Unlike most years, there’s no question about which was the biggest story of 2008. It began about Sept. 8 and is still happening.
But just as there someday will be life free and clear of Hurricane Ike, there was life, and therefore news, before the storm.
What follows is a quick tour — mostly subjective, in no way exhaustive — of the news before the flood. Some of the picks were big, important stories, some small and heartwarming and some, in fine Galveston County tradition, were merely weird. Hope you enjoy them. Happy New Year.
JANUARY
• Firefighters saved a Yorkshire terrier from a burning League City house when the dog licked the face mask of a fireman crawling along the floor to avoid dense smoke.
• Galveston beachgoers reported seeing waves of eerie, fluorescent water that left the sand glowing with electric blue foam. The likely source is the aptly named Noctiluca scintilla’s, a single-celled organism whose Latin name means “sparkling night light.”
• The glow was not caused by the sinking 200 miles off Galveston Island of a sailboat carrying three people and 10,000 pounds of coffee from Belize. The crew was rescued, but the coffee went down with the boat.
• A study found that The University of Texas Medical Branch in 2006 generated more than $232 million for Galveston’s economy, according to a new report.
• U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent was upbeat and unfailingly polite when he returned to the Galveston bench. Kent had served a four-month suspension starting in September after his case manager filed a sexual-harassment complaint in May, accusing Kent of touching her in ways she didn’t want. Through his attorney, Kent has denied the charges.
• Bonnie White-Boos found the high school class ring she lost while working the bumper-boat ride at the 1980 Arizona State Fair in Phoenix, Ariz. The ring had found its way from the depths of a bumper boat pool into the hands of a Utah woman.
• A Hitchcock middle-school basketball player died after collapsing to the court near the end of a game. Kaylyn Bowclair, 13, had a rare heart condition.
• Former Galveston police officer Kenneth Deshun Woods, 28, was sentenced to 40 years in prison for abducting a woman while on duty.
• Six bug foggers detonated inside a house in the 5400 block of Avenue P1/2 in Galveston, blasting the roof off and causing significant structural damage.
• Growing pains had Santa Fe officials contemplating whether to ask voters to approve the first bond issue in the city’s 30-year history.
• Island native Tilman Fertitta made a $1.3 billion bid to take Landry’s Restaurants private, joining the swelling ranks of CEOs seeking to unshackle companies from shareholders, public markets obsessed with short-term results or stringent post-Enron financial reporting requirements.
• State Sen. Kyle Janek called a news conference at the state Capitol, where he announced plans to leave office.
• A Galveston couple looking for wildlife on the island’s eastern tip found a mortally wounded infant. Caren Kohberger, 27, of Alvin told police later she thought the infant was hers. The body was that of Alijah Mullis. His father, Travis Mullis, 21, was charged with capital murder.
Kohberger was charged with endangering a child.
Three days after that grisly discovery, Travis “T.J.” Mullis surrendered to police in Philadelphia. Mullis, the boy’s father, told police there that he had stomped on the baby’s head until the skull caved in because the infant would not stop crying, according to police reports.
Prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty for Travis James Mullis, who is charged with capital murder.
Officials allege Kohberger endangered Alijah by sending him off with Mullis, while knowing Mullis was volatile and potentially violent.
• Investigators from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requested information about cases of childhood lead poisoning on the island, looking for violations of a federal law that requires owners to share information about their property’s lead status if they know it.
FEBRUARY
• Coyote sightings were on the increase in Galveston.
• A federal plan 40 years in the works that aimed to reduce flooding along Clear Creek found that fixing Friendswood’s drainage problems wouldn’t be worth the trouble.
• Henri Urushihara of Parker Elementary School won The Rotary Club of Galveston’s 50th annual spelling bee with the word “horseradish.”
• Former President Bill Clinton held a rally in Galveston on behalf of wife Hillary, who was seeking the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
• Police, sheriff’s deputies and the district attorney’s office were investigating the disappearance of an undetermined amount of cash from the Galveston Police Department property room.
• University of Texas Medical Branch employees were facing organizational restructuring, but wouldn’t have to worry about widespread layoffs.
• A jury found former Texas City police officer Christopher Marshall, 35, guilty of trying to hire a prostitute. Members of his own agency arrested him in April 2006.
• Plans to redevelop Friendswood’s downtown stalled when prominent plaintiff’s attorney Tony Buzbee sent a letter announcing his intention to scrap the project because of mounting frustration with the city’s “fatally flawed” development approval process.
• Bill Read, meteorologist-in-charge of the National Weather Service Office in League City, left to take over the Nation Hurricane Center in Florida.
• A federal judge rejected claims that the government violated the rights of victims of the deadly explosions at Texas City’s BP refinery in 2005 when the government agreed to a deal in which BP pleaded guilty to criminal charges and was fined $50 million.
