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20 NO. 2

Rita Castillo-Vela

12 Pillar

8 If Tenth Street could talk 10 Sunset sweethearts 16 The Johnson brothers 18 Ryan + Jared 22 29 Pieces

Whose Books hosts a variety of local book clubs, from romance to mystery and everything in between. Read more on page 6. Photography by Lauren Allen.

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O ak C liff is for L overs

Book

club leader Rita Castillo-Vela shares her love for literature & romance

Story by VICTORIA HERNANDEZ | Photography by LAUREN ALLEN

When Rita Castillo-Vela, 43, thinks of her first time reading romance, she thinks of the avid readers in her family. Her grandma, mom and tías.

“They would just read (it) all, everything,” she says, “but there was always this True Love or True Story magazine ”

Within the pages of the print, Castillo-Vela would read through little romance stories that she confessed weren’t always appropriate for kids. But she read them because the women of her family read them.

Her love for reading in general blossomed in elementary school. She fondly recalls Dr. Razon at James Stephen Hogg Elementary (which is now Hogg New Tech Elementary School) as the first educator to encourage her to check out certain books like Sweet Valley High.

All of these influences inspired her to earn her bachelor’s degree in literature and later attend the University of North Texas for a master’s in organizational leadership.

“I actually thought I would be a high school English teacher, then it happened,” Castillo-Vela says. “I’ve always been an avid reader, and then kind of fell into teaching math and science because I really wanted to stay at the school that I was at, and that was the only position they had. So then, I discovered a love for STEM as well. I love teaching science and getting dirty and really creating cool labs for kids.”

Today, she is no longer a “traditional teacher,” instead using her background in education to found Enrooted Consulting and Solutions in June 2025 and works part-time at the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden.

“We take my love of botany, plants and STEM and merge it with social-emotional learning for kids and then pro-social skills for adults,” she says.

These lessons include teaching parts of a plant, what a plant needs to thrive and survive, and connecting the scientific with the

humanistic skills needed with love and compassion.

“I was in education for a really long time and very formal education, and I was principal during COVID and post-COVID while I was also pregnant,” she says while tearing up, making a comment she was not going to cry.

“It was a really hard time to be an educator and to be a new and first time mom,” Castillo-Vela says. “There was no reference to how to be a leader through a global pandemic while postpartum. I needed an outlet that was soft enough, but at the same time, something I didn’t feel was frivolous.”

She ended up joining Whose Books’ mystery book club to fill that void. During one of the club meetings, she leaned over to tell the shop’s co-owner Claudia Vega that they needed a romance book club.

Vega said, “And you should lead it.”

“While I was transitioning out of formal education and really focusing in on the needs of myself and my family, I still wanted to be able to connect with people,” Castillo-Vela says. “And so romance gave me that bridge to really feel like, ‘OK, this is soft and easy, and fun and flirty, and I can connect with people and bring people together.’ That was my bridge.”

The Oak Cliff is for Lovers Book Club has met every month since May 2024. Having this club has not only helped Castillo-Vela find connection, but live out what she finds central to our community.

“We are lovers of people and our neighborhood and, of course, literature,” she says.

“Your perceptions of what you’re reading are always true to where you are in life and your experiences and so we bring those out. Often our book club is really a diverse group of people. All genders, all ages, all ethnicities, and it’s really beautiful to just come together and see how different perceptions play out and strike a chord with one another.”

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IF TENTH STREET COULD TALK

kinkofa is coming back to Dallas to preserve the culture

This article is an update to “An SMU student is documenting the hidden history of Oak Cliff Freedmen’s Town” published in September 2024.

Living in Tulsa has not put a stop to revisiting their Dallas ties. In fact, one descendant of Tenth Street residents is about to return to the largest remaining Freedman’s Town in the United States.

In 2020, Tameshia Rudd-Ridge and Jourdan Brunson joined a Clubhouse chatroom with a group of folks interested in genealogy. Through that online connection, the two learned that they were researching the same surnames and small towns, leading to the discovery that they were cousins.

