16 Garland Road’s twoeyed, no-horned, green frozen yogurt eater
FEATURES
24 Sunrise Academy makes sweet sounds
28 Longtime Texas
A&M University College of Dentistry professor retires
32 The steamboat that could
COLUMNS
36 The goats came, they saw & they ate privet
Monster Yogurt doesn’t just supply the fro-yo but also the sauces and toppings, including nuts, fruit, candy and all things chocolate. Read more on page 16. Photography by Lauren Allen.
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CITY INSTALLS NEW STOP SIGNS AT THE INTERSECTION OF SWISS AVENUE AND DUMAS STREET
Story and photo by VICTORIA HERNANDEZ
New stop signs were recently installed at the intersection of Swiss Avenue and Dumas Street, creating a four-way stop to help combat speeding in the neighborhood.
At a press conference held March 29 to celebrate the installation, community members and city officials gathered to discuss the collaborative effort made to add the new traffic devices and increase the safety of the neighborhood and the Swiss Avenue Linear Park, which runs through the intersection.
Bob Hopkins, a Swiss Avenue Historic District resident, shared his own experience of a crash that happened at the intersection over a decade ago.
“It’s not a place to move your car faster than 10 or 15 mph. It’s not a racetrack, but I had an accident right there because of the fact that I was looking. I was waiting. I looked, I thought, but here comes this fast car and he hit me,” Hopkins said.
Until the installation of the stop signs, drivers turning from Munger Boulevard onto Swiss Avenue would travel for 1,000 feet before they’d have another stop sign, said David Dean, chair of the Swiss Avenue
Historic District’s Alliance Against Crime Committee.
“ One of the most important functions of local government is ensuring public safety, safety of its residents and visitors. This was an opportunity to slow traffic on Munger and at the intersection with Swiss Avenue and here today, at Swiss Avenue and Dumas, by the insertion of a new stop sign,” District 14 Council member Paul Ridley said at the press conference.
“This was important because of the speed of traffic and because of the volume of traffic at this intersection, and some very recent incidents.”
Within the last six weeks, there have been at least two major hit-and-run accidents, in addition to previous collisions that have happened in the area due to high speeds, Dean said at the press conference.
“People are speeding, they’re trying to get from one place to another. They come through this area and you know what happens,” he said. “So when we got these devices, it's not going to be over. We’re going to keep working to make this a safe neighborhood. We want this to be one of the safest neighborhoods in Dallas.”
COMINGS & GOINGS
DEEP ELLUM
Patagonia in Deep Ellum is shutting down. Meanwhile, Queen’s Head Pub is reportedly looking forward to a May opening.
CTRL Room is taking the place of the former bar Citizen that closed earlier this year.
OLD EAST DALLAS
Crockett Dog Park unveiled a new statue, March 27, titled “Natural Encounter.”
Dave’s Hot Chicken opened early April.
El Chingon — purveyor of hand-crafted cocktails and “bad ass Mexican” food — is finally opening at 3404 Ross Ave.
MOCKINGBIRD LANE
Chipotle Mexican Grill plans to open across from Mockingbird Station this summer.
Total Wine & More is moving into the former Joann space on Mockingbird Lane.
LOWER GREENVILLE
The cocktail bar Hide quietly closed late March after nine years in business.
NICK & NORA PLUS THREE
The famed bald eagles of White Rock Lake recently welcomed three new hatchlings into the world.
Photo by Alex Martin.
GAMEDAY GIRL
Woodrow Wilson cheerleader with disability puts team spirit on full display
Story by MADELYN EDWARDS
Photography by YUVIE STYLES
Make no mistake — Daniela Ramirez is a cheerleader because she likes dancing, makeup, the pompoms and the sporty-yet-feminine uniforms.
So it makes sense why she wanted to join the team.
The Woodrow Wilson High School senior, who is hard of hearing, began cheering at age 7 in a league outside school before joining the team at Woodrow her freshman year.
For the past four years, Daniela has performed at pep rallies and football and basketball games, plus supported her teammates during competition season. She has also cheered at the Special Olympics.
Between pep rallies and game days, her favorite cheerleading activity isn’t a mystery.
“I like games,” Daniela says.
Even during her first one, she was not nervous about performing in front of people, just excited and happy. She remembers jamming to K-pop music in the car with her friends on the way to games in the first season.
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But there was a time when Daniela wanted to quit cheerleading. Daniela’s mother M.C. Camacho, who interpreted for her during the interview for this story, wanted her to learn not to give up during tough times.
“In the second year, she was tired,” Camacho says. “And I say, ‘I’m sorry. You picked, you decided, and I’m sorry; you’re not going to quit.’ So I think now she loves it.”
You may think that being a cheerleader with a hearing disability would be difficult to pull off safely amid a group of other members waving pom-poms and performing stunts. If one of her teammates is talking too fast, Daniela will ask them to slow down and repeat themselves.
