Bob Ford: A Living Legend

Meet Bob Ford. At 93, this lifelong Islander is a walking and talking encyclopedia of All Things Galveston. His dad was none other than Fred Mack Ford, who served as Galveston Police Chief from 1940-47 during the heyday of infamous racketeers Sam and Rose Maceo, who controlled the island and organized crime for almost three decades. Bob’s son, Robert Ford, is lead announcer for the Houston Astros. Bob was kind enough to sit down with Humans of Galveston for an in-depth interview. Here’s what he had to say:

Humans of Galveston: Tell us a little about yourself, Bob.

Bob: I was born on January 31, 1928 and grew up in Galveston. My mother and I raised chickens and turkeys and guinea birds and hens. I’ve always loved birds. I had racing pigeons. Altogether in a 4-square-block we would play marbles, we would get in the lot and play baseball and football. In the evenings we’d play, ‘Red Rover’ and ‘Capture the Flag.’ In those days, when you had your friends visit your house and they’d say, ‘C’mon out’ to play. So I came out with a cookie. The first thing you would do is break it in half and give whoever was there a half of it. Even if it’s a little candy, you would share it, no matter what it was. Galveston was safe. No one bothered you. You could walk at midnight or 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning, and walk wherever you wanted to go down, and if there were people on the street no one said anything to you and no one bothered you.

I was drafted into the Army and served during the Korean War (June 1950 to July 1953), stationed in Germany. I returned home and worked for William Parr & Co. steamship agents. I worked there 20 years and decided I wanted to get out of the box and work on my own. I was making $1,000 a month and in those days in the 1970s that was pretty good money. So I quit and got my retirement money. I had no place to go, no office, no business. And I was asked to manage the bookkeeping for Peter Phillips (William Parr & company) in Galveston. We were based in the U.S. National Bank Building. I did that for another 15 years until 1988 when I went to work for the City of Galveston and stayed there for 10 years. I was insurance risk manager. I stayed there and retired in 2003. Then I worked for the county in a contract position. My wife, Carolyn and I raised two boys and two girls. My wife died six years ago.

Humans of Galveston: What do you remember about downtown Galveston?

Bob: You had Grant’s and Kress, McCrory’s (5 and 10 Cent Store) and Woolworth’s on Market Street. You had a barber shop, small restaurants, jewelry stores and a record shop. In the evenings, there was no air-conditioner in the houses and the families would say, ‘Let’s go downtown.’ You’d get on Market Street and you’d walk down to wherever street you wanted to walk to. It was just casual living.”

Humans of Galveston: What kind of entertainment did downtown have?

Bob: The State Theater (now The Grand), the Key Theater, the Tremont Theater and the Queen (Theater) would show a movie and then they’d have a vaudeville show at midnight. I worked at the Queen Theater on Market Street as an usher. I can remember when my brother, Fred Jr., went there and he called my dad at midnight saying, ‘Are they supposed to take their clothes off?’ The next day, they corrected that. (laughs).

Humans of Galveston: What was it like having a dad who was police chief?

Bob: My dad had his own way of doing things. There was a guy named Frank Sennett who used to walk down Broadway. He was in the first World War and he was shell shocked, so he was kind of out of it. I remember one of the times I was up at daddy’s office in the police station and my dad was talking to Frank Sennett. My dad gave him 20 dollars, and I later asked him, ‘What was that all about?’ He said that Frank doesn’t beg. He wants to do something for you to give him money. He said he sent him to 21st and Market and give me a report on what’s going on down there. So, Frank came in and gave him a report and my dad gave him 20 dollars (laughs).

Another time, a (Galveston County) commissioner came in and I happened to be there with my dad, and a detective asked the commissioner, ‘Do you remember we used to fight to bring you home? We used to go down to the party houses and park the car out front, and get the madam and say, ‘Look who’s in the car. It’s the commissioner, and his daughter is getting ready to go to college and he wanted to see if you could help him out a little bit.” The commissioner knew nothing about this. So the guy would get the money from the madam and stick it in his pocket (laughs).

I remember when the Army had some soldiers that got syphilis from going down to the brothels, and my dad had to raid the whorehouses. We were sitting down at home at suppertime and my dad was on the phone with one of the madams. He told her, ‘Gimme two girls.’ Then he’d call another madam and said, ‘I need six girls.’ He was setting up the women so that the next morning the headline read, “Police Raid Boarding House.” (laughs)

Humans of Galveston: What memories do you have of the Maceos?

Bob: The Maceos were the benefactors of Galveston. They brought people here. We had a priest over at St. Mary’s called Father Dan and they would pay for Father Dan to go back to Ireland and do charitable things. The Maceos wanted the town to be clean. One time they called my dad up at his office and said, ‘Chief, we’re getting some bad publicity. Someone is robbing the service stations and you haven’t been able to catch him.’ It had been going on for two or three months. My dad said, ‘We’re trying. We’ve got people out to see where he’s going to hit next.’ So they (Maceos) said, ‘Ok, we’ll take care of it.’ We got home and my dad says, ‘I don’t know what that means.” My mother and I asked my dad two days later, did they ever catch that guy?’ My dad said, ‘Yes they got him.” I asked, “Who got him, the police or the Maceos?’ He said, ‘The Maceos got him and threw him over the bridge.’ Dad said they just wanted a clean town. They didn’t want any publicity because of the kind of business they were in. My dad said they never ever fooled with drugs. They were bootleggers. There was a guy named Johnny Jack and he would get a boat and they would go to the jetties to unload some liquor. That’s how they operated.

Humans of Galveston: It’s widely known that Chief Ford went to prison rather than to testify against the Maceos. What memories do you have of that?

Bob: The FBI and the IRS had come and visited my dad. My dad asked, ‘What do you want?’ and they said, ‘We want the Maceos.’ My dad said, ‘I don’t know anything about what the Maceos do. I know that they gamble’ and whatever else he told them. I said, ‘Dad, why don’t you just tell them what they want to know?’ It was about 1953, right after I got out of the service. He said, ‘Son, I’m getting older but you guys are just starting in town. If I told them anything, you guys would have to live with that the rest of your lives, being called a stool pigeon. Dad said, ‘Whatever they’re going to do to me, let them do it. But I’m not going tell anything to save myself and condemn someone else no matter who it is.’

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Published by Bobby Stanton