Thanks to the cleanup crew:  Dave Maskarinec, Steve Dillon, Iris Dillon, Brandon Wooddell, Alfred Schram, Eleanor Schram, Greg Hoffmann, Roy Jones, Hanna Beauchamp, Daniel Beauchamp, Xaver Blaschamp, Mary Evans, David Kern, Carol Kern, Craig Watson, Dottie Watson,  Sandi Collins, Al Kohutek, Tom Root, Beverly Root, Gene Stoneburner, Jim Young, Darlene Young, Steve Martin, Sandy Cole, Rick Huffman, Chris Huffman, Tom Kressely, Mark Grigsby, Jon Griffin, Jim Pilarski, and Angle Pilarski.

Special thanks to: City of Irving and Bob Horton for providing the cleanup kits. Iris Dillon for lunch, drinks, ice, and ice chests.   Brandon for getting the ice.  Al Kohutek for the ice chests, water, sign-in sheet, coffee, cream, sugar, outboard motor boat, OJ, and flyers.   Gene Stoneburner for his tractor.   Mary Evans for getting the donuts.   Alfred and Eleanor for the coffee cups.   Tom Root, Jim Young, Mark Grigsby, Steve Dillon, & Tom Kressley for delivering the flyers.   And anyone else missed.      

Cleanup Drawing Prizes (2 Sam's/Walmart gift cards provided by the City of Irving):  Dave Maskarinec and the Beauchamps

Residents savor 'hidden jewel'
(Taken from the Sports & Recreatons of the Dallas Morning News, Irving section)

Vilbig Lake presents great bass fishing to South Irving anglers

09/02/2001

By TODD JORGENSON / The Dallas Morning News

Mark Grigsby speaks of Vilbig Lake as though it's his next-door neighbor. And actually, for him and more than 300 south Irving residents, it is. Take two steps past the grass of Grigsby's back yard, and you'll be swimming with catfish in 10 feet of water.

Invisible from any street with a traffic light, Vilbig Lake is lined with 234 middle-class homes on more than a dozen winding streets west of MacArthur Boulevard and north of Hunter Farrell Road.

Yet many locals are shocked to find out such a place exists in Irving. A place where you can satiate your appetite for fishing in the back yard and get a good view of the Dallas skyline in the front. A place where you can see picturesque sunsets and hear coyote calls on a dock 20 feet from the back door.

"I lived in Irving for five years before I even knew this place existed," Grigsby said. "You take a new vacation every week."

Grigsby is president of the Vilbig Bass Club, which seeks to enjoy sport fishing on the obscure Irving lake, but also to promote environmental health on its 154 acres.

That's one reason the club is closed to outsiders – just like the lake itself. Vilbig residents bond around their "hidden jewel," as Grigsby calls it. The common denominator is what makes their community unique, and they'd like to keep it that way.

"It's kind of its own society," said Grigsby, who bought his home on Vilbig Lake in 1997. "Everything I know about fishing I learned from people on this lake."

And the fishing is pretty good, too. The bass club has been active since 1993 and holds monthly member tournaments that typically attract dozens of competitors. It also raises money through fish fries, garage sales and raffles to fund fish-stocking projects.

The Irving Lake Association – a resident-operated organization that oversees Vilbig Lake and its shoreline development – first stocked Florida bass in Vilbig in 1993. Since then, the ILA has spent more than $16,000 and stocked almost 50,000 fish. The association also conducted a wildlife habitat survey in 1998.

"It's paying off. We're seeing some definite fish improvements," said Al Kohutek, a two-year Vilbig resident and the bass club's vice president. "[The lake] is just the right size where you can get around the whole thing with a trolling motor, but you can't fish the whole thing in one day. There's no crowding."

Besides the growing bass population, which included nine 8-pounders in 2000, Vilbig also has plentiful catfish, crappie, bluegill and carp, Kohutek said. The lake has a maximum depth of about 30 feet.

The bass club, which has sprouted from its humble beginnings as a neighborhood poker club to a membership of about 40, has a common structure to its tournaments. At the end of the five-hour tournament, anglers weigh their top three bass in competition. Highest cumulative total wins. A dead fish constitutes a one-pound penalty.

The lake originally was open to outside fishermen but has been exclusive to residents since the late 1980s. Not that many hard-core anglers would want to compete for trophies in lieu of cash, like the Vilbig faithful, anyway. But that doesn't decrease the level of competition at tournaments.