• A new breed of wildcatter was at large in the county. But instead of punching holes in the ground on hunches, they were exploring restaurants in search of used cooking oil for refining into biodiesel.
MARCH
• A rabid bat turned up on the grounds of League City Intermediate School.
• Twenty bottlenose dolphins were found dead on beaches in Galveston and Jefferson counties.
• The refinery now owned by Valero Energy Corp. celebrated a birthday, marking a century since it was commissioned, helping to establish Texas City as a key port for the shipment of crude oil.
• Joshua Mauldin, 20, went on trial for burning his 4-month-old daughter in the microwave oven at a Seawall Boulevard motel.
• The Galveston County Daily News named Dr. Ben Raimer as Citizen of the Year.
• Workers began excavating a railroad tank car filled with thousands of gallons of liquid including a deteriorated form of DDT found buried near a cruise-ship terminal on Port of Galveston property.
• Nursing student Enyonam Estella Agbemafle, 24, was critically injured after she made a U-turn on Interstate 45, causing rush-hour wrecks between Bayou Vista and La Marque.
APRIL
• After months of legal disputes, the Texas Department of Insurance approved rate increases for State Farm that could cost some Galveston County consumers on average almost 21 percent more.
• Dallas real estate investment firm Macfarlan Capital Partners said it purchased five resort properties from Centex Corp., including the Pointe West development on almost 1,000 acres of the island’s western tip.
• A Texas City woman was jailed accused of hanging her pit bull in a tree.
• Sgt. William O’Bryant of the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office pulled over a speeding driver and wound up delivering a baby.
• League City named two longtime volunteers, Dr. Ned and Fay Dudney, as its first citizens of the year.
• Four Gulf sharks died in the Caribbean exhibit at Moody Gardens Aquarium after the ozone level in the water spiked overnight.
• A fight involving as many as 40 people at a District 23-4A track meet in Dickinson prompted increased security at Sam Vitanza Stadium.
• Bolivar Peninsula residents were worried about a lack of emergency medical care.
• Developers would not be able to build any buildings taller than The Hotel Galvez without special permission under guidelines adopted by the city council.
• Some county residents were drinking less milk, eating fewer eggs and a lot less meat as everything from skyrocketing fuel prices, to droughts in Australia, to the weakness of the U.S. dollar caused food prices to rise at the fastest pace in almost two decades.
• Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, once on the brink of extinction, were making a comeback.
MAY
• A majority of Dickinson Bayou testing stations showed bacteria levels exceed clean-water standards almost 90 percent of the time.
• City leaders were worried that Santa Fe might outgrow its charm and low taxes.
• Charter fishing boat operators were being rocked by a huge spike in diesel fuel prices, a shortened red snapper season in federal waters and an economic trough that has some consumers tossing leisure spending overboard.
• An appeals court ruled that the U.S. government violated the rights of victims in the explosions at the BP America refinery in Texas City because the government reached a plea bargain with BP without consulting the victims.
• The University of Texas Medical Branch pushed ahead with plans to build a $61 million specialty center in League City.
• The Texas Rangers sent 10 agents to audit the Galveston Police Department’s property room after District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk was forced to dismiss 16 cases because of compromised evidence.
• Jellyfish stings were on the rise.
• The state was reviewing claims from an adult protective services caseworker who reported seeing and talking to a 21-year-old cerebral palsy patient on a day medical reports say he was dead.
• Nude images of junior high students widely distributed by cell phones prompted Santa Fe school administrators to confiscate the devices.
• Texas Department of Insurance Commissioner Mike Geeslin allowed the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association to spend $184.1 million to buy $1.5 billion in catastrophe coverage for its own protection.
• The 2008 hurricane conference began with a prayer and included an estimate that a major storm here would do $52 billion in damage.
• A two-block stretch of 57th Street was named in honor of Leroy Colombo, Galveston’s best-known lifeguard.
• Contractors working on a project meant to beautify the Galveston’s historical Broadway esplanades cut down two large magnolia trees in full bloom.
• A presentation to Friendswood junior high students about Islam ignited a furor among some parents and led to the principal’s resignation.
JUNE
• William Gray, of Colorado State University’s Tropical Prediction Center, said the chance of a hurricane making landfall somewhere on the Gulf Coast was 44 percent, up from 30 percent.
• Local leaders were chafing at rules proposed by the Texas General Land Office that would force the city to push all new beach-front construction farther away from sand dunes.
• The 38-foot Cape Fear racing yacht Cynthia Woods lost its keel and capsized 11 miles south of Matagorda.
Safety officer Roger Stone, 53, was killed. Four student sailors and another safety officer were cast adrift in the Gulf, where they shared four life jackets for 26 hours.
