{"id":6273,"date":"2023-04-20T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=6273"},"modified":"2023-04-21T06:48:36","modified_gmt":"2023-04-21T06:48:36","slug":"harlan-crow-led-a-life-out-of-the-spotlight-clarence-thomas-revelations-ruined-that-the-dallas-morning-news-da-harlan-crow-led-life-out-spotlight-clarence-thomas-20230420","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=6273","title":{"rendered":"Harlan Crow led a life out of the spotlight. Clarence Thomas revelations ruined that [The Dallas Morning News :: DA-HARLAN-CROW-LED-LIFE-OUT-SPOTLIGHT-CLARENCE-THOMAS-20230420]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>HIGHLAND PARK \u2013 Before gaining fame as Clarence Thomas\u2019 biggest benefactor, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/business\/real-estate\/2023\/04\/06\/who-is-harlan-crow-his-family-connections-run-deep-in-dallas\/\">Harlan Crow<\/a> wasn\u2019t particularly well-known outside Dallas or real estate circles. He liked it that way. His father, Trammell, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/janetnovack\/2023\/04\/19\/from-the-forbes-archives-1971-how-harlan-crows-dad-trammell-crow-became-the-biggest-real-estate-operator-in-the-us\/?sh=2a222b655574\">billed by Forbes<\/a> as America\u2019s largest landlord, was once called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.texasmonthly.com\/news-politics\/eccentric-genius-trammel-crow\/\">an outsider in his hometown<\/a>\u201d by <em>Texas Monthly<\/em>. Growing up, Harlan told <em>The Dallas Morning News<\/em> in an interview, it made for a normal life, then and now.<\/p>\n<p>Or at least as normal as life can be for a billionaire with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.superyachtfan.com\/yacht\/michaela-rose\/\">a superyacht<\/a>, private jet, resort in the Adirondacks, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/07\/02\/arts\/collecting-despots-assassins-and-such.html\">pantheon of despots in his backyard<\/a> and a signed copy of Adolf Hitler\u2019s <em>Mein Kampf<\/em> in his library.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike other Dallas legacy families of his generation such as the Hunts and Perots, nationally famous mostly because of members <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/business\/2019\/07\/09\/ross-perot-self-made-billionaire-patriot-and-philanthropist-dies-at-89\/\">who ran for president<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/business\/2020\/01\/26\/meet-the-dallas-billionaire-responsible-for-the-kansas-city-chiefs-resurgence\/\">founded sports leagues and a professional football franchise<\/a>, Harlan Crow has gone to great lengths to avoid the spotlight. He calls himself \u201ca back-row guy\u201d who\u2019d like to return to his seat as soon as the hubbub dies down.<\/p>\n<p>The sentiment might seem odd for someone who helped draw Dallas\u2019 skyline and pulled his father\u2019s empire out of the ditch in the late 1980s despite corporate and family reservations at one point that he was the person for the job. His mother, Margaret, made nice for everyone involved when she said the third of her six children \u201ccame to the rescue,\u201d a sentiment Harlan doesn\u2019t deflect.<\/p>\n<p>At 73, white-haired, a little stooped, retired from his real estate business\u2019 day-to-day operations, he no longer resembles in appearance or spirit the party boy who flunked out of his first college. Gave up drinking a dozen years ago. Calls himself a \u201ccenter-right Republican\u201d who believes in bipartisanship and a good debate. To that point, he counts <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cornelwest.com\/\">Cornel West<\/a>, a self-proclaimed \u201cnon-Marxist socialist\u201d and activist, \u201ca good friend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to do my part to help for moderation, for consensus, for listening to each other,\u201d Crow said from his home office Saturday. \u201cFor civil discourse.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s what I want.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The sentiment might seem at odds with recent national media reports of <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/business\/real-estate\/2023\/04\/06\/dallas-billionaires-friendship-with-clarence-thomas-raises-ethics-questions\/\">extravagant vacations and six-figure donations lavished upon the high court\u2019s most conservative member<\/a> and his wife\u2019s interests, but then Crow\u2019s public policy has rarely jibed with his personal style.