A Nearly Accurate History of Sunrise Beach
By Dick Hart (deceased)
Written for the 25th Anniversary Celebration of the City in November of 1998
recovered and updated in 2005 and continued by others (I hope, hjs)
Page 6 of 19
together a group of good workers and said "let's get this thing off the
ground". Ten people loaned the CCAA $500 each for a $5000 startup
fund and I started the one hundred dollar club and off the yellow brick
road we went. It wasn't long before we had the slab poured for the
kitchen, rest rooms and foyer and the sides closed in. As soon as that
was done we started having fund raisers in the partially completed
civic center and before long we were closing in walls and the building
process was on its way; all with contributions and donated labor. As
soon as the sides were closed in we bought heat pumps for cooling
and heating. It was really quite an undertaking for a small community,
especially without tax dollars. Most of the lenders were paid off when
contribution started coming in. However, most of the lenders said to
keep half as their contribution. I remember that well as I was writing
the checks to pay back the lenders of the startup fund.
Hardly a day went by that someone was not down at the new "civic
center" working. Every time the CCAA put together a few bucks they
would run out and buy materials. One guy who was a real standout in
all this process was Ed Houy. I can guarantee he hardly missed a day
working on that building until it was completed and useable. Many
days it would be just he and I down there. I could pull wire through
and hand him tools but wasn't much help other than that. Man did he
really put the time into that building. Perhaps
I will take a bit of
writer's privilege here and state simply that without Ed Houy, we
probably would not have a civic center. He got the ball rolling on the
land purchase, drew the plans for the building, chased after most of
the materials, and put in way more hours of labor that any other
person.
One of the great things about the formation of the CCAA, is it allowed
the Ladies Auxiliary to turn its full attention to supporting the fire
department. We finally had another civic organization that could take
on new projects and relieve the Auxiliary of a few that they had
assumed. The Primary function of the CCAA still continued to be the
maintenance and upkeep of the Civic Center.
In 1985, a 14 inch snowfall fell on the beach. It was pretty but did it
ever mess up our civic center. The weight of the snow caused the roof
to cave in and rendered the building unsafe and, of course, unusable.
What to do? The CCAA has already milked the community for
donations, hit on some of the companies out there for contributions;
GTE, Exxon, even the beloved LCRA for example. The city had a little
bit of insurance money coming in but not nearly enough to do the
whole job (big deductibles you know). Well, behold the CCAA bunch
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