True love

neighbor Peggy Van Wunnik, 71, grew up attending a Presbyterian church in Oak Cliff. She walked into Sunday school one October day, and a blond, blueeyed guy she had never

seen was sitting there.

At that time, the church-sponsored athletic league required attending Sunday school for three weeks a month to play on the basketball team. Theoretically, it prevented stacking the team with great players from all over town onto teams. But one of Peggy’s classmates managed to convince several guys to attend Sunday school just so they could play basketball. That’s why Jack Van Wunnik, a Catholic Dutch immigrant, was sitting in Peggy’s Sunday school class.

“I, all of a sudden, decided I needed to hang around to watch a basketball practice,” Peggy says. “Somehow, Jack and I just started talking afterward, and that's when we officially got acquainted.”

Jack, who had only lived in Texas for three years, would take her home after practice, and they’d sit in the car and talk.

“He was too shy to ask me out. His best friend was the one who actually phoned me and asked me out on Jack's behalf,” she says.

New Year’s Eve 1968 was their first official date. They went with three couples to see the Dallas psychedelic rock group Southwest F.O.B. play at a club. Jack asked her if she’d like to go steady. Peggy said yes.

“He was so excited that he drove me to his next-door neighbor's house, after midnight, so he could introduce me,” she says.

After dropping her off, Jack’s key broke off in the ignition. He had to walk home in the cold January weather.

“I woke up the next morning and thought,' What have I done?,’” Peggy says. “But that was 53 years ago, and we're still together.”

They dated through senior year. Jack went to Texas Tech. Peggy stayed in Dallas to work.

Interstate 20 hadn’t been built yet, the highways were smaller, and the speed limit was slower than it is today, but Jack drove home almost every weekend to see her. Jack lasted one year before he transferred to the University of Texas at Arlington.

“He missed me too much,” Peggy says.

They dated for three years before eloping in 1971 at the Oak Cliff courthouse.

“Nobody believes it now, because my husband comes across as really self-confident, but the idea of standing up in front of a church full of people just terrified him,” she says.

Her mother was thrilled because she loved Jack, Peggy says. His mother, who survived the Nazi’s occupation of Holland, wasn’t thrilled. Jack had been a tough delivery when he was born, Peggy says, and he also was a bonus baby and the youngest of three boys.

“Once the first granddaughter was born, all was forgiven, that's for sure,” Peggy says.

The Van Wunniks waited exactly three years before having the first of three daughters.

“I told each one of them before they started dating seriously, ‘I said you've got to marry a guy that makes you laugh,’ she says. “It makes such a difference. Even when I'm mad at him, he can say something to just crack me up.” — by Jehadu Abshiro

in a sense, grandchildren present a micro-world. Our six, with or without photos and pre-K drawings, are unique individuals with their own characteristics and personalities. And all of them fairly willingly teach us the basics of operating our phones...

I can’t single out a mind-bending or world-changing contribution, but we have abundant tales to share with relatives and friends even — or especially — without being asked to do so.

We’re way beyond diapers now, nearing the end of babysitters. Our grandkids add up to three boys and three girls. No! Excuse me! Two of the girls changed their names, making them less gender specific. I find that’s close to average, though not all grandkids are as confident to share with us their private concerns. I never feel we’ve been short-changed, just very blessed that such a lively bunch know they are lovingly accepted.

Among the six, we have one who recently shot a squirrel on his grandparents’ private land in Oklahoma, then stewed it for an unusual urban Dallas dinner that was quite hard to stomach by a vegetarian grandma. One grandkid works on a strictly regulated cannabis farm in Colorado, another one jet-sets around the country on an exacting, exciting job in the modern music world, still managing to achieve great grades in his junior college year. One is now a college freshman in religious studies, and our 14-year-old granddaughter sings in the Greater Dallas Children’s choir.

