What can we learn from Tyler’s incredible growth? How can these lessons be applied to other communities? Hear a captivating conversation with Henry Bell, fifth-generation Tyler native and president of the Tyler Chamber of Commerce. With more than three decades’ experience in the chamber and 12+ years at Regions Bank, Bell shares unique insights into the city’s development, the power of collaboration and the bright future he envisions.
As a student of history, he observes the impact of the East Texas oil field on Tyler’s growth and the subsequent diversification of its economy. Bell also discusses the importance of continuity and working together to achieve common goals for the community’s betterment.
Mike Landess: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. Arguably, no Tyler native has seen more change in this city, or been part of making that change happen, than Henry Bell. He’s a fifth-generation Tylerite on both sides of his family. After more than a dozen years with what is now Regions Bank, he’s served more than three decades on the Tyler Chamber of Commerce and is currently president. And he’s our guest today. Welcome.
Henry Bell: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Mike Landess: I feel like with an introduction like that, we should play “Hail to the Chief,” don’t you think?
Henry Bell: Not hardly, not hardly.
Mike Landess: Well, the CEO of the chamber, Scott Martinez, has been our guest a number of times, and he brings insight into what’s happening right now for the city and its future. We’ve wanted to talk to you for some time now to bring some perspective on where the city of Tyler is today as compared to when you became a part of the chamber 30+ years ago. How do you chart that?
Henry Bell: Well, you can chart it in lots of different ways. You know, we can bore you to death with stats all you want to, but it has been on my mind a little bit more than usual lately. I am a student of history, always have been-love history, so I’m always going back and reading stuff. I was actually doing some of that this morning. I was working-there’s a project, a possible project, downtown, that’s going to try to use some past history from the city to develop their project. That’s about all I can say about it. But I went back and pulled out some chamber annual reports from the ’30s and ’40s. We have all those very well documented and stuff. So I look at some stuff — and if you think how long we’ve come since the last 35 years since I’ve been at the chamber — when I started, several interesting facts, just not just local to us, but we did not have internet. My first day on the job, we had a something called a fax machine installed that we had never used before. And remember, you said I came from the banking world. We didn’t, and a lot of people don’t remember this, we did not have branch banking in Texas. So we only had one building, one brick and board mortar building, no internet of course, for a particular bank. So, in that period of time, 35 years ago, there were basically four banks in Tyler, and look how many there are now.
Mike Landess: It means that the banks is a good way of charting that. But even in the progress of the city itself, where for a long time, it seemed as though Tyler kind of pushed away some of the big companies that wanted to come in and that sort of thing. It felt that way anyway, because people liked it just the way it was.
Henry Bell: Yes, you know, and Tyler’s grown tremendously. I can go back farther than 35 years ago. We were very fortunate here to have had the East Texas oil field, discovered in the ’30s here, which defined our economics for years and years and years. And so still plays a very large part of it. But we got too complacent with it. So maybe we liked the way things were, maybe we didn’t do like what you said. So, in the ’80s, we had a small boom in the oil and gas industry And then we had a complete crash like we’ve never seen before any other time, and all of the whole state of Texas and a lot of the Southwest suffered because we had concentrated, put too many eggs in one basket. Thus, the economic development effort switched and started, you know, recruiting other type of diversified and diversifying quite a bit, and that’s what’s happened the last 35 years. So that’s the major change that I’ve, of course, have seen, too.
Mike Landess: Your father and grandfather are considered to be part of the city. Fathers of of Tyler. What do you think they would make of Tyler, Texas, 2023?
Henry Bell: I never knew my grandfather. My grandfather actually died before I was born, but I’ve read a lot about him, and he was very charismatic, had a lot of interest and did a lot of things for the community. Totally different from things that my father may have done. And so they were two different entities. He was such a go-go cheerleader-type person, from what I could tell. I think he’d be thrilled. My father was much more even-keel, and he would keep his nose to the grindstone, and things would get accomplished. And his attitude was well, that’s what we were supposed to do. So you’d have one doing a little bit more celebrating and one just kind of keeping the even-keel, kind of like, yeah, we got to move on to the next thing.
Mike Landess: But that’s interesting. I was just thinking about your grandfather. I mean, certainly he was operating at the time that when the first East Texas State Fair came along, they did it at what’s now Bergfeld Park.
Henry Bell: Yeah, he did a lot of things if you go back and look. I was just at the Carnegie History Center yesterday. So it’s fun to see pictures of things, you know, back then. But when the East Texas oil field was discovered, most of the streets in the city of Tyler were not paved. So I mean, we obviously had automobiles by then, but there weren’t many roads that could go down. So we had some horses and stuff going on, and then the oil boom forced us to lay brick streets as quick as we could. That’s why we have so many brick streets, because of the amount of people that weren’t coming into town to try to get a piece of the black gold is what I always say. So yeah, it’s a whole different perspective and a mindset.
Mike Landess: I’m wondering if you would tick off a short list of things that changed in order for Tyler to be where it is today and on the trajectory that it is now.
Henry Bell: It’s over the last 35 years that, you know, through elected officials, our entities, our different sections of the community that actually work together to make the community grow and to project a better quality of life, all get along so great in this community right now. You’ve got a city council that gets along with the county commissioners, you know, that gets along with entities like the chamber, and we’re all working together for really the same goals. That’s not always the case, and you can go to other cities, even in the East Texas area, where that’s not happening. So, there’s an effort to all work, all work together. Now that can change at any minute, so we have to keep working at that to make sure that it doesn’t. It’s like a marriage. That’s why you keep some people along for 35 years, like me, so you have some continuity. There’s a lot of change, and you know there’s… I’m in that peak baby boom group. You know, there’s a lot of that changing, but they’re, that group — a lot of us are still going because we got to fill a role and try to make that continuity smooth somewhere down the line.
Mike Landess: Final thoughts? Anything you’d like to share before we wrap this up?
Henry Bell: Well, I’ll just say, and I mentioned it a couple of times, it’s great to be on the campus of UT Tyler. I’m so excited about the growth there. It’s exciting to me that I don’t hear conversations of like, “Oh, I had to go, I had to run over to Dallas today to get a tooth pulled,” or “I had to run over there to buy a dress.” You know, you just don’t hear that anymore. So, I just think the future is very, very bright also.
Mike Landess: Our guest has been the president of the Tyler Chamber of Commerce, Henry Bell. To hear this interview again or to share it, go to our website, KVUT.org. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.
Jeff Johnson: Thank you for listening to the UT Tyler Radio Podcast on 99.7 KVUT. If you’d like to hear this episode again, or if you missed a previous episode, find the UT Tyler Radio Podcast on your favorite podcast platform or click “podcasts” on our website, KVUT.org.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)