Aging might be life’s biggest surprise. Even if we prepare for it, the reality shocks us. And virtually no one is ready to ask for help when the time comes.

Ashley Lassberg and Edward Flores

For 30 years, Family ElderCare has provided that help, scaled by staff and volunteers to financial capacity of the clients. Backers joined the caregivers and clients for an anniversary salute on Thursday at the Kodosky Lounge. The view of the park, river and skyline from the donor room at the Long Center provided the right visual reminder for the 100 or so quiet revelers of all the changes in Austin the past 30 years.

Angela Atwood and Grova Jones

Two groups of photographs stood on easels. One set were dignified, gray portraits of the elderly, part of a judged contest called “The Changing Face of Central Texas.” The other consisted of Sarah Wilson’s sensitive color portraits of ElderCare clients — some playful, some resigned — in their own homes. These will hang on the walls of the nonprofit’s new quarters.

Jim Spencer and Carrie Rodriguez

Director Angela Lassberg rose to honor leader Cheryl George, volunteer Ellis “Pat” Craig and community champion Jim Spencer, the face and voice of Family ElderCare’s annual fan drive, which has kept Central Texans from heat harm. Spencer compared our deaths in the recent heat wave (0) to those in the Midwest (more than 80).

I know and admire Lassberg and Spencer. As for Craig, the story of his 18-year guardianship of a particular client is destined to feed an Out & About column some day soon.

Physicist Cécile DeWitt-Morette ponders prodigiously.

“I worry,” says the University of Texas professor emerita who still keeps an office at UT and covers classes for other professors. “I worry a lot. I keep worrying until I figure out the underlying problem that is responsible for the problem. Then I see what I can do to fix it.”

Jan DeWitt, one of DeWitt-Morette’s four daughters with the late physicist Bryce DeWitt, lives with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

So in the 1990s, her mother, a scientist and decorated Legion of Honor officer, designed the Planned Living Assistance Network of Central Texas, which each year helps more than 100 area families coping with mental illness.

Next week, DeWitt-Morette welcomes to town two old friends from the days when she was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.

The subject of the movie “A Beautiful Mind,” John Nash is a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician and pioneer of game theory. His wife and former student, Alicia Nash, has cared for the schizophrenic scholar for decades, even when they were divorced. (They remarried.)

“She’s been a wonderful caregiver,” DeWitt-Morette says. “Not overbearing, but there as needed.”

The Assistance Network here has named a caregivers’ fund for Alicia Nash. Sept. 14, the couple will attend a symposium on mental health care at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center. Sept. 16, they will appear at a screening of “A Beautiful Mind” and at a private fundraising dinner.

So how do DeWitt-Morette’s worries turn into comprehensive fixes?

“I don’t see it as worrying,” says Liz Shelby, a network board member who also assists DeWitt-Morette. “It’s problem solving. She enjoys solving problems.”

‘I tell you why I worry so much,” DeWitt-Morette says. “When I was 7 years old, my mother said, ‘You are a big girl; now you have a conscience.’ I took it seriously. I had to figure it out. I was given a little black notebook for the pros and cons of each problem.”

Born to an industrialist father and a mother with a mathematics degree in a posh area of the Sixième Arrondissement district of Paris, DeWitt-Morette witnessed a mixture of privilege, achievement and social responsibility at an early age.

At the end of World War I, her father was handed the reins of the Société Métalurgique de Normandie, a huge mining and manufacturing operation. He did so on the condition that half the profits from the company would go to worker services — housing, education, health care — which were managed by DeWitt-Morette’s mother.

The outfit thrived, even during the Depression, in part because of worker loyalty. At the company’s 100th anniversary celebration two months ago, DeWitt-Morette ran into friends from first grade, some 85 years earlier.

“Until then, I thought everything was infinite,” she says. “Ever since, I’ve been looking for whatever I lost at that time. What I lost was infinity.”

Despite her advantages, she attended public schools, which DeWitt-Morette says in those days were often better than the private ones. When she finished high school, she had hoped to go to medical school but ended up studying math, chemistry and physics.

After undergraduate school, she really wanted to explore Paris on her own. The Germans who occupied northern France during the 1940s, however, required her to obtain a pass to visit Paris.

“They asked what I was going to do there,” she recalls. “I couldn’t say: ‘To have adventures.’ I had heard the words ‘quantum mechanics.’ I didn’t know what it was. But I told them I was going to study it.”

To keep her pass, she signed up for graduate work in physics at the Sorbonne. On June 6, 1944 — D Day — she took her final master’s degree exam. The same day, she lost most of her family, including her mother, when six Allied bombs fell on their house in Caen.

“When mother died, I became an adult overnight,” she says. “I thought: ‘I am now in charge of my family.’ ”

That year, she was offered a job in the laboratory of Frédéric Joliot-Curie, who was Marie Curie’s son-in-law. DeWitt-Morette answered his letters and prepared his lecture notes.

Eventually, she joined a group of physicists working in Dublin, then another group in Copenhagen, Denmark, working with Nobel Prize winner Neils Bohr, who laid the groundwork for quantum mechanics.

In 1948, she received a telegram from Robert Oppenheimer — the theoretical physicist often called the “father of the atomic bomb” — asking that she join him at the Institute for Advance Study (not connected, it should be said, with Princeton University).

“I traveled first class on the boat because my stepfather wanted me to meet only proper people,” she remembers. “I had to figure out where Princeton was. So I asked another passenger.”

At the Institute, she did not work directly with Albert Einstein, but she frequently ran into him walking to and from the Institute.

“He and I had two things in common,” she says. “We were the only ones without a car. And we were keeping reasonably rational hours.”

(Other brushes with intellectual fame: Dr. Albert Schweitzer was once her physician, and developmental psychologist Jean Piaget was one of her daughters’ baby sitters.)

Although settled happily in America, she worried about the quality of her area of physics in France.

“Theoretical physics in France was in a very, very bad state for several reasons,” she says. “I decided something had to be done about it.”

So she created from scratch and led a rigorous physics summer school for 20 or 30 participants each year at Les Houches in the French Alps. Twenty-six of its students, who collaborated on publications, have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

“It was not user-friendly,” she says. “Two lectures in the morning. Afternoon was for discussion. Nobody was allowed to arrive one day late or leave one day early. Lecture notes had to be complete on that day. No Xerox.”

In New Jersey, she met Bryce DeWitt. They married and moved to North Carolina, then to Texas in 1972. In 1973, they journeyed to Mauritania during a total solar eclipse to test the relation between Einstein’s general theory of relativity and gravity.

