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‘Shooting’ animals at livestock show
A&M grad mixes veterinary medicine, photography at rodeo
By Sharon Maberry
STAFF WRITER
Photography and veterinary medicine don’t
have much in common. But one Houston man
splits his time doing both.
Dr. Frank Martin, one of three official veteri
narians for the Houston Livestock Show and Ro
deo, also shoots and develops most of the public
ity photos for the event.
Martin began his photography career in 1974
asaTexas A&M freshman when he volunteered
to take pictures at the Houston show, he said.
“I’ve worked as a volunteer for the stock show
ever since,” he said. “I walk around and take pic
tures of livestock or rodeo performances or any
thing else that seems interesting.”
Martin entered A&M’s College of Veterinary
Medicine in 1976 and graduated three years
later.
“In 1985, the administration decided a vet was
needed in the Astrodome at all times during ro
deo action and they hired me,” Martin said. “My
job as photographer kind of went along with ev
erything else.”
Martin said he processes and prints all his pho
tographs, which the 1 louston press office keeps
on file for use during the year and for publiciz
ing the next year’s show. He said the show re
ceives about 1,200 requests each year from publi
cations for pictures of specific events.
“It serves as a tremendous source of goodwill
for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo that
you couldn’t buy for any price,” Martin said. “We
send my pictures to different newspapers and a
large percentage of them are run.
“They’re also used for other purposes. For in
stance, an airline in Houston might want some
shots of the rodeo in January. T he press office
can send them some of the pictures I took at last
year’s show.
“I’ve been told that one of my photos is in the
current edition of World Book Encyclopedia.”
As an official veterinarian for the Houston
Livestock Show and Rodeo, Martin examines ro
deo animals before and after each performance
for injuries or other problems.
“One rule we’ve enforced is not allowing indis
criminate use of electric shocks on rodeo ani
mals,” Martin said. “Some rodeos allow a lot of
that, but we reserve the shocks for animals refus
ing to come out of a chute. An animal staying in a
chute once it’s open creates a dangerous situation
for the animal and the rider.”
Martin also oversees a livestock drug-testing
program initiated at Houston this year to test sale
animals for drug residues. The program is a re
sult of random drug testing at last year’s show,
which indicated a problem with drugged live
stock.
“We’re the first livestock show to implement
any sort of drug-testing program,” Martin said.
Although the Houston Livestock Show and
Rodeo is a major part of Martin’s life, it generally
occupies him for only a few months each year, he
said.
“In real life, I do some mobile (veterinary)
work,” he said. “Although I primarily practice on
large animals, I also do some small animal work
for elderly people or for those who can’t afford
to bring their animals to a clinic.”
Martin said he wouldn’t want to choose be
tween veterinary medicine and photography.
“I like to do them both,” he said. “I used to
wonder if people would think I was wasting my
veterinary education with photography. About a
month before graduation (from vet school), one
of my professors asked if I planned on continu
ing photography. I thought, ‘Here it comes. He’s
going to tell me what a mistake it would be.’
“But he really surprised me. He said he hoped
I’d continue photography because I have a talent
that shouldn’t be wasted. Ever since then, I
haven’t worried about it anymore.”
In Advance
Aggies go off campus for ’QO-’Q 1 class ball
The Classes of ’90 and ’91 will
have a semi-formal combined ball
aithe University Inn Friday from
8:30 to 12:30.
This is the first time the ball
will be off campus.
Tracy Hammerstein, Class of
'90 Ball Chairman, said, “Lately,
the Class Ball attendance has not
been as great as it was years ago.
We thought it (being off campus)
would attract more people.”
Tickets are $12 per couple or
$7 per person and are available in
both the MSC and the Quad be
tween 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. this
week.
Door prizes are to be given
away at 1:30 p.m. Friday at Rud
der Fountain. T hose who have
purchased their tickets will be eli
gible. Prizes include a limousine
for the night.
Meeting to be held to discuss class agents
A mandatory meeting for May,
August and December graduat
ing seniors interested in seeking
election to class agent for the
Class of ’89 will be Thursday at
6:30 p.m. in the Clayton Williams
Alumni Center.
Requirements, qualifications
and duties of class agents will be
discussed by Bob Epstein, Class of
’44, Association of Former Stu
dents vice-president for class ac
tivities, and Jim Jeter, Class of
70, associate executive director
of the Association.
Voting is scheduled for the an
nual spring induction banquets
sponsored by the Association
April 4 and 5.
Seniors unable to attend the
meeting may contact Katy Brad-
berry in the Class Programs Of
fice at 845-7514.