“If she is not understanding something, she advocates for herself,” Camacho says.
Her mother wasn’t concerned about Daniela’s hearing but more so for her coordination disability.
“IF SHE IS NOT UNDERSTANDING SOMETHING, SHE ADVOCATES FOR HERSELF.”
“It’s like she asked her hand to move, and her hand is going to say, ‘No, I’m not going to move,’” Camacho says.
In fact, Daniela had surgery on her knee last summer after tearing a ligament while jumping during tryouts. That injury has impacted her ability to keep up during performances, but it didn’t stop her completely. She was healed after six months on what was supposed to be a yearlong recovery.
Unlike her love of games, Daniela’s future plans are a bit more mercurial. She says she wants to be a Dallas Cowboys
cheerleader and travel. Her mother says she also had ambitions to be a chef.
For now, Daniela seems to have settled on going to college to become a teacher. Specifically, she wants to be an interpreter for children like her who are deaf and understand both English and Spanish.
When she graduates and leaves the WWHS cheer team, Daniela says she will miss her friends and coach the most. The girls on the team are kind to her, and one of her teammates can even speak sign language to her.
Throughout Daniela’s time at Woodrow, her mother attended almost every game, “watching her in front of everybody, trying to do her best” with utmost pride. Daniela has gained confidence and leadership skills and has made bonds with fellow cheerleaders, both seniors and underclassmen.
“I feel she is part of the team, like not just a special needs girl with a spot there,” Camacho says.
Monster Yogurt has Casa Linda screaming for fro-yo & community
Story by MADELYN EDWARDS | Photography by LAUREN ALLEN
WHEN AVA SKIPWORTH
opened Monster Yogurt over a decade ago, Casa Linda Plaza was filled with empty storefronts.
“It was kind of a bad area, and a lot of the tenants had moved out,” she says.
That’s not the case anymore. Skipworth described the shopping center as “thriving” and attributed the change to the economy, new owners of the shopping center and businesses moving in.
Seeing this evolution was one of her goals for Monster Yogurt – to bring back the Casa Linda community.
Prior to opening the frozen yogurt shop, Skipworth had a career in automotive sales and hadn’t run an eatery before.
“My attorney actually told me not to do it,” she says, laughing. “He said, ‘Go buy a car dealership.’ But it didn’t accomplish the goals that I wanted. I wanted something here, basically, local where I could drive to work in five minutes and that kind of thing, spend more time raising my son.”
Skipworth has lived in the Casa Linda area for about 25 years. She grew up in Pottsboro near the Texas-Oklahoma border and left for Florida when she was 18 or 19 years old.
“You can’t be a hero in your hometown,” she says. “That’s what I always believed.”
Skipworth picked the Sunshine State to find opportunities, enjoy the beaches and join her friends there. Upon arriving, she took up some odd jobs but fell upon hard times and was homeless when she got hired at a car dealership. That job was a game-changer for her and led to her getting an education and buying a house in Florida.
She mainly worked at a Saturn dealership in Florida and in Texas when she returned as a 30-year-old. But in 2010, Saturn closed, so Mazda took its place at the Mesquite dealership, where Skipworth served as operating partner. This change led to her leaving the car-selling business.
“It was just a different atmosphere,” she says. “(Saturn was) more family-friendly. You treated people a little bit differently.”
Upon exiting her career, Skipworth decided to do something different
and for the community. At first, she looked into opening a franchise store for an established brand but decided to create her own concept. Speaking transparently, Skipworth says she wanted to start a frozen yogurt shop because it was popular, but she didn’t think it was being marketed to the right customers.
“They always wanted to cater to the Starbucks crowd, the Millennials at the time, but the Millennials really wanted caffeine and really wanted more of a Starbucks, but the people that went to the frozen yogurt stores were people with small children,” she says. “It’s like, ‘Why don’t they have one that caters to young families and people with small children?’ My son was 4, and every time we left the house, it was $100 or $200, so what I say is, ‘It’s a place to go with kids in tow without spending a lot of dough.’”
With her mission in mind, the Casa Linda fro-yo shop opened in 2012. Business was going so well that Skipworth started a second location in Richardson a year later.
“The concept was working,” she says. “People really embraced it, and so I just went for it.”
The monster motif started with the slogan “scary tastes good.” Skipworth brainstormed
A fun fact about Monster Yogurt is that the business’s food truck, which was acquired during the pandemic and is used for catering events, was hand-painted by artist Chris Gonzalez as opposed to being wrapped.
Photo by Jessica Turner.
concepts with her friends and family, and she remembered one of them calling her in the middle of the night to go with the Monster Yogurt idea.