“I never had a program,” she says. “If something looked like fun, I’d look into it. No program.”

When her daughter was diagnosed with OCD, DeWitt-Morette responded as a mother, but also as a scientist.

“I pulled together people in physics and neuroscience,” she says. “I wanted to understand more about Jan’s illness. How can it be cured? Whenever I got frustrated with daily life living with the illness, I’d go talk with scientists, which was easier.”

She found people like Bob Englert, later director of the Assistance Network, who had the same worries. She and Englert attended a gathering in Dallas about how to help the mentally ill by helping their families. It changed her goals.

“I had already designed in my head a full residential outfit, which would include activities that would be income-producing,” she says. “The idea was beginning to gain support. That’s when I sensed that a smaller scale could be done right away and was what people wanted.”

DeWitt-Morette wants to applly some of the lessons she’s learned through this effort to geriatric care, complementing the work of existing groups such as Family ElderCare and Care Communities.

Before joining the board, Shelby quietly and effectively applied for many of the grants that have kept the nonprofit going. Recently, however, the group has gone more public. This week’s events are something of a coming out for the group. Perhaps just as telling, Jan DeWitt will talk this weekend about the hurdles of balancing work and benefits when ill.

You see, once DeWitt-Morette solves a problem in her head, action almost always follows.

“I don’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” the compact, restless woman says with a glint in her eye. “Because ‘no’ is simply a delayed ‘yes.’”

Alicia and John Nash: A Beautiful Partnership

Symposium on Sept. 14 at AT&T Center: $35-$55.

Screening on Sept. 16 of “A Beautiful Mind” at Alamo Drafthouse on West Anderson Lane: $20.

Information: www.planctx.org/NashEvent

Extra photos:

The second image was taken in academic year 1948-49 at the Institute in front of Fuld Hall. It features DeWitt-Morette with fellow visiting scholars (from left): Cheng Shu Wang Chang, Sheila Power, Mrs. Yukawa, DeWitt-Morette, and Hideki Yukawa. Credit: “Photographer unknown. From the Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA.

The third is of Alicia and John Nash. It was taken by John O’Boyle/The Star-Ledge

Correction: A previous version of this post misreported the number of DeWitt-Morette children. Names of the fund and the symposium were incomplete and the sequence of some events were incorrect.

I hadn’t seen anything like it. Musicians mixed with benefactors. Old Austin mixed with New Austin. And everyone at the Four Seasons Hotel appeared upbeat about the Austin Symphony Orchestra’s evolving leadership and energy.

Thomas and Kerri Neville

After decades of strong, steady if sometimes conservative leadership from Jane Sibley and, later, Joe Long, too, the orchestra installed a new president.

Earlier in the evening, Thomas Neville, joined by orchestra executive director Anthony Corroa, welcomed guests to the Long Center for the season’s first concert. Then the PlainsCapital Bank executive warmly greeted guests to the socially remarkable season launch party.

Courtney Johnson and Amber Gunst

Back at the Long Center, conductor Peter Bay had presented a short Dvorak piece, a muscular Brahms concerto with returning guest artist Midori and an excitable Shostakovich symphony. The hall was nearly full. While the violinist won the standing ovation, it was gratifying to see that almost nobody left before the less familiar and closely attended Soviet-era piece.

Stephen Mills, Meria Carstarphen and Brent Hasty

What struck me most about the Four Seasons affair was how easily all the parties played together. Austin’s oldest performing arts group is weighed down by layers of social strata, including at least six divisions of backers, some split by gender or age.

Now, it does take a lot of money to keep an orchestra going. So the hundreds of devoted folks you never see onstage are crucial to the group’s health and, in some years, even its survival. Glad to find them all in the same setting.

It looks like public art. And the arresting Austin Open Table is just that. Yet the stylized picnic table with benches and festive light trees planted an interstitial space near West Cesar Chavez Street and North Lamar Boulevard invites a party.

Ellen Rozman and Andrew Ashmore

So the scamps with Homegrown Revival camped there at dusk on Saturday. These young farmers, foragers, cooks and artists put together a meal of wild and raw food, prepared under tents then served at the long table. Super cool idea.

Sonya Cote and David Barrow

Revivalists Sonya Cote and David Barrow — also a couple — hope to repeat the experience with different menus for the next several months, then take the show on the road. You may recognize Cote as the chef at Hillside Farmacy. Photographer Barrow is carefully documenting each Revival meal for a future cookbook.

Veronica Vallado and Carl Schultz

Several fascinating folks introduced themselves. One with the delicious name Tink Pinkard is a forager. He provided the flathead catfish — which, he was careful to explain, are not bottom feeders like their brethren — from the Colorado and Brazos rivers.

Lightly fried with a Boggy Creek Farms breading, they proved denser and tastier than the usual suspects. This dish, served family style, was refreshed with chilled Gaia melon and Armenian cucumber soup.

Other guests told of backyard farms and deeply rooted eateries in East Austin. A lovely way to start the evening. After I’d left, late summer greens with wild dove, smoked goat ribs with cream and duck fat polenta and raw goat’s milk ice cream were served.

Was it wrong to leave?

At regular intervals during the evening, they repeated the mantra: “No one should face serious illness alone.”

Art and Tanya Acevedo

That’s all Care Communities needs to keep our attention. Started for patients with HIV-AIDS, the group now provides trained teams of staff and volunteers to meet the daily needs of those with life-threatening cancer as well. And half of their clients also now survive.

Ivy Kim and Jennifer Lynn Larson

Saturday at the Hyatt Regency Austin, several hundred backers gathered for the iCare Gala to salute three leaders who have made a difference in our shared health. Kerry Tate, for instance, is well known in business, charity and civic circles. For a long time, she’s been the wind beneath the wings of the Mamma Jamma Ride which benefits multiple Austin-area cancer-related charities.

Kerry Tate and Dawn Moore

Jesus Garza, of course, has been among the city’s most influential leaders, having earned top managerial stints for the City of Austin, Lower Colorado River Authority and Seton Healthcare Family.

Jay Billig, president of the Whole Place residential design firm, has supported a full array of Austin worthy causes.

In the past, heroes like these might work in relative obscurity. Thanks to Austin’s endless thirst for kindness to strangers, their labors are no longer ignored for long.

They came for different reasons. One fondly recalled a father’s gift of a first album. Another talked of the star who had been a member of their Arizona church. Still others remembered the concerts or the TV show or the artist’s early hard living.

