Chatting with longtime Oak Cliff surgeon Dr. Wayne Gossard was a highlight of working on the OOCCL Fall Home Tour story in the October Advocate CliffDweller. Because he has lived on 1525 Olympia in Kessler Park for more than half a century, he was a wealth of knowledge about the neighborhood — in fact, the interview with François Chandou came about because Gossard was telling me about his interesting neighbor in the wine business.

I’m sure I could sit with Dr. Gossard for hours and listen to him tell stories about Oak Cliff. In the short time I spent with him, these were just a few of the famous neighbors he mentioned:
"A lot of old Dallas families were Oak Cliff people. The fellow who was the superintendent of schools, W.T White, lived over here on Edgefield. There was a chain of drug stores in Dallas called Skillern’s, and they lived on Colorado where it turned into Montclair. D.A. Hulcy, the president of Lone Star Gas Company, lived over here on Mayflower. The Folsom familiy lived here on Colorado. Ex-mayor Bobby Folsom? That’s where he grew up."

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Gossard’s house will likely draw the curious like moths to a flame during home tour weekend, Oct. 11-12. In case the address has you stumped, it’s the house atop the hill along Kessler Parkway, right before it turns into Colorado. When the photo appeared on the screen during the OOCCL Fall Home Tour reveal party, a collective gasp swept across the room. It was the first home OOCCL board president John McCall told me about, emphasizing that it was built in 1928, and Gossard’s family is only the second to occupy it.