"I'm worn out after one of these things," Grigsby said. "It's intense. We go at it 100 percent."

Several steps have been taken to ensure the continued high water quality in Vilbig Lake. No gas motors are allowed, and residents schedule biannual drainage clean-ups. They help perpetuate the ecosystem by stocking crawfish and perch and by building duck boxes for waterfowl on the lake's north side.

"Most people that live on the lake use it as a backdrop, so I don't think they would do anything to intentionally hurt it," said Brandon Wooddell, who holds the club record with a 9-pound bass caught in June 2000. "I think most of the people who live here are conscious of that."

Among the projects in the planning stages are a park with picnic tables, a clubhouse and a baseball field on the north side of the lake. Erosion controls, including sea walls, already are in place to alleviate the need for dredging.

"There's a lot of growth yet on this lake. We're only in the beginning stages," Grigsby said. "People who live here are willing to make that investment once they realize what a jewel we have."

Wooddell said that's because Vilbig residents appreciate the value of the lake, not only as a backyard novelty but as a source of community pride.

"The club has helped us grow closer as neighbors, but the lake itself brings everybody together, too," he said. "For some of us, it's the view. For some of us, it's the fishing. It offers something different for everyone."

When the urge to feel a little sand in our sandals beckons us to the beach, many pack up and head south. The Drumm family steps out their back door.

Harvey and Judy Drumm and their three children live in the Vilbig Lake area of south Irving. The neighborhood, off of South MacArthur Boulevard near Oakdale Road, is a well-kept secret, even for many Irving residents. Families who live in the close-knit neighborhood are sold on its convenient location and lakeside lifestyle.

"I've lived in the Dallas area for 50-plus years, and I've never run across a neighborhood like this," says Jim Young, president of the Irving Lake Association, a group of lakelot homeowners. Mr. Young and his wife, Darlene, moved to the neighborhood in 1994. "You have the lake atmosphere, but you're right here in the middle of Dallas-Fort Worth. Living here gives us the best of both worlds. As my wife says, it's like being on vacation all the time."

Ducks waddle across lawns. Turtle heads bob on the 125-acre lake. An occasional crane dots the horizon. Residents park boats in driveways and prop fishing poles against backyard decks and docks.

The neighborhood association schedules regular activities for residents and conducts lake cleanups, with homeowners pitching in to tidy up the lake and shoreline. The association stocks the lake with a variety of fish each year, Mr. Young says, and the Bass Club hosts monthly activities for fishing enthusiasts.

Judy Drumm and her ex-husband bought a home on the lake 12 years ago.

"I'm from Puerto Rico, and when I saw this neighborhood and the lake, I just loved it. It was just breathtaking," she says. "It was a beautiful, beautiful day, and when I saw the lake, I knew this is exactly where I wanted to live."

Mrs. Drumm remarried two years ago.

"She came with the house," teases her husband, Harvey Drumm. "It was a package deal. I told her it was the lake and the house, or no deal."

Living on a lake is a great deal for this family, who enjoy fishing, boating and the view from their back yard.

Mr. Drumm hauled in several truckloads of white sand to make the backyard beach. He's built a hexagon-shaped deck – which extends over the water – and is putting in new stone retaining walls. A hammock sways under the mulberry tree. A blaze of red roses and golden marigolds brighten the yard.

"This is my therapy. I love to spend time in the gardens and working outside," Mr. Drumm says. "This is our retirement home. We love it. We don't plan on going anywhere else."

Mornings on the lake

Like many residents, the couple's lifestyle revolves around the lake. They sip morning coffee on the patio. Friends gather for dinner and conversation under the glow of patio tiki lights. Their children invite school chums over for fishing and swimming. Shareef, 11, says having a lake in his back yard is "pretty cool."

"My friends come over, and we get to go swimming and have parties and stuff," Shareef says. "Sometimes they come here instead of all of us going to Wet 'N Wild. It's fun to live on the lake."

Across the street at the Parson home, Gail Parson and her sister, Angela Williams, are watching Ms. William's 3-year-old daughter, Amarah. The little girl is making mud pies on the lakeside deck. A breeze blows across the water as several brown-and-white ducks circle near the shoreline.

Gail and Mike Parson didn't know the home was on a lake when a Realtor showed them the property two years ago.