Then, there’s the logo — created by Dallas artist CJ Miller — of a grumpy green monster with fangs and hair that resembles a swirl of frozen yogurt, a creature that’s part The Grinch mixed with Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. Purple and green in the monster logo is reflected throughout the Casa Linda store — from the avocado-colored walls, the furniture inside and outside, and even the neon open sign. The shop is undoubtedly meant to appeal to children. Before even getting to the fro-yo, there are toys for sale on the right side and a playpen on the left. Books are also available to borrow for families who want to read together, as opposed to looking at TVs, which are mostly absent in the store.
“I always get a lot of dads that say, ‘You know what would be a great business idea? You need to have the football games in here,’” Skipworth says. “But it would take away from it because a lot of people do come in and just read books to their kids.”
Flavors of frozen yogurt are even being created by children. For the first three months of the year, the young’uns pitched thousands of ideas, and now, they’re being made. For example, the first on tap in Casa Linda was Sophia’s Banana Pudding Custard, and new flavors are expected to roll out every couple of weeks.
In store, frozen yogurt prices are calculated by weight — 79 cents per ounce for bowls and cups. House-made waffle cones are also an option. As of writing this, mandatory flavors chocolate, vanilla and tart are available, plus acai palm berry, salted caramel corn, cookies and cream, Texas peach, bubble gum and Irish mint.
With any frozen yogurt shop, it’s not just about the flavors but also the sauces and toppings, which include nuts, fruit, candy and all things chocolate. A highlight is the fresh whipped cream made in-house.
When Skipworth said she wanted to bring back the community in Casa Linda, she meant it. Each year, Monster Yogurt hosts a fundraiser for Dallas Art Therapy as well as a children’s book drive benefitting underserved schools. Local children are given free frozen yogurt that they give to their moms for Mother’s Day.
“Anytime we see an opportunity that’s a good fit — children’s charities, stuff like that — we’ll do it,” she says.
Skipworth also cares for her team behind the counter. She wants to transition into an employee-owned business so that whenever she sells Monster Yogurt and retires, her longtime staffers can benefit. There is also an employee savings plan for high school seniors and college students; they are encouraged to save a dollar for each working hour, and Monster Yogurt will match it.
“The parents can’t always afford everything for them to go to school or for them to buy a car,” Skipworth says. “You really need those things to start. I started very poor and worked my way up, and without adults giving me a hand, I never would have made it.”
Monster Yogurt, 9540 Garland Road, Suite 394, 214.321.6363, scarytastesgood.com
MAKING HER MOTHER PROUD
Bryan Adams senior strives for her best & comes out on top
Story by MADELYN EDWARDS | Photography by KATHY TRAN
“MAKE ME PROUD.”
Emmanuella Jesumurewa’s mother told her this before the then 13-year-old left Nigeria for the United States with her father, brother and stepfamily.
Four years later, Emmanuella is now a senior at Bryan Adams High School Leadership Academy, and her mother’s parting message has meant everything to her while navigating her education abroad.
“Those three words kind of shaped every single thing I’ve done since I’ve come here because she did raise us as a single mother before my dad came back to get us,” Emmanuella says. “She is the definition of resilience and love and care and compassion.”
What has Emmanuella done in high school? The better question is, what hasn’t she done? Senior class and student council president. Expected valedictorian who plans to graduate high school with her associate’s degree. Singer in worship group Hallmark Music outside of school. She used to play basketball and volleyball and run track. Emmanuella has also worked while in school, mostly in retail and food service jobs but also by tutoring children in math and English at Charles A. Gill Elementary, northeast of Casa View.
“My mom has always taught me to just be the best you can be, leave everywhere better than you met it, and make an impact,” she says. “Not to be cocky; I’ve just been the top-achieving student. I’ve aimed to be the first in everything that I do, just because why not?”
As the adage goes, Emmanuella and her family came to the
U.S. looking for a better life. She described limited resources in her home country, like not always having enough food to eat and running out of money to pay for school.
On the plus side, Emmanuella already knew English, which is used in parts of Nigeria. (She can also speak the language Yoruba, which is used in parts of Nigeria as well as neighboring countries Benin and Togo.) But she became depressed during the transition. Not only did she have to get used to a new country, but she also had a “new” family.
“I never lived with my stepmom or grew up with my dad,” she says. “I didn’t know anybody here at all, and so I just had to get out of my comfort zone and use those three words, ‘Make me proud,’ to just do what I can (with) what has been invested in me because my mom didn’t go through all that for nothing.”
Getting involved and finding her people was crucial. To that end, she was president of the now-defunct Bible club at school, and she joined a religious fellowship group. The former Pathways in Technology Early College High School workplace learning coordinator at Bryan Adams made Emmanuella aware of multiple chances to take advantage of.
“Every single opportunity — public speaking-wise, internship-wise, volunteering-wise — she placed it at my feet, and when no one signed up for it, I signed up for it,” she says. “Like the summer programs because last year I went to University of Chicago for a
Math is Emmanuella’s favorite subject. “It gives me that sense of completion, that sense of like, ‘I can do this,’ that sense of confidence that, ‘Hey, it’s just numbers.’ Numbers will be numbers, except infinity or pi. I’m kind of a nerd in that aspect. But math is just, it’s me.”
week by myself. It was so exciting. I got to meet new people, take courses at UChicago.”