Memories vacillate between serious and a little less so. A while back, on the walk home from his church pre-school as a 3-year-old, a grandson confided to his older brother’s friend, “Some people believe God lives up there,” he said. Equally confident, when learning to read he saw a sign posted on a tree and proudly spelled out “Lost frog!” Very young grandkids don’t hesitate to articulate what is important to them.

Seeing the young lives our three children have brought into the world, along with their temporary or lasting spouses, I recognize how lucky we are. Perpetual apprehension, annoyances and not infrequent requests for supplementary funds are well mitigated by joy. We can “tut-tut” as much as we like and claim how, “When we were young, etc.” But for sure our grandchildren are much more accepting of religious, racial and language differences, and far more sensitive and perceptive than we were.

angie Eckelkamp was working for Pricewaterhouse Coopers in Dallas as a consultant when her mom called one

afternoon.

“You should watch Oprah — it’s really good,” her mom said.

“I’m at work,” Angie replied.

“Well, her reruns come on at night so you can watch it then.”

That night, Angie happened to turn on Oprah.

She had been preparing to attend graduate school to pursue a master of architecture at The University of Colorado at Denver. Though her undergraduate degree was in finance from SMU, Angie always loved architecture and had applied to schools with career-change programs which included Denver and UT Arlington.

She was ready to live in a cooler climate among the mountains. The U-Haul was reserved, and plane tickets were bought. She and her mom could scope out apartments and a new laptop for school had just arrived.

However, watching Oprah that night sparked a lifechanging decision. Oprah’s guests featured financial author David Bach and guests who were in financial distress — including those in significant school debt. Watching the show, Angie realized that attending architecture school in Denver would put her in substantial debt, thanks to expensive outof-state tuition and the inability to work; architecture school is notorious for time-consuming studio projects. Her parents had always emphasized that financial management was of paramount importance, and Angie recognized she had been in denial about the total cost of school and its impact on her future.

That night after the show, she called her parents; she would forgo her Denver dream and attend UT Arlington instead. She even asked to move back home to minimize potential debt.

At 8 a.m. day one of architecture school, Angie sat in class — Construction Materials and Methods, dolefully knowing she had made the right decision. Right as class began, a cute guy hastily took his seat in the row ahead. His name was Dan Eckelkamp, and he was the teaching assistant for the class. Dan was in his final year as a graduate student and also in the architecture career-change program, having left a career in telecommunications.

At the end of the semester, Dan asked Angie out on a date. That was in 2004, and they’ve been married for 15 years. If it wasn’t for the phone call from Angie’s mom about watching Oprah, their paths may not have crossed. — by Angie Eckelkamp

HARMONICA MAN

Dallas native Mickey Raphael made a career of wailing on the harp

LEGENDARY UNIVERSITY OF

TEXAS FOOTBALL COACH Darrell K. Royal introduced Mickey Raphael to Willie Nelson in 1973.

“He was a big music fan and patron of the arts and a close friend of Willie’s,” Raphael says of Royal. “He had heard me play, I guess, at some clubs in Austin.”

Coach Royal had a friend-of-a-friend invite Raphael to a “pickin’ party” in his room at what is now The Highland Dallas on Mockingbird Lane after a game at SMU. Willie and 30-40 other people were there.

The harmonica player, who grew up in Preston Hollow, has been in Willie’s band ever since that night.

Now 70, he’s still the young guy in The Family.

“I started with him when he was 39, but he doesn’t look any different to me now,” Raphael says of his boss, who is 88. “Maybe a little bit. But he was seasoned when he turned 40.”

Raphael graduated from Hillcrest High School in 1969, and the father of his inimitable style was Don Brooks.

Brooks, a South Oak Cliff High School graduate, was a harmonica session musician who played on dozens of albums, including titles by Diana Ross, Bette Midler, Judy Collins and the Talking Heads. He was in Waylon Jennings’ band and stands out on Honky Tonk Heroes and This Time. He’s featured on the track “Harmonica Talk” off Walker’s 1970 album Bein’ Free. Brooks died in 2000 at age 53.