"My husband about knocked me over to get outside to take a look at the lake," Mrs. Parson says. "We'd lived in Irving a long time, but we didn't even know the lake was here until we came to look at this house. We grew up on a lake in Minnesota, so we all loved the lake right away. ... When Mike and I were dating, we'd go out on the lake and talk about someday owning our own lake home. Here we are."

Mrs. Parson's father and mother, visiting from Minnesota, also fell in love with the neighborhood. They bought the home next door as a second residence. Ms. Williams is living in the home until her parents permanently relocate. A gate has been added between the two homes for easy access.

Mrs. Williams hopes to buy a home on the same street. "I'm a single mom and was living in downtown Chicago. This is a much better place to raise children," Ms. Williams says.

The family members take their boat out for evening spins and enjoy fishing from their dock. Robert, 11, practices his swing, batting rocks over the water.

"I caught a catfish my first time fishing," Robert says.

'Nice place to live'

John and Ronda Cornwell also moved to the neighborhood about two years ago, when their son was a baby. Now Jack fishes with his dad.

"You don't have to head to the lake; you just go to your back yard," Mr. Cornell says. "I grew up in Irving, but I didn't know about this lake. I've had friends tell me they used to ride their bikes out here when they were kids before any of these houses were here. ... It's a really nice place to live. We have all kinds of people who live in the neighborhood – Indian, Chinese, African. People here are all really friendly."

Under the shade of a large tree, two ducks nest in the family's back yard. One has made a nest in the top of a large trashbag.

"I start my day out here feeding the ducks," says Mark Withers, the Cornwells' neighbor. He and his wife, Robin Strouse, are computer consultants who work in downtown Dallas. "We definitely moved here for the lake. We'd call Realtors and tell them we wanted a house on Vilbig Lake, and most of them didn't know what we were talking about. It's a pretty well-kept secret."

Quarry days

Vilbig Lake got its start as a series of gravel pits.

"The lakes were my grandfather and great-grandfather's gravel pits," says David Vilbig, owner of Vilbig and Associates, a Dallas civil engineering and surveying firm. Mr. Vilbig's great-grandfather, August Vilbig, and August's brother, John Vilbig, opened Vilbig Brothers Excavation in 1886. Mr. Vilbig's grandfather, J. Lee Vilbig, took over the business, operating it for many years as one of the area's premier galena pits.

The Vilbig family sold the land to Centennial Homes in 1972, and the developer built homes around the lake.

Kevin Kendro, an archivist with the city, turned up several maps and aerial photos of the area. The lake doesn't exist in a 1930 aerial photo, but it does appear in a 1959 aerial shot. In 1964, an Irving road map indicates the lake had been named Lake Vilbig.

"I've also heard it was a catfish farm at one time," says Wayne Lee, senior civil engineer with Irving's Public Works Department. Mr. Lee has lived in the neighborhood since 1992. "We really don't know a lot about the history of the area, but we know we all like living here."

Staff writer Barrie Page Hill can be reached at 972-594-7198, ext. 2001, or by e-mail, at bhill@dallasnews.com.

 

 

04/21/2001 Lake Cleanup.

Thanks to all who helped with the Spring lake cleanup.  2,440 pounds of trash was collected and taken to the City dump. A couple of sections on the lake were not cleaned due to a shortage of cleanup boats.  Hopefully we will get to those sections missed during the fall cleanup.  

 

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Thanks to the cleanup crew:  Dwain Morgan, Dave Maskarinec, Steve Dillon, Brandon Wooddell, Alfred Schram, Greg & Joanne Hoffmann, Roy Jones, Hanna, Daniel, & Xaver Beauchamp, Mary Evans, David Kern, Craig & Dottie Watson, Jason Burnette, Michael & Sandi Collins, Al, Debby, April & Ali Kohutek, Sydney Furgerson, Tom & Beverly Root, Gene Stoneburner, Jim Young, Steve Martin, Wojciech Kedzierska, Cliff Cook, Peggy Tackett, and whoever else that forgot to sign-in.

Special thanks to: City of Irving and Bob Horton for providing the gloves, trash bags, Sandi for making lunch plans, Brandon for getting the ice, Greg Hoffmann for the coffee, Al for the ice chests, water, sign-in sheet, cream, sugar, use of his pickup truck and outboard motor boat, Steve Martin for the use of  his pickup truck, Craig & Dottie for the use of their big trailer, paper plates and paper towels, Mary Boudreaux movie tickets prizes, Jason for the use of his pickup truck,  Mary Evans for getting the donuts, Eden Cook for the cokes, and anyone else missed.      