Michael Neibergall and Kathryn Rogers

On a farewell tour after a diagnosis of dementia, Glen Campbell gave the multivaried crowd his all at the Long Center on Sunday. The voice is still there, deepened and darkened with time. The guitar playing is still nothing short of astounding.

The lyrics, however, returned only with the help of prompters and the short bursts of patter did not always make sense. Or, when they did, his remarks were endearingly unedited. (“You like this song,” he says to a longtime sideman. “You cry during this song.”

Mike and Margarita Raupe

While many in audience cheered and sang along during bright-light hits such as “Rhinestone Cowboy” or “Southern Nights,” my heart belonged to the crossover gems written by the incredible Jimmy Webb.

Tinged with melancholy and social commentary, “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman” and, especially, “Galveston” brought back unresolved heartaches from four decades ago. I didn’t even know Webb wrote “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress,” a harrowing song I associate with songstress Judy Collins.

Janet and Andy Graham

My companion for the evening was not born by the time Campbell recorded his last hit. For him, it was an education. And, it seems, a pleasure. Hard to explain this country pop outlier without being there.

A dry chill blows through Drew Womack’s lyrics.

Take this slice from “Butterfly” on the Austin musician’s recently released “Sunshine to Rain”:

“Don’t you go letting your guard down now/I’ve got a big appetite/I fight every urge to devour you now/With your beauty maybe I might.”

The urgent melody sweeps along a first-person warning that pairs words like “danger” and “threat,” “instinct” and “alarm.” It sounds like an ominous physical attraction. So it’s surprising to find that Womack wrote the first drafts with his 10-year-old son Maxwell.

“It’s actually about a vegetarian frog,” Womack, 42, admits. “He got bored with it. But I had the melody. Sounds more like a stalker song now.”

Frustrated, he returned to Texas to raise his son with wife Tara Hughes-Womack. And to recover from debilitating back pain only recently relieved after double surgery at a Round Rock hospital.

From his retreat in Lago Vista, Womack has written enough songs to fill five more albums.

If there were any justice in the music business — there rarely is — his Americana rebirth in “Sunshine to Rain” would balloon into a huge hit. It combines tender hooks with darkly tinted stories, including the title song about a drunk whom Womack saw loading her belongings into liquor boxes.

On a bright, warm day on South Congress Avenue, the black-and-silver clad Womack appeared upbeat, curious and anything but a tortured singer-songwriter.

He isn’t short, per se, but he doesn’t tower over the cafe-goers and jokes about his stature on the warm, wise song “The Way Love Rolls.” His salt-and-pepper locks and grizzle look more relaxed and even a little dashing these days.

Despite the angst fused into his writing, Womack seems to have reached peak contentedness.

“Some of my songs are pretty dark because that’s where I go when I’m in a creative place,” he says. “I write for me now. I feel like people enjoy it more if I like it. I have to love it.”

In Brownwood and San Angelo, Womack grew up among a mess of siblings in a blended family. One brother, Tres Womack, is in the music business, while another, Tim Womack, played guitar for the Waco-launched Sons of the Desert, named after a Laurel and Hardy movie.

Raised Southern Baptist, Drew Womack took the ups and downs of childhood in stride.

“I was always the happy kid,” he says. “Always smiling. Kinda quiet. Really extroverted when young, then I grew introverted. At football games and church, I got left behind often. It’s quite the family joke.”

While an easy talker revealing an inner ham, he doesn’t like large crowds. That posed a problem at his first concert after the Sons signed with Epic Records. They opened for Tim McGraw before a crowd of 24,000.

“I had been playing honkytonks and small clubs,” he recalls. “I walk out, the lights go down, the crowd goes wild. It was overwhelming and beautiful at the time.”

Womack’s mother played classical recordings at home. His father sang around the house. His first encounter with a guitar came at age 12.

His oldest brother was given a new instrument for Christmas, which Drew Womack picked up along with an Eagles songbook. He hung out with a San Angelo rock band that rehearsed for hours and hours. Then the lead singer lost his voice.

“He got through two songs,” he says. “So I jumped in. That’s what started it.” He was 14.

Wanting to develop his voice, Womack enrolled in the music program at McLennan Community College, where he appeared in operas.

“My teacher said twang was carrying over into the opera singing,” the tenor says. Channeling Neil Young, Jackson Browne and John Hiatt, Womack also polished his songwriting skills.

“I loved the way they painted a picture that was open for interpretation,” he says. “In Nashville, it tends to be more literal. It relies on a formula. Nashville is a very Thomas Kinkade town. Now, the writers I was blessed to collaborate with in Nashville are unbelievable. My own writing lands somewhere in the middle of literal and abstract. You have to listen a few times to my lyrics before you catch all of it.”

Sons of the Desert started as a five-piece outfit in 1989. After the lead singer left, Womack auditioned for the job. The band, inspired by the likes of Steve Earle, Kevin Welch and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, went from playing weekends to making a career out of music, with Womack doubling as booker and manager.

When a gig in Arlington was canceled the Sons took the offer to fill in at a new Nashville club called the Wild Horse Saloon. They were offered a recording deal the very first day.

After driving all the way from San Angelo and bowling all night because they couldn’t get a hotel room, they rushed from a sound check to a showcase for Sony executives. During the second song, the sound system started blaring.

“We had to stop playing,” he says. “I’m freaking. They were waving us up. We go up there and the say: ‘That’s all right, we heard enough.’ We were so shocked. Finally they stopped talking and said: ‘You do want a record deal, don’t you?’ We just couldn’t comprehend it.”

The Sons enjoyed a good run, hitting the charts and attracting wide attention. What happened next is heartbreakingly familiar to anyone who loves music but not necessarily the music industry.

Personnel at the label moved around. The Sons lost their main benefactors. Womack wrote songs on the side, including Chesney’s first big hit, for other artists.

Then the Sons discovered “Goodbye Earl,” a Dennis Linde song about woman drafting a friend to help kill her abusive husband. The Sons played it regularly in concert and included it on their second Sony record. About that time, the Dixie Chicks were exploding onto the scene.

“We gave them a blessing to record it, too,” Womack says. “According to the label, it was never supposed to be a single for them. But the label knew the Chicks had a record that would sell millions, so they didn’t release our version as a single. We were doing radio and club tours to promote it.”

After several long frustrating weeks, Womack learned while deep sea fishing in Tampa that the label had no intention of releasing the Sons’ version.

The Sons moved over to MCA and recorded another album. One single hit the Top 10. A second album — full of hits for other artists — was never released.