<\/p>\n<p>Before the controversy over the justice boiled over with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/business\/real-estate\/2023\/04\/06\/dallas-billionaires-friendship-with-clarence-thomas-raises-ethics-questions\/\">ProPublica\u2019s revelations<\/a> on April 6, Crow\u2019s only public dust-up came when he reportedly put up $5.2 million to fight the bid of then-Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert for a city-backed convention center hotel in 2008-09. <em>The Dallas Morning News<\/em> in stories and editorials <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/2009\/02\/27\/harlan-crow-benefactor-of-anti-dallas-convention-center-hotel-effort-has-nothing-to-say-to-you\/\">took Crow to task because he wouldn\u2019t spar publicly<\/a> with his adversaries, and his efforts on behalf of the anti-hotel push failed.<\/p>\n<p>The criticism led a longtime friend, <em>D Magazine<\/em> founder Wick Allison, to write a blog post on April 25, 2009, under the heading, \u201cWho is Harlan Crow and why are people saying all those mean things about him?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More than a decade later, the question still resonates.<\/p>\n<h3>Growing up Crow<\/h3>\n<p>Besides reading them Dale Carnegie\u2019s <em>How to Win Friends and Influence People<\/em> \u2014 twice, as if it were a children\u2019s book \u2014 Trammell Crow gave each of his six children a small box containing the following handwritten words:<\/p>\n<p><em>There must always be a burn in your heart to achieve. In the quiet of your solitude, close your eyes, bow your head, grit your teeth, clench your fist, ache in your heart, vow and dedicate yourself to achieve.<\/em> <\/p>\n<p>The elder Crow lived those words for 94 years. Born in 1914, he lived at 1318 N. Fitzhugh in East Dallas, then the edge of town, until the age of 10. Three rooms, one bedroom, one toilet, no bath, no electricity, nine people. Trammell\u2019s father, Jefferson Brim Crow, and mother, Mary Simonton Crow, led family prayers every night on their knees. They attended two Presbyterian services on Sundays and another on Wednesdays. No one was allowed to read the Sunday comics until Monday, according to the book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/en\/book\/show\/97512\">Trammell Crow: A Legacy of Real Estate Business Innovation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>From his 5-foot-3 father, who earned $225 a month as a bookkeeper for Collett Munger, developer of Munger Place in East Dallas, Trammell adopted stringent personal standards and a love of poetry. He described his dad as \u201cbright, diligent, well-read and a presentable if unpretentious gentleman.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He also called his father \u201ca little nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the <em>Trammell Crow <\/em>book, a 2005 project commissioned by the subject and written by William Bragg Ewald Jr., a former speechwriter in Dwight D. Eisenhower\u2019s White House, Trammell is candid about the family he entered as well as the one he built with his wife, the former Margaret Doggett.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had come to feel that my mother and father were na\u00efve and inadequate in many ways of the real world,\u201d Trammell told Ewald. \u201cI decided that they didn\u2019t get the whole picture. And I made up my mind then to be somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trammell accumulated several jobs growing up before taking a position at a local bank as a runner. He worked his way up fast. In 1942, he married Margaret, daughter of a well-to-do Highland Park grain merchant. Before marrying, Margaret had endured two life-altering events. One was the death of both parents, killed in an automobile accident while returning to Dallas from a trip to the University of Texas to visit their only child. She\u2019s also listed among the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/2010\/09\/03\/unsinkable-spirit-margaret-crow-recalls-fateful-summer-of-39-when-she-survived-u-boat-attack\/\"> survivors of the 1939 torpedoing of the SS Athenia<\/a>, the first British ship sunk in World War II.<\/p>\n<p>Trammell went into the Doggett family business and, when it folded a few years later, according to Ewald in his book on Crow, he rented out the Doggett\u2019s six-story building on South Field Street to competing rug dealers. A market center and real estate career were born.<\/p>\n<p>From that point, Trammell pioneered the concept of building on spec everything from warehouses to office towers to apartments and hotels. At one time, he owned 30% of the warehouses in Dallas, 40% in Houston and properties in more than 100 cities worldwide. Besides the <a href=\"https:\/\/dallasmarketcenter.com\/\">Dallas Market Center<\/a>, he developed Peachtree Center in Atlanta and the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco.<\/p>\n<p>Robert Glaze, formerly Crow\u2019s right-hand man, told Ewald that his boss was \u201cin business to own the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>An empire\u2019s decline<\/h3>\n<p>Trammell\u2019s folksy, freewheeling style won over partners, but the full-speed ahead strategy left his empire vulnerable for economic downturns in the \u201870s and late \u201880s.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was a great offensive player,\u201d Harlan said about his father\u2019s business skills, \u201cbut he was a sh&#8212;y defensive player, and in a bad economy, you\u2019re playing defense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Few might have guessed Harlan would be the Crow to steer the company out of trouble. After graduating from a Georgia boarding school, Harlan enrolled at Emory University in Atlanta.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd I flunked my ass right out,\u201d he says. \u201cThey gave me a school year, and then they wrote me a very charming letter telling me that we ought to go our separate ways. And they were right. I\u2019d been at boarding school and all of a sudden I got the kind of freedom you get in college. Beer and girls were more interesting than biology and geology.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Crow transferred to the University of Texas, where, if his lifestyle didn\u2019t change much, at least his grades improved. During a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.institutionalinvestor.com\/article\/b1dwss3tzkch9d\/Inside-Texas-s-Exclusive-Bizarre-Enclave-of-Family-Offices\">2019 interview with Institutional Investor<\/a> <em> <\/em>at his Old Parkland office, where a banner from Faber College, the fictitious setting for <em>Animal House<\/em>, hung prominently, Harlan said that, at Texas, \u201canything above a C was inefficient.\u201d He graduated in 1974 with a bachelor\u2019s in business administration and moved to Houston to lease the company\u2019s properties.<\/p>\n<p>After returning to Dallas four years later to run the office division, he supervised the designs of four office towers that remain among the tallest in downtown today: Trammell Crow Center, Chase Tower, 2100 Ross and 717 Harwood Tower. He hired the sort of national architect his father disdained in hopes of reshaping a skyline that, according to Ewald, author Tom Wolfe once described as \u201ca collection of Kleenex boxes turned on end.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Crow\u2019s latest signature project in Dallas: a years-long <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/business\/real-estate\/2018\/01\/26\/pig-room-debate-room-see-what-makes-old-parkland-home-to-dallas-first-hospital-a-unique-redo\/\">restoration of the original 1913 Parkland Hospital<\/a> into a finance center filled with investment firms, including the headquarters of Crow Holdings. The centerpiece is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/for-whom-does-this-bell-toll-dallas-billionaire-harlan-crow-11636919224\">a $25 million, 228-foot tower <\/a>outside his office, a monument, he said, to entrepreneurial ambition. Last year, he won <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/business\/real-estate\/2022\/05\/17\/dallas-old-parkland-campus-is-growing-with-new-office-building\/\">approval to expand the 9.5-acre campus<\/a> with a $150 million-plus office development directly across Maple Avenue.<\/p>\n<p>Harlan\u2019s success in altering the perception of Dallas\u2019 profile depends on the point of view. Mark Lamster, <em>The News\u2019<\/em> architecture critic, said that, while the city\u2019s skyline \u201cwould be very different without Harlan Crow,\u201d the effect, \u201cto be generous, is mixed.\u201d He called the towers in the Arts District \u201cleaden and overgrown products of the postmodern era\u201d and dismissed Old Parkland as \u201cprofoundly out of step with the times, an anti-urban walled city in kitschy historic dress.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Crow has enjoyed more success in changing the views within the family business.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTrammell Crow was seeking immortality not through his commercial company, but through his children,\u201d Ewald wrote in Trammell Crow. \u201cHe had no heir apparent, no son or daughter who deserved hands-down to become his successor. Harlan, to be sure, held a major place in the company. Crow admired his business acumen &#8230; But Harlan had a reputation as a playboy, not a student, at one university after another, and graduated, in [Trammell] Crow\u2019s words, \u2018by barely making it.