Cleanup Prize (movie tickets for two with popcorn):  Greg Hoffmann won the prize for the most unusual trash item (a bag of VHS movie tapes) and he declined the prize so the move tickets went into and drawing and the Beauchamp family won!  

Next Lake Cleanup is September 22, 2001.

 

04/01/2001 Kraig Brabson Puts Client on Record Fish.

Kraig Brabson lives here on Lake Vilbig but works on Lake Texoma as a professional striper guide.  On March 23, 2001 while guiding a striper fishing trip he put one of his clients on a record 139 pound gar.  

Kraig said he plans to stuff the fish and put it on display at his cabin on Lake Texoma.

 Kraig Brabson and Joe 

If you are interested in booking a guided striper trip, duck hunting trip, or having some taxidermy work done, contact Kraig at Brabson Taxidermy & Guide Service, 972-986-5146.

The following was taken out of the Dallas Morning news on 04/01/2001    

By Ray Sasser / The Dallas Morning News
Rugged fishing

Late March was a hot time for rough fish at Lake Texoma. On March 23, Johnny Wilson of Plano caught a 139.5-pound alligator gar nearly twice as big as the existing lake record. Wilson was casting a Roadrunner jig for striped bass when the 85-inch gar bit the lure. 

 

IRVING - A row of houses rises just beyond his sheds. Concrete drainage pipes for a growing region cover land to the south along Interstate 30. The urban rush presses ever closer to Doug LePori's vegetable farm.

That's OK, except city rules sometimes get in the way.

"You can't shoot a shotgun in Irving," Mr. LePori says, gazing across furrowed earth toward the home of his enemy - lousy, leaf-chomping nutria.

"Wait till they get in some of these [neighbor] ladies' flowerbeds," he says of the beaverlike raiders that live around a nearby lake and some nights clip him for a hundred dollars worth of green.

That's a bite out of the bottom line, another challenge like hail and bugs and too much sun, but not one that's slowing this 78-year-old grower.

There's work to do, people to feed, the furry beasts to battle. And here in the land of rooftops and plentiful change, he's holding his ground.

"I enjoy it. I like to watch plants grow. It's life to me," said the farmer, who is thought to be the last of his kind in Dallas County.

Mr. LePori remembers Irving with 27 commercial vegetable farms in 1948, when he joined his father, Cyril, in working 25 Trinity River bottomland acres along a gravel road later renamed MacArthur Boulevard.

A year later, theirs was one of 115 Dallas County farms reporting vegetable production on 1,139 total acres. Another 378,000 acres was in other crops or pasture.

Today, the county has about 70,000 acres of agriculture, 13 percent of its total area, and a landscape much removed from its midcentury look. The LePori farm has been sold down to 93/4 acres. Cyril LePori died almost six years ago at age 96, farming three weeks before his passing.

But the constants include Doug LePori and his steady offering of turnip greens, mustard greens and collard greens to area Tom Thumb stores.

The farm has been supplying the supermarket chain since 1950. These days the company buys 98 percent of the crop, with the remainder going to Traci's, the Dallas restaurant owned by his niece, Traci Owen, sales at the farm and freebies to friends.

Endless flow

Last Thursday's morning sun finds him and Tim Krause, his longtime hand, preparing for the day's shipment to the grocer's Roanoke warehouse.

A serenading mockingbird hushes the city hum as Mr. Krause boxes 20 dozen bunches of Florida broadleaf mustard greens. Gathered the previous day, the pickings were washed and cooled overnight. And now, another harvest ready for the world, Mr. Krause applies a label of authority to each box: "LePori & Son Farm, July 6, 2000."

Mr. LePori's wife, Molly, arrives on schedule, and by 9:30, with the mockingbird still going, she is off on one of her five weekly warehouse deliveries, one that will bring $105. By afternoon, some of the peppery leaves will be sold, and on into pots and bellies by suppertime.

"I've always enjoyed helping people eat," Mr. LePori said.

That means helping himself to the endless flow of farm work. "You've got to be aggressive," he said. "You've got to make every hour count."