After moving back to Texas, Womack suffered from problems worse that perfidious music industry types.

“I had struggled with back problems ever since I was young,” he says. Womack had spondylolisthesis, a condition in which a crack in a vertebra doesn’t harden, remaining in the cartilage stage. “Mine got so bad, the vertabra above it slipped forward. There was no disc left. A couple of times on stage it felt like it was getting worse.”

The pain increased.

“It was like I was walking around and I was 85 years old,” he says. In 2006, doctors decided on a full body fusion. Over the course of nine hours, surgeons pushed his spine back into place, then inserted perforated dowel rods.

“It worked. But there was a problem with the screws,” he says. “I woke up from surgery and my wife didn’t recognize me, my face was so swollen. And I was in enormous pain.” Turns out one of the screws was rubbing up against the sciatic nerve.

“I wake up two hours later and I was smiling,” he says. “It was the first time in years I wasn’t in pain.”

He was then free to complete “Sunshine to Rain,” his first album in seven years. He retained control over its future.

“We own the album, so if we wanted to license it to a bigger label, we can do that,” he says. One single is already charting, but just about any of the 12 cuts could stand on its own. What defines such a good song?

“If it makes you feel something,” he says. “It might piss you off. It might make you feel good. Ask why something was a big hit — it made a lot of people feel something.”

Correction: A previous version of this post reported incorrectly that Womack wrote “I Hope You Dance.”

Mary Moore Searight began and ended life in Paris, Texas.

Here she met and married Dan Searight, president of the Walter Tips Hardware Company.

While living in the city, they purchased ranch land from the pioneering Slaughter family, eventually calling it Indian Grass Farm. They ran black Angus cattle along Big and Little Slaughter creeks. For 30 years after her husband’s death, Mary Moore Searight oversaw the ranch alone.

In the 1980s, as development threatened open spaces in the area, Searight met with City of Austin land agent Junie Plummer, who was given a slow tour of the varied terrain and native flora and fauna.

Plummer could only muster $1.5 million from the parks budget to purchase 88 acres of land. “Don’t you want it all?” Searight asked. “Of course,” Plummer responded, “but we can’t afford it.”

After making sure that the remaining 206 acres would be protected by law as parkland, Searight made a gift of it. (More land was added later.)

In 1996, Searight’s life ended abruptly when she was murdered by an intruder in her original hometown. Her adopted city, however, continues to enjoy those 334 acres of urban wildlife.

MARY MOORE SEARIGHT PARK

Located: 907 Slaughter Lane

Dedicated: 1988

Acres: 344

Named for: Mary Moore Searight

Photo: Adrienne DeVorkin (1990)

It started with a street sign. It ended with a stroll around the grounds of an abandoned Civil War fort in South Austin.

You didn’t know Austin — far from any battlefield — played a part in Confederate defenses? In fact, slave labor built three forts around Austin to ward off possible invasions from the south, north and east.

Now I’m no Civil War buff, but why hadn’t I heard of Fort Magruder while reporting on the people, places and scenes of our fair city? Questions to longtime residents drew blanks. Published references were few and far between.

Six months ago, though, while looking into Travis Heights for a Real magazine profile, I stumbled across a history of South Congress Avenue in an online report first published in the 1990s when improvements were considered for what would become known as SoCo.

(Years earlier, architect Emily Little had given me a print version of the report, but clearly I didn’t read it too carefully. A clue ignored.)

Anyway, that report showed the precise location of trenches and a dugout near the northwest corner of South Congress and Ben White Boulevard. The fort’s plan — which looks something like the silhouette of the Starship Enterprise — lay alongside Wadford Street below Dunlap Street. Wow! It existed, I thought.

Two weeks ago, taking time off from another project, I requested materials on Fort Magruder at the Austin History Center.

Two yellowed pages referred to “Fortview,” an 1875 subdivision laid out around the fortifications.

One reproduced the original subdivision plat and the other was a 1956 newspaper article about the City of Austin charging a “tap fee” to link the rural area to its urban sewer system.

(Consider that in my lifetime, this area at the headwaters of East Bouldin Creek was way out in the country. Now condos and apartments south of there boast of “downtown living.”)

The gold mine of material, however, is a bound 1995 Texas Department of Transportation report written by John Clark Jr. and David Romo. This survey of archeological and archival evidence was put together quickly, since TxDot was already in the process of turning Ben White into a freeway.

The fort was built in December 1863 and January 1864 as Confederate leaders panicked about Union incursions into Texas. Major Gen. John Magruder, who earlier had battled Union Gen. George McClellan during the Peninsula Campaign in Virginia, was then in charge of the military district that included Texas.

When Galveston, the state’s main city and port, was briefly captured by Union troops, Confederate soldiers retreated inland. Even after it was recaptured, Texas leaders wavered on how to defend the capital city.

In November 1863, Union forces took lightly defended Brownsville, and it appeared as though an expeditionary force would sweep up from the Rio Grande Valley.

As many as 1,000 slaves were drafted from as far away as La Grange to build defenses on the San Antonio to Austin road, which became South Congress Avenue. Neither plantation owners nor Austin residents were happy with the arrangements.

Local white women called the billeting of the slaves in an Austin church “barbaric.” As usual, the African Americans got the worst of it.

“They were half froze since the winters of 1863 and 1864 were cold ones,” wrote engineer Major Julius Kellersburg. “We had 11- to 12-degree weather and naturally no winter clothing.”

During an interview conducted in the 1930s, former slave John Walton remembered panic in the face of what seemed like an imminent Yankee attack. The emergency ended when Union troops focused instead on reaching the Texas interior via the Red River.

After that, the northern boundary of Fort Magruder’s grounds turned into Post Road Drive, while the southern line became Radam Lane, south of Ben White. East-west, the full fort stretched from South First to South Congress. The unfinished defenses filled with trash.

A Chamber of Commerce pamphlet from the 1930s reported: “These large trenches and the dugout are still plainly visible.”

The TxDot conclusion after the 1990s excavation: No Civil War-era artifacts were found. The only remaining 19th-century structure near the site, a house occupied by transients, burned to the ground.

(About the time I started asking questions in 1992, reporter Stuart Eskenazi wrote a focused piece about TxDot’s early archival work on Fort Magruder for the American-Statesman, but I didn’t run across his article until this week. Reporters: Always start your research in your own archives.)

