Farmers Branch: Big amenities with small-town charm and safety

Six years ago, Marcel Brunel and his family decided to make the move to Farmers Branch to take advantage of the all the city has to offer, including their Demo/Rebuild Program. The Brunel family demolished an existing home in an established neighborhood to build a new home, and they earned many economic incentives, including a seven-year tax rebate from the city.

We caught up with Marcel to find out about the best kept secrets in Farmers Branch and why Preston Hollow neighbors might want to take a closer look.

Why did you build in Farmers Branch? We were living in Castle Hills, but our life was happening in Farmers Branch. We valued the community, the services, the schools and the life there.

Do you feel connected to the Farmers Branch community? Yes! We live near the historical park, and the city does a brilliant job of letting you know what is coming to town, what is going on at the park, what is happening in the community.

What are the advantages to the Demo/Rebuild? When you build in Farmers Branch, there are big trees, an existing infrastructure, an established community and an existing history.

Would you recommend the program to friends? Yes, absolutely. The neatest thing is that you can literally step into a city that is already established. They have been building and planning all the good things about a city, and you get to take advantage of it.

How does it feel to live in a smaller community in the middle of DFW? The word that comes to mind is “safe.” We are able to do more things with our families when the sun is up and the sun is down.

What is your favorite way to spend the weekend in Farmers Branch? On a Saturday morning, we all go to the Rec Center. It’s the local hub. We go for the people there. We also love to start Saturdays with donuts, of course!

For more information on Farmers Branch and the Demo/Rebuild Program visit: lovethebranch.com

PRODUCTION: No space before or after paragraph. All answers follow questions on same line. All paragraphs indented.

If you must force a return and don’t want an indent do a soft return ico for six months tops. He was there for four years. During that time, he prepared for a fight against Julio Alvarez, one of Mexico’s top boxers. The men were friends but things turned ugly before the fight.

“His supporters paid off the chef where I used to eat,” Chávez says. “I was getting stomachaches and had to postpone the fight They were putting barbiturates in my food.”

The foul play was documented in “Split Decision,” a 2002 film that chronicles Chávez’s struggle to return to the United States.

“I agreed to do [the documentary] for educational purposes,” he explains. “It’s educational for a lot of different people, like at risk kids, and it has a lot of good information regarding immigration law.”

Chávez won his match against Alvarez. He says it was the only time in his career he was “intentionally trying to hurt someone in the sport of boxing.”

Then, in 2001, he secured an even greater victory. With the help of his attorney, he was allowed to return to Austin — this time, legally.

After four years of relative peace, his world would come crashing down again.

On Sept. 17, 2005 he fought Leavander Johnson, for the lightweight world title. Chávez won. But after leaving the ring, Johnson collapsed in the locker room, and later died from a brain injury received during the fight.

“I felt horrible,” Chávez says, tearing up. “I blamed myself for a long time. The only people who could help me get out of that rut were [Leavander’s] family. They asked me to come to the funeral. I agreed and I flew out there. They understood the risks and they said, ‘Keep fighting. Do it for Leavander.’”

Chávez kept fighting another four years, but he also began exploring other interests. He volunteered with the Austin Police Department, teaching boxing to at-risk kids, and developed a passion for social work.

In 2010, he met Arnie Verbeek, the Preston Hollow resident who owns Maple Avenue Boxing Gym, now located near our neighborhood off Inwood Road. The two became close.

Verbeek offered Chávez a job managing the facility, so he moved to Dallas. That’s how he discovered Café Momentum, a nonprofit restaurant that provides culinary training to teens who have served time in juvenile detention facilities. Chávez couldn’t resist putting in an application. He was hired immediately and now works as a case manager.

“The kids I work with are all really good kids in bad situations,” he says. “They ask me about my past. Some have seen the documentary and it’s interesting to them. They say, ‘You must have made a lot of money.’ They think I’m rich.”

Chávez tells them he’s experienced extreme highs and extreme lows and advises them to stay out of trouble and pursue their passions. He can’t imagine where he’d be without boxing.

“After all of the hardship — the incarceration, the deportation I know I was great at something,” he says. “I was one of the best in the world. Not many people can say that.”

C At H Y M A R I N O

You’d think Cathy Marino, the head golf coach at Jesuit Preparatory School, would be tired of fielding questions about Jordan Spieth but she’s not.

“I love talking about Jordan,” she says. “He’s a special player and a special person also.”

Marino met Spieth in 2005, when he was a freshman at Jesuit. She says she’s “not at all” surprised by his immense success.