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo many observers, Harlan lacked the acumen and discipline to run the Trammell Crow Company. He was at best unpredictable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ewald noted the observation of Don Williams, the company CEO at the time, who said, \u201cYou never knew which Harlan Crow would show up on any given day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Whatever reservations Trammell may have still had before putting his third son in charge in 1987, Harlan proved equal to the task. He altered the company\u2019s course by managing its properties, separating many of the family assets and working out agreements with banks. Now chairman of Crow Holdings, he estimates its assets at $30 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Taking over the company, Harlan said, \u201cwas never certain. Everybody\u2019s life evolved the way it evolved. At some point, with the children, I became the obvious choice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Did you want it?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI suppose I did,\u201d he said. \u201cI probably wanted to do everything I could to follow in my dad\u2019s footsteps.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To prove something to your father or yourself?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not even going to touch that,\u201d he said, smiling. \u201cThat would be a fun thing to know.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Not a family affair<\/h3>\n<p>Of Harlan\u2019s siblings, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/business\/real-estate\/2019\/09\/23\/developer-billingsley-co-s-success-is-all-about-the-land\/\">only his sister, Lucy Crow Billingsley<\/a>, might have presented a serious challenge. Stanley Marcus, who did for Dallas\u2019 fashion sense what Trammell Crow did for its standing as a market center, once called Lucy \u201cthe real go-getter of the family.\u201d But she severed her ties with the family business after her marriage to Henry Billingsley, according to Ewald\u2019s book, and the couple went into the real estate business on their own.<\/p>\n<p>Trammell and Margaret\u2019s oldest son, Robert, ran the family\u2019s California operations until a debilitating cocaine habit made a wreck of his prospects, and Williams fired him, with Trammell\u2019s blessing. Bob\u2019s addiction also ruined his marriage. In a 1990 <em>Texas Monthly<\/em> story entitled, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.texasmonthly.com\/news-politics\/76-million-dollar-divorce\/\">The $76 Million Divorce<\/a>,\u201d Bob\u2019s soon-to-be-ex-wife, Emilia, an actress whose biggest claim to fame was the role of a drug dealer\u2019s girlfriend in <em>Scarface<\/em>, suggested an obvious source of her husband\u2019s demons.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe way Bob saw it,\u201d she told the magazine, \u201che could never live up to his father\u2019s legend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bob died at 67 in 2011, two years after his father, who <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/obits.dallasnews.com\/us\/obituaries\/dallasmorningnews\/name\/trammell-crow-obituary?id=32731576\">passed away at his East Texas farm at 94<\/a> after a long battle with Alzheimer\u2019s. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/obituaries\/2014\/04\/12\/margaret-crow-philanthropist-and-matriarch-of-prominent-family-dies-at-age-94\/\">Margaret died at 94 in 2014<\/a>. Howard Crow, second in line of succession, ran Paige Art Gallery and a string of pet shops before <a href=\"https:\/\/obits.dallasnews.com\/us\/obituaries\/dallasmorningnews\/name\/howard-crow-obituary?id=18125886\">his death in 2016<\/a> at 69. Stuart, the youngest, raced dirt bikes out of high school before graduating into auto racing.<\/p>\n<p>Trammell S. Crow, distinguished from Harlan and the rest of his siblings by a long gray ponytail, studied at Yale and worked for the family until becoming an environmental activist. He founded Earth Day Texas, now called EarthX. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/earthx.org\/\">His website defines EarthX<\/a> as a place \u201cto find meaningful solutions to enrich and protect our planet, without regard to politics or philosophical differences.\u201d EarthxExpo, billed as \u201cthe largest green gathering in the world,\u201d convenes this weekend at Fair Park.