Last year, Emmanuella took an internship with Parkland Health that had her and others create a curriculum for educating young students on breast health. She wants her minor to be health care related when she attends college. Again, her mother served as the inspiration.
One night years ago, her mom did not come home until midnight. When she finally returned, she had a cut on her head after being involved in a bus crash.
“She didn’t even know she was bleeding so much,” Emmanuella says. “She was helping other people get out of the bus.”
Her mother first went to a hospital but was turned away because she couldn’t afford treatment. The next facility she went to stitched up her cut but without anesthesia.
“I could hear her screams from the hallway as a 10-year-old kid,” she says. “And that just stuck with me.”
Emmanuella is passionate about health care and wants to prevent other families from dealing with similar experiences and help to increase equity. She plans to major in applied math and data science and wants to find a way to combine her ambitions in health care with math.
“I’m in AP Calculus right now, and it’s beautiful. It’s my favorite class right now,” Emmanuella says. “My whole life is
kind of structured around resilience and perseverance to the end, and mathematics gives me that perseverance and confidence that can solve real-world problems.”
Here’s one such real-world problem that she has observed — people trying to find their sense of purpose in life. Math can reveal solid advice.
“You will find your answer, the solution to your problem in math, but there’s a million ways to solve that problem, and so your ‘why’ should not be tied to just one thing,” she says.
Emmanuella also has multiple interests to explore in her future. She wants to model. She loves to sing. Establishing a nonprofit to give back to her community in Nigeria is also on the list.
Though she tries to talk to her mother on a daily basis, Emmanuella hasn’t been able to go back to Nigeria to visit her. Fortunately, she has found mentors who have served as mom-like figures in her life.
One of them is Roslyn Baker, former P-TECH workplace learning coordinator at Bryan Adams. Emmanuella credited Baker with connecting her with opportunities and helping her feel seen and appreciated at school.
“I really hope people do find people like her in their lives to provide them those opportunities and hold them dear like daughters and sons,” Emmanuella says.
HERE COMES THE SUNRISE
TWO BEST FRIENDS MAKE MUSIC THAT SOUNDS LIKE SUMMER DAYDREAMS
Story by MADELYN EDWARDS | Photography by LAUREN ALLEN
OPTIMISTIC. FRIENDSHIP. HUSTLE.
These are the words that came to mind when asked to describe the musical duo Sunrise Academy. The band’s origin story is important to members Yakob Dye and Julian Sol Jordan, who are both in their mid-20s. They don’t want to be another unknown artist behind catchy singles on your Spotify playlist. They want to tell the story of their friendship.
On paper, the two young men’s backgrounds are pretty different. Jordan grew up east of White Rock Lake and attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Dye spent his early years on the other side of the world in Ethiopia until he was adopted at age 4 and moved to College Station.
“Imagine being in an orphanage with nobody and then coming to a family with 10 people,” he says.
Dye describes his adopted family as musically gifted. They all played a role in the church band — Dye on guitar and drums — and his brother taught him to make and master music.
As a teenager with
“WE’RE TRYING TO GO BACK AND EVOKE THAT FEELING BECAUSE IT’S JUST INNOCENCE, CHILDHOOD.“
Sunrise Academy started because of a serendipitous summer camp meeting between Yakob Dye and Julian Sol Jordan. They started making music almost immediately. “We’re making beats on our phones at camp, and then, they would be like, ‘Go play, go play in front of everybody,’” Dye says.
a guitar in tow, Dye met Jordan about a decade ago while playing basketball at a Christian Orthodox summer camp in a middle-of-nowhere part of Texas. Their connection was effortless, the kind that can only happen with kids. It wasn’t long until they started making music together at camp.
They kept in contact through email after camp and, eventually, made the drive for visits. Dye’s interest in music only grew, and he and Jordan would send beats to each other to listen to. About a year ago, Dye moved to Oak Cliff after he finished college.
Now that they are a bit older, it’s not lost on them how special their bond is.
“These last couple years of our 20s are like, this is the time where friendships tend to either keep going or stop,” Jordan says.
The positivity in their friendship is what they try to capture in their music. Sunrise Academy (originally named Sol and Dye, but they changed it to the current moniker, inspired by a rural daycare called Sunshine Academy) provides easy, breezy music. Think Harry Styles’ 2022 Harry’s House album. Some songs have vaguely romantic lyrics but also portray a romantic view of life.
Sunrise Academy’s 2021 single “Wondering Why” set this vibe of endless summer, where the only thing on your mind is a pretty girl.
“‘Wondering Why,’ I remember when we made that; we were, like, 18 years old, 19 years old, and he came over one summer to stay at my place three hours away,” Dye says. “We were just drinking slushies, eating pizza, playing pool, riding bikes.”
