Held Hostage: Video 
The Fire That Time: Slideshow 
Cities
Is Waco Wacko?
Five years after the Branch Davidian siege, the hometown of Ann Richards and Dr Pepper is still a punch line. But locals are getting the last laugh.
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The prototype of that new generation might well be Bill Clifton. The scion of an old Waco family, the 51-year-old has a master’s degree in computer science from MIT, raises Thoroughbred racehorses on the side, and spends much of his time trying to persuade companies to move to Waco’s industrial districts. “A city is like anything else,” he told me. “It either grows or dies.” In the past ten years or so, the hard work has paid off. In 1989 Waco lured Raytheon Systems, a huge defense contractor that upgrades and retrofits airplanes for the military and foreign heads of state; it is now the city’s largest industrial employer. More-recent arrivals include Caterpillar, a construction equipment manufacturer, and American Fabricators, which customizes sheet metal. “Geography is one of our resources,” says Jack Stewart, the president of the Waco Chamber of Commerce. “We like to say we’re three hundred miles from eighty percent of the Texas population.”
Indeed, with easy access off Interstate 35, the city is a convenient business location—and that’s not all. Jerry MacLauchlin calls Waco “Tinkletown” because it’s a favorite rest stop for so many Texas travelers, but it boasts tourist destinations, from the Texas Ranger and Dr Pepper museums to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame and the superb zoo in Cameron Park, one of the largest municipal parks in Texas. New hotels are opening, including a Marriott Courtyard and a Residence Inn, and the city is working with Baylor University to develop the region’s greatest natural resource, the Lake Brazos Corridor. As part of the corridor plan, Baylor has announced plans to build a $23 million law school on the west bank of the Brazos. And downtown Waco is even nurturing some semblance of a nightlife, as Baylor students and young professionals flock to restaurants and clubs that have opened in Waco’s warehouse district near the river. As is the case in many cities nowadays, loft apartments are even being built in renovated warehouse buildings.
The catalyst of the warehouse area’s resurgence is Randy Roberts, a Jackie Gleason—size 45-year-old who bought the hundred-year-old, 135,000-square-foot redbrick Waco Hardware Building in 1995. “It had been vacant for twelve years,” he says. “There were three inches of pigeon crap on the floors.” Today the newly renamed River Square Center is home to a seafood restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, a bar and grill, and assorted retail shops and offices. Since Roberts set down roots in the neighborhood, he’s seen property values soar. A year ago he was negotiating to buy a building that only a decade earlier had been on the market for $10,000. Given Waco’s comeback, he figured he’d have to pay $150,000, but when the deal was finally signed, the price was $300,000.
Another critical thing happened in the mid-nineties, as Jack Stewart points out: The combined population of Waco and its surrounding towns reached 200,000, which automatically put the city into the various databases that are used by national chains. As a result, Loews, Outback Steakhouse, and other big-name franchise operations began to crop up. But the economic upturn only took place after the Branch Davidian siege, spurred on by Waco’s notoriety. “When businesses got around to growing again,” Stewart says, “Waco’s name identity had something to do with it.”
At first, no one would have predicted that any good could come from the events unfolding east of town. Bob Sheehy, a folksy, white-haired lawyer who was Waco’s mayor at the time, remembers getting a call on a Sunday morning in February from a Dallas reporter who asked if he had a reaction to what was happening. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean,” Sheehy told him. The reporter suggested that he turn on the TV. Sheehy did, then explained that what was happening was outside Waco. “We have nothing to do with it,” he said. As the siege unfolded, of course, the mayor realized what was really going on, and he talked to hundreds of journalists, appeared on dozens of news shows, and frequently got up in the middle of the night to accommodate foreign journalists who wanted a live interview. “Bob was made for that role,” says Jim Holgersson, who was Waco’s city manager. “With patience and kindness, he served as an oracle to help others understand what was happening.”
Holgersson had just taken the job in Waco and was on his way there that Sunday for a preliminary visit. Waylaid in a Pittsburgh airport, he was watching a basketball game on TV when the broadcast was interrupted by a special report titled “Shootout in Waco.” He thought about heading back home to Michigan. That Sunday was also the day before Liz Taylor started work as the director of the convention and visitors bureau. She knew she had a problem when she began seeing stories about “wacky Waco,” a one-horse Texas town obsessed with God and guns. She was particularly incensed by a Times of London story intimating that Waco was benefiting economically from the tragedy. She and other civic leaders began looking for opportunities to combat the negative image. “The event was unique in that there were fifty-one days of it,” Stewart says. “In fifty-one days, the media had time to realize that there was a difference between the community of Waco and the Davidians.”
And, in fact, stories began to appear about the kindness of Wacoans: how the local restaurant association was providing meals for the ATF agents and their families, how Caritas and local radio stations were collecting clothes for the Davidian children, how courteously hotel and restaurant employees treated their visitors. “There was never any organized effort to court these reporters,” Sheehy says, “but I had a lot of them say to me, ‘I wish to heck I didn’t live where I do. I’d just as soon stay right here.’ It’s strange to say, but the fact that it lasted that long probably helped us.”
“The character of this community deepened because of what happened,” Taylor says. “It’s like when you have a loss in the family. You become more reflective about what you can do. It caused us to look very closely at what we have to offer, how we see ourselves, and how others see us.”
“For a time, we didn’t want people to look at the Davidian situation,” Stewart says. “Now we’ll give them a map.”
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