“Right from the start he shot super low scores and was an amazing player,” she remembers. “I knew he was going to do this. He’s always done amazing things on the golf course.”

Marino has done some “amazing things” herself. From 1983 to 1993, she held a Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour Card. During that ten year period, she traveled all over the world —Japan, England, Ireland, Canada, the list goes on. She finished second three times — once in 1984 at the United Virginia Bank Classic, once in 1988 at the Konica San Jose Classic and again in 1989 at the Boston Five Classic. According to LPGA.com, her career earnings totaled $389,897. Marino probably wouldn’t tell you this

Although she’s usually in the minority, Marino has met plenty of women who share her passion for golf. Her inner circle includes people like Juli Inkster, who was the Team USA Captain at last year’s Solheim Cup.

“She asked me to be one of her helpers,” Marino says. “I got to go to Germany with my daughter and it was super fun.”

Marino has clearly been exposed to a lot of talent, so of reinforcegood from that position and took the job at Jesuit 11 years ago, so she could spend more time with her children.

Being the head golf coach at an all male school could easily turn awkward, but Marino is used to being the only woman in a room full of men.

“When I played high school golf in Palos Verdes Estates [California] they didn’t have a girls’ team,” she explains. “I played on a boys’ team and my high school coach got a big kick out of it.”

According to Marino, the male coaches at Jesuit couldn’t be more welcoming but she admits things can “get interesting” at tournaments.

“They’ll sometimes start by saying something like, ‘Gentlemen, here we are at our meeting’ and I’m like, ‘Umm, excuse me,’ ” she quips. “I just laugh at it mostly. It brings back memories. That experience [of playing on the boys’ team in high school] kind of helped me.”

Jim Montgomery is still blown away by the fact that he won three gold medals and one bronze at the 1976 summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada. That’s mostly because the Preston Hollow resident, who competed in freestyle swim events, is the only person in his family with serious athletic ambition.

“My dad might have run cross country,” he says without confidence. “I was pretty much self motivated. I really enjoyed it.”

Montgomery played lots of different sports growing up, but decided to pursue swimming exclusively at age 14 per a coach’s encouragement. He still swims twice a week, but these days he is more interested in getting other people in the water. Ten years ago, he started dreaming about opening a school of his own.

“I went to the national conference for the United States Swim School Association,” he explains. “I’m used to being on the competitive side, but I realized [the instructors] are the real professionals.”

That thought inspired Montgomery to take a self-guided tour of pools around the country. Checking out the aquatics facilities in places like Arizona, Iowa, California and Wisconsin, where he was raised, filled him with ideas. His excitement eventually became too intense to ignore.

“I resigned [as the head swim coach of Greenhill School] after 17 years to dedicate my time to this,” he says, referring to the Jim Montgomery Swim School, which opened on Preston Road in December. “I knew I was going to miss coaching the kids, but this was the step to take. When opportunity knocks you go through the door.”

This new business venture is something of a family affair. Montgomery’s wife, Diane, designed the school’s bright, inviting interior and his daughter, Ellis, heads its early childhood division. Within the first three weeks of being open, the school had more than 100 students and that number is only growing — luckily, there are 14 instructors on staff.

Montgomery is particularly interested in helping adults overcome their fear of water.

“The water is so much fun if you let it be,” he says. “So many people come and say, ‘I’m watching my kids have fun in the water but I can’t get in with them.’ They all have a story of why they are terrified. Something traumatic like, ‘Uncle Fred threw me in the lake and said ‘start swimming.’ Or maybe their parents were scared and they passed that fear onto them.”

Few people are more comfortable in the water than Montgomery. He enjoys swimming in the ocean, and since his career has taken him “all over the world,” he’s had plenty of opportunities to just that.

“I’ve seen a couple sharks under water,” he says casually. “They’re more afraid of me than I am of them … They’re mostly just curious.”

In addition to being brave, Montgomery is highly motivated and possesses an entrepreneurial spirit, which he thinks comes with being a professional athlete.

“I just go, go, go, go,” he says. “I don’t have hours, I just do it. I guess that’s what entrepreneurs do. They don’t keep a clock. I’m conditioned to be goal oriented — go for this go for that — my whole life it’s been about timing and goals. How fast can you go on a stopwatch?” description of what Koprowski is trying to accomplish, but there’s a reason he’s not using that term.

“There’s nothing magical about putting a white kid next to a black kid,” Koprowski says. “The socioeconomic piece is really the powerful component.”

He’s not enough of an idealist, however, to think that altruism alone will “bring back an entire socioeconomic group.” The genius of choice schools is that though they are designed to impact the most at-risk Dallas ISD students, they also appeal to the segment of families drawn to private schools.