<\/p>\n<p>In November, two women filed a lawsuit in California alleging Trammell S. provided \u201cessential financial assistance\u201d to a sex-trafficking ring. His lawyer, Ken C. Stone, told British press that the charges were \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/news\/royals\/sarah-fergusons-billionaire-friend-being-29500389\">absurd and blatantly false<\/a>,\u201d alleging the women had prior relationships with some of the defendants in the suit.<\/p>\n<p>Harlan said he doesn\u2019t know much about the suit, but he doesn\u2019t think Trammell S. is guilty of anything.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy brother\u2019s got a sweet soul,\u201d Harlan said. \u201cHe\u2019s a Yalie. He went to Yale and I flunked out of Emory. But he\u2019s a dumbass. I mean that with love. I mean, we love each other, but we follow different lives. He\u2019s a big environmentalist, and I live the life I live.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The four surviving siblings, all of whom live in Dallas, get together as a group four or five times a year, Harlan said.<\/p>\n<p>Harlan and his second wife, Kathy, a Princeton graduate, married in 1994 and have three children: Rob and Jack, both in real estate, and Sarah, a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Harlan and Kathy met when she worked as a financial analyst for his company in the early \u201890s, she told <em>The Remarker<\/em>, St. Mark\u2019s campus newspaper, in a September 2020 story about her role as the incoming president of the board of trustees at the school both of her sons attended. Besides her position at St. Mark\u2019s, she has served as a trustee at Hockaday School and Southern Methodist University, where she earned her MBA. According to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/kathy-crow-66807416\/\">her LinkedIn profile<\/a>, she also served on the North Texas Advisory Board for Teach for America, a nonprofit that recruits and develops college graduates and professionals to teach two years in high-need schools.<\/p>\n<p>Harlan looks forward to being a grandparent. As it is, he has scant memories of his grandfather, who died in 1955 still short of Trammell\u2019s expectations.<\/p>\n<p>The same couldn\u2019t be said of Trammell\u2019s imprint on his heir.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike a lot of sons,\u201d Harlan said, \u201cI think my dad hung the moon, but I would never want to say I\u2019m like him, because I don\u2019t think I\u2019m as good as he is. He did things in his life that I consider aspirational, but I doubt I\u2019ll get there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The biggest difference?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor a number of years . . . I partied pretty hardy,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know, college, chasing girls, drinking whiskey. I had to get through that. At some point, I became an alcoholic, and I was able to quit drinking and I haven\u2019t had any alcohol in a very long time. And I\u2019m grateful for that. My father didn\u2019t have any of that. So that\u2019s different.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His recovery came in fits and starts until 12 years ago. He said he\u2019s been sober ever since.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think when you have an issue like that, you know it,\u201d he said. \u201cMost people that know they have an issue want to deal with it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd finally I did.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fallout from his friendship with Clarence Thomas is another issue, and as much as he hates to, he\u2019s dealing with it, too.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn fact,\u201d he said, \u201cthe conversation we\u2019re having is because of what\u2019s going on. And I understand it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut if I could never read my name in the newspaper again, I\u2019d be thrilled.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Collector of good and evil<\/h3>\n<p>Harlan Crow leaned over a display case in his two-story library for a closer look at a document his personal librarian left out for him. A syllogism from Abraham Lincoln on race and slavery. Next to it, the manuscript of a Martin Luther King speech in Birmingham. Next week, maybe something else historic will take one or the other\u2019s place. When you own an inventory of artifacts numbered in the thousands, it\u2019s probably best to keep things moving.<\/p>\n<p>Crow\u2019s interest in collecting history began in his early 20s when he\u2019d sort through the papers on his father\u2019s desk and find, say, a letter from former Texas Gov. John Connally. He wouldn\u2019t let his dad throw away letters from such high-profile correspondents. He has them still.