One order filled, it's time to think of tomorrow. And Mr. LePori, his padded right knee resting in the dirt, joins a seated Mr. Krause in gathering and tying another 20 dozen bundles. "Each one should be a good handful," the farmer says.

Before his day sets, Mr. LePori will prepare for a planting of beets. He will pump water from his irrigation pond and help along a patch of collard greens. If the weather and bugs cooperate, they will be ready in two weeks.

That's a big reason he grows greens. "In 30 days you've got a crop."

Four generations

Mr. LePori has been making crops for most of his life, starting early on the family's 11 acres near Fishtrap Road in West Dallas. The farm hands included a kinder, gentler Bonnie Parker, who picked beans one teenage summer to earn money for a dress. When she came up $1.68 short, his father fronted her the money.

"He was such a pleasure to be around. We worked hard but you didn't mind it," Mr. LePori recalled. "I'd like to take up in his footsteps."

He walked and planted and harvested with his father for almost half a century after the West Dallas place was sold to make way for public housing. They joined the post-war shift to the suburbs, moving to the still-open spaces of Irving, near where sand and gravel were being harvested for concrete. From those now water-filled pits, called Vilbig Lake, come his nemesis nutria.

Cyril LePori may be gone, but he's not forgotten. His son sometimes wears his white hat in the fields. And inside a shed hangs a photograph of four LePori generations: Cyril, Doug, Doug's sons Marlyn and Mark, and one of his grandsons, Ryan. They, and another grandson, Kelly Bicknell, help out on the farm.

"Our little business is a family business," Doug LePori said as a shirtless Ryan worked flowing water toward a crop row. A senior at Baylor University, he comes home most weekends to work with his grandfather.

"You won't have a fight with him as long as you do what you're supposed to do," Ryan said.

For his grandfather, that means steady, efficient work and respect for others. "It doesn't take much to be kind to people," said Mr. LePori, whose friends return his garden generosity in pickled beets, preserves and sweets.

Mr. LePori has learned about more than human nature over the years, like reading the sky, measuring the temperature with his skin, taking a day's pace as it comes. And then there's the power of leafy greens.

"The older ladies appreciate their value as a laxative," he said. "The young girls, they don't have time" to mess with them, just as "lots of the young people don't know where food comes from."

But "you bet" he enjoys a helping every week or so with a few strips of bacon, pepper sauce and hot cornbread.

He has learned that turnip and mustard greens need irrigation and "don't like water from the overhead." Recent rains cost him three crops. But collard greens, being from the cabbage family, "like it top down."

Safe crops

He has learned that consumers' changing tastes can change his routine. "A new recipe will come out and it takes over the land," he said. "It came out for the women that carrots were a beauty food and we couldn't pull enough."

He has learned that greens are a relatively safe crop. "They're one thing most people won't steal," but watermelons: "that's one thing in life people will steal. I'd have to be up all night with a shotgun."

And he figures it's best to use old equipment as well. "You don't want them too shiny," he says of his 1964 and 1984 Ford tractors. "If they're brand new you better put your bed next to them."

The tractors' engines have been rebuilt once and power his plowing and other fieldwork. Two walk-behind, tillerlike machines are used for planting. Two pickups, a flatbed wagon, an old golf cart and assorted rakes, shovels and hoes complete his tools.

They've helped keep the place growing these years, helped the farmer make "a decent living" inside the ring of pecan and cottonwood trees and now the new houses that have cut off some of the ventilating wind.

Nothing but clouds block the sun that has left his skin a deeper chocolate than his soil and flirting with cancer. Both knees have been replaced, the last one in January. "Baseball," he said, too much running and sliding in the early years.

But two weeks after his surgery, he was back harvesting from a stool. And still feeling right in the field, he has no plan to call it a career.

"If you've got something you love and you feel good, why not do it?" he said.

That's not what Molly, his wife of eight years, wants to hear. She wants him to retire, give up the 12-hour days and join her around the house or on the road.

"It's time he learned to play," she said. "He's been doing a man's work since he was 5. ... He refuses to discuss it."

"The worst thing I can imagine is four walls," Mr. LePori said. As long as I can maneuver around out here, I'm OK," he said. "As long as my boys are with me, it's a good place to have."

Land developers have felt the same way about this prime residential real estate. And Mr. LePori knows they will return. Imagine that gated community with six or so one-acre lots: LePori Farm Estates.

"They haven't been working on me lately," he said. "But if they want it bad enough ..."