Mary Palko was new to Fort Worth when she got involved with the effort to become a Sister City. That has opened doors all over the world.
Is it fair to say you are the reason we have a Sister Cities program? It's fair to say that I was certainly part of that burst of energy. And I was the volunteer that rumbled it along and kept the idea on the forefront. A Japanese city came and looked at us first before we knew to look. They didn't choose us. I was so amazed. So I asked Bob Bolen, "Mr. Mayor, do we have to wait for someone else to ask us?" He did one of those pat-you-on-the-head things and said, "Honey, you just see what you can do." I took that for complete license.
Are you proud of Fort Worth's program? It's a phenomenal program. They do 80 percent of their program for youth. They operate the International Leadership Academy. They come from all over the United States to replicate that program. No one does a youth program as deep and as strong as Fort Worth does.
What is your connection now? I'm a global envoy for Sister Cities at the national level. A handful of us got quite a bit of experience, particularly when the walls were coming down around the world and we represented Sister Cities abroad, helping those emerging democracies create a Sister Cities program in their country.
Tell me about Mayor Kay Granger's town hall meeting. I was the chair of the Vision Coalition, which we jokingly called the Vision Collision. I was in charge of the part that related to the community aspects. There were other elements that came together to create a new vision and a path for Fort Worth in light of several major company pullouts, including the potential of the base closure. … I think because of the Sister Cities work that I had done, I was asked to be involved.
Were there good results? Not the least was we became an All-America City. That was an amazing celebration. That was a huge citywide initiative. The Japanese came and did their fireworks. It was an amazing process - community dialogue, corporate and community and political responsiveness.
You also were involved in a project to preserve historical Russian film with local filmmaker Mitchell Johnson. We were leaving a Sister Cities event in Budapest and ended up sitting next to these guys from the State Department. They had given up completely on being able to find an American small filmmaker with Eastern European experience [like Michael has]. We had the form filled out by the time we landed in New York City. By the time we got to Fort Worth, we had been approved for this project.
Was this film secretly hidden away? Movie archivists are like little keepers of the truth. Even though different Russian leaders had come in and demanded that all the films be removed or purged, someone hid it in these miles of catacombs under the city … footage that showed the truth of what actually happened at a scene. Stalin recreated battles over and over again until they were as he wanted them to be. We found the footage of Van's [Cliburn] performance when he won the Tchaikovsky [Competition] in "58. They filmed him in his radio interviews, and we found those in the archives. It was pretty awesome.
This is celluloid film? Yes, and the silver nitrate was becoming goo in the cans. It was a race against time.
All that travel led you to invest in bed and breakfasts? All of our bed and breakfasts have the commonality of vineyards and grapes and wine and cowboys and culture. Our B&Bs are in Texas, Southern France - the Camargue, which has cowboys and grapes -Argentina, which has cowboys and grapes, and Fredericksburg is completely surrounded by vineyards and lots of cowboys.
And now you've taken up painting. Has that been a lifelong passion? Never. I couldn't even do stick figures. It was completely by accident. I've been known to have the shortest visitation time to any exhibit because I couldn't stand and look at the paintings because I didn't know or appreciate enough.
How many paintings? More than this house will hold. All of my beginning paintings are now hanging on the walls in Fredericksburg. If nothing else, it helped reduce the cost of renovation of those three building down there. I've sold some - an amazing, exciting, exhilarating thing. And now I'm getting ready for a show (Arts Goggle, May 19). … My work is mostly abstract and somewhat sensual, not by design, more by happenstance.