Last week, I walked our dog down to Fort Magruder. Although there’s a man-made cut in the knob above Dunlap Street, there are no signs of trenches or earthworks. A busy P. Terry’s hamburger joint and a new rehabilitation hospital join a few residences and a construction project atop the former fortifications.

No historical marker. No physical clues except the alley-like Fort Magruder Lane.

Next to the hamburger stand, I tried to imagine the shivering laborers and the guards posted on earthworks looking south down what must have been a rugged trail to San Antonio. Any historical reverberations were at this point extremely faint.

Wait! The TxDot report included a turn-of-the-century map showing two other Confederate forts.

One rose at College Hill somewhere around the corner of West 15th Street and West Avenue. The other, called Fort Colorado, and later Fort Prairie on maps, stood off Webberville Road just east of Heflin Lane, near the wooded area where Austin Wildlife Rescue now operates.

To my knowledge, neither site has been excavated. Note All three forts are marked on the map above that was included in the TxDot study.

Hipsters and design buffs need places to meet and relax. The roof of the Jones Center at Congress Avenue and West Seventh Street is one such place.

Nicolas Allinder and Joshua Penhaskashi

The blend of a sculpted, roofless auditorium and spectacular urban scenery lend the spot a unmistakably cool vibe. Catered snacks and drinks help loosen up the crowd, which tends to pose a bit before succumbing to chat.

Fulfilling a key museum function, AMOA/Arthouse shows art-themed movies here.

Alexer Taganas and Jen Wong

More than 200 guests gathered Tuesday to watch a movie about Philip Johnson, which, it turned out, I’d already seen. So I just soaked up scene. Odd note: Several surfer types with shoulder length hair and beachside manner attended. Didn’t that design freaks surfed.

Brian Willey and Thao Votang

Earlier in the week, I dropped by the new home of the Armstrong Community Music School. Located above a rugged creek bed on Camp Craft Road, the school fits snugly in with other learning outlets like mammoth Westlake High School and other Eanes district properties in an area that feels very old West Lake, meaning prior to the big homes and fancy shopping districts.

The school’s two-story regional modern building stood empty for a long time after serving as offices for a small engineering firm. Frankly, it think it’s superior to the school’s former digs at the old Austin Lyric opera campus on Barton Springs Road.

The interiors of classrooms, offices and meeting spaces are bright and welcoming. Staff informed me that enrollment is reaching former highs of 800 students learning all sorts of musical skills and knowledge.

Congrats to school leader Margaret Perry and primary donors James Armstrong and Larry Connelly.

Before, during and after graduate school — social prime time for many young Americans — former electrical engineer Sky Cheung did not party.

“I never went out,” he says. “I had no social life.”

The immigrant from Hong Kong worked as a busboy in a Chinese restaurant during grad school, then pulled round-the-clock stints at Texas Instruments offices in Dallas and Chicago after that.

Two things contributed to Cheung’s upgraded social life. First was securing a green card, which lit a path to permanent residence and, he hopes, citizenship. Second was a move to Austin to work for a series of high-tech firms on low-power processors found in smartphones.

“At one point, I going out three or four times a week,” he says. “Not getting wasted. Meeting people. If you work in a tech field, you talk tech. But I like talking to people more on the creative side.”

Cheung — whose name in Chinese, Tein, means sky — is afforded plenty of options for meeting creative types these days. Strategically located on Colorado Street between West Fifth and West Sixth streets, Haven is hopping most nights of the week, especially late, catering to social migrants from the West Sixth Street and Warehouse District nightlife districts.

“We bring in a young professional crowd,” says Annie Parmelly, who heads up marketing and events for Haven. “It’s a good-looking group with money to spend. In their late 20s to early 30s. Thursdays, though, we cater to the college crowd.”

Cheung is delighted that Haven is generating fresh buzz after the spectacular rise and fall of Pangaea and Phoenix. And to think, it all came about because of an investment gone bad.

Cheung’s parents — ethnic Han from Northwest China who, like their son, speak Mandarin and Cantonese — worked hard in everything from manual labor to business, teaching and day trading. Raised by a nanny and her family, he learned about his parents from a distance.

“I didn’t know they were educated in science in college and didn’t end up using it,” he says. “Living outside the home, I was a disaster. I think you become more reserved and build more self-defense mechanisms. I cried a lot. Got bored. Nothing made me happy. It was a bad time. But it made me a lot more independent, because I never felt the security of parents protecting me all the way.”

He aced elementary school and entered the prestigious Queens College prep school, but then he started slipping.

“I didn’t get along with the nerds,” he says. “I was always a little more outgoing. They were all about studying. Very structured. I was not. I just wanted to live.”

Meanwhile, his friends outside school were doing stupid, teenager things. So Cheung packed up everything and moved to Seattle to help out a Christian church community. There, he attended community college, while his parents waited out what they thought would be a short stay in the U.S.

“It’s not unusual for Hong Kongese to immigrate after school,” he says. He transferred to the University of Washington, then Georgia Tech, which presented another wave of cultural shocks. “I had adapted to the Seattle way — which is the Austin way — of not a lot of ethnic and social segregation,” he says. “In Atlanta, every just hung out with their own people.”

Cheung’s social life blossomed after he took a series of high-tech jobs in Austin. Living modestly in Cedar Park without a fancy car or clothes, he became fascinated by the hype around club owner Michael Ault’s Pangaea, the ultra-lounge that helped transform Austin nightlife.

For better or worse, certain Austin clubs turned dressier, wilder and more worldly. Part of the allure was the illusion of exclusivity, which, as anyone who actually ducked in found out, proved more velvet-rope illusion than reality. In truth, everyone was welcome.

“It changed how people partied,” recalls Cheung, who got to know one of the club’s operators. Eventually, he met Ault, who persuaded him to invest $100,000 in the club.

Not exactly the move you’d expect from an electrical engineer. The wildlife-themed Pangaea quickly ran through its A-List clientele, so some of the partners, who never hid their conspicuously lavish lifestyle, remodeled the upstairs retreat into the darkly baroque Phoenix. Eventually, the landlord asked Cheung to step in.

“I more or less took it over with some of the original partners,” he says. He took sole control in 2011.

At first Cheung wanted to banish the red-and-black decor for a white beach house feel. Luckily, his research showed that the light wood and linen he wanted were not resistant to stains.

“It would be a very dirty club by now,” he says.

Using Whole Foods and Audi as models, he strove instead for an organic look with earth tones and an outdoor area where people could talk. He hired skilled DJs, but insisted that guests could hear each other.

Eventually, he gave up his day job and says he has sunk more than $500,000 into the effort that now operates at a profit.

