hosted the second link in a professional winter golf tour, ending with a banquet at the Nueces, where prizes were awarded by toastmaster Joseph Hirsch. Jones' daughter Lorinda, a member of the La Retama Club that founded the Corpus Christi library system, donated free office space to the Junior League (originally the Junior Assistance Club) in the Nueces—and in 1937 donated the family's original mansion to the library. In 1938, the Buccaneer Days Commission met and established their headquarters on the hotel mezzanine floor; their purpose was to start Buccaneer Days in place of Splash Day (established 1917) as a civic festival and tourist attraction. The Old Bayview Cemetery Association, dedicated to making the oldest downtown cemetery a state monument, met there in May 1940. The Texas chapter of CPAs was established during a meeting there in the fall of 1947. The C. C. Harmonairs, dedicated to barbershop singing, established the first local barbershop quartet chapter at the Nueces in 1948. In 1947, a baby boy was found abandoned in a room rented to a couple who had registered under what turned out to be false names. According to hotel clerk Joseph Sears, the baby had a note with him to the effect that he was "born without a daddy". George de Mohrenschildt, who was involved or at least suspected to have been involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, mentioned in his 1964 testimony that while staying at the Nueces in the 1940s, he was harassed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hurricanes The Nueces was a sanctuary in two natural disasters before 1920. One was the hurricane of 1916, which struck on August 18 of that year. About 500 people found sanctuary in the building, over a thousand were evacuated from North Beach (the sand bar island across the mouth of the Nueces River), the boat Pilot Boy in Port Aransas was lost, the roof was blown off Lichtenstein's department store, and about 116 people were killed. The hotel stood up to the storm. The second was the hurricane of September 11, 1919, the worst natural disaster to hit Corpus Christi. Again, people found refuge in the hotel, but this time the tidal surge poured through downtown, destroying houses and businesses and reaching to the hotel's second floor before rushing back out into the bay. The lobby was flooded, its furniture floating among debris that included