#old dallas

Family legend has it that my great-grandmother, Rindia, gave her church a large insurance settlement that her son S.E. received after being terribly injured in a car accident when he was only 17.

Afterward, my mom says, Rindia and S.E. were too poor to buy food or firewood. My mom remembers going with her mom, my granny, to their little house in Grand Prairie, on the outskirts of Dallas, to give them provisions long after Granny had divorced my mom’s father (another of Rindia’s sons), Robert.

Rindia and S.E. went to Bethel Temple in Oak Cliff. The church was or would soon become “the largest Assembly of God Church in America.” Although my grandfather evidently reviled the minister, Albert Ott, for taking the money, my mom says Rindia herself never complained.

Several years back, I found documentation of the accident in the Dallas Morning News archives. “Skull is crushed as truck is hit,” one story read.

Then, last year, I visited the Dallas Public Library and unearthed court documents showing that the full settlement, awarded on May 5, 1936, was $4400 (about $75,000 in today’s dollars). The court held on to the funds until May 12, when the lawyers received $1466, and the doctors received $934. Later that year, Rindia petitioned for distribution of the remaining $2000 (about $34,000 in today’s dollars), which must be what she gave to the church.