This is the origin story for kinkofa, a tech company that provides resources for Black families to document, share and preserve their stories. A direct expression of that work is the umbrella project If Tenth Street Could Talk , which is grounded in a partnership with Remembering Black Dallas and supported by funders such as the Library of Congress and the Mellon Foundation. By following the descendants and residents that work to preserve the history of the district, the pair focuses on community-driven documentation to collect those stories as oral histories.

“What sets this project apart from something that might be more historical in nature (is) a lot of our stories live with us,” Brunson says. “We got to contextualize them and include things like family history and migration patterns, but also some other cultural traditions, like broken glass at the cemetery and the story that tells some of the events and traditions that happen within the community, and then finding parallels between other communities across Dallas and really, across Texas. There’s been just a deeper fabric weaving of really how Black people live, how we survived and how we pass on our history. Tenth Street tells all of these stories.”

Since receiving the Community Collections Grant from the Library of Congress’s Of the People: Widening Path initiative for their project in 2023, the documentation of the Tenth Street community has been compiled into an archive of nearly 500 artifacts. However, the release has been delayed.

“It’s kind of held up by the shutdown and administration, but we submitted it over a year ago, and so it was supposed to be up by November,” she says. “We haven’t seen it up there yet, but one day, it will live there.”

The artifacts with the Library of Congress are just one portion of their Tenth Street focused work.

“We have different legs. It has different projects inside of it. One of them is the cemetery, and like figuring out who’s buried there … ‘If Tenth Street Could Talk’ is just like what we call our Tenth Street projects in general,” Rudd-Ridge says. “And we have specific areas, like we want to focus on its connections to Freedman’s Towns throughout Texas and in the U.S., and then we want to connect to specific people’s family history and then some of it is cemetery preservation.”

All that they compile comes together into a digital museum. To avoid the legalities of where to put it or who owns the information, they have the ability to use their skills as a tech company to keep their collection accessible in a unique way.

“The research and the findings and the storytelling are all ongoing and will continue to develop,” Brunson says. “One of the thoughts and eventual goals of our work in Tenth Street is multifold as well. One is to connect the stories, the people and places of the Tenth Street community to other places.”

The pair’s upcoming project is a national tour called “Preserve the Culture,” with Dallas planned to be their pilot city. Through community pop-ups, they’ll bring digitization material for folks to submit their own family photos and videos. Additionally, there will be cultural heritage workshops hosted to teach how to cook certain foods or learn certain games that are important to Black culture.

“Also estate planning, that’s something we saw that was very critical that came out of Tenth Street, and then our own personal journeys, too,” she says. “We learned how much of the land in Tenth Street was being lost to heirs property, which (is) people not knowing that they had received or that they’re the heirs of these homes in a historic district because of the loss of family history. Or not being able to pass it down via will or like too many people (were) involved in it. And then the house gets lost. It becomes a public nuisance.”

Although the Preserve the Culture tour won’t come until summer 2026, the Tenth Street Digital Museum will launch on Feb. 25.

An accompanying exhibit will also come to Tenth Street in the spring with a portion focusing on the history of Black businesses in Oak Cliff, projecting images onto the side of the last standing commercial building on North Cliff Street (which some of Rudd-Ridge’s family members formerly owned).

“Community work can be difficult. It can be difficult to get different players at the table, different community members, different advocates, adversaries, to talk to make things happen,” Brunson says. “There were lots of challenges that Tenth Street has faced over the years, from demolitions to house fires to you name it. But one rewarding thing has been while slow, we can see things turning around. We could see both glimmers of hope, but also light at the end of the tunnel.”

Sunset Sweethearts

Coincidences brought Eric & Ericka together

T HE THIRD BORN . A second brother named Sergio. Fathers with the same birth month and date. A two letter difference between their names.

Eric and Erivcka Gutierrez have quite a few things in common, connections that make their love story fate.

The two were just one year apart when they attended Sunset High School, graduating in the late ’90s. As a member of the football team and a cheerleader, their paths often crossed, but they never truly connected until after Ericka graduated.

Eric remembers meeting Ericka as a freshman when she was a sophomore in the lunch room.