Jordan adds, “The stuff we make, we’re trying to go back and evoke that feeling because it’s just innocence, childhood, but not in a way that’s cute or whatever. That’s what I feel like is — I’m not going to lie — missing in a lot of people’s art, is just that semblance of hope.”
In Dye and Jordan’s creative process, instrumentation is prioritized over lyrics. The words in their songs create a vibe more than a message. For Dye in particular, he’s inspired by The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” a masterclass in simple yet effective songwriting.
“We’ll just start with a melody, something that we really like, usually a beat that sounds nostalgic or sounds like kids or very summery,” Dye says. “When we start writing, we just try to keep it simple. I wouldn’t even say our lyrics are very happy in a sense, like a lot of our lyrics are melancholy, bittersweet, ‘take me back to some old times.’”
And if writing music starts to feel forced or not so much fun, they stop.
“I feel like that’s when you start to do bad work,” Jordan says. “Also, when you start to do work that you have the intention of other people in mind when you’re making it, that’s also when you typically make your worst work, when you’re like, ‘Oh, these people might like this.’ It’s just got to feel real.”
Sunrise Academy is a “DIY” band. Jordan and Dye put their music together basically on their own — composition,
songwriting, both singing on the tracks, most of the production and directing their own music videos — while each of them holds down full-time jobs. They don’t always record in a professional studio, so sounds may not be as clear as they can be. But they like it like that.
“For the longest time, we used a mic that was like 100 bucks for all of our songs,” Jordan says. “His computer crashes on us all the time. It’s this dinky little computer, but if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”
After Sunrise Academy started releasing music regularly, Dye came to a crossroads. He had the choice to further his education in occupational therapy school or take a chance on the band.
“I was like, ‘Dude, what are we going to do with this band?’ We love the music. We don’t really market or anything for it. What are we going to do? Are we going to be the people who, when we turn 40 and 50, say, ‘Hey, we had a band in high school, too, or in college, too,’” he says.
Dye was teed up to start occupational therapy school a few years ago, and he went on a trip to Europe a month beforehand. Upon arriving back, he had a revelation.
“I was like, ‘No, I can always go back to school,’” Dye says. “‘I can’t always do this.’”
Around that time, Dye and Jordan started marketing Sunrise Academy on social media, particularly TikTok, by telling the story of their serendipitous summer camp meeting.
“We were posting every single day,” Jordan says. “I think we were posting three, four times a day, just our story. It would get to the point where I’d be doing a shift at this restaurant, be tired, take my gloves off, post a video, put it in my pocket, go serve someone food, come back, look — a million views just within 10 minutes, and it was like, ‘Oh my.’ We get messages every day that just describe how much this stuff means to people.”
As of writing this, Sunrise Academy has 86,260 monthly listeners on Spotify. Their most popular TikTok post is of the duo singing their single “Dinner Date” with 3.7 million views. But despite their desire to be known, Jordan and Dye are not aiming for Beyoncé’s level of fame.
“I’d be lying if I said we wanted to be super famous and going around on tour,” Dye says. “I get paid to have fun with my best friend. That’s the way I think of it. And so we know the numbers are all kind of a product of just us having fun and doing that.”
Last year, Sunrise Academy released the eight-track album Big & Strong, named as such to represent their growth and that of their band. And they want to continue that growth by playing live shows and meeting their fans.
The duo posted a fake band breakup announcement on April Fool’s Day that ended with Dye hyping up a new song and album coming out this year.
They’re more energized than ever.
“(This year) is like, we have the ammo ready,” Jordan says. “We have the listeners, record, merch, promo, it’s just time to act.”
YOUR
“He was the type of professor that whenever he spoke, everyone listened very intently,” student Scot Burkett says. Photos courtesy of Texas A&M University College of Dentistry.
Educator who taught thousands of dental students looks forward to retirement
Story by MADELYN EDWARDS
Being a good dentist means seeing your patient as a whole human, not just a mouth in need of repair.
Dr. Jake Hornberger, who serves at Leftwich + Hornberger Dentistry in Lakewood, learned this best from his former college professor, Dr. Amp Miller III. The 78-year-old North Dallas native and current Lake Highlands resident is retiring in May after 53 years as a faculty member at Texas A&M University College of Dentistry on Gaston Avenue.
Miller sticks out in Hornberger’s mind in the time following the death of his grandfather, Dr. Charles Moody Alexander, who also used to teach at the dental college and chaired the orthodontics department back when it was under the Baylor umbrella. Alexander was Hornberger’s hero and the main reason why he pursued his career.
“He passed away while I was in dental school,” Hornberger says. “It was a time that could have been very isolating, I think, and made dental school really tough because of the constant reminders.”
Miller, a friend of Hornberger’s grandfather, was there to pull him aside after class, ask about his family and let Hornberger know that he was thinking of them.
