Crocketts Descending on Alamo

--The descendants of Davy Crockett will reunite this week at the Alamo in Texas--a state also celebrating its 150th birthday--where their famous forefather made his final stand against Santa Anna’s Mexican troops in 1836. The reunion’s organizer is Jim Dumas, 56, of Pigeon Forge, Tenn., Crockett’s great-great-great-great-grandson. “The first two years, we met in Greeneville (Tenn.), near where Davy was born (in 1786). But this time we’ll be meeting where he died.” He said he hopes the reunion will draw as many as 200 Crockett descendants from both branches of the family. The gathering is to last from Wednesday through Saturday, when the descendants will be guests of the state at a party in their honor in San Antonio, Dumas said. Davy Crockett “didn’t go west to fight Indians or Mexicans. He went to homestead,” said Dumas, who cites a letter Crockett wrote 30 days before his death in the winter of 1836. “He’d had all the adventure he could stand,” Dumas said. He just wanted to settle down and find some land.

--It took two years for three Britons to retrace the steps of Henry Morton Stanley, who took eight months to trek through Africa in 1871 to find British missionary-explorer David Livingstone. Government-owned Radio Tanzania reported that the three, George Tardios, his wife, Christine, and Andrew Graham, had reached the western Tanzania town of Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika. The Tardioses are in their early 40s and Graham is about 25. The trip from the eastern coast of Africa covered 813 miles. On Nov. 10, 1871, the best-known encounter in the annals of African exploration took place at Ujiji. Stanley, a journalist assigned by the New York Herald to find the missing Livingstone, marched into the town, walked up to a frail-looking white man and said: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

--Teachers get nervous about tests too. And so a team of psychologists has developed a teacher’s aid to help them get through next month’s competency test in Texas. Teachers will take the Texas Examination of Current Administrators and Teachers on March 10. The test “has to do with careers being placed on the line,” says Dr. Don Strickler. Southwest Counseling Associates in Dallas says its audio cassette, “Test Anxiety Reduction and Control,” should help fight the jitters. The 34-minute cassette helps the listener learn to fight rapid breathing, nausea, insomnia, anger, irritability and doubtfulness. “However,” Strickler said, “this tape won’t do a thing for an incompetent teacher.”