“If you are profitable in the summer in Austin with big street construction going out in front of your place, then you’re doing pretty good,” he says.

Parmelly helps keep the crowds fresh with special events and Haven Helps, a monthly charity party. He’s looking to duplicate his success with perhaps a smaller concept bar in Austin or clubs like Haven in other Texas cities.

“My experience turning a broken concept into a sustainable one taught me that I could run a club,” he says. “I have much better tools now. With Phoenix, I was just trying to save it. With Haven, I’m trying to create a community.”

Arty parties don’t raise nearly as much moolah their counterparts in the fields of performing arts or charities, where hundreds of thousands can be pledged in one evening. Still, these stylish social affairs expose guests to the visual arts and give Austin’s tight circles of art devotees chances to mix and match. And raise a dime or two.

Karen Aston and Chris Plonsky

The Director’s Dinner at the Blanton Museum of Art this week attracted the big names among contemporary art backers, meaning the Kleins, Butlers, Blantons, Booths and so forth. They were joined by some local sports royalty, since the main temporary exhibit not only displayed the originating document of basketball, it also gave plenty of air to enormous photographic prints of basketball players.

Simone Wicha and Carmel Borders

Folks dressed up a bit for this always stimulating meeting of art-loving minds. Early on, the lobby was thronged with guests catching up on personal matters, since so many of them flee Austin during the summer. I couldn’t stay for dinner, yet still absorbed enough social news to keep me coming back. Plus, I must spend some more time in the permanent collection. Austin is lucky enough to have one, why not deepen our acquaintance with it?

Francesca Consagra and Kelli Blanton

Things were decidedly more casual a few blocks away at Women & Their Work. The arts advocacy group has staged its Red Dot Sale for many years now and working artists make up a large subset of the party.

Paul Beck and Misty Contreras

The walls of the gallery on Lavaca Street were filled with a buzzy variety of creative projects. The artists I talked to seemed delighted with the attention and the chance to help out an Austin group which never lost touch with its roots.

Katelina Hernandez Cowles and Brooke Hollan

The spiky food was provided by Quincy Adams Erickson, not present because she was also catering the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders birthday bash at Lance Armstrong’s manse. Lance attended and rescued the event when rains washed out planned outdoor setting.

Thomas and Gina Holton

I never made it. Rush hour traffic worsened in the rain. I spent that rare Austin hour or so stuck in a car. Usually, I avoid automotive traffic altogether, so, when it looked like I’d spend more time in the car than at the party, I bailed and headed over the the Blanton.

I later heard that attendance was one quarter the number expected. Do over?

Never heard of Commons Ford Ranch Metropolitan Park? Join the club.

Visitors to the Cuernavaca area off Bee Cave Road know about Commons Ford Road. Nearby residents are also familiar with the rugged park by the same name, but they aren’t broadcasting its astonishing peace and quiet.

Commons Ford Ranch — sorry, haven’t yet discovered name’s origin — was purchased by the City of Austin in 1982 from developers Gary Bradley and John Wooley for $3.6 million. Then it was left pretty much alone.

Daytrippers will find a mere 10 picnic tables and one shelter. A volleyball area sometimes attracts a healthy crowd. There’s a fishing pier, but no swimming is allowed beyond a certain point because of dangerous drop-offs and entangling plants.

An unfinished ranch house with two patios and a swimming pool is available for rental and works well for weddings.

The true glory of Commons Ford, however, is the nature. The lowland portion was disturbed by ranching, but few parts of Texas were never ranched. Nowadays, loyalists are restoring the prairie with native grasses and wildflowers, hoping to attract more wildlife (commonsfordpro.blogspot.com).

Meanwhile, there’s little to disturb the peace on a three-mile trail that leads to rocky streambeds and, in wet seasons, more than one waterfall.

Commons Ford Ranch Metropolitan Park

Location: 614 Commons Ford Road

Acres: 215

Dedicated: 1983

The play contains powerful moments. Equally powerful were the real people portrayed in the play. They gathered onstage after “Just Outside Redemption” at the City Theatre opening to acknowledge that what happened in the legislative drama was, for the most part, nonfiction.

Glen Maxey and Dianne Hardy-Garcia

Writer Dennis Bailey has a history with this material: The fight for a hate crimes bill in the Texas legislature, based on his book with David Mixner. It chronicles the trials and travails of Dianne Hardy-Garcia, who insisted that sexual minorities be included.

Beth Broderick and Suzanne Balling

The crowd on opening night, backers of the LGRL, gave the play from Theatre en Bloc a suitably partisan welcome. They laughed and sighed knowningly. Actors such as Beth Broderick (comedy) and Scott Teeters (drama) gave the performances a necessary range, while Suzanne Ballard bravely played the brave heroine, who happened to be in the audience.

Dennis Bailey and Elliott Naishtat

Just seeing them all together in the lobby for the after-party gave me a swell idea for a column. We’ll see if it works out. The play runs through the end of the month.

Austin lawyer and benefactor Becky Beaver has raised the barre (or legal bar?) for looking fabulous on one’s 60th birthday. Tall and lean, she looked stunning in red as she greeted her 1,200 party guests at the Four Seasons Hotel.

John Duncan and Becky Beaver

Several hotel staffers said it was the biggest party ever at the classy joint. The guests spilled onto the patio, through two banquet rooms and three lobbies. A band played. Immediately, the lovely Katy Hackerman and new beau, serial business-starter Corky Logue hit the floor.

John Hogg and Charmaine Denius McGill

Because she has served on so many boards and supported so many causes, Beaver can count her good friends in the thousands. Yet it would be disingenuous to ignore the many satisfied clients from her family law firm were also present. (It goes without saying that the opposing spouses were, for the most part, not present. Hey, I’m not taking sides!)

Kellie Pierce and Lance johnson

Personally, I have a hard time thinking anything ill about this West Texas gal who plays sports like a teenager, fully engages the Austin social universe and regularly volunteers her leadership skills when she is not serving as a top attorney.

Two is not a trend. Three isn’t either — except in journalism. Yet there’s something going on.

Ivan, Noah and Chiaki Stout

Last week, the Texas Campaign for the Environment staged a fashion show of apparel made from recycled material. The Trash Makeover Challenge filled the pleasantly warm Delta Lumber & Millworks with green types, but also fashionistas hoping to make a splash from their creative designs and products.

I especially liked Aidan Liller’s reuse of fashion labels. The detailing may have proved too small for the judges to see, but the concept and execution was impressive.