“I was sitting at the same table with some friends, and we have mutual friends and just trying to get to know her,” he says. “She was pretty popular in school, so really I don’t think she paid much attention.”

Ericka says she doesn’t remember their exact meeting in the lunch room, but recalls him throwing a couple of Sonic ice cubes just trying to get her attention.

“We did know who each other was,” she says with a laugh. “I did take one of his pictures (from the yearbook) because I thought he was cute.”

Although Ericka graduated from Sunset in ’97, she stuck around the area. One time she had gone up to the school to check a friend out of class while Eric was in the office as a student helper.

His backup ended up busted. A couple days later somebody had unplugged the caller ID, and her number was erased. They didn’t reconnect again until July 1999.

Going out that night in his recently purchased first vehicle, Eric saw Ericka and a couple of friends walking out of a club. He asked for her number once again. She complied and added that he should call her in 30 minutes.

After dropping off their friend, he gave her a call after 25 minutes. When he asked what she was doing that night, at this point after 2 a.m., she replied she was going to sleep.

For their first date, Eric brought over some Miami Subs. About six months later, they were searching for an apartment together.

From there, Eric says he quickly learned his way to her heart was through food.

“Feeding her, taking her to a place she hasn’t been before and just trying to introduce her to the foods,” he says. “I think we kicked it up pretty, pretty fast.”

Early on in their relationship, Eric recalls potentially setting the bar too high. For her first birthday gift, he bought her a gold nugget bracelet.

Ericka says she still has it. She remembers him putting it on her at the movies.

Once they were pregnant with their first child, they began the house search, later finding a place in Pleasant Grove in 2001.

This March will be their 25th marriage anniversary. Their advice on reaching that milestone lies in traveling together, communication and dates.

“Eating, yes, eating for sure,” Eric says. “Communication, I think, is key, too. I know after COVID, or during COVID, I unfortunately lost both of my parents. I think since then, just trying to make the most out of events or just things that we have planned, things that we’re trying to do, with family members or just each other. People are taken every day, and it’s all in God’s plan, but tomorrow

“On this one occasion, she was walking in with a friend, checking her out to give her a ride. I guess I built up enough courage to ask her for her phone number, which she gave to me,” he says. “I remember calling her that day. We spoke a little bit, or maybe she returned my call. Whatever it was, I misplaced the piece of paper that she wrote her phone number (on), but back then, we had caller ID. Well, I never called. I didn’t call. I knew the number was saved on caller ID, so that was my backup.”

HUMBLE INGREDIENTS WITH A TWIST

Pillar brings flavors from across cultures all in one place

IN BISHOP ARTS,

there’s a menu with Nashville hot oysters ($5), chile relleno ($18) and ricotta cavatelli ($29) all in one place. The combination of cultures may fit what some call New American. That’s how Pillar’s Chef Peja Krstic described the initial concept, though he doesn’t love the term anymore.

With the closure of Boulevardier in 2024, Pillar became a reality. A concept in mind for two or three years, he was ready to fill the big shoes left behind.

He wanted New American, but with more of the American food that people here grew up with, such as black-eyed peas and pork of Hoppin’ John.

“We take all these traditional kinds of dishes, we take from parts of the U.S.,” he says, “and take those classic executed dishes, and then put them in a twist up.”

The first dish that he ever made for the menu speaks to that: the fried chicken ($35). With his version, the plate includes the entree laid over braised collard greens covered in the sausage and spices combination of ‘Nduja cream and served with a side of cornbread brioche and honey butter.

Krstic’s other meal favorites are the grilled leeks served with poached crab, orange supremes and hazelnuts in brown butter vinaigrette ($19) and the fried oyster po’boy ($24). Each section of the menu (brunch, lunch, dinner and happy hour) also includes a specialized drink menu with more champagne and juices in the morning to boozy, spirit options in the evening. Krstic says that these are not binding options and, “If you like something, we can always make it.”

For dessert, everything is made in house, with his favorite being the cranberry parfait ($14).

Cooking throughout high school and college as a side gig wasn’t what Krstic expected to lead to his career. He started out doing it for the money, but he developed a love for food.

