Monday, July 15, 2024
Kathleen Mata writes about Galveston.
“There’s something for everybody. If you’re a history lover, a nature lover, there’s just a little bit of something for everybody.”
After graduating from Sam Houston State, Kathleen, who lives in Clear Lake, spent 25 years in advertising.
“I started out as a copywriter and I ended up as an ad broadcasting director.”
Then, she started writing books.
“After my daughter was born, I quit working in downtown Houston because I wanted to spend time with her. I wanted to do something I could stay home with. A friend was publisher of a local magazine and asked me to start writing for them. It just kind of snowballed from there.”
She has written five books on Galveston history. The newest one is about the Tremont House hotel where prominent personalities such as Sam Houston and Wild Bill Hickok stayed.
“My publisher started asking me when I was going to write about somewhere else, because Galveston is an island, and the information was going to run out. I told him he obviously didn’t know anything about Galveston. I will never run out of topics to write about this little island with such a colorful history.”
She’s been going to Galveston a long time.
“It was really different in the sixties when I was growing up. You never would have ventured over to the Strand, because it wasn’t necessarily a nice place to go. It was run-down. We would have gone to the beach and then onto Sea-Arama Marine World, which was kind of the forerunner of the SeaWorlds of today. Now, the Strand and other sections of Galveston have been saved, restored, and repurposed. So, it’s quite a different place than it was 40 or 50 years ago.”
Some people still go to Galveston just for the beach.
“There are some people who come here just to hop on the cruise ship, and, by accident, they discover that there’s great shopping, there are nature preserves that you can visit, and it’s a wonderful place for bird watching. A lot of birders come down here. We have no shortage of restaurants, so food lovers love to come down here. It’s incredible. If you’re an architecture buff, this is a great place to come. If you look at the Strand, even though it’s been restored, the reason that we have those wonderful buildings is because Galveston went through a hard economic time, and they couldn’t afford to tear them down and replace them with pretty new buildings. By the time economics turned up, they realized the value of them. It ended up being a lucky thing.”