Rachel Wilcox and Latarsha Burger

Next week, Tribeza will stage a similar fashion show with a recycling theme during its annual Style Week. How cool is that? It falls on Wednesday right in the middle of the crowded festivities.

Lisa Del Dotto and Aidan Liller

Back to the TCE event. I attended due to a strong lobbying effort from former mayoral candidate Brigid Shea. Shea is one of those people who can get you on the phone and make it seem like a sin that you did or didn’t do something worthwhile. In this case, that power of persuasion was a very good thing.

It began in 2010 as tribute to the 200th anniversary of Mexican independence. It doubled as a dinner to benefit MexNet Alliance, which provides business training for Mexican immigrants. Just two years later, Authentic Mexico serves as a sacred shrine on the trail of Austin’s fall social pilgrimage.

Gregory and Kim Vincent

Credit businesswoman and benefactor Monica Peraza, who fires MexNet Alliance with energy, when she is not running two businesses, overseeing a family and providing the heat behind the Hispanic Alliance for the Performing Arts.

Carmen “Titita” Ramirez Degollado and Monica Peraza

She has a lot of help from allies such as Teresa and Joe Long. So it’s apt that Authentic Mexico is presented as a sit-down feast on the Long Center stage.

Charles Santos and Cookie Ruiz

This year, we hung out with Charles Santos, Cookie Ruiz, J.R. Ruiz, Eugene Sepulveda, Juan Miró, Rosa Rivera, Carol Adams and Chris Adams, also spending a little time with Steve Wanta of Whole Planet Foundation and John and Jennifer McGrath, whom I got to know through GSD&M.

The meal, including saucy pheasant from Mexico City chef Carmen “Titita” Ramirez Degollado, was lovely and not overwhelming. The all-female mariachi band was lovely, but ultimately overwhelming.

Best news of the evening: MexNet is expanding to other cities and adding seminars throughout the year. In just two years!

Two weeks ago, Dianne Hardy-Garcia, formerly of Austin, saw herself on stage.

“It was very nerve-wracking and surreal,” says the veteran campaigner for political and charitable causes. “I was humbled and honored — and slightly terrified at the same time.”

The occasion? The opening of Dennis Bailey’s “Just Outside Redemption,” produced by Theatre en Bloc and running through Sept. 30 at the City Theatre. The drama concerns Hardy-Garcia’s efforts to usher the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act, named for the black man who was horrifically murdered in Jasper, through the Texas legislature. Gov. Rick Perry signed the bill into law in 2001.

Recently, we’ve been blessed by top performers playing Austin figures such as Gov. Ann Richards, writer Molly Ivins and first lady Lady Bird Johnson. These subjects, however, were deceased at the time. That changes the dynamics considerably.

“I always said the great thing about doing this play is that it happened here in Austin,” playwright Bailey says. “The difficult thing is that it happened here in Austin. Meaning I knew we had to get at least the gist of it right or we would be called on it. People are not shy here. They tell you when they think you’ve erred.”

On that score, Bailey and his artistic team have received almost uniform approval from the people who worked with Hardy-Garcia when she ran the Lesbian Gay Rights Lobby of Texas from 1993 to 2002. Her job was to ensure that sexual orientation was included in the bill’s language, that allies rallied against the crimes and that victims’ loved ones testified in order to ensure bipartisan support.

“In addition to the shocking nature of the violence itself, one of the most painful things about that time was being told that the victims of anti-gay hate crimes got what they deserved,” Hardy-Garcia recalls. “Even in the face of such brutality, we were continually told that the gay community of Texas was unworthy of hate crime protections. That finally changed.”

The play grew out of the book “Brave Journeys,” a series of leadership profiles written by Bailey and David Mixner, published in 2000. The next year, Bailey brought up the possibility of a dramatic adaptation.

“Back in 2001, the topic was still very raw,” Hardy-Garcia says. “And we hadn’t yet passed the legislation. … When Dennis mentioned doing a play about this struggle then, I was unable to imagine it.”

In the past months, as Bailey revived the idea, he met with Hardy-Garcia to go over some of the details. The producers also assured her that the story would be told respectfully.

“I was able to try to get past the pain of this struggle and get more proud of the effort,” she says. “But battle scars remain.”

“Dennis accurately captured some of our personal conflicts from the time he spent with us both as he was working on the book,” she says. “I was deeply ashamed at the failure of my first relationship. I was raised Catholic and some things stick. The play challenged my sense of privacy in that regard and forced me to re-evaluate what I saw as a tremendous failure on my part.”

The playwright, however, needed to humanize the activists.

“I had made the decision to approach the material much like Larry Kramer did in ‘The Normal Heart,” Bailey says. “Taking the story and characters a step away from the factual day-to-day so I could develop a clear-cut theatrical arc for the play.”

Hardy-Garcia worked with the team in advance on the legislative language and the culture of the statehouse. She was grateful that a speech by her legislative hero, Rep. Senfronia Thompson, was included.

Some of the action, of course, is condensed, since the campaign lasted for years. Some names are changed and other characters are composites.

“Billy Thibodeaux, who is murdered at the beginning of the play — hello: spoiler alert! — is a composite of several of the victims, especially Tommy Musick and Nicholas West,” Bailey says.

The comic-relief character Harlene, a West Texas housewife who helps out with lobbying, echoes the mothers who had sons they suspected might be gay and who wanted to do something constructive, Bailey says.

On opening night, Hardy-Garcia called up to the stage many of the real people from the story, including her brave and funny assistant Andy Delony and several board members. Rep. Glen Maxey, who preceded her as a gay rights lobbyist, joined her, but sadly not lobbyist Bettie Naylor, who died earlier this year.

Perhaps most moving were the presence of Cruz Saldana and Denise Guerrero, who lost their brother, Ernest Saldana, to a hate crime in 1994.

“They were one of the victims’ families who repeatedly testified about the need for this bill until its ultimate passage,” Hardy-Garcia says. “There were many families that were so courageous, but the Saldana family stuck through this process for so long and I’ve always deeply admired them.”

The tight ensemble includes some stand-out performances from Beth Broderick (comedy) and Ryan Hamilton (drama). A Texas tour and a teleplay are being discussed.

“It was easier to see the portrayals of other characters because I love those people so,” Hardy-Garcia says. “I was glad their hard work was honored and I still wish we could have included and honored more of the people who worked personally on this issue.”