Krstic began his restaurant journey to Dallas from Belgrade, Serbia (what was once Yugoslavia before “we all fell apart,” he says). Marrying in his early 20s, his brother-in-law came to the Lone Star State in the ’90s. The couple then began traveling “back and forth, back and forth” to visit when Krstic began helping out in our local restaurants.

“It was at that time I kind of realized this is what I want to do,” he says. “And the rest is history. I just dived into studying and learning and getting myself more acclimated and educated in this business, and 20 years later, here we are.”

Working as a corporate chef with La Reve Company, he transitioned in 2015 to M ộ t Hai Ba, a Vietnamese fusion restaurant in Lakewood.

“They couldn’t find their niche at the time. So they needed somebody to bring in a little

modern flair to it,” he says. “So I came in, I jumped on board with that. About four or five months later, we had a really great kind of review that just propelled it.”

Krstic bought M ộ t Hai Ba with the original partner, Chris Panatier, and has owned the restaurant since 2016. He describes adding in French and Italian touches to the backbone of Vietnaemese flavors to make M ộ t Hai Ba his own over the last decade, later earning a Michelin Bib Gourmand Award.

With Pillar opening in 2024, he had another canvas to make something his own.

Krstic says he has a love of tradition and vintage, something clear in the portraits of the politicians and scientists hanging by the front entrance who he calls pillars of our society. Design is key in his overall look of Pillar, along with the presentation of the food.

“I believe that with the food, we should take the humble ingredients and things that are very simple and familiar to us, and train ourselves a technique in certain things like reading a magazine that is filled with photos and pictures and stuff like that,” he says. “Because then you see the shapes, then you see the colors. … you go and combine those things, and you picture those ingredients as a piece of art on a plate, not as an ingredient.”

The elevated look of the presentation is part of what Krstic hopes to add to the community aspect of the space.

“You can come here and be casual, or you can be dressed up nice for a date night,” he says. “But you’re going to feel welcome any way.”

“Pillar can be a lot of things. It’s a beam. It’s a community. We wanted to have something that is like a pillar, it’s a beam. Something that would really mean what this restaurant is.”

Pillar, 408 N. Bishop Ave., 972.803.3274, pillardallas.com

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BART THRASHER Realtor® bartthrasher@dpmre.com 469.583.4819

History is finally being

The story of George and Johnny Johnson

Story by VICTORIA HERNANDEZ | Photography by VICTORIA GOMEZ

Late one evening, nearing midnight, Tamara Durham received an article by Sam Judy from her half-brother that sent her chills.

“I had never seen a picture of George and Johnny,” she says. “They were killed when I was 6 years old.”

Durham says she had been wondering for decades what the real story was behind her brothers’ deaths. At the time that it happened in the summer of 1974, she recalls her father, Rev. George Alvin Johnson Sr., never talked about it, and the family tried to explain the situation to her the best they could for a little girl.

“The only information I knew growing up was that they were killed by Dallas police officers who accused them of trying to rob a restaurant or something. That was the story I got,” she says. “A restaurant or something, and they had sticks. So when Sam’s article came out, and I read it, it gave me a sense of, ‘OK, finally. Finally, I get a story.’”

WHAT’S THE STORY?

The article “Death of the Reverend’s Sons; The Police Murder of the Johnson Brothers” was first published by Dallas Weekly on Aug. 20, 2024, just five days before the 50th anniversary of the brothers’ deaths.

According to the article, the two brothers, George Johnson Jr., 14, and Johnny Johnson, 13, had gone to play basketball at Kiest Park with four other boys following service at their father’s West Dallas church, the Church of God in Christ. Walking from the park, the boys came across discarded pipes that they picked up and played around with as they headed toward Golden Triangle Shopping Center. There, they stopped at Zip’s Sizzlin’ Steaks around 8:40 p.m. When the other boys left their pipes before entering the restaurant, George and Johnny held onto theirs.

