Seeking to provide refuge to children and families in need, the Evangelia Settlement Home opened in 1908. Established by religious reformers Ethel Dickson and Nell Symes, the home aimed to care for the least of these throughout Waco’s community for nearly a century.

Evangelia Settlement was part of a broader settlement house movement that began in Great Britain and moved to the United States. In the late nineteenth century, white, middle- and upper-class women, often motivated by their Christian faith, began to establish homes for those in low-income areas with few resources. Settlement houses popped up across the country. Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr established one of the most well-known settlement houses, Hull House, in Chicago, Illinois. As the movement spread across the country in the early twentieth century, an estimated eighteen settlements opened throughout Texas, including in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Waco.

Inspired by a traveling evangelist who spoke in Waco, Dickson and Symes opened a small nursery on Webster Street. Initially a modest room located on Thirteenth Street, Waco’s Evangelia Settlement began as a humble effort to care for children whose mothers worked as sewing machine operators at Slayden-Kirskey Woolen Mills. Seeking to expand Evangelia’s reach as a charitable, educational, and religious institution, the founders partnered with Protestant churches in the area to garner community support and to secure funding.

By 1910, with financial aid from local churches, volunteers for Evangelia Settlement began working from a rental house. The next year, additional donations from Waco citizens enabled the opening of Evangelia’s own home, complete with a playground and five full-time staff. The State of Texas issued a charter for Evangelia Settlement Home in June 1912. Though backed by the state government, Evangelia’s board members and volunteers continued to depend on community support.

Donations and funding from those across Waco provided necessary aid for the growing settlement house. An upper floor and additional rooms were added to Evangelia in the late 1910s, and the Karem Shrine constructed a building for boys and a space for kindergarten classes in 1927. The Waco Community Chest, organized in 1924, regularly allocated money to Evangelia, and other generous donors also helped improve the building. For instance, donations from the Cooper Foundation, United Way, and the Andrew J. Dossett family facilitated the construction of a cottage for infants. Later in 1953, Evangelia operated with financial support from the United Fund of Waco and continued to improve the building on site. With each expansion, Evangelia Settlement grew in capacity and provided additional children with housing, meals, and educational and religious instruction.

In partnership with the Salvation Army and the YMCA, Evangelia joined the “Yes-For-Youth” Building Fund Campaign in 1956. The fund enabled the construction of a new building, which opened in June 1958. From 510 South Twelfth Street, Evangelia volunteers and workers continued their efforts to serve children and families throughout the community. By the late 1950s, Evangelia was authorized to care for sixty-two children and offered twenty-four-hour day care. To subsidize costs, parents paid on an individual basis, and the price of care depended on each family’s financial situation. Some children stayed for free, while others paid around five dollars a week per child. For those who placed their children in twenty-four-hour care, Evangelia sought to provide parental education so that children could eventually return home. Still, depending on the family’s circumstances, others were placed in foster homes and at times, orphanages.

Hoping to accept the growing number of interested families, Evangelia continued to expand throughout the mid-twentieth century. Despite Evangelia’s broad efforts, though, the institution remained segregated from its founding until the mid-1960s and only offered resources to white parents and children. Other organizations, including the Joyce Stamps Nursery and the Latin American Neighborhood Center provided care for Black and Latino children in the area.

By the 1970s, Evangelia offered services to over one hundred children and continued to partner with community organizations to ensure children received necessary care. Evangelia held kindergarten classes for children not yet enrolled in school, and for those who attended Waco Public Schools, Evangelia provided after-school care to assist working parents. The settlement house worked with social workers, public school teachers, nurses, doctors, and psychologists. Providing resources to children and families in need remained central to Evangelia’s efforts.

Evangelia Settlement continued to operate in Waco until the state denied their licensure in 2007. After advocacy from Buck Cole, whose family found refuge at Evangelia Settlement in the mid-twentieth century, the Texas Historical Commission placed a marker at the site in 2022. While the settlement house no longer exists in its original form, the site now accommodates EOAC Head Start, an organization that provides educational opportunities and childcare to families across McLennan and Fall Counties. Other organizations in Waco also heed the message of communal care that Evangelia promoted. The Good Neighbor House, founded in 2016, draws on the settlement house movement as its volunteers and workers aim to provide resources and enrichment for Waco’s youth. Through these organizations, Evangelia Settlement’s effort to support under resourced children and families endures.

