Kenneth "Big Moe" Moore (1974-2007)

    Kenneth Doniell “Big Moe” Moore, musician, rapper, and an original member of DJ Screw’s Screwed Up Click (S.U.C.), was born in Houston, Texas, on August 20, 1974. He grew up in southeast Houston and graduated from Jack Yates High School. Moore, whose stage name was Big Moe, gained distinction from other Houston rappers for his softer and slower style and his "rapsinging," the term he applied to his mixture of rapping and singing. As a founding member in S.U.C., he began his music career by freestyling on DJ Screw’s mixtapes. He was subsequently signed to Wreckshop Records, and in 2000 the label released Big Moe’s debut album, City of Syrup. The title paid homage to the codeine-laced cough syrup that was prevalent in Houston’s hip-hop community. The album cover show’s Big Moe pouring syrup from a styrofoam cup. City of Syrup featured the single, Maan! which was Big Moe’s answer to an East Coast hit titled Whoa! by Black Rob. 

    In 2002 Moore released his second album Purple World. The release showcased a number of prominent Houston vocalists and two versions of Moore’s breakthrough single, Purple Stuff. The song’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory-like video garnered some airplay on MTV, and the album ranked as high as Number 3 on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Moore’s third album, Moe Life, issued in 2003, included the commercially-successful single Just a Dog. After suffering a heart attack and slipping into a coma, Kenneth “Big Moe” Moore died on October 14, 2007. Wreckshop Records and the Koch label released his album Unfinished Business posthumously in 2008. In 2009 City of Syrup earned Number 25 on The Houston Press' list of the 25 Best Houston Hip-Hop Albums. Lil’ O, another original S.U.C. member, commented, “While Moe did sing about syrup, he also sang about a wide array of things. Outside of hip-hop, he was a happy man….He was very approachable. The fans knew they could always come up and ask for a picture, and he signed every autograph.” Musicologists regarded Big Moe’s style of rap as a type of hip-hop/R&B hybrid that covered a middle ground between hardcore and pop styles. Source

Block 4

Paradise Cemetery South

Pearland

COORDINATES

29° 34.116, -95° 20.970

John Joseph "Johnny" Keane (1911-1967)

    Johnny Keane, major-league baseball manager, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 3, 1911. His mother died when he was young, and he was raised by his grandmother. As a youth, he studied six years to become a Catholic priest but cut seminary classes on occasion in order to play semiprofessional baseball and soccer. He also played as the first-string quarterback at a St. Louis high school under an assumed name. At the age of seventeen he was about to sign a professional soccer contract, when the St. Louis Cardinals signed him and sent him to the minor leagues. He moved to Houston in 1935 to play for the Houston Buffs and appeared headed for the major leagues when he was struck in the head by a pitched ball. He was unconscious for six days and was hospitalized for six weeks. Although he played ball again after his recovery, the Cardinals decided to make him a manager in 1938. Keane managed teams in Albany, Georgia, Rochester, Minnesota, Columbus, Ohio, and Omaha, Nebraska.

    In 1946 he returned to Houston as manager. The next year the Buffs won the Texas League pennant and the Dixie Series. In the seventeen years that Keane managed in the minor leagues, his teams finished third place or higher eleven times and won five pennants. Keane joined the Cardinals as coach in 1959 and became manager of the team midway through the 1961 season. The Cardinals barely missed winning the pennant in 1963, after a streak of nineteen victories in twenty games. In 1964 they won the National League pennant and defeated the New York Yankees in a seven-game World Series; Keane, hailed as Manager of the Year, startled the baseball world by leaving the Cardinals immediately for the Yankees, where he replaced Yogi Berra as manager. His teams were plagued by injuries, however, and Keane was released in 1966, after the Yankees lost sixteen of their first twenty games. He next worked as a special-assignment scout for the California Angels, the job he held at the time of his death. Keane was noted for being soft-spoken and mild-mannered but also for being a strict disciplinarian. Sports writers observed that he drank little but smoked about fifteen small cigars a day, which he inhaled. He died of a heart attack in Houston on January 6, 1967. He was survived by his wife, Lela, whom he had married in 1937, and by one daughter. He was buried in Houston at Memorial Oaks Mausoleum. Source

Chapel of the Oaks Mausoleum
Memorial Oaks Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 47.009, -095° 36.871

 

Lloyd Millard Bentsen (1921-2006)

