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Contractor completes Rialto roof shortly before
recent rains
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| The Bee County
Courthouse looms large in the background as two employees of Port
Enterprises, Inc. brave June heat to lay down alternating layers of hot
tar and roofing felt. The job left downtown Beeville’s historic Rialto
Theater protected from recent rains which have drenched most of South
Texas since the beginning of the month. |
- The recent completion of the installation of a
new roof on the historic Rialto Theater came just in time, according to Dr. John
Hester.
Hester, one of the volunteers of the Hall-Rialto Preservation Association, said
a temporary roof put on the building years ago had begun to leak and he was sure
there would have been considerable damage to the interior of the building if
volunteers had not opted to replace it.
The temporary roof was one of the first things the original group of volunteers
voted to provide when they took over the building 12 years ago. Some of those
responsible for the decision to have the temporary roof installed were Sarah and
Marge Carter, Grace Beck, Ida and Wayne Dirks, Lin Cox, Sid and Donna Hall and
Bob Horn, to name a few.
Thankfully, their decision kept the destructive forces of moisture out of the
building while the group got busy with trying to find the money for a complete
restoration of what used to be the center of entertainment in downtown Beeville.
“Without it,” Hester said, “there would have been no theater left to
restore.” Until the temporary roof was built, rain leaking through what had
been there before had caused considerable damage to the theater’s contents.
The temporary roof actually had begun to leak several years ago, Hester said.
Thankfully, Beeville did not experience much heavy rain during that period. A
half-inch would allow a considerable amount of water into the theater once the
roof started leaking. Volunteers were worried about the damage the rain was
causing.
Hester credited volunteer Wayne Massengale, vice president of the Rialto
association, with pushing hard to have the temporary roof replaced with
something that could stand up to the South Texas weather.
As soon as the association had enough money to take care of the job, Massengale
enlisted the aid of Tom Marshall, a retired building contractor who has lived in
Beeville several years now. Marshall contacted Jake Comstock of Port
Enterprises, Ltd. of Corpus Christi and that group designed a new $45,000 top
for the important historic site.
Fortunately, work on the new roof was completed just before the early July
thunderstorms that left much of South Texas flooded. Those same storms have
dumped more than 10 inches of rain on Beeville in the last couple of weeks. The
recent rains, although badly needed here, would have caused even more severe
damage to the theater’s interior, Hester said.
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