“It added this very personal feel to dental school, to the academic work and really helped remind me of that human connection of dentistry that goes so much further beyond the clinical skill,” Hornberger says. “What was unique about him is that he had that great ability to connect with students on a deeper level in a way that demanded respect, but also, just made them feel known and cared for.”
It wasn’t until his undergrad years at Southwestern University, between Waco and Austin, that he discovered an interest in health care sciences, like his major in chemistry, and teaching. Miller also connected his eventual pursuit of a dentistry career with his fondness for handmade models.
“Our family dentist would let me come sometimes and look over his shoulder in the lab,” he says. “I just got interested in the models and the details of the technical things that he was doing.”
Miller returned home to Dallas to attend what is now Texas A&M University College of Dentistry from 1969 to 1973 and never really left. He made friends with faculty members at dental school, who got him into teaching while also working as a dentist. Not too long later, he earned a prosthodontic (practice involving dental prosthetics) certificate in 1980.
Of course, Miller has decades of experience in working with students. He was an associate dean for clinical affairs at one time, but he didn’t stay there because he was more interested in teaching and managing curriculum. Miller has taught dental students of all levels and particularly enjoys one part of the learning process — the accumulation of swagger.
“The first few times they do something, they’re struggling, and you want to give them some thoughts on how they do that. Second year, they’re getting better, and some of them are getting really good. And then in the clinics, it’s fun to kind of watch them work with the patients the first time,” he says. “I like to see them get a little swagger, begin to get better and better, and it’s fun to watch them teach, like to watch a second year sometimes teach a first year because they’ve done it once or twice, and the first years haven’t done it much.”
Despite his current dedication to the field, Miller didn’t always have a dream to work with teeth.
“I thought I wanted to be an athlete or something goofy like that,” the Thomas Jefferson High School alumnus says.
At that time, restorative dentistry was the right place for self-proclaimed lab rats like Miller.
“You used to have to really be OK with being in the laboratory,” he says. “Back in those days, we were doing everything analog. You make an impression, you make a cast, you wax it up, you do a bunch of things with it, and so you really had to spend a lot of time in the lab. I didn’t mind that so much.”
The process for this work has now become more digital, which Miller says is a good thing. Yet, having the manual “hand skills” — like figuring out where a tooth needs to be restored, drilling into it and placing a filling — are still important for dentists today to know.
“When you prepare the tooth for a crown, you got to have some hand skills in order to get the shape right,” he says. “You still need to have hand skills in order to do that, even though the scanners and the digital technology has made it a little bit easier sometimes to fabricate the crowns and get them ready to be placed.”
Like Hornberger, plenty of Miller’s students stick around the Dallas area after they graduate, and Miller enjoys bumping into them from time to time and checking in. One of his former pupils is the college of dentistry’s dean, Dr. Lily T. García.
“He’s taught thousands of dental students, including me,” García said in a statement. “The dental college has served the North Texas community for 120 years, and Dr. Miller has been an important part of that for nearly half the time. His contributions to dentistry are immense.”
Miller keeps an eye out for professionals who would be good teachers at the dental college. Enjoying teaching and being around students, helping and engaging them, are mandatory qualities, and once Miller recognizes that, he encourages them to give it a shot. And these are things he saw in García.
“I was always interested to see what she would do because I knew she would be a good educator,” he says.
Hornberger recalls meeting Miller for the first time as a teenager when he was at the college with his grandfather. He doesn’t
Dr. Miller was named the Teacher of the Year in 1992.
remember what the conversation was about but left realizing that Miller was one to know.
“I remember meeting him and chatting with him and just thinking like, ‘Oh yeah, that dude carries a lot of weight around here,’ especially with how excited my granddad was to introduce me to him and all that,” Hornberger says. “It was very clear that that was someone that you wanted to know and wanted to be around and learn from and that there was a lot of respect garnered from his presence.”
Scot Burkett, a college of dentistry student who plans to graduate next year, had the same first impression.
“He was the type of professor that whenever he spoke, everyone listened very intently,” Burkett says.
Burkett doesn’t take classes with Miller anymore but will still check in when he sees him around campus. Miller remembers him and will ask how he’s doing with patients. After taking on an overwhelming first case in clinics, Burkett knew just who to turn to.
“He took time out of his day, even though it wasn’t anything regarding his class or anything that he really had any responsibility for, and he sat down with me for a good hour, maybe, and talked me through the decision-making and treatment planning regarding crowns and how to properly approach it,” Burkett says. “That was super awesome because it really showed that he still cared and always will care, and he’s always somebody to rely on whenever I have questions.”
Miller is retiring on his birthday this year, and he plans to use his newfound free time for himself by playing golf and working on home improvement projects. Miller hopes he is remembered as a “capable, caring educator that tried to make the programs as good as they could be and help the students when they need help” — similar to how Hornberger and Burkett described him.
