MEDIA REVIEWS

Boomtown DA
By Carol S. Vance
321 pages
Whitecaps Media 2010

Reviewed by Don Rogers
Carol S. Vance, the author of Boomtown DA, received his law degree from the University of Texas in 1958, and served as an assistant district attorney with the Harris County District Attorney's Office for eight years. On February 1, 1966, he became Harris County's district attorney following his appointment by Governor John Connally, and remained in that position for almost 14 years after winning four unopposed elections. In 1979, he resigned as district attorney, and took a position as a partner with the law firm of Bracewell & Patterson, now Bracewell & Giuliani, where he remained until his retirement as a senior partner in 2001. During his career, he was a founder and served as president of the National District Attorneys Association; chair of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, which oversees the Texas Department of Criminal Justice; and as a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. A Christian faith-based Texas prison unit he helped start in Sugar Land, the Carol S. Vance Unit, is named after him.

Houston was the fastest growing city in the United States (a "boomtown") when Vance served as district attorney, and with its population growth came a dramatic increase in crime. In his book, Vance discusses his experiences at the Harris County District Attorney's Office during that era, including: (1) the changes and improvements he made to the office itself, which progressed from a small office that was challenged by big cases to a big office that could handle anything; (2) the many high-profile criminal cases he oversaw or personally prosecuted as district attorney; and (3) the many colorful judges, prosecutors, criminal defense lawyers, and other notable characters who participated in those cases, including such Texas legal legends as Percy Foreman, Richard "Racehorse" Haynes, Dick DeGuerin, Rusty Hardin, Erwin Ernst, and Johnny Holmes.

The book contains 22 chapters. The first seven chapters address Vance's experiences during the period he served as an assistant district attorney, and the remaining chapters discuss the events that occurred and criminal cases he prosecuted or supervised after he became district attorney. The book contains photographs of Vance and some of the judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, politicians, and government officials with whom he associated. Its four appendices contain additional information about the Harris County District Attorney's Office and the assistant district attorneys who served there during Vance's era, as well as office rosters, organizational charts, and a 1976 office portrait.

The book is well-written, informative, and entertaining. It will bring back many memories of persons and events to anyone who practiced law in Harris County during the time Carol Vance was district attorney, and will otherwise be of interest to persons concerned with the history and development of Houston and Harris County, the Harris County District Attorney's Office, and the Harris County criminal justice system.

Don Rogers is an assistant district attorney with the Harris County Attorney's Office and serves as the Media Reviews editor for The Houston Lawyer.

Matches in the Gas Tank: Trial by Fire in the Armstrong Cult
By Carla Powers
Bright Sky Press 2009

Reviewed by N. Jill Yaziji
In one of the most arresting passages of Carla Powers' personal memoir Matches in the Gas Tank, the author describes coming home one evening from a neighbor's house to find that her mother had nearly died giving birth to her youngest brother. The labor had started the night before, but since the Radio Church of God disallowed medicine and surgery, her mother had to give natural birth at home. The baby was breach and his arm entangled in the umbilical cord, tearing her mother's uterus on the way out. "[T]he first thing that hit me" Powers writes, "was the metallic, pungent smell… Blood was everywhere… in the bathtub… spattered on the walls. Blood smeared the floor. I was scared out of my wits, but I didn't let on… I knew something was dreadfully wrong."

Powers kept quiet for years, distancing herself from this and other painful childhood memories through layers of professional recognition and Armani suits. She broke away from the tyranny of the Radio Church of God, and an abusive father, to become a lead litigator at a major Houston company. Yet, professional success notwithstanding, a powerful inner voice one day urged her to write her story; and write she did.

The narrative voice in this intense personal memoir is bitter, as the author demands answers for why her family, and many others, yielded to the dictates of Armstrong's cult, abandoned traditional Christian dogma, declined medicine, accepted the Church's tithing at higher rates than federal income taxes despite its poverty, and refused to question Armstrong's dogma well after so many of his prophecies failed to materialize. The result is a moving account of the power of indoctrination and the destructive influence of religion when it turns from a force of moral guidance into a draconian code of conduct regulating its followers' lives.

The author's father began listening to Armstrong's radio sermons while stationed overseas in the 1950s. Powers tells us that Armstrong's voice was authoritative and commanding, spoke of "reeducation" and prosperity, and promised his followers "material gratification here and now," unlike the conventional eschatological narrative of happiness beyond. For a war veteran with a fourth-grade education, the attraction of becoming a well-respected and well-paid minister was undeniable. So, when Powers was five, she and her family moved from Arkansas to Big Sandy, Texas, where the Church had embarked on building a major campus.

But the promise of prosperity turned into thin air when Charles Powers failed to become a minister and his business faltered as he turned increasingly to alcohol to patch over his wounded pride. With riveting detail, Powers takes her readers through the turmoil that she, her mother, and two brothers experienced in the subsequent 15 or so years, as their lives tethered between the harsh strictures of a church that prohibited divorce and the violent rages of an alcoholic father who had become completely absent from his family, except for short visits when he beat his wife and terrorized his children into believing he was in charge.

Powers dealt with the fear and insecurity that haunted her childhood by becoming more driven, "driven by indignation" to become a lawyer so she could defend others who, like her mother, had no recourse. Yet, she herself did not escape the psychological impact of dogma. She recounts listening to Armstrong's prophecy that Christ would return "eight years from now" when she was 12-years-old and feeling chill bumps on her body as she pictured the world unraveling in the Great Tribulations—her young imagination seized by the Church's illustrations of "emaciated parents holding dead children…." Even at the age of 16, despite winning speech and debate awards, she surrendered to a minister's cross-examination of her sex life. Only after years of physical and intellectual distance, and access to alternative social institutions, did the author begin to peel off the layers of her own inner subjugation.

In writing Matches in the Gas Tank, Powers reclaims a life nearly lost to fear and insecurity. But in so doing she also expands our understating of how religious dogmas take their hold on people's minds and turn them into manipulated psyches—a tale bearing relevance to far greater an audience than the one simply interested in the book's cathartic value.

N. Jill Yaziji is the principal of Yaziji Law Firm, specializing in business litigation. She is a member of the Editorial Board of The Houston Lawyer.

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