Inside, two policemen in plainclothes on burglary patrol, Officer Fred E. Sexaur and

Officer Robert Ross, had stopped to eat at Zip’s. Allegedly, a white woman is heard saying to her husband, “That boy’s got a gun,” referring to either George or Johnny as the pipes started to slip out of their pocket and sleeve.

According to police reports, Ross said from their booth that one of the Johnson brothers displayed nervous behavior and mistook the pipe under clothing for a sawed-off shotgun. Ross told Sexaur to get his gun in preparation for what he suspected to be a hijacking.

Following one of the boys saying, “All right, everybody…,” Ross drew his .38 pistol responding with, “Hold it. Police.” One of the Johnson brothers reaches for the pipes, and Ross shoots, hitting both George and Johnny, and another customer is nicked by a ricochet bullet.

The next day on Aug. 26, George and Johnny were declared dead early in the morning at Parkland Hospital.

Coverage published the day of the boys’ deaths by The Dallas Morning News referenced the brothers as “men,” calling them “two holdup suspects” without indicating that they were teens. Another report from the Dallas Times Herald wrote that the boys were slain in a holdup along with stating they were rushed to the hospital.

Regina “Reggie” Holleman, a cousin of the brothers, remembers differently.

A COUSIN’S MEMORY

“What they didn’t say was about them throwing their bodies in the back of the police car, and they were there for two hours. See, they didn’t put that in the report, but that’s what happened. They had their bodies in the police car for two hours,” Reggie says. “Well, that’s some of the things that the boys (of the six at Zip’s) said. They said that they shot Johnny first and Junior said, ‘Man, why did you shoot my brother?’ Then they shot him, and he fell on top of Johnny. ‘Man, why did you shoot my brother?’ He just wanted a glass of water,

and they shot him. And it’s terrible. Every time I think about it, I get mad.”

Unlike Durham, Holleman heard more details of the circumstances as a college-aged adult at the time.

She learned the news of her cousins’ deaths while attending the University of Oklahoma in ’74. Holleman and sister Jackie received a call from their mother at their Norman apartment that the teens had been killed.

“And we asked her, ‘What?’ And she told us what happened, about the policeman shooting them and this and that,” she says. “We were pretty upset about it.”

Quickly after learning the news, the pair drove to Texas for the funeral. Upon arrival at their Aunt Ruth’s house, all eight of her mother’s kids were there, along with various cousins and aunts and uncles.

“It was chaotic. It was terrible. It was awful,” she says.

Holleman remembers the state of her Aunt Betty was utter devastation, so much so she believed they were going to have to put her in the hospital. Her uncle, Johnson Sr., was in a state of “just trying” along with being upset, searching to find out why it happened.

“They were good kids,” she says. “Johnny was the one that was mischievous, the younger one … and Junior was a little bit more subdued.”

In the summer, Holleman remembers that George and Johnny would often come up to Oklahoma City for weeks at a time.

“They were part of the family, and then the next summer, we would go and spend weeks with them at their house,” she says. “We were more like siblings than cousins.”

Holleman says she recalls the brothers joining her at the local recreation center and at church services.

According to a 2024 article from The Dallas Morning News , prior reports credited the Dallas police chief at the time, Don Bryd, for calling the shooting “defensible,” and a Dallas County grand jury no-billed the case.

told

Holleman recalls the discussions among the adults on outlets referring to the teens as men and other contemplations of suing the department for wrongful death. To her memory, the family didn’t follow through with it.

However, the West Dallas Ministerial Alliance called for an investigation into the shooting, according to an article from The Post Tribune , along with the Committee for the Unification of the People (CUP) and the NAACP. The Black Panther Party publication The Panther also reported that the Dallas Chapter supported an investigation.

CUP helped plan a student boycott in Dallas ISD schools for Tuesday, Sept. 3, 1974. However, the protest was called off the Monday afternoon prior.

Although Holleman had to return to her own classes at OU after just a few days in Texas, her mother would often call with these updates.

“She was saying that my uncle said that the police department said that the shootings were justified,” she says. “And they kept telling them they needed to do something about those two officers. So they put them on leave, and they sent them to, I think it was Hawaii for a week on vacation, and they never did anything to them. They basically got away with murder.”

