seem to be well and happy after surviving so much hardship. If you ever plan a future visit to Waco, I promise never, ever, to call the Ohio governor on you.

Sources: Waco Sunday Tribune-Herald , May 16, 1948; Waco Times Herald May 24-26, 1948; Dallas Morning News, May 22, 1948]