Don Hill Slides From Mayoral Candidate to Alleged Criminal

To some, Hill's association with Reagan, as outlined in the feds' case, is even more troubling than the allegations themselves. If Hill was seen as a thoughtful, cautious figure, Reagan is a firebrand, a volatile, divisive personality, whom most people never would have thought could have snagged the confidence of an experienced politician like Hill. Rufus Shaw, who has had a few scrapes with Reagan over the years, says that he never knew Hill had anything to do with his longtime adversary.

"I've spent a lot of time with Don. My wife has spent a lot of time with Don. I never knew they even had a passing acquaintance with each other," Shaw says about Hill's relationship with Reagan. "I certainly would think this is something he would have shared with me."

Reagan began to fashion a career as an activist after he left a carpentry job at the UT Southwestern Medical Center in 1991. The South Oak Cliff graduate had filed four separate racial discrimination complaints against his employer with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of himself and other black employees, all of which were determined to be without foundation. Still, Reagan and his new organization, the Black State Employees Association, targeted school President Kern Wildenthal while using whistles and bullhorns at campus-wide demonstrations.

Reagan soon signed a settlement agreement promising not to engage in any more protests at the medical school. But, according to a subsequent lawsuit, Reagan resumed his demonstrations anyway, this time picketing Wildenthal's home. Reagan and the Black State Employees Association held several more protests at the president's residence. They rang the doorbell, blew whistles and paraded with large signs. The group also threatened to picket the nursing home where Wildenthal's mother lived. Finally, Reagan also had a threatening message for the president.

"UT Southwestern initiated this War, and in a War we take no prisoners," Reagan wrote in a note for the university president. "No more talking and rhetoric. This is simply a matter of survival to the family who could endure to the end."

Reagan and his family lost that war as a judge ordered the supposed civil rights activist to have nothing more to do with Wildenthal or UT Southwestern. But from the rubbles of this rogue protest Reagan and the Black State Employees Association inexplicably became players in southern sector politics and development. Over the years, Reagan would be party to nearly 10 more lawsuits. Just this past fall, in addition to his federal indictment, Reagan was ordered to pay a $200,000 judgment to a bank after a shopping plaza that he helped develop went bankrupt. Now Reagan claims that he can't afford a lawyer to defend himself against the federal indictment.

Shaw, a longtime journalist in Dallas, lost a lawsuit to Reagan after writing a column alleging that he shook down developers in 1999. Seemingly vindicated by the spirit of the indictment, Shaw says that Hill should have known better than to have anything to do with someone like Reagan.

"You would think a guy running for mayor, a guy who was touted as the next mayor of Dallas, a guy who trended out in early polls as neck and neck with Laura Miller, you would think someone like Hill would not involve himself with Reagan," Shaw says.

Shaw, 57, can't seem to come to terms with how his friend could be so foolish. This was a guy he knew for years, talked politics with over dinner at his home and could criticize in print without worrying whether Hill would take it personally. Now Hill's on the cusp of ruin, Shaw believes, because of his bad choice of cronies.

"What hurts Don in the black community more than any FBI investigation or any tapes was his association with Darren Reagan," he adds. "We were prepared to go to the mat for Don, but his association with Reagan has given a lot of us some pause."

Still, Shaw says that many of his neighbors date the change in Hill's behavior to the arrival of Sheila Hill. By that accounting of Hill's fall from grace, it was the new, younger woman who introduced Hill to a new set of friends and a new way of life. Hill married her within a year of divorcing his first wife.

"I don't want to give the impression this woman has done something wrong, but there is a lot of negativity out there about the influence she had on Don Hill," Shaw says. "I don't know if it's true, but it's certainly out there."

Culbreath seems to hint that Sheila Hill, or someone else, is responsible for her friend's change in behavior.