OVER 50 YEARS SINCE

After coming across the Dallas Weekly article, Durham contacted Judy to let him know there were other relatives still alive and learned

about an event honoring George and Johnny’s memory coming up just two days later.

A vigil and protest was held at the headquarters of the Dallas Police Department to commemorate the 50th anniversary with 40-50 people in attendance. Durham joined two of her siblings, Cedric Jones and Donna Woods, that evening, sharing their memories and highlighting that still to this day, the brothers lay in an unmarked grave.

But this hasn’t been the only effort made to share their story through community action. Activist Olinka Green told Durham that the story of the Johnson brothers called out to her when their image flashed on a jumbotron in the Dallas Public Library.

“She said that there George and Johnny spoke to her, saying, ‘Come find us,’” Durham says.

With the help of Judy and veteran reporter Dick Reavis, she did just that.

“They have been incredible in pulling that information out and making it public,” Durham says. “My family and I are thrilled that George and Johnny’s story is finally out there.”

Durham highlighted how community action has gone above and beyond any expectations in order to continue not only telling their story, but supporting beyond the words.

“When I was talking to Sam, he said, ‘We want to make sure that the family doesn’t have to pay for the headstone. We want to

do this for you guys,’ he said. ‘So what we’ll do, we’ll work on maybe doing a fundraiser to make up the difference in paying for the headstone,’” Durham says. “And so next thing I know, they’re working on additional fundraisers, and we did another GoFundMe.”

In August 2025, Dallas Nomad (the culture magazine and populist newsroom that Judy co-founded with Marlissa Collier) shared the GoFundMe to raise funds for that headstone. A month later, the newsroom collaborated with DFW Art House for a Sept. 6 exhibit honoring the brothers that also continued to raise those funds.

“Olinka presented artwork that she created regarding remembering like Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor and those women. There was a variety of artwork there, and I was just pleased that all of these artists had it in their hearts to contribute to this exhibit as a fundraiser to help pay for the headstones of George and Johnny,” Durham says.

With another fundraiser at the Pan-African Connection Bookstore and Resource Center, the headstone creation is now officially in the works. Durham says they hope to hold a memorial service to finally deliver the completed headstone in the coming months.

“When I talk about the compassion and the passion from strangers who did not know them,” Durham says, “but they have a heart for wanting to make sure that George and Johnny get this headstone … we’re grateful. I’ll say that we are very grateful.”

FROM LONG DISTANCE TO A BACKYARD WEDDING

A modern love story, but historic home

Story by VICTORIA HERNANDEZ | Photography by YUVIE STYLES

SWIPING ON BUMBLE IN 2016 HAS LED TO NEARLY A DECADE TOGETHER.

Ryan Stepp and Jared Ragsdale had their first date in Dallas with only one of them living in the city. They knew from the start their relationship would be long distance, but that didn’t seem to bother the two because of their strong connection.

Stepp originally moved to Dallas in 2013 from Central Texas. An Aggie graduate, he began his career at Neiman Marcus and later attended grad school at SMU from 2019-2021. He now works in business development for healthcare.

Similarly, Ragsdale went back to school for a career change to study interior design. He had one year left at Stephen F. Austin State University when he met Stepp, already with the intention to move to Dallas after graduation.

During the first year of getting to know each other, Ragsdale made the drive up often. With those visits northwest, Ragsdale would bring the dog treats from his bank job with to save for Charlotte, winning over her heart before Stepp’s.

Stepp added that the pair never felt the pains of long distance since Ragsdale came to Dallas so often.

“There was more to do here than there was in East Texas on the weekend,” Ragsdale says with a laugh.

From the beginning of their relationship, it was expected that they would eventually end up together in Pegasus City, just not yet.

“We realized this is what we both wanted, and it worked out,” Stepp says. “Honestly, it made our relationship stronger by being

long distance for a year, just because you didn’t have to have that constant like seeing each other and everything. Like, you kind of were able to build a relationship, but still be independent in your own city for a while.”

