Sometimes this 'saltiness' got the diminutive man in trouble; more often than not it served its purpose: defusing the situation while making his point clear: he would stand up for what he believed was right.

[4] At the coaxing of fellow Lions International members, Welch was elected to the Houston City Council and served four two-year terms from 1950 to 1952 and then 1956 to 1962.

Welch was the first Houston mayor to win all precincts during one of his reelections, including predominantly African American areas with which some claim he had trouble.

By the time that Welch left office in 1974, Houston was within two years of supplanting Detroit to become the fifth largest city in the United States in 1975, and in the fall of 1980, the fourth.

Welch was mayor in 1967 when two days of siege by the Houston police at predominantly black Texas Southern University.

It was rumored that his campaign was associated with organized crime with a handful of his cabinet coming under suspicion and indicted as a result of this link.

In early 1985, Welch was a leader in the opposition to the extension of job protection rights to homosexuals employed by the city government.

Some of his comments (namely his candid quote caught by a microphone on live television, suggesting that one way to curb the spread of HIV would be to "shoot the queers") upset the city's gay community.