No longer having Miller as a readily accessible resource may be a loss for the college of dentistry students, but Burkett is grateful to have had any opportunity to learn from him.
“We all wish that he could teach forever and teach everybody,” he says. “He’s got to retire, and you’ve just got to be happy that it happened.”
“HE TOOK TIME OUT OF HIS DAY, EVEN THOUGH IT WASN’T ANYTHING REGARDING HIS CLASS ...AND HE SAT DOWN WITH ME FOR A GOOD HOUR, MAYBE, AND TALKED ME THROUGH THE DECISION-MAKING AND TREATMENT PLANNING...”
In 1980, Dr. Miller had returned to the dental college for grad school and earned his prosthodontic certificate.
Dr. Miller was named Teacher of the Year again in 2025 alongside former College of Dentistry professor Brandy S. Cowen.
THE JESSICA ANNE LIVES ON
A PIERCING WHISTLE RIPPLES ACROSS THE EASTERN SHORES OF WHITE ROCK LAKE.
Faint, rhythmic chugs rumble closer and closer to the ear. Runners leave trails to get a closer look.
As he lets the boiler release pressured steam with a deafening hiss, Lake Highlands neighbor Dean Smith cruises by in his 22-foot-long steamboat. Fitted with a bright red paddlewheel that propels up to 4 miles per hour, near-deck length canopy and twin rudders, the Jessica Anne takes on the shape of a Mississippi River boat ripped straight from the pages of a Mark Twain novel, albeit much smaller.
“As far as I know, this is the only steamboat of its size in Texas,” Smith says.
The Jessica Anne made its first appearance on White Rock Lake in May. Its first voyage, however, took place almost a half century ago on Lake Ray Hubbard.
Smith and his father Cole, a highly-respected architect, built the original body together in the ’70s. Cole had grown up in Topeka and worked part time in a locomotive shop for the Santa Fe Railroad, which sparked an interest in steam-powered engines. One of their first projects led them to build a threecar steam-powered mini locomotive set on tracks 16-inches wide on their Garland property. Dean taught himself to weld, while his father specialized in bending and forging metal parts.
“My dad was really good at sketching and had a real good eye for proportions and all that. And so we would make all these sketches and stuff. Everything we built, it wasn’t like there wasn’t any failure. And stuff that we built, there were some things that didn’t work out quite right, and we just tried something else.”
Love of steamboating passes through generations
Story by AUSTIN WOOD | Photography by LAUREN ALLEN
The boat began as two pontoons laid in Smith’s backyard. From there, the pair framed the hull and laid a plywood deck. Their metalworking skills came in handy when it came time to assemble the pipe system inside the boiler. Working out of a well-equipped workshop, they tamed yard after yard of 1-inch steel pipe into a complicated system of tubes and gauges designed to pressurize and capture the steam necessary to power its 12-float propelling wheel.
Dean and his father named the boat for his niece, Jessica. Anne, his maternal
grandmother, earned the second nod over his mother.
“There was a little bit of politics in that,” Smith laughs. “My mom, she thought me and my dad were a little screwy.”
After a few trips to local lakes, including a well-publicized stop at Cedar Creek covered by the local newspaper, the ship ran aground in Lake Ray Hubbard. Smith was out of the country at the time on an archaeological dig in Cyprus, so he isn’t too clear on the circumstances leading up to its decommissioning.
Eventually, the Smiths pulled Jessica Anne from the lake using a truck and some rope, leaving it to collect dust for the next three decades.
“My dad has always wanted to get it restored and all that. It never really happened. He passed away in 2019; that was kind of the motivation for me to rebuild it really.”
Over the last couple of years, Smith has made small improvements while restoring the boat to its former glory. A new paddlewheel slices the water at a better angle, he says, as the original engine sat “too low,” which left the wheel paddling deeper than needed. The pontoons were replaced. And instead of a plywood deck, Smith sourced construction-grade lumber from a jobsite in Hillsboro for the updated surface.
After years of work, the resurrected vessel made its first appearance last spring.
“It’s just the joy of it running,” Smith says.
“Of course, the biggest satisfaction is here is something you built from scratch, and it actually worked. It’s pride in your work, and it worked pretty well. It’s not like you build a model or nothing against that. Build a model of something and then you just put it on the shelf.”
The steam powering the engine is created by pulling water from the lake, then heating it through the steel pipework in the boiler using thermal energy from a firebox. The goal
is to create enough pressure (around 100 pounds per square inch) to kick start the engine, which is composed of an intricate lattice of metal motors and levers powering the paddlewheel.
“The neat thing about a steam engine is it all kind of has its own personality,” he says. “All the parts and everything are exposed.”
He takes the boat out once or twice a month, with weather conditions being a deciding factor. When he takes it up White Rock Creek, he’s only about a half-mile away from his White Rock Valley home. While he normally brings some company for four- or five-hour boat rides, his most crowded trip came over the holidays, when eight family members piled on.