Class agents serve five-year
terms as members of the Associa
tion’s Council. Class members
elect one to three agents every
five years to act as liason between
the class and the Association.
Distillery flash fire
kills one, injures 2
at Port Arthur plant
PORT ART HUR (AP) —Investi
gators Tuesday were trying to deter
mine the cause of a flash fire that
swept through a Fina Oil and Chem
ical Co. crude distilling unit killing
one and injuring two others.
Killed in the early Tuesday morn
ing fire was Albert J. Gage, 36, of
Orange, said Capt. Ken Duhon with
the Jefferson County SherifFs De
partment.
Molly Toups, 30, of Beaumont,
was admitted for observation at Park
Place Hospital and was listed in sta
ble condition, hospital spokesman
Wendi Romero said Tuesday af
ternoon.
A third employee, Jimmy Wo
mack, 32, of Port Arthur, was
treated for minor injuries and re
leased, Fina spokesman Hood Barn
well said.
The fire occurred shortly before 4
a.m., a fire department dispatcher
said.
The fire was quickly extinguished
by plant personnel and local fire
fighters did not have to respond, the
dispatcher said.
Seven employees were on duty at
the outdoor unit when the fire
erupted, Barnwell said.
The unit will be shut down while
damage is assessed, he said.
“I’m not sure what the employees
were doing at the time, or why these
particular people were injured,”
Barnwell said. “That will come out in
our investigation.”
The plant, owned by Dallas-based
Fina, employs 450 people and pro
duces about 110,000 barrels of oil
per day, he said.
Operations were continuing
Tuesday in other areas of the plant,
Barnwell said.
Inmates make license plates by mill ions
HUNTSVILLE (AP) —Texas prison inmates
last year stamped out 3.5 million license plates
and printed more than 20 million annual license
plate validation stickers, according to the Texas
Department of Corrections 1988 annual report.
The items are among hundreds of thousands
products turned out by 29 prison factories and
detailed in the report released this week.
The license plates and stickers are made at the
2,300-inmate Wynne Unit near Huntsville.
Other totals of products for the fiscal year
ending Aug. 31, 1988 as listed in the report in
dude 24 million yards of cloth produced at tex
tile mills for manufacture of inmate clothing and
600,000 towels.
Garment factories at four prisons assembled
2.4 million items, including flags, janitorial bags,
gloves, sheets and drapes.
At the Beto 1 Unit, inmates made 600,290
signs for state roads and highways, 207,746 re
flectors and 444,075 letters and numbers.
The Central Unit turned out 2.56 million
pounds and 870,443 gallons of soaps, detergents
and wax products.
And the woodworking factory at the Ellis I
Unit made 10,082 floor and janitorial brushes
and mops along with 3,200 furniture items for
offices and living quarters for state agencies.
In a letter to Gov. Bill Clements, Board of Cor
rections Chairman Charles Terrell said the high
lights of the year were the winding clown of the
federal monitoring of the prison system and the
start of the largest construction program in the
history of the department.
“After 15 years of litigation and the threat of
contempt findings as little as two years ago, this
confirms the tremendous progress toward com
pliance with the court orders,” Terrell said of the
decision by a federal master to call for a final re
port in 1990 in the landmark Ruiz case, which
spurred court-mandated prison reforms.
The construction plan, now under way, will
add 10,000 beds to the crowded prison system,
the nation’s third-largest with more than 39,000
inmates.
“Those efforts will definitely aid the entire
state’s capacity dilemma —certainly an encour
agement to the criminal justice system,” Terrell
said.
Of the 39,664 inmates at the close of the year,
17,199, or 43.4 percent, were black. White in
mates numbered 13,688, or 34.5 percent. His-
panics totalled 8,658, or 21.83 percent.
Nearly 96 percent, or 38,050 inmates, were
male, and nearly half of them — 44 percent —
were between the ages of 17 and 28.
The most common conviction —23.3 percent
for men and 22.6 percent for women — was for
burglary. Robbery was the next most likely of
fense with 2 1 percent of both male and female
inmates.
More than one-fourth of the inmates either
lived or were convicted in Houston, the state’s
largest city. Dallas, meanwhile, contributed 19.5
percent of the male inmates and 18.6 percent of
the female inmates.
According to department figures, each of the
39,000 inmates cost taxpayers an average of
$32.66 per day, up about $6 daily from a year
ago. A decade ago, the total average daily cost
wasjust over $7.
Scientists poking noses into olfactory rese arch
BOSTON (AP) — Scientists know
alotabout smell. T hey know it weak
ens as we get older, it varies depend
ing on a person’s sex and ethnic
background, and it involves more
than just the nose. What they gener
ally don’t know is why.
