Max Starcke

Maximillian Hugo "Max" Starcke (November 11, 1884 – June 29, 1972) was a businessman and then a government official in Texas for 37 years, first as Mayor of Seguin, Texas, from 1928 to 1938 and then as Managing Director of the Lower Colorado River Authority from 1940 to 1955.

Born and raised on a farm in the York's Creek area about 12 miles north of Seguin, Max Starcke was the son of Hugo and Ida (Eberhard) Starcke, and the grandson of German immigrants. He attended Seguin public schools, then Texas A & M University and a San Antonio business college.

Starcke married Meta Blumberg of Seguin in 1908, and they had two daughters, Lucile and Maxine, before her death in 1938. In 1940 he married Evelyn Quinn of Ackerman, Mississippi, and they had one daughter.

In 1906 he clerked in the law office of state senator Joseph B. Dibrell of Seguin. Starcke also worked as a real estate developer, then established a funeral home, and helped organize Farmer’s State Bank in Seguin. From 1917 to 1938, Starcke worked as a bank officer, first in Farmer's, then at Seguin State Bank & Trust after it took over the smaller bank.

After helping to revive the local Chamber of Commerce, he headed its effort to recruit the Chicago White Sox for two seasons of spring training in Seguin, in 1922 and 1923. He also served as president of the South Texas Chamber of Commerce. He was active in the Texas League of Municipalities (later the Texas Municipal League) and served as its president in 1934.

Starcke was an alderman from 1909 to 1912, before being elected mayor in 1928 and re-elected for five terms.

He was an dynamic, successful, and highly popular mayor. Not long after he took office, in 1929, the Darst Creek Oil Field came in, about 15 miles east of Seguin. The resulting oil boom carried the town through the worst years of the Depression, as local stores sold supplies and residents rented out rooms to the oil patch workers. The local taxes collected were used to match federal grants for make-work projects that created jobs when the oil rush subsided.

Toward the end of his service as Mayor, Starcke totaled up the trophies that had transformed his hometown, including the city's first water-filtration plant, a new Post Office, a new Municipal Building, a new Court House, a new jail, new storm sewers and sidewalks, a fountain in the town square, a small park built by the Civilian Conservation Corps along the banks of a stream fed by Walnut Springs, and a park that stretched for a mile along the beautiful Guadalupe River. Also three swimming pools: one for Anglos in the new park, one for blacks at William Ball High School, and one at Juan Seguin School for the Tejanos.

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