Gladys Pfluger

Gladys Pfluger

By Kelsey Wilkinson Friday, 01 May 2009

Gladys Pfluger has seen Pflugerville morph from a small German community to a booming suburb in which many employees of high-tech companies like IBM and Dell, Inc. live. She has watched Deutschen Pfest evolve from a small bicentennial celebration on Main Street to a large, multiple-day outdoor festival that many Central Texas families attend. But after all of the changes she has seen in the community, Pfluger said her fondest memories come from watching her six children grow up and following the Pflugerville High School football team during their winning streak in the 1960s.

Pfluger is the granddaughter of a founder of Pflugerville, George Pfluger. Her grandfather came to Texas in 1849 from Germany and settled near what would later become downtown. The rest of George’s family came from Germany a year later. Pfluger said her family and many other local families passed down their German heritage. She even grew up learning to speak German and still knows the meaning of nearly every German word.

The city has changed a lot since those first settlers arrived, but certain aspects of growing up in Pflugerville remain planted firmly in Pfluger’s memories. She especially enjoyed afternoons spent in the area now known as Pfluger Park.

“Even though cows and sheep were there all the time, as far back as I can remember people were having picnics down there,” she said. “Not just the Pflugers, but all families had reunions down there.”

Pfluger remembers a severe drought in the 1950s that destroyed many of the trees in the park, but the area grew up again over the next 20 years by the time Gladys and her husband, Leon, donated it to the city for a park in 1974.

The land that surrounds Gilleland Creek still hosts families who come to enjoy the shady trees and running waters of the park, but Pfluger observes one major difference.

“When I was growing up, lots of groups of people would go out there and have lunch, then go and play baseball or set up some volleyball nets. Around 5 o’clock they would grill some burgers and then keep playing till dark,” Pfluger recalls. “Now people run out there, eat lunch and everything’s done by 3 o’clock. The biggest change I’ve seen in my life is that people don’t sit down and relax and enjoy the whole day.”

But Pfluger said she and her family took the time to relax.

Her husband was a farmer who grew corn, wheat, oats, hay and cotton in the area. She remembers him bringing home profits of $1,000 when the crops were good, which in those days, Pfluger said could sustain their family for an entire year.

With her family now dispersed across different parts of Texas, Pfluger says her community involvement has diminished a bit. She now enjoys watching her grandson, Dillon Pfluger, a senior at Taylor High School, play in his varsity baseball games.

Recently she had several of her family’s secretarial books translated from German to English. She said entries in the books date from the 1800s through the 1920s, and she believes she may be able to discover more about her own family’s past and perhaps too, more about the history of Pflugerville.

Editor’s Note: Gladys Pfluger requested that she not be photographed.

Pfluger family reunion

Each Fourth of July since 1934, the families of Henry Pfluger, Sr., a founder of the community who immigrated from Altenhasungen Hesse, Germany, 160 years ago, gather for a family reunion. For years, they met at what is now Pfluger Park until they had Pfluger Hall built near the fire station. Approximately 415 attended the first reunion, and about 300 attended last year.