Abilene was built by boosters, sustained by boosters, and still continues by boosterism (under a different name, of course). It's a self-made town and is not reluctant to sing its own praises. Ronald Reagan, before his political years, came to Abilene and stayed at the home of oilman French Robertson. A.C. Greene, then a humble reporter for the local newspaper, was invited to meet the actor. The reporter recalled that Reagan put his arms around Robertson and Greene and said "'Boys . we're the best kind of Americans.

We're self-made men.' . As I left them, he and French were still congratulating each other (and me in absentia, I trust) for being self-made men." There's the State School (now under a new euphemism), the District Court, Camp Barkeley, Dyess AFB, the CCC-built State Park, Lake Fort Phantom Dam, the West Texas Fair and Rodeo, numerous businesses and the colleges, all brought in from outside or invented locally. How did they get here? The answer: Abilene went out and recruited them. But we also had an inheritance. Downtown renewal came by the grace and grants of some generous citizens, most notably the Dodge Jones Foundation. The money and the ideas that this foundation poured into Abilene are absolutely reflected in the city's downtown, where renovation and preservation of historic buildings on the one hand, and dedication to the arts on the other, makes the area visually pleasing and physically vibrant.

Numerous indeed are the communities whose downtown areas feature shuttered businesses and deteriorating structures, scars on the façade of enterprise. Not so in downtown Abilene, where renewal is in the air. And most of it was generated from initiatives of the Dodge Jones Foundation. The money came from the railroad, land, and business empire of Col. Morgan Jones, the Welch entrepreneur who made his fortune in the New World and settled in Abilene as his main place of residence. His family shared in his ability to create wealth and then added an unparalleled element of public and private service. Abilene is not entirely "self-made" with generosity like theirs. What else is Abilene? Like most other places, it has poverty and wealth, virtue and crime, vision and blindness, compassion and hard-heartedness, good people and bad.

But it has some other features that distinguish it from "most other places" in degree if not in kind.