Her story is history
Volunteering is a continuing theme for longtime mayor, community leader Pat Isaacson
By Pearl Cantrell
Monitor Staff Writer
MALAKOFF–If the research is true, that those who volunteer regularly for more than one organization substantially lower their risk of dying early, then Pat Isaacson will probably live forever.
She’s the voice of the Malakoff Chamber of Commerce, recently completed a book project with the garden club, championed saving the Rock Building and has set her heart on establishing a museum for the historic hamlet.
But she is best known as Malakoff’s longest-running mayor.
“It was time for new blood, new ideas,” Pat Isaacson said of her resignation one year ago.
Sometimes, we forget that those who serve on city councils, economic development corporations, school boards and utility districts do so as volunteers.
“I learned more about sewer and water than I wanted to know,” she laughs.
“I probably only voted (at a city council meeting) three times in my 11 years as mayor to break a tie,” she adds.
On a positive note, she got to attend many conferences, where she met a whole lot of people and gained needed perspective on her town and its challenges. “I learned Malakoff is all right, especially compared to some,” she said. She is particularly proud of the city’s new water treatment plant and the replacement of all water and sewer lines.
Additionally, some of the people she met have become dear friends.
“Being mayor is mostly a PR post, which is right up my alley,” she summarized.
Pat Isaacson is a perennial volunteer.
She currently serves as president for the local chapter of the Rotary Club, and has joined in perhaps a dozen volunteer efforts, including the area’s Toys for Tots.
Her most recent obsession has been with the Greater Malakoff Area Garden Club book project.
When she resigned the mayor’s seat shortly after voters pushed through a tax rollback and won, the Chamber of Commerce picked her up to staff its office, track projects and spending, and be the friendly voice to the city’s newcomers.
The former radio station manager admits she was at loose ends after retiring from her 25-year career with KCKL two years ago. “I was glad for the offer,” she said.
Isaacson is one of those who picks up on a string of thought and just follows wherever it leads.
This latest string, which led to the Garden Club, though she confesses to having two black thumbs and doesn’t dare touch or even speak to a plant for fear of it wilting on the spot, was picked up in 2005.
That’s when she learned that the “1855” painted on a local building was the year the city got its name.
When it applied for a post office, the postmaster general at the time had been studying the Crimean Wars and suggested the name, since the town’s first picks of Mitchem and Perdul had already been taken, she explained. Though the Caney Creek community can trace its roots to at lease 25 years earlier, it wasn’t until 1855 that it had an official name.
That would make 2005 the sesquicentennial (150th year) of the town’s naming, which led to the formation of the Malakoff Historical Society, the collecting of hundreds of old photographs, histories and a citywide celebration.
Soon afterward, the garden club obtained the old Bartlett House, a veritable brick castle and its once magnificent gardens. At its first public tour, before restoration, the club was able to collect pre-orders on its book, Malakoff, Texas.
“We already had all this historical information, it made sense to put it into a form others could see and use,” Isaacson said. Consequently, she is listed as one of the five editors on that 456-page project, of which there are less than a dozen copies left from its first printing by Future Horizons in Fort Worth.
Immersed in all that history, it was natural that she, along with the Malakoff Historical Society, would lead the fight to save the old Rock School building, built in the ’40s under the WPA program. “Only about 500 schools were built under the program and few are left,” she said.
Malakoff was lucky enough to have two of them; the second, a high school, was built on the site where the middle school is now. “It was torn down in 1969. It was a big one, too,” she said.
It’s a fight, they seemingly won, for the school board has rescinded its intention to tear it down.
“There were five of us who were going to chain ourselves to the front door, if we had lost,” she said. “It has so much history.”
It has employed the services of an architect, who specializes in restoring old school buildings for current use.
“There’s nothing wrong with it structurally. It’s just not suitable for today’s full-time classrooms,” she said.
Malakoff schools superintendent Dr. John Spies told The Monitor the 2-year-old Malakoff Elementary School is quickly approaching capacity and the district is looking into the possibility of re-employing the Rock Building as an extension for the school.
Just as she is not a gardener; Isaacson also has never gone to school in the old building. “I guess the older one gets, the more important preserving the past seems to become. You have to know where you’ve been and what has been accomplished before you can know where you’re going and what yet may be accomplished,” she said.
And though the historical society’s dream of turning part of the Rock Building into a library and museum will not become a reality, the dream of a museum is just starting to bloom.
Isaacson and architect Ken Andrews and a few others are close to being ready to clear about an acre of property for a museum, very near the last Malakoff Fuel Co. building.
It will be about 4,600 sq. ft, she explained and include a research room, records room complete with old copies of the Malakoff News dating back to 1800s, courtesy of its former owner, Loretta Humble, a Sports Hall of Fame and an entry hall featuring “The Malakoff Man,” — three stone heads, weighing about 100 pounds each found in a quarry and dating before the last ice age. Part of the building will also be leased to the Chamber of Commerce, she said.
“I have ideas for the displays and what needs to be done,” she said. Much of the plans will require grants, which she anticipates being able to get.
“I’ll probably make a ton of mistakes, but I also learn from the mistakes of others,” she said.
Volunteering along her areas of interest has been a theme throughout her life.
“I’ve always been kind of involved,” she said. “But this has become a beloved obsession. It’s the first time I’ve been able to quote facts, figures, dimensions and names.
“I just really like it.”