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In 1969, in response to health-care disparities in Waco and McLennan County, local leaders and physicians established the Family Practice Center, now called Waco Family Medicine. Prior to these efforts, many Wacoans lacked access to adequate medical services. In fact, the patient-doctor ratio was 1,200 to 1. Seeing a profound community need, a partnership between community leaders and the McLennan County Medical Society sought to bridge this divide between patients’ needs, particularly those in poverty, and health-care access. Further, they officially started the Waco-McLennan County Family Practice Residency Program in 1970, the first of its kind in Texas. Through this program and the establishment of the Family Practice Center, they hoped to attract new physicians to Waco and to provide medical care to those in need.

The Family Practice Residency Program accepted its first two residents, Bing Oei and Julia Esquivel, on July 1, 1970. Learning from local physicians, including the first hired faculty Dr. May Wang, they graduated in 1972. Over the years, the residency program continued to expand and emphasize medical education as one of their primary goals as they trained physicians locally. While some went to practice in other states and countries, many stayed in Texas. As of 2017, over 300 of the 400-plus graduates practiced in the state. Further, McLennan County’s active physician population increased as the program expanded. Within thirty years, the number of family doctors in the area increased from 130 to over 300. In addition to resident education, the Family Practice Center also opened the Faculty Development Center in 1978, where practicing family physicians could continue learning, staying up to date on evolving medical practices.

During the Family Practice Center’s initial community outreach efforts in the 1970s, they also opened their first clinic at 1700 Providence Drive. At this location, they began their mission to provide care for residents with lower incomes and those without private or government-supported health insurance. Further, beginning in 1971, the Family Practice Center worked to meet the needs of community members without access to transportation. Thus, their mobile clinic went into communities across Waco and McLennan County, offering medical options to those who could have otherwise gone without care. These efforts ended in 1976 as the Family Health Center began establishing additional health centers across the community. With easier access, mobile clinic use decreased, and patients were able to commute to the clinic nearest them.

The rise in physician, resident, and patient numbers required building expansion. In 1983, the Family Health Center relocated up the road to 1600 Providence Drive; a shift made possible through their fundraising efforts and subsequent, generous donations from the public. Previous CEO Dr. Roland Goertz and other leaders within the clinic also saw a need for federal funding to assist their community care goals. As of 1999, the clinic became a Federally Qualified Health Center, able to receive federal funding to sustain their expansive services and enable continued growth. Since then, additional clinic locations have been added, expanding sites available to the public.

CEO Dr. Jackson Griggs and local board members renamed the Family Health Center Waco Family Medicine in 2021, a name that reiterates the clinic’s dedication to providing primary care for the community. With a variety of locations across Waco and McLennan County, Waco Family Medicine’s physicians and staff work to ensure better medical access for patients in the area. They persist in their original mission to provide health care for underserved populations and to offer educational opportunities for physicians. Their outreach in the community continues, as they offer care for medical, dental, and behavioral health to those in need throughout McLennan County.

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For nearly a century, Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey Funeral Home has provided funeral care to McLennan County, priding themselves on not only offering funeral arrangements, but on serving families during times of grief.

Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey (originally Wilkirson-Hatch Funeral Home) was founded in 1925 by Dillard J. Wilkirson, his son, Jim, and his son-in-law, Roy H. Hatch. The three men settled in Waco during a time when the city was rapidly expanding, but neither the Wilkirsons nor Hatch originally set out to start a funeral home. In the early twentieth century, burials were, for most Americans, small affairs based around the family home. The concept of a remote location dedicated solely to the hosting of funerals was not yet well established, and the three founders initially used their experience in the lumber industry to make and sell coffins. Soon after moving to Waco, however, they became interested in the idea of the modern funeral home and shifted the emphasis of their business. After the owners built a new structure at the bustling intersection of Washington Avenue and Twelfth Street, their new funeral home quickly became an established part of the Waco community.

Wilkirson-Hatch adapted well to the changing midcentury business climates of both Waco and the United States. As a part of booming business in the mid-twentieth century, Wilkirson-Hatch became an incorporated business in 1957, with Roy Hatch as its first president. Under Hatch, the funeral home billed itself as a “family serving families.” Hatch took pride in tasteful, up-to-date facilities, modern vehicles, and effective administrative practices. The business also offered new services such as funeral insurance to defray costs for grieving families, as well as air service to transport deceased persons who may have passed away far from home.