International Baccalaureate (IB). Montessori. Bilingual. Personalized learning (which has been described as “high-tech Montessori”). All of things are all black marks in a lot of people’s books,” Lyons says. “You get that and the test scores as data, and that’s it.”

He recently hosted a meeting in his home for parents interested in Preston Hollow Elementary, and nine families from his six-street neighborhood showed up. They learned from a current parent that about half of its students transfer to the school because of its IB curriculum.

It’s reassuring, Lyons says, for a school to attract parents “who I know have bought into their kids’ school and their kids’ education, and if your neighbors and you all kind of go in together, then you know, I’m not doing this alone. I’ve got a lot of people with me.”

All of this adds up to low-income students in mixed-income schools being able to perform two grades ahead of those in impoverished schools, Koprowski says.

And for parents worried about the reverse effect, Koprowski insists it’s an urban myth.

“Look at the research that’s not what happens,” Koprowski says. “Middle-class kids do just fine academically. They have the ultimate wraparound service, which is affluent parents.”

And on the flip side, he says, “If you’re going to prepare your kid to succeed in a diverse society, think of all the social and moral things you gain by opting into the public enterprise.” these in-demand curriculum approaches are now available to Dallas ISD families — sans the magnet-like academic entry requirements — and the needle is beginning to move.

Mike Lyons lives in Windsor Park within Preston Hollow Elementary’s boundaries, and when he and his then-pregnant wife moved into their home a few years ago, public school wasn’t on their radar.

“The sort of pervasive mindset in Preston Hollow is you just send your kids to private school; that’s just what you do.” So now, when he tells people he’s considering public school, “it’s almost like I said I have four heads and I’m part lizard.”

DISD’s demographics scare people, he says — high numbers of economically disadvantaged students and non-native English speakers who change schools frequently — “those

It’s the “critical mass” factor, he says. “It’s a nicety to say, give me involved parents and I’ll give you a good school, but it’s true, right?”

One of the main reasons integrated schools are effective is that middle- and upper-class parents have more time to volunteer and pull in community resources, and the knowhow to advocate for their campuses, while low-income parents often are “working the third job to pay for gas to the second job,” Koprowski says.

There’s also the “peer effect,” as he calls it. For example, low-income children come to school with about half of the vocabulary of their of peers, and much of that vocabulary is shared in informal settings, such as bathrooms, cafeterias and playgrounds. Data also shows that the most experienced, effective teachers are drawn to more socioeconomically diverse schools, he says.

If integration happens, it will happen school by school. The outlook is bleaker on the district level even if all of Dallas’ middle- and upper-class families re-enter public schools, the district’s socioeconomic stats wouldn’t be 50/50.

And that’s “perfectly fine,” Koprowski says, because diversity is not the “be-all end-all” of choice schools or even academic success.

“This city has a painful history with race and class relations,” Koprowski says. “These problems didn’t happen overnight; they’re not going to get solved overnight with my choice initiative.”

He sees signs of hope, however. More than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education and 45 years after Dallas’ own court-ordered desegregation, Dallasites may be starting to naturally integrate.

“It’s all voluntary. This isn’t the days of desegregation where it was forced busing,” Koprowski says. “Parents are opting in.”

Watch a video of Preston Hollow Elementary fifth-graders singing the school anthem, look at additional photos, and learn more about DISD’s efforts toward diversity online at prestonhollow.advocatemag.com.

THE BENEFITS OF EXERCISE

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Seven years ago, I decided I needed to get healthier. My mother had died of cardiovascular disease at the young age of 48 and one thing I knew for sure is that I wanted to be around to see my son grow up, marry and have children. I enrolled in a Pilates class at Town North YMCA and have been attending it ever since with the same group of women. Our ages span five decades.

Between my pilates class and discussions with my good friend and neighbor, Patsy Shropshire, PT DPT, I began to understand the necessity of keeping fit and eating right. Patsy has been a physical therapist for more than 30 years. She runs WWB Wellness, a community wellness program geared toward women primarily in their 50s and 60s. Patsy says, “Sometimes we laugh more before 7 a.m. than most people do in an entire day.” termining

I sat down with Patsy to talk about the health benefits of exercise at any age.

LL: IF A PERSON HAS NEVER EXERCISED CAN THEY START AT ANY AGE?

PS: It’s never too late to start, just know that today is better than tomorrow. There are many examples of people in their 60s and up who begin exercise and reap great benefits.

LL: WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO START, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’VE NEVER DONE IT BEFORE?

LL: AS WE AGE, WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF WE DON’T EXERCISE?