<\/p>\n<p>Frankly, it\u2019s hard to tell where the library ends and the rest of the century-old estate on Preston Road begins. A sitting room is almost entirely dedicated to paintings of or by George W. Bush; the next room over, several works by Eisenhower fall under the steady gaze from a massive bust of Winston Churchill.<\/p>\n<p>Passing through a doorway, Crow pointed to an innocuous oil painting above his head.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s by JFK,\u201d he said. \u201cHe only painted two or three, supposedly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Harlan\u2019s cast of artists includes Peale, Renoir and Monet.<\/p>\n<p>Also Hitler.<\/p>\n<p>His eclectic collection \u2014 including statues of \u201cdead dictators\u201d in his sculpture garden \u2014 is old news in Dallas. Even <em>The New York Times<\/em> ran a piece in 2003 about the rogue\u2019s gallery in the backyard. Castro, Lenin, Stalin, Tito and Mao rank among the headliners. Lesser known is Gavrilo Princip, who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, jumpstarting World War I. Acquiring these artifacts has not been without trials. Princip\u2019s likeness had to be sawed into pieces and smuggled out of Europe, losing its nose in the fray.<\/p>\n<p>Crow\u2019s artifacts became fresh controversy when media dug into his background after revelations of his decades-old relationship with Thomas. Among other examples, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2023\/04\/harlan-crow-nazi-american-academy-of-arts-and-sciences\/\">Mother Jones came up with the time the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship<\/a>, an outgrowth of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, had dinner in Crow\u2019s library in 2019 and somebody pulled back the covers on his Nazi paraphernalia.<\/p>\n<p>Danah Boyd, a tech scholar and Microsoft researcher, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/zephoria\/status\/1644701758390927361\">recalled the scene in a recent tweet<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYears later, I still shudder thinking about the Nazi uniform decorations in Harlan Crow\u2019s house. And the painting. And the book. And the statues. And the \u2018antebellum\u2019 (pro slavery) artifacts. I\u2019m glad others are questioning the acceptability of those materials.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What bothered the committee members was the lack of context provided and what it left open for interpretation. People collect what they love, a line of thought goes. Gavriel Rosenfeld, professor of history at Fairfield University in Connecticut, offered another theory.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe stereotypical collector of Nazi artifacts is either a wealthy Texas oil baron with military veterans in the family tree,\u201d <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/news.artnet.com\/market\/market-nazi-art-1714905\">Rosenfeld told Artnet\u2019s Daniel Grant in 2019<\/a>, \u201cor neo-Nazi lunatics creating basement shrines to their historical idols.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Crow explained at length that he built a library to celebrate the history of the United States while recognizing an obligation to present both sides.<\/p>\n<p>Good as well as evil.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnyone that thinks that I collect any of this stuff because I like it, it\u2019s just massively wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cI love the virtue of our country and I hate the evils that have existed in our country and in our adversaries. So the idea that I have anything but total bad will toward these people, the Nazis, the Communists, both Russia and China, such as Pol Pot, people like that in Southeast Asia, those people are the evil of the world. And the evil they\u2019ve done to humanity is gigantic, but we must remember it and we must learn from it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Recalling his mother\u2019s experience on the Athenia, he offered a closing argument.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy would I like people who tried to kill my mother?\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>His friend, the justice<\/h3>\n<p>Crow seems to understand that the story of his relationship with Clarence Thomas may suffer from a similar lack of context, which is why he\u2019s come out from behind the brick wall in front of his home to talk to <em>The News<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>He may not have helped his cause in the 2009 anti-hotel fight against city officials when he let others do the talking for him while his opponents stood front and center. Crow said he doesn\u2019t consider himself \u201ca very articulate person.