Now together in the same city, from 2017 in East Dallas to 2019 in Oak Lawn, they’ve kept that independence. Living in separate spaces during their early days, Stepp shared that Ragsdale was understanding of his long campus hours in grad school and vice versa when Ragsdale traveled often with interior design.

As dedicated as the pair are to their independent careers, they were also dedicated to buying their first home in 2022. Stepp added that rising rates led to that search, with their desire to own an old home together.

“Where our 1930s quadplex was in Oak Lawn, we were just right adjacent to Highland Park, so when we would go walk and run, we would always go in that direction,” Ragsdale says. “We would just see how all over Highland Park, they’re tearing down these beautiful old houses just left and right. And so that’s what led us to Oak Cliff. Because, first-time home buyers, Highland Park is not happening.”

Their good friend and real estate agent Michael Mahon helped guide them through the neighborhoods of Oak Cliff, such as Elmwood and Winnetka Heights, for their dream style: a Tudor cottage older than the 1920s or 1930s. Along that journey, they got engaged.

After a rejected offer, they found a home in June they love surrounded by the wild peacocks of Beckley Club Estates.

“We were probably going to have a lon -

ger engagement,” Stepp says, “but with the political climate and things happening with the Supreme Court, we sped up the process.”

Specifically, Stepp mentioned the remarks made by Justice Clarence Thomas that month. In Thomas’s concurring opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , the case that revoked the constitutional right to abortion, he wrote that the justices “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. ”

The Obergefell mention raised concerns for the couple’s engagement and upcoming wedding. Instead of an elaborate occasion, they held their wedding in their new backyard, with move-in renovations of fresh paint quickened for their “small, but special” party.

“After our marriage, we ended up turning in our marriage certificate at the courthouse Downtown,” Stepp says. “I can’t tell you how many other gay couples I saw also who had clearly, recently decided that they needed to get married before the Supreme Court started back up again, just to be safe, just in case.”

Today, they’re a little more optimistic. And here, they feel safe.

“I’ve never in Dallas have ever felt unsafe in my surroundings, but I also don’t put myself in surroundings where it’s going to be like a place where I would question it,” Stepp says, “whether it be where I’ve worked from Neiman Marcus to healthcare. Jared in the interior design world. We’ve always had a safe community, and Dallas is really a big place for that.”

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20 YEARS OF 29 PIECES, 10 YEARS OF PIECE 24

Walking eastbound down West Jefferson Boulevard, a miniature mosaic skyscraper sits outside the Texas Theatre and the Oak Cliff Cultural Center. Although it is the first piece completed of 29 designs, it feels ingrained into the neighborhood.

Over a decade ago, Piece 24 was built over a three-year process through the local art nonprofit 29 Pieces. Designed by co-founder Karen Blessen, the organization holds love at its core through expansive art lessons.

As the first graphic artist to win the Pulitzer Prize, she even worked on the redevelopment of Times Square along with confetti engineering for the millennium New Year’s Eve ball drop. Blessen says her work truly took off in Dallas with the bulk of her career having an illustration and journalism focus.

One of her most impactful stories was published in 2003 with The Dallas Morning News . Titled “One Bullet,” the piece is a retelling of the events that happened in her own front yard while living in the Lakewood Heights area, having to dial 911 after a man came for help.

“In 2000, a young man was shot and killed in my front yard,” Blessen says. “The story was not about who committed the murder because we knew within several weeks who had been the shooter. The story was about the impact of one act of violence on the individuals involved, on the community and just on the world at large.”

This is what inspired Blessen and Barbara Miller to found 29 Pieces in 2005 (first called Today Marks the Beginning).

That same year, Blessen began to practice passage meditation, where she would devote time each morning to learn sacred texts from major faith traditions and write about them. These words eventually evolved into three-dimensional designs for 29 large-scale works, some even reaching as large as 60 feet tall from conception.

Those were the 29 Pieces that have reached 20 years of impact. Through the years, lesson plans were developed to strengthen skills for students, all tying back to love.

In 2013, 29 Pieces launched The Dallas Love Project. Inspired as a way to combat our city’s reputation as the “City of Hate,” the project included working with teachers and students across 24 states and Washington D.C. to create artwork to demonstrate that love lives in Dallas.

