Jerry Cecil Starnes: A Legacy of Business and Community Service in Fort Worth (1910–1990)

Jerry Cecil Starnes, businessman and longtime operator of Casino Beach at Lake Worth, son of Thomas Harrison Starnes and Sarah Lucrecia (Manners) Starnes, was born in Elmer, Oklahoma, on October 2, 1910. Starnes attended Sul Ross State Teachers College (currently Sul Ross State University) in Alpine, Texas, where he starred as a starting forward and letterman on the Lobos basketball team. He graduated from Sul Ross in 1936. After college Starnes owned and operated a Gulf Oil service station in Alpine. He married Evelyn Ruth Cheves on September 15, 1940. They had two children together, Jerry Charles Starnes and Carolyn Sue (Starnes) Johns.

Alpine Businessman

After a stint in the U.S. Army during World War II, Starnes returned to Alpine, where he was a prominent businessman, civic leader, and booster for Sul Ross athletics. He served as president of the Sul Ross State College Boosters’ Club. By the late 1940s Starnes owned a successful Kaiser-Frazer automobile dealership. He gave athletes and other students from Sul Ross jobs at the dealership and on occasion backed them financially in their own business endeavors. In 1948 he served as chair of Alpine’s second annual rodeo. To publicize the event, Starnes invited President Harry Truman to the rodeo and proposed to deliver a custom-made Stetson hat to the president in Washington, D.C. The president was not able to attend but did send his hat size measurements to Starnes.

Manager of Casino Beach

As a young man Starnes had visited the amusement park and swimming shore at Casino Beach at Lake Worth and was impressed by the number of patrons that the park attracted. Around 1949, after his plane was unexpectedly grounded at Meacham Field during a business trip, he made another visit to the beach, by then greatly diminished in popularity. Seeing an opportunity to restore the floundering park, Starnes sold his dealership in Alpine, moved to Fort Worth, and acquired the lease to the park grounds from the city. His new company, Lake Worth Beach, Inc., refurbished the amusement park with new rides and a new bathhouse, cleaned up the beach, and laid an additional 2,000 yards of sand. Starnes reopened Casino Beach for the 1951 summer season. Despite a successful reopening, the beach’s popularity continued to fade during the following decades. In 1972 the Casino Ballroom, one of the beach’s principal attractions, was condemned by the city for fire safety concerns. The following year, over the initial objections of Starnes, the large dance hall was torn down. After the ballroom was demolished, the park endured as a summertime, family recreational facility that included children’s rides and miniature golf. Starnes, who at times operated without a formal lease and without a profit, continued to serve as manager.

Other Ventures and Civic Life in Fort Worth

While primarily identified as the proprietor of Casino Beach, Starnes also operated other businesses in the entertainment and service industry within Fort Worth and served his community as he had done in Alpine. He operated restaurants around Lake Worth. In 1977 he bought the River Ridge Pavilion recreation area (later the River Ridge Family Fun Center) on the Trinity River and began employing the River Queen, a mock paddleboat, to sell river tours and host events. Starnes was credited with rescuing twenty-six joggers and cyclists overcome by heat along Trinity Park’s trail during a 1985 heatwave. From his River Ridge office he responded to distress calls and drove his personal truck to retrieve and revive the victims. For sixteen years Starnes worked as Santa Claus at the Stripling Department Store in downtown Fort Worth. He was also a member of the downtown chapter of the Rotary Club of Fort Worth and the Frog Club, a booster organization for Texas Christian University athletics.

In 1988 Casino Beach and other commercial properties surrounding Lake Worth faced large rent increases. Having managed the park for roughly forty years, Starnes, at age eighty, finally relinquished his lease with the city in 1989. In 1990, with its longtime manager gone, the remaining facilities at the beach were torn down. Starnes died on October 29, 1990, at a nursing home in Arlington, Texas.