Serving as a pre-party for the first huge weekend of the fall social season, the mixer at Malverde on Tuesday blended behind-the-scenes players with very public ones. The organizers were Laura Villagran and Kevin Smothers, founders of the vital Austin Social Planner site. These energetic socializers preview and review galas and other affairs. Yet their calendar — which helps hosts and hostesses avoid clashes — is worthy of beatification.

Jack and Carla McDonald

And what a weekend! Wednesday, Center for Child Protection previewed its Dancing with the Stars extravaganza at the Domain. Thursday,Westcave Preserve staged its inspiring Children in Nature gala indoors and outdoors at the Four Seasons, while the Knights of the Symphony held court for King Brio at Hilton Austin, and, down the way, one of the season’s first F1 parties perked up Star Bar.

Laura Villagran and Shaady Ghadessy

Earlier today, the Women’s Symphony League revived its fashion show and luncheon tradition with a stunner from Patti Hoffpauir and Sue Webber at the Palmer Events Center. Tonight, we’ll head to Ballet Austin’s nested Féte and Fét*ish parties at the Driskill Hotel, then the John Legend concert for the rebooted Andy Roddick Foundation at ACL Live. Alas, we’ll miss the kick-off to Tribeza Style Week at By George.

Scott Thomas and Maria Orozova

Tomorrow, it’s the Women Symphony League’s longstanding Jewel Ball as well as the Art of Giving gala for the American Diabetes Association at Hilton Austin. Sunday, we plan to drop by the Harvest Moon Festival at the Asian American Cultural Center, the Texas Monthly Barbecue Fest at the Long Center, the Black and White Ball for the Texas Advocacy Project at the Four Seasons and the Big Give for I Live Here I Give Here at the Driskill Hotel.

Looks like some party planners could have availed themselves of Austin Party Planner’s calendar ahead of time.

Correction: Patti Hoffpauir’s name was misspelled in an earlier version of this post.

Eighty years ago, Lebanese and Syrian women rose before dawn to cook bread. They ferried the warm food to the corner of Sixth Street and Congress Avenue.

At their sidewalk bake sales, they hawked savory and sweet nibbles derived from various Middle Eastern traditions to raise money for a new Antiochian Orthodox church.

Two years later, a stone structure rose on East 11th Street just downhill from the State Capitol and above Waller Creek’s floodplain.

(PHOTO: Rosalie Dagar, Elaine Jabour, Adele Diab, and Alexandra Zegub. The gentleman standing between Mrs. Diab and Mrs. Zegub is former Priest of St. Elias, the Very Reverand Archpriest James Rottle. Approximately 1968.)

Revelers have flocked to the fall fest for gyros, baklava, falafel, spanokopeta and kibbee — delicacies from the historical Orthodox Christian zone around the eastern Mediterranean.

Yet far before Lebanense and Syrian immigrants arrived in Texas during the late 19th century, Orthodoxy had spread to — and prospered in — Russian, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Caucasian, African and South Slavic realms.

“We pray in English, Greek, Arabic, Russian, Slavonic, Romanian, Spanish and Tigrinya,” says the Very Rev. Fr. David Barr, pastor at St. Elias, now a diversified group. Tigrinya, by the way, is spoken in Eritrea. Barr explains that refugees from this Red Sea country journey through Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to seek asylum here.

These days, the St. Elias faithful include immigrants from dozens of countries. And the Med Fest reflects those cultures. Among the treats expected Sept. 28-29 — along with dancing, singing and other ecstatic activities — are Romanian and Eritrean specialties, as well as Ukrainian goods in what is usually called the Mediterranean Market.

Teodora Pogonat, for instance, is preparing mixed-meat, caseless Romanian sausages known as mititei. The sausages pack enough garlic to fend off any real or fictional vampires.

(PHOTO: Church under construction in 1934.)

One enduring strength of the Orthodox faith is that services are conducted, when possible, in a version of the local language. Many of the St. Elias founders spoke Arabic.

As followers of the Antiochian Patriarch — who actually moved from Antioch, Turkey, to Damascus, Syria, because the powers there were more tolerant, Barr says — they heard service in Classical Arabic as well as English.

As early as the 1950s and ’60s, however, more and more Greek, Russian and Serbian names showed up on St. Elias’ parish roles.

“Even in the early days, St. Elias never saw itself as totally an Arabic or Lebanese enclave,” Barr says. “Because it was the only (Orthodox) game in town.”

More recently, Orthodox churches have sprung up in West Austin, Pflugerville, Leander, Cedar Park, Dripping Springs and elsewhere. They tend to cater, Barr says, to narrower ethnic and linguistic slices of Orthodoxy than does St. Elias.

Unlike some downtown churches, St. Elias did not wither during the long, midcentury flight to the suburbs.

“It’s as lively as it has ever been,” Barr says. “Maybe more so.”

A month before the festival, parish leaders Gene Attal and David Jabour shared a table at Russell’s Bistro. The nonprofit consultant and the Twin Liquors chain owner have been involved with the Med Fest all their lives.

This year, Attal chairs the festival, while Jabour chairs the parish council.

Like many of Austin’s old Lebanese families, the Attals and Jabours are related through multiple marriages. Their ancestors arrived at the turn of the last century from El Mina, the harbor city of Tripoli on the northern coast of Lebanon.

The men came first. They were merchants who peddled goods door to door. Then they built shops, many of them in East Austin or along Red River Street, where they shared space with Chinese and Hispanic newcomers.

“It was green with water and hills,” Jabour says. “It reminded them of Lebanon.”

Almost four decades after they arrived, Attal and Jabour’s ancestors decided to built a church — during the Great Depression.

(PHOTO: stuffed grape leaves, baklava and tabouli are traditional for St. Elias Orthodox Church festival. Pictured is Regina Haddad, who died in 2010.)

They paid $400 for the land at what was then East 11th and Neches streets. They spent another $400 on the stones purchased from another church. Even factoring for inflation, that’s a mere $13,000 for a handsome building with a glowing interior.

Their families — along with the Josephs, Dagars and Mansours, among others — moved from shopkeeping to real estate, education and high tech. Yet they all returned to St. Elias for Sunday luncheons at the parish hall.

“As Austin grew, other food was added,” Attal says. “Greek first. Most recently Romanian and Eritrean. Where else in Austin do you get that?”

The cousins expect between 5,000 and 10,000 guests.

“It’s unusual to get all this authentic cuisine all in once place,” Jabour says. “Even in as diverse a place as Austin has become.”

Unlike other outdoor festivals in Austin, Med Fest sticks to a strict Friday-Saturday schedule.

Attal: “Sunday we rest.”