The 29 Sculptures project stands out differently, having taken a multi-year process to complete the first piece of two currently finished and being the namesake of the nonprofit today.

Between 2015 and 2016, a team of mosaic artists and local Oak Cliff high schoolers designed and built Piece 24.

“I had developed a system and love for working with young people and with educators,” Blessen says. “It turned out to be one of the great joys of my life, really, to work with that team on Piece 24.”

Operating out of an office on Peak Street between Main and Elm, the nonprofit opened an application and hosted interviews to give local students the opportunity to be paid interns.

Those students are now young adults. Some applied having a goal to end up in the art world where others were reluctant to even be involved.

Elmer Rivas wanted a foot into the field of art when he applied as a sophomore at Sunset High School.

“The idea of just working in art and, specifically, in Oak Cliff, where a lot of the community is marginalized and it’s Hispanic-based, I wanted my voice to be heard along with my peers,” Rivas says.

Piece 24 was a stepping stone for Rivas’ career goals. Following graduation, he earned his associate’s degree in art and a bachelor’s in art, interdisciplinary art and design studies.

Eventually, he landed a job back in Dallas ISD working as a teacher assistant. Today, he’s in the process of earning a certification to be an art teacher.

His experience with 29 Pieces helped him earn not only art experiencce, but nonprofit experience and pushed him to grow as an individual.

“During that time, I was a relatively shy kid. And I feel like as time went on, I was able to slowly open up and kind of find my voice in the project,” he says. “And even if you ask Karen how I am now, compared to how I was back then, it’s a completely different person.”

Hope Trevino was reluctant, but later became one of the most active in 29 Pieces.

“It’s so odd now that I think about it. I actually didn’t want to (apply) at the time,” she says. “I was very young, but my math teacher saw that I was drawing on my binders in class, and she gave me the paper to apply, which I did. She said that this might be a good way of expressing myself and just doing something other than drawing on the folder in her class.”

Trevino applied while she was a junior at Sunset, later graduating from Dallas Can Academy. She interned for 29 Pieces a few years after having left her mark on Piece 24. She remembers coming up with the eyeball on the hand at the top of the sculpture with Maria Patino.

“When I was working on Piece 24, I had a realization that even after I am gone, buried in the ground, that the piece will still be there,” she says. “I think that’s something that will stick with me forever because if I have children, my children will be able to see that, and I think it’s just something that I did for the community that will be there even when I’m not around, and I feel like kind of just leaving my mark for my hometown, especially because I’m from Dallas, born and raised in Oak Cliff. It means a lot to me.”

Dolores Mendoza worked on Piece 24 as a sophomore at Sunset, along with her first daughter attending most of the events with her.

“We’ll pass by it with family members. She’ll just say, ‘Look, my mom did that,’ or she’ll tell my youngest, ‘Oh, look what mom did,’” Mendoza says. “Having them know that I was part of something that everybody can see and everybody passes by. It’s just like a feeling that I did something. It just gives that little excitement every time she brings it up.”

The nonprofit and Piece 24 continues to impact her life today, even if it’s been a decade since she was spreading the grout and selecting the mosaic tiles.

“Throughout the years, what I would do is be with my family or go to 29 Pieces and even now … they’re just a big part of my life, especially all the people that I worked with and being able to catch up with them every now and then. It’s just great,” Mendoza says. “Karen is one of them. Maria is one of them. Hope is one of them. Elmer is one of them. They’re the type of people I go to every now and then when I need somebody to talk to.”

With 20 years of 29 Pieces wrapping up and a celebration in the spring, Blessen says she looks back on the impact made with a whole lot of pride and joy taking such a tragic event and finding purpose.

“It’s been just fulfilling, artistically fulfilling, personally fulfilling, spiritually fulfilling and a joy to meet all the people,” Blessen says. “There have been so many people who have helped make this happen. I look at it with a little bit of disbelief that we’ve done as much as we have and reached as many people we have on what’s been a very small organization, really, and that for the most part, we’ve all remained part of it and friends and still contributing in one way or another.”

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