Raphael met him at The Rubaiyat, a bygone coffeehouse and music venue in Downtown Dallas, where Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark and Michael Martin Murphey also played.

“He was the first real harmonica player that I ever saw,” Raphael says. “I heard him play, and that’s when I decided to focus on harmonica.”

The tuba was Raphael’s first instrument in the middle school band, which he joined to avoid gym class.

“I think they just gave it to me because I was tall enough to march with it,” says the 6-foot-tall musician. “They didn’t even care if I could play it, but I learned a few things.”

He loved music but was a lousy guitar player. He says he was “just a music fan” noodling around on the harmonica when he ran into Brooks at the Rubaiyat one fateful night.

“He taught me the basics of everything I know in 10 minutes, sitting on a step outside the Rubaiyat,” Raphael says. “I’d say about 80% of my style comes from him.”

After that, he went on tour with Oak Cliff native B.W. Stevenson for about two years. Stevenson, who had hits with “Shambala” and “My Maria” at the time, died in 1988.

Willie was on Raphael’s radar only because he and Stevenson were both signed to RCA, so they were allowed to grab free records from their office in Dallas.

Now his harmonica playing is as much a trademark of a Willie Nelson song as the chords from Trigger, Willie’s guitar.

The discography of Raphael’s work as a session musician could make anyone starstruck: Elite Hotel and Luxury Liner by Emmylou Harris, Two the Hard Way by Cher and Gregg Allman, Seven Year Ache by Roseanne Cash and TNT by Tanya Tucker, to name a few from the early years.

Raphael moved to Nashville from Los Angeles about 20 years ago. He also tours with Chris Stapleton when Willie’s not on the road. He’s an avid cyclist who packs a road bike onto the tour bus with him.

His dad, a furniture designer who died in 1994, built Raphael’s childhood home on Edlen Drive, where he and his older brother used to ride bikes around the neighborhood. His mother lived in that house for decades, and she died in 2019.

Raphael supports Farm Aid and gives a lot of money to the Carter Foundation, Habitat for Humanity and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

ABOUT LIFE ON THE ROAD WITH WILLIE

I can’t tell you anything about that. I’m sworn to secrecy. I’ve been around the world many times. It’s been fun. I’m very fortunate. I don’t take anything for granted. Willie is a great ambassador. As split as the nation is now — and it was split when I first started because the Vietnam War was winding down — but our crowds were always a cross section of all types. It’s a mixed crowd, be it racial or political. You had your cowboys and your hippies back in the early ’70s, late ’60s. One thing Willie always told me is that music would bring people together.

AND IT LITERALLY HAS

We played in Belfast during The Troubles. You’d pull into the city limits, and our bus would have to go through a checkpoint with machine guns, and there was a tank at the entrance of our hotel. But when we played the civic center, or wherever it was that we played, in Belfast, that’s one place where the two opposing factions were agreed upon not causing any trouble.

THE THING ABOUT WILLIE

He’s got this longevity because he’s really honest, and what you see is what you get. He didn’t really follow any trends and just did what he wanted to do. Sometimes it was popular, and sometimes it wasn’t. But we’ve got such a great fanbase and such loyal fans. We’ve been very lucky.

THE SPORTATORIUM

My favorite place to play was the Sporatorium. It was one of those places where you’d just be soaking wet by the end of it, and you know, we’d play two or three hours. You were surrounded by the audience on three sides, and it was just electric. We played in the boxing ring, and the promoter at that time was named Geno McCoslin. He also ran 57 Doors on Cedar Springs where we would play in the ’70s. He wound up promoting a bunch of Willie’s picnics. But anyway, he oversold the place by I don’t know how many tickets, and we got there, and the fire marshal said just the band could go in. They wouldn’t let any of our guests or anyone else inside. Someone asked him why he oversold it, and he said, “Well, bubba, airlines do it all the time. It’s because I was depending on a 20% no-show factor.” He was a colorful character.