Most of the time, he says, reactions around the lake are mixed.
“Some people could really care less and other people just think it’s kind of a cool hobby.”
His son, who lives in Corpus Christi, enjoys taking the boat out and recently even brought a drone to capture aerial footage of their voyage.
The love for steam has been passed down through three generations. Dean says his father would be proud.
“I just know if he was here or if he’s able to see it from now, he would be most pleased,” Smith says. “And I just kind of wanted to keep the tradition going on.”
“AS FAR AS I KNOW, THIS IS THE ONLY STEAMBOAT OF ITS SIZE IN TEXAS.”
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The goats at White Rock Lake brought joy & privet control to the neighborhood
Story by PATTI VINSON
In our divided, often polarized world, it was refreshing to find that we could all agree on one thing: The goats at White Rock Lake were awesome! “Where are the goats today?” was a common question among friends, neighbors and on social media back in February and March. How about a goat recap and update?
All told, around 300 goats, plus a few sheep thrown into the mix, helped restore about 26 acres around the lake “by thinning invasive plants and overgrowth, improving visibility and access, and naturally improving the soil,” says Brett Johnson, Superintendent of Environmental Quality and Conservation Manager for the City of Dallas.
The City had actually been toying with the goat idea for several years. As a joint effort of forestry and conservation city staff, a group known as the Forestry Technical Team, their pilot program occurred a few years ago at Frazier Dam, near Dallas Love Field. The goats also reported for duty near Bachman Lake, Northaven Trail and other locations before taking the stage in East Dallas.
For the goats at the lake, the City contracted with a farm in the Weatherford and
Mineral Wells area. A shepherd remained with the goats constantly, to control and protect these important workers.
From the time the goats arrived on Feb. 5 until they were loaded up to leave on March 3, folks from all over East Dallas and beyond came by to take a gander at the herd. The first couple of days, as the goats and scattered sheep grazed on the hilly grassland above Bath House Cultural Center, visitors trickled by, approaching quietly, almost reverently, to see the ruminants at work.
Word spread quickly and crowds grew. Families and couples and groups of friends came by to watch the goats. The occasional street vendor or ice cream truck added to the carnival, county fair atmosphere. But all the while, the goats ignored the curious onlookers and continued their grueling work of eating plants they loved.
One Sunday morning, the goats munched away at delicious privet berries, completely oblivious to the group playing pickleball on a court just a few feet away.
The goats were entertaining and a source of joy for many, but they were also a tool in the fight to preserve precious prairieland and forest around the lake. Despite our modern technology, goats are often the
best choice for a natural, eco-friendly approach to clear land. For humans, the work is labor-intensive, and machinery like mulchers and mowers can remove other plants needlessly.
Johnson explains that one of the objectives for the goats was thatch reduction. “Thatch is the layer of dead grass and plant material that builds up on the soil surface over time. In unmanaged areas, this layer can become thick and limit new plant growth.”
As they grazed in grassy areas, the goats converted their plant diet into manure and urine, which were quickly returned to the soil and replaced nitrogen and organic matter back into the system.
Johnson and his team were thrilled with the results. “On the thatch issue, they did a much better job than we were initially thinking.”
In the forested areas, the goats happily munched on privet, an invasive plant. “These plants can outcompete native grasses and reduce biodiversity,” says Johnson. “Goats are particularly effective at browsing these woody species, stripping leaves and even bark from plants up to several feet high.” You may have noticed many of the goats standing on their hind legs, reaching for higher berries and leaves. “Repeated grazing can weaken or kill these species, helping maintain open grassland conditions and supporting a more diverse plant community.”
Once they had munched their
way through land stretching from Mockingbird to the Bath House Cultural Center, it was time for the goats to move on. Mission accomplished? “Very much so,” says Johnson, “but understand as the spring growing season unfolds, it may not be super noticeable after
“GOATS ARE PARTICULARLY EFFECTIVE AT BROWSING THESE WOODY SPECIES, STRIPPING LEAVES AND EVEN BARK FROM PLANTS UP TO SEVERAL FEET HIGH.”
a few weeks. But if we can run the goats through the same area for two or three years, we will start to see a major difference.”
The
question everyone is asking: Will the goats be back? Yes, assuming Johnson and team can find the budget and support. “Hopefully, next fall to early spring period. They have the biggest impact on privet in the winter when it’s the main species that’s green, and the berries are on the tree.”
While it was not the simplest task to manage 300 or so goats, the results speak for themselves. Bonus: the goats raised awareness of the need to take special care of the land around the lake, plus the effectiveness of using a creative, natural solution. Johnson smiles, “They have helped put a spotlight on the conservation efforts of the Dallas Park and Recreation Department and Forestry Technical Team’s conservation efforts.”
PATTI VINSON is a guest writer who has lived in East Dallas for more than 20 years. She’s written for the Advocate and Real Simple magazine.