\u201d <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/2009\/02\/27\/harlan-crow-benefactor-of-anti-dallas-convention-center-hotel-effort-has-nothing-to-say-to-you\/\">Citing Crow\u2019s silence in the hotel debate<\/a>, Leppert, the mayor, told reporters, \u201cDoesn\u2019t that say a lot?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>John Wiley Price, a Dallas County commissioner and hotel proponent in 2008-09, took his shots, too.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve always known where his politics were,\u201d Price said. \u201cHis politics aren\u2019t new. Clarence Thomas and that group, it doesn\u2019t surprise me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Crow, in <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/2023\/04\/17\/harlan-crow-theres-nothing-wrong-with-my-friendship-with-clarence-thomas\/\">a recent interview with The News\u2019 Cheryl Hall<\/a>, characterized revelations about his friendship with Thomas as a \u201cpolitical hit job.\u201d He defended Thomas as \u201cone of the most honorable people I\u2019ve ever met in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think the media cares really much about Harlan Crow, and I think they\u2019re right,\u201d he told <em>The News<\/em>. \u201cThey shouldn\u2019t care much about Harlan Crow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Over the last 40 years, stories of any substance about Harlan Crow have been rare in Dallas papers. He once held off <em>The New York Times<\/em> for two years before agreeing to a 1996 profile under the headline, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1996\/12\/01\/business\/more-than-a-chip-off-the-building-block.html\">More Than a Chip Off the Building Block<\/a>.\u201d He told the newspaper he didn\u2019t care if the public ever heard of him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not a Howard Hughes privacy thing,\u201d he said in \u201896. \u201cIt\u2019s a what\u2019s-the-point thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The point: His long friendship with a justice \u2014 and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/business\/real-estate\/2023\/04\/13\/dallas-harlan-crow-bought-property-in-georgia-from-clarence-thomas\/\">the perks the latter has enjoyed<\/a> because of it \u2014 raises questions about the motivations of a billionaire most of the public barely knows.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith this spotlight that I\u2019m under in the last few days,\u201d he said, \u201cwhich I hope I\u2019ll be out of pretty soon, I just gotta say that I\u2019m pretty passionate about the traditional American values that we\u2019ve had in our country. Rule of law. The constitutional order. The Judeo-Christian values. I think America\u2019s in a pretty bad place right now. Extremists on one side, extremists on the other side. We\u2019ve got to reacquaint ourselves with each other and remind each other that somebody who disagrees with us isn\u2019t evil.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d like to do everything that I can to help all that. I\u2019d love to do it from the back of the room because I\u2019m not a front-row guy. I\u2019m a back-row guy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Twitter: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KSherringtonDMN\">@KSherringtonDMN<\/a> <\/p>\n<p class=\"shirttail\">\u00a92023 The Dallas Morning News. Visit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/\">dallasnews.com<\/a>. Distributed by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tribunecontentagency.com\">Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>KeyWords:: 5feeb675-74bd-5a82-9ad0-45bd0d49d199<br \/>\n5feeb675 74bd 5a82 9ad0 45bd0d49d199<br \/>\nDA-HARLAN-CROW-LED-LIFE-OUT-SPOTLIGHT-CLARENCE-THOMAS-20230420<br \/>\nDA HARLAN CROW LED LIFE OUT SPOTLIGHT CLARENCE THOMAS 20230420<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HIGHLAND PARK \u2013 Before gaining fame as Clarence Thomas\u2019 biggest benefactor, Harlan Crow wasn\u2019t particularly well-known outside Dallas or real estate circles. He liked it that way. His father, Trammell, billed by Forbes as America\u2019s largest landlord, was once called \u201can outsider in his hometown\u201d by Texas Monthly. Growing up, Harlan told The Dallas Morning [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6274,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6273\/revisions\/6274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}