“Within the scientific community,
smell has always taken a back seat to
the other senses, probably because
we don’t live in an olfactory world.
We live in a visual world; a world of
sounds,” said Dr. John S. Kauer, a
New England Medical Center re-
MOSCOW, Texas (AP) — Strang
ely enough, Dinosaur Gardens
owner Don Bean hates the fact that
the extinct creatures have gained
widespread popularity in the late
1980s.
“Fused to be that if you wanted to
buy a toy dinosaur, you have to come
tons,” Bean said. “But now you can
get dinosaurs anywhere.”
Since Bean opened his folksy cli-
nosaur park in July 1981, he has sold
plastic dinosaur toys and other cu
rios.
Lately, souvenir sales are less than
30 percent of what they were a cou
ple of years ago, because all manner
of variety and toy stores now carry
their own lines of dinosaur items.
“Back then, we didn’t get near as
searcher trying to determine biam
function using the nose.
Last year he used video cameras
and special dyes to trace the path of
an odor impulse through the brain
of a salamander. The work pro
duced a “movie,” or series of color-
enhanced pictures, showing that the
brain is “a parallel processor,” hand
ling many signals simultaneously —
like a supercomputer.
The research may have implica
tions for the study and treatment of
brain tumors by helping differen-
many people through the park, but
we sold a lot more in the shop,” Bean
said.
So Bean is naturally apprehensive
as he prepares the park for this
year’s March 4 season opening.
On this day, he is figuring out
how he can repair Smilodon, a fi
berglass sabre-toothed tiger with a
tooth that was snapped off last year
by some mischievous tourist.
Bean says he is going to have to do
something to figure out how to pick
up souvenir sales.
He has an idea and figures he will
give it a shot.
“Yeah, crystals,” he says, picking
up a box of sparkling quartz crystals.
“I heard people are really buying
these things.”
tiate between tumors and normal tis
sue.
Scores of researchers are poking
their noses into such olfactory oddi
ties as a link between premature de
cline in smell and Alzheimer’s dis
ease; a protein that ferries odor
molecules through the nose; the fact
that half of all people between ages
65 and 80 suffer major loss in the
sense of smell; and the trait peculiar
to some nasal nerve cells to regener
ate.
“They’re the only neurons in the
human body that undergo this spon
taneous renewal and spontaneous
decay,” Kauer said.
Some of the research in the field
of smell is aimed not at medical ad
vancement but at the bottom line. In
Union Beach, N.J., Dr. Craig War
ren heads a research and devel
opment team for International Fra
grances and Flavors Inc., a company
that produces scents for soaps, per
fumes and other products made by
hundreds of companies around the
world.
Smell, Warren said, is the one
sense for which the mechanism for
perception is unknown. Scientists
know how odor molecules are gath
ered by smell neurons but they don’t
know how a few similar types of re
ceptor cells can distinguish between
thousands of different odors.
Research suggests that the process
of smelling involves more than the
nose, Warren said. “When blind
folded, most people cannot discrimi
nate a lemon from a lime or an
orange from a grapefruit.”
IFF regularly brings in dozens of
smell samplers, usually women, to
rate and react to fragrances, with
emphasis on how the fragrances can
alter mood. In the process, Warren
has found that 10 percent and 15
percent of the subjects display a par
ticularly acute sense of smell.
At the opposite end of the spec
trum are those with no sense of
smell.
Mary Brooks, 35, of Philadelphia,
took an uncommon route to this
fairly common problem. Beginning
in 1972 she began to experience
what amounted to smell hallucina
tions; she thought she smelled an
unpleasant odor when there was no
odor present. Years of anguish and
unsuccessful treatment finally led to
brain sugery in which her olfactory
nerve was removed, ending her hal
lucinations but leaving her incapable
of smelling.
“It can be very dangerous,” she
said. “I’ve already burnt things in
the oven and I didn’t know it and
there are smoke alarms everywhere.
But on the other hand it doesn’t
bother me not to smell because 1 still
sense that I’m breathing and smell
ing the same as you are.”
Brooks’ doctor was Richard Doty,
director of the University of Penn
1051390 Isylvania Smell and Taste
Center. Patients include the aged
and professionals like wine tasters,
firefighters, police officers, gas com
pany workers, inspectors and cooks
whose lives and livelihoods can de
pend on the sense of smell.
“There have always been prob
lems that people had and they’ve
had no place to turn in the past,”
Doty said. “It’s a frontier of science
which really hasn’t even been
touched on.”
Entrepreneur loses monopoly
on plastic dinosaur market
as popularity of reptiles rises
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