In the 1950s, A. William Bailey married Roy Hatch’s daughter, Roberta, and joined the Wilkirson-Hatch family business, and eventually rose in rank to run the funeral home. In the 1970s, Bailey’s son and current company president, Hatch Bailey, felt drawn to the same line of work as his father after experiencing the comfort that the funeral home provided following the death of his grandparents. He began working part time at the home in 1979 while a student at Baylor University and began a full-time position upon graduating. Hatch Bailey became president in the 1990s, with his two brothers, Wes and Roy, serving on the board of directors. Shortly after becoming president, Bailey purchased a new location on Bosque Boulevard to better serve families in the Woodway area. Some years later, this Bosque Boulevard office became the sole location of Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey, and remains so to this day.

Throughout his tenure as president, Bailey has consistently implemented new ideas to keep the funeral home and its services poised to meet the needs of Waco families. For example, the funeral home was one of the first buildings in Waco to have stained concrete flooring, installed to amplify the noise level to avoid an unnatural quietness that might make visitors feel uncomfortable. Modern technology has also shaped the way the funeral home functions, with half of all services using pre-recorded and selected music, and live-streams of services being commonly available. Hatch Bailey’s sons have begun to participate in the operations of the funeral home, comprising the fifth generation of workers from a single extended family.

Bailey now sees his funeral home less as a business than as a ministry to grieving families. With its focus on providing comfort and familial services and a history of innovation, Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey Funeral Home will likely continue to provide an important array of services to the Waco community.

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For over 100 years, Vitek's Grocery and, now, BBQ restaurant, has remained a cherished business in the Waco area, providing residents with quality meats and a community gathering place.

The story of Vitek's BBQ began in 1915, when butcher William Martin Vitek, the son of Czechoslovakian immigrants, opened a grocery store and meat market in Granger, Texas. From the very outset, Vitek was always willing to accommodate special requests and deliveries, establishing a customer-first ethos that would define the Vitek family business for the next century. Shortly after opening the new business, William and his wife, Hattie, moved sixty miles north to Waco, eventually setting up shop at 1715 Speight Avenue. The fledgling venture changed locations several times during its first decade as it weathered both the Great Depression and the death of its original owner. Vitek's entered a new phase, however, when William Martin's son, William "Willie" Frank Vitek, took over following his father's passing.

As the small town of Waco grew and developed over the next several years, so did Vitek's Grocery. In addition to running the business, Willie also built Vitek's current location at 1600 Speight Avenue in 1958, the same year that construction of Interstate 35 began in Waco. While many businesses were unable to survive the disruption of highway construction, the creativity of Willie and his son, Billy Joe Vitek, helped the business to stay afloat. Willie began to cook barbecue on a portable pit, serving barbecue sandwiches and homemade sausage to customers. Vitek's takeout service was thus born, making the shop's premium barbecue more accessible than ever.

The building of I-35, however, was not the only challenge that Vitek's met. During this time, many smaller family stores were driven out of business by larger chains that could offer a greater variety of goods at lower prices. The number of small grocers and butcher shops dramatically decreased in the second half of the twentieth century as towns expanded into suburbs and cars became more ubiquitous. Luckily, the decline of small family grocers in the United States roughly paralleled the rise of quick-service restaurants—a shift that the Vitek family was poised to take advantage of. Billy Joe and his wife, Susan, took over the business in 1972, officially changing the name from Vitek's Grocery to Vitek's BBQ. While the original restaurant contained only one picnic table and operated off of a takeout-only business model, it rapidly evolved into the quick-service restaurant that remains a local staple today.

Vitek's identity as a Waco icon was cemented when, in the early 1980s, Billy Joe and a Baylor student employee concocted the now-famous Gut Pack, which later went on to be recognized in such publications as The American Way, The New York Times, and Texas Monthly. Thanks to the advent of the Gut Pack and the restaurant's status as a cherished Waco eatery, Vitek's was named one of the "Best College Eats" by the Cooking Channel and has received praise from the likes of ESPN and the Travel Channel.

In 2006, Billy Joe and Susan retired, leaving the restaurant to their daughter, Julie Vitek Keith, a fourth-generation owner of the establishment. In 2007, Julie and her husband, Jason, expanded the dining area and added an outdoor biergarten well-suited to live entertainment. While the Waco of today presents a marked contrast to that of the restaurant's early days, Vitek’s is proof that innovation, customer service, and delicious barbecue have indeed remained constant.

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