Winehole23
06-26-2014, 09:26 AM
In the five years since Phil Collins first made known his lifelong fascination with the Alamo, news coverage of his interest in Texas history has ranged from the man-bites-dog variety to downright mean. For Texans, the fact that one of the world’s richest musicians—Collins has sold more than 250 million records—might spend a small fraction of his royalty checks collecting treasured artifacts from the Texas Revolution is not so hard to fathom. Or at least that was the intended takeaway from Texas Monthly ’s January, 2012 story on Collins, “Come and Take a Look at Me Now.” (http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/come-and-take-look-me-now) The rock-and-roll press and British tabloids, on the other hand, have taken a different view. In a 2011 story, Rolling Stone depicted (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/phil-collins-last-stand-why-the-troubled-pop-star-wants-to-call-it-quits-20110304) him as a rejected relic of the eighties who sits in his basement in Lake Geneva, Switzerland, staring at Jim Bowie’s knife and Davy Crockett’s rifle and thinking about killing himself. London’s Daily Mail called him “one drumstick shy of a pair.”
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1333165/How-psychic-cook-called-Carolyn-convinced-Phil-Collins-hes-reincarnated-American-hero.html)
Well, prepare yourself, naysayers, because now Phil Collins has done something truly weird. This afternoon, the Texas General Land Office announced that the pop star has agreed to donate his collection, which is thought to be worth tens of millions of dollars, to the state. For free. All of it. That includes hundreds of documents, ranging from a letter Stephen F. Austin wrote from a Mexican prison in January, 1834 and Sam Houston’s original 1835 land grant for property in East Texas, to the signed receipt for thirty beeves that Travis brought into the Alamo on the day the siege began, plus artifacts like uniforms and Brown Bess muskets that belonged to Mexican soldiers, a sword belt believed to have been worn by Travis when he died atop the northern wall, and a shot pouch that Crocket is thought to have given a Mexican soldier just before he was executed.
The deal was initiated by Kaye Tucker, a GLO project manager who has been the agency’s unofficial Alamo liaison since it assumed custody of the site from the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in 2011. “We’ve always had a pipe dream to get a collection like this,” she told me over the phone this morning while stuck in I-35 traffic on the drive from Austin to San Antonio. “My understanding was that he had been talking to some area museums about an exhibit, so I had dinner with him and asked if he’d consider giving at least part of it to the Alamo. To my amazement, he just said, ‘Yes.’” The logistics of the gift, like how it will be shipped, insured, and stored upon arrival, have yet to be hammered out, she said. “But Phil said he’s even been looking into that.”
http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/phil-collins-donates-his-expansive-alamo-memorabilia-collection-general-land-office#.U6sPnLDVteC.facebook
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1333165/How-psychic-cook-called-Carolyn-convinced-Phil-Collins-hes-reincarnated-American-hero.html)
Well, prepare yourself, naysayers, because now Phil Collins has done something truly weird. This afternoon, the Texas General Land Office announced that the pop star has agreed to donate his collection, which is thought to be worth tens of millions of dollars, to the state. For free. All of it. That includes hundreds of documents, ranging from a letter Stephen F. Austin wrote from a Mexican prison in January, 1834 and Sam Houston’s original 1835 land grant for property in East Texas, to the signed receipt for thirty beeves that Travis brought into the Alamo on the day the siege began, plus artifacts like uniforms and Brown Bess muskets that belonged to Mexican soldiers, a sword belt believed to have been worn by Travis when he died atop the northern wall, and a shot pouch that Crocket is thought to have given a Mexican soldier just before he was executed.
The deal was initiated by Kaye Tucker, a GLO project manager who has been the agency’s unofficial Alamo liaison since it assumed custody of the site from the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in 2011. “We’ve always had a pipe dream to get a collection like this,” she told me over the phone this morning while stuck in I-35 traffic on the drive from Austin to San Antonio. “My understanding was that he had been talking to some area museums about an exhibit, so I had dinner with him and asked if he’d consider giving at least part of it to the Alamo. To my amazement, he just said, ‘Yes.’” The logistics of the gift, like how it will be shipped, insured, and stored upon arrival, have yet to be hammered out, she said. “But Phil said he’s even been looking into that.”
http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/phil-collins-donates-his-expansive-alamo-memorabilia-collection-general-land-office#.U6sPnLDVteC.facebook