A single page letter to Banks McLaurin Jr, hand signed with personal notation from Annette Strauss when she was Mayor Pro Tem of the City of Dallas Texas . Dated June 10, 1986. 


Using her many connections in the city, Strauss was elected to a Dallas City Council seat in 1983. She became deputy mayor pro tem and then mayor pro tem in 1984. In 1987, Strauss ran for mayor of Dallas and won with 56 percent of the vote. Her opponents included the Texas Republican state chairman, Fred Meyer, a Dallas businessman originally from suburban Chicago.


Banks McLaurin, Jr. was born in Austin, Texas, on February 21, 1924, the son of Banks McLaurin, Sr. and Evelyn Davidson McLaurin. Mr. McLaurin fondly remembered looking through the family stereoscope at views as a boy in the same way children of later generations watched TV. He kept the viewer and about 135 views throughout his life. He graduated salutatorian from Austin High School in 1941. While at the University of Texas majoring in civil engineering, he joined the Navy ROTC. After he graduated in 1944, during World War II, he served aboard the USS Portland at Okinawa. He married Louise Cromwell Morrison and had three children, Candace Morrison McLaurin Volz, Thomas Banks McLaurin and Marion Glover McLaurin Forbes. Mr. McLaurin was a member of the Episcopal Church and an avid genealogist. With a degree in engineering, McLaurin pursued a career in the field of petroleum first with Humble Oil Company, followed by thirty years with the Atlantic-Richfield Company. His father-in-law, who had one of the first home movie cameras in the 1920s, sparked his long-time interest in photography. McLaurin’s involvement in the medium evolved from making movies and slides to still photographs. After he retired, while he accompanied his wife to antique shops and shows, he thought he needed to collect something, too, and stereographs fit in with his photography interests and fondness for travel. McLaurin loved the stereoscopic medium and collected from seemingly every category and time period. Although he enjoyed stereo’s virtual armchair travel, he and his wife frequently traveled abroad, where he also bought views for his collection. Banks McLaurin, Jr. died in Austin at the age of 79, November 17, 2003.