• Ruth Levy Kempner, the trailblazing, outspoken lover of Galveston politics who was the city’s first female elected official, died in her home at the age of 90.
• A traffic accident that killed a 16-day-old boy and injured the car’s driver and another child passenger may have been avoided if the Galveston Causeway had a shoulder or emergency lane, police said.
• Oil well worker Wayne Fults, 41, of Boling, was zapped by a lightning strike near Algoa. Fults shook it off and went back to work.
• Longtime Crystal Beach resident Sam Brown, 65, had already suffered blows and cuts to his neck and was dying when neighbors called 911 to report his house was engulfed in flames, the medical examiner said.
• The mother accused in the “Baby Grace” killing gave birth to a son. Kimberly Dawn Trenor, 19, along with her husband, Royce Clyde Zeigler III, is accused of beating Riley Ann Sawyers, 2, to death in 2007. Both are awaiting trial for capital murder.
JULY
• The family of a Santa Fe woman killed in a collision on a Texas City bridge filed a lawsuit against the state seeking up to $250,000. The lawsuit said the death could have been avoided if the state had designed a safe bridge.
• In a one-sentence order, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request to block a plea agreement in the criminal case against BP PLC for the deadly Texas City explosions of March 2005.
• A venomous African bush viper disappeared from its exhibit at Moody Gardens. Officials suspected another venomous snake could have eaten it.
• The widow of a safety officer Roger Stone, credited with saving the lives of two Texas A&M student sailors at the cost of his own, filed a lawsuit against the designer and manufacturer of the racing Yacht Cynthia Woods.
• As oil and gas prices continued to break records, the U.S. energy industry was flush with cash, helping Texas add 245,000 jobs, while job growth nationally was flat.
• High gas prices were driving day-trippers to Galveston beaches.
• A consultant hired to determine how drugs and money went missing from the Galveston police property room said the department had the most disorganized system for managing evidence she’d seen in 30 years.
• Capt. James D. Atchley, in charge of repairs and maintenance on all boats in the fleet at Texas A&M University at Galveston and coach of the university’s offshore sailing team, was fired for not revealing a felony conviction. The termination had nothing to do with the sinking of the university’s sailing vessel, the Cynthia Woods.
• A Galveston public school district police officer accused of roughing up a woman tooting an air horn at Ball High School’s graduation was cleared of any wrongdoing.
AUGUST
• The University of Texas Medical Branch said it could be in the black by 2010 and be earning $20 million more than its annual operating costs by 2017 if it succeeds in four strategies designed to lure paying customers and other new revenue.
• Tropical Storm Edouard hit Gilchrist on the Bolivar Peninsula.
• A lawsuit filed in the 122nd District Court against the University of Texas Medical Branch on behalf of the 53-year-old Galveston man claimed the hospital lost the 8-inch by 4-inch piece of his skull.
• A viper thought to have been eaten but was later found, disappeared again from its exhibit at Moody Gardens.
• Galveston County marked the 25th anniversary of Hurricane Alicia.
• The venomous African bush viper that disappeared, was thought to have been eaten, was found, and then disappeared and was thought to have been stolen from Moody Gardens was returned.
• La Marque assistant fire marshal Capt. Alfred A. Decker IV, 41, cited Kathryn Fridge with disorderly conduct when she dropped the F-bomb while shopping at Wal-Mart.
• La Marque police charged a man with aggravated assault after he allegedly bit his cousin’s ear off during a fight.
• A toolbox left unattended on a Galveston-Port Bolivar ferry sparked a scare that shut down the ferry system for more than four hours.
• The University of Texas Medical Branch paid $9.4 million for 29 acres in League City.
• The state of Texas was having trouble spelling “La Marque” on traffic signs.
• Emergency planners were worried about Hurricane Gustav. Long-range forecasts had the storm headed straight for the upper Texas coast. Gustav went to Louisiana.
SEPTEMBER
• BP PLC settled the last of more than 4,000 lawsuits filed in connection with the deadly refinery explosions of 2005, ending more than three years of litigation and the chance that a jury would rule on any of the claims against the energy giant.
• Security personnel in charge of screening vehicles at the Galveston-Port Bolivar ferry landing are under investigation after they overlooked a propane tank and cans filled with gasoline in the back seat of a pickup.
• Indicted U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent pleaded “absolutely, unequivocally not guilty” to sex charges during an initial court appearance and was released on his own recognizance.
• Texas City commissioners unanimously granted Police Chief Robert Burby’s request for the yearlong moratorium on permits to operate video slot machines to investigate whether the businesses pose a public safety risk.
• A retired NASA engineer trying to invent a cheap way for average people to travel to space caused a bang in Hitchcock when his rocket fuel exploded, police said.
• Galveston County officials began preparing for Hurricane Ike ...
