02/18/2016
From Galveston:
By MICHAEL A. SMITH | Posted 10 hours ago
It’s hard to imagine a more fitting tribute to A.R. “Babe” Schwartz than naming a beach in his honor, as Galveston’s Park Board of Trustees recommended Tuesday.
We urge the city council to follow the park board’s lead and vote to create a “Babe’s Beach.”
Schwartz, 90, is near-legendary in Galveston and elsewhere in the county and probably everywhere among people who care about the public’s right to unfettered access to the public’s own beaches.
The park board voted to name 15 blocks of new beach west of 61st Street after Schwartz, who represented Galveston in the Texas House of Representatives and Senate from 1955 to 1981.
Schwartz told a Daily News reporter Monday that he was “greatly honored” the board was even considering naming something after him; he was grateful.
Anybody who has ever enjoyed a long, unimpeded walk along any Texas beach between Brownsville and Port Arthur should take a minute to be grateful for the work Schwartz did during his long career in the legislature on behalf of ordinary Texans.
His legislative career was marked by bills supporting coastal protection and the public’s right to access beaches.
He was among the main drivers behind the Texas Open Beaches Act and the law making it illegal to post signs declaring a “private beach” on public land, and he sponsored a constitutional amendment giving counties the right to regulate traffic on beaches.
In 1962, Schwartz wrote the state legislation that created the Park Board of Trustees. In 1971, he wrote the laws that created the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, which to a large extent made it possible for people of ordinary means to afford to live along the coast.
The idea to name the beach after Schwartz came from the park board’s Beach Maintenance Advisory Committee.
“Babe has been a senator and an advocate in Austin for Galveston beaches,” said Clyde Steddum, the chairman of the advisory committee and a park board trustee. “He’s such a symbol of things in Galveston, we thought, ‘What a way to honor him.’”
The section of beach that could bear Schwartz’s name has existed only since November. Through a partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Texas General Land Office, the park board created 15 blocks of beach, starting at 61st Street, using sand dredged from the Galveston Ship Channel.
Schwartz built a great legacy through his work to keep Texas beaches open to all Texans; but, like the beach that will carry his name, his legacy is susceptible to erosion.
Especially in recent years, people hostile to the notion of public beaches have had success in rolling back concepts in the Open Beaches Act that many of us had thought were safe, beyond even much argument.
If we have a Babe Schwartz in the Legislature on open-beach issues today, he has not stepped up yet, which means rank-and-file Texans will have to carry the fight or, conceivably, in 10 years or so our beaches will be as restricted as those in California, where the beaches belong to the highest bidder.
• Michael A. Smith
