Army vet pays $1 parking ticket 58 years later

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Most drivers try to avoid paying a parking ticket, if possible. But nearly 60 years after being cited, an Army veteran shows city leaders that you can't put a price on responsibility.

Fifty-eight years ago, downtown Houston was a different place and Dale Crawford was in a hurry. He had a date with the Army.

"I couldn't tell you what meter I was on and parked along here somewhere and the induction center was down that way," said Crawford.

He parked his Nash sedan on Milam Street and shipped off to Alaska where he was an anti-aircraft gunner during the Korean War.

Four years later, he returned home and resumed his life. But in 1995, he found something in a box of mementos kept by his mother -- a parking ticket issued the day he was inducted.

"My dad, he got off from work at seven o'clock and he was to come down here and get it," said Crawford.

His dad was late picking up the car. The ticket was for $1 and it still nagged his conscience at times, so he contacted the city. It's the only time parking management can recall such a thing.

"He didn't have to do this and no one would have ever known. It's purely his honor to pay his debts," said Don Cagle with the city's Parking Management Department.

Today, that one dollar debt was paid.

"I am gonna pay the mayor in cold hard cash," Crawford said.

One U.S. dollar -- the same price on the ticket from 1953, with penalties and interest waived.

"What we call the Greatest Generation; his service to his country started here in Houston and his service to the city of Houston continues," said Mayor Annise Parker.

It's a lesson in responsibility and making good on debts -- something Dale Crawford learned from his parents and is passing down.

"I can still get a parking ticket, Crawford said.

When we asked him if he would get another parking ticket, he replied, "No, I might get a speeding ticket sometime."

That same ticket today costs $35 plus penalties and interest if not paid on time.

(Copyright ©2011 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.) Get more Local »

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How much of your lottery ticket is helping education?

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- With Texas schools facing billions of dollars in cuts, everyone is looking for more money. And we get asked all the time, what about the lottery? Isn't the lottery supposed to support Texas schools?

Texas law says lottery proceeds are supposed to go toward education. Since 1998, the lottery's given about a billion dollars to Texas schools every year. It's a lot of money, but it hasn't gone up a dime even when lottery sales have doubled. Linda Neighbors is pretty serious about her scratch offs. She plays every other day and spends about $50 or $60 a week, and every once in a while she hits. "Fifty-dollars so far," Neighbors said. Like a lot of Texans, Neighbors believes her lotto spending is helping Texas schools. And this Katy great-grandmother has a lot of reasons to help Texas schools. The Texas lottery has helped Texas classrooms; it's given $13 billion to education since 1997 -- about a billion dollars a year. But today, Texans are buying twice as many lottery tickets as they did that first year, and the lottery isn't given a dime more. "Pooey, pooey, pooey," Neighbors said. Dawn Nettles, a self-appointed Texas lottery watchdog, puts it a different way. "They need to pay what they have in their budget to pay," Nettles said. Nettles runs lottoreport.com, where she's traced every winner, every jackpot and every decrease in the percentage of lottery money that ends up in Texas classrooms. She says the lottery is just giving away too much money -- more money than it can afford and that hurts your kids. "They claim they're taking money from their operating account to fund these over-payments, but I suspect it's really coming from the schools," Nettles said. The first thing the lottery pays is prizes, and 62 percent of lottery money pays off winners. Then the lottery pays itself to run the games.. That's 10 percent of the money. And whatever's left in the bucket goes to the education fund. Today it's just 27 percent of lottery budget, but when it started, it was 10 percent higher. "Isn't there some argument that when you offer bigger prizes, players win but schools lose?" we said to Bobby Heith with the Texas Lottery Commission. "Well, you could look at it that way," he replied. But as you can imagine the Texas Lottery Commission doesn't see it that way. "Why do you have to offer so much money?" we asked Heith. "To get players to buy tickets," he said. The lottery says research and history show when prize percentages go down, sales suffer and so does the lottery bottom line. Winners want big prizes. The last time lawmakers forced the lottery to cut prizes was 14 years ago. With no other legal gambling option in Texas, Neighbors says she might be willing to help classrooms a little more. She'd even play if the prizes weren't as big. "Probably, I am an inveterate gambler," she said. We checked. If the lottery had kept its 37 percent donation to schools, it would have given Texas schools $3.4 billion more since 1998. It's money that now has gone to lottery winners. (Copyright ©2011 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)
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