    Lloyd Millard Bentsen, Jr., businessman, United States representative and senator, and secretary of the treasury, was born on February 11, 1921, in Mission, Texas. He was the son of Lloyd Millard Bentsen, Sr. (informally known as Big Lloyd), and Edna Ruth Colbath (informally known as Dolly). Bentsen grew up on the Arrowhead Ranch, one of the largest ranches in the Rio Grande Valley, where his father was in the ranching, oil, and banking businesses. The younger Bentsen graduated from Sharyland High School and later earned a law degree in 1942 at the University of Texas at Austin. He married Beryl Ann Longino (informally known as B. A.) of Lufkin in 1943. Bentsen served as a B-24 pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces and flew combat missions over Europe during World War II. He earned the rank of colonel and received the Distinguished Flying Cross. A Democrat, Bentsen was elected Hildago county judge and served in that role from 1946 to 1948. In 1948 Bentsen was elected to serve in the U. S. House of Representatives, where he was a protégé of Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. (Rayburn would autograph a photo of himself to Bentsen with the inscription, "For Lloyd Bentsen, who likes ugly things." The keepsake photo was eventually given to the Sam Rayburn Library in Rayburn's hometown of Bonham.)

    In 1955 Bentsen stood down from elective politics and moved his family to Houston, where he worked in the financial industry and solidified his financial position. During this time he founded Consolidated American Life Insurance Company. By the late 1960s he was chairman of Lincoln Consolidated Inc., a financial holdings company. While Bentsen was not seeking office during these years, he remained in touch with Democratic Party politics. In 1970 Bentsen decided to reenter politics, this time as a candidate for the United States Senate. He won an upset victory over incumbent U.S. Sen. Ralph Yarborough in the Democratic primary and then went on to win the general election over the Republican nominee, U. S. Rep. George H.W. Bush. Bentsen was reelected to the Senate in 1976, 1982, and 1988, eventually serving as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. He campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976 but lost. In the Senate, he was known for his pro-business stance and was a supporter of the oil and gas industry, free trade, and the real estate industry. In 1988 Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis won the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency. Dukakis chose Bentsen to be his vice presidential running mate in the general election. Thanks to Texas election law, Bentsen was able to seek both the vice presidency and his Senate seat, which was up for reelection, that year. Bentsen was easily reelected to his Senate seat. However, the Republican ticket of Vice President George H.W. Bush and U.S. Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana won the presidential election. Despite the loss of the Dukakis-Bentsen ticket, Bentsen received notoriety for his performance in the nationally-broadcast vice presidential debate. When Quayle compared his political experience to that of President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, Bentsen replied, "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy."

    In 1992 Bentsen was urged to seek the presidency but chose not to make the race. The Democratic nominee, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, won the election. Clinton asked Bentsen to serve as secretary of the treasury. The Senate confirmed Bentsen to that post, and he resigned his Senate seat. As secretary, Bentsen played an important role in the formation of the Clinton Administration's early fiscal policies. Bentsen served as secretary from 1993 to 1994, and left, he said, because he had planned to retire from politics in 1994, upon the conclusion of what would have been his fourth Senate term. Clinton recalled Bentsen as a "conservative Democrat, a fiscal conservative who thought more prosperous people like him should pay taxes so that those who were less fortunate should be able to get a good education and have some opportunities in life." In 1999 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Bentsen, who had suffered a stroke in 1998, died in Houston on May 23, 2006, at the age of eighty-five. He was survived by his wife, two sons, a daughter, two brothers, a sister, and seven grandchildren. He was a Presbyterian. Bentsen was buried at Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery in Houston. Source

Section 30
Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 42.946, -095° 18.261

Margaret Julia Trigg (1964-2003)

    Margaret Julia Trigg was born May 30, 1964, in Bastrop, Texas, to Kleber and Minifred Trigg. She graduated from Bastrop High School in 1982 and Stephens Womans College in Columbia, Missouri, in 1985 with a B.A. Degree in Literature and Dramatic Art, then spent her junior year at Oxford University in England. After graduation, she lived in Dallas and briefly in Los Angeles before moving to New York in 1989 where she worked tirelessly writing her own stand up comedy routines. A skilled comedian, her popularity took off  after performances at Caroline's Comedy Club, The Comic Strip, The New York Comedy Club and others. 

    She appeared on several television shows and won a starring role as alien mother Cookie Brody in Aliens in the Family on ABC. She began accepting roles in movies, and starred in two low budget films, R.O.T.O.R. and Dream House. It was around this time that she became heavily addicted to plastic surgery, mostly on her face to fix issues that weren't there, and she quickly went bankrupt from spending every dollar she earned on imaginary flaws. In 2003, she died of a heart attack triggered by extreme amphetamine abuse.

Fairview Cemetery

Bastrop

COORDINATES

30° 06.856, -097° 18.319