William Chapline Swearingen (?-1839)

William Chapline Swearingen, soldier of the Republic of Texas, was born in Kentucky in 1806. He came to Texas in January 1836 to join the fight for Texas independence and enlisted at Velasco on February 13, 1836, "for two years or the duration of the war." He joined Sam Houston's army on the Colorado River, and at the battle of San Jacinto he fought in Capt. Amasa Turner's Company B of Lt. Col. Henry W. Millard's Regular Infantry battalion. From the battlefield on April 23 Swearingen wrote a lengthy and detailed account of the campaign and battle to his brother Lemuel in Scottsville, Kentucky. The letter ends with the poignant request that his brother "kiss William for me and tell him pappy will be there in the fall and stay with him always." With the reorganization of the army after San Jacinto, Swearingen was transferred to Company A of the First Regiment, Regular Infantry, under Capt. John Smith, formerly Millard's first sergeant. He was posted to Galveston Island but served a part of his enlistment period on detached duty aboard the schooner Apollo out of Cedar Bayou. He received a promotion to sergeant on March 17 and resigned from the army on November 4, 1836, but reappeared on the muster roll of February 28, 1837. He died in Houston on December 24, 1839, and was memorialized at Founders Memorial Park. Swearingen was most likely a kinsman of Elemeleck Swearingen, who also fought in Turner's company at San Jacinto, and of Elemeleck's brother V. W. Swearingen, who served in Capt. John York's company at the siege of Bexar and with Capt. Moseley Baker's company at San Jacinto. He subsequently took part in the Mier expedition and was incarcerated at Perote prison. Elemeleck and V. W. Swearingen moved from Kentucky to Milheim, Austin County, Texas, in 1830. Source

Note: This is a cenotaph. Founders Memorial Park, originally founded in 1836 as Houston's first city cemetery, was rapidly filled due to a yellow fever epidemic and closed to further burials around 1840. The cemetery became neglected over a period of time, often vandalized and was heavily damaged by the 1900 hurricane. In 1936, despite a massive clean up effort, a century of neglect had taken its toll. The vast majority of grave markers were either destroyed or missing and poor record keeping prevented locating individual graves. Several cenotaphs were placed in random areas throughout the park in honor of the more high-profile citizens buried there, but a great number of graves go unmarked to this day.


Founders Memorial Park
Houston

29° 45.436, -095° 22.769

Lucian Adams (1922-2003)

Lucian Adams, Medal of Honor recipient and son of Lucian Adams, Sr., and Rosa (Ramírez) Adams, was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on October 26, 1922. The Adams family consisted of nine brothers and three sisters. Eight of his brothers served in World War II, and all returned home safe after the war. Lucian Adams attended Webster and Franklin elementary schools in Port Arthur as well as Thomas Jefferson Junior High School but dropped out of high school to help support his family. At the beginning of World War II, Adams worked eighteen months for Consolidated Iron Works, a company that manufactured landing crafts and warships. In February 1943 Adams was inducted in the United States Army at Fort Sam Houston and then went to Camp Butner, North Carolina, for basic training. He remained at Camp Butner until November 1943 and then was sent to Europe.

Adams distinguished himself during the Italian campaign. The Texan hit Anzio Beach with the Third Infantry Division in January 1944. On the beach at Anzio, he was credited with neutralizing a German machine gun nest. Wounded in combat, Adams would receive the Purple Heart. For his efforts at Anzio, Adams was awarded the Bronze Star on May 23, 1944.

On August 15, 1944, the Third Infantry Division came ashore on the Riviera in southern France as part of Operation Dragoon. In late October the division faced stiff enemy resistance in the Vosges Mountains in eastern France. Reinforced with fresh troops familiar with the terrain, the Germans succeeded in moving into the Third Division’s defenses in the forest and cutting its supply lines. Assigned to a company in the Thirtieth Infantry Regiment, Staff Sergeant Adams’s unit was assigned the task of reconnecting this breach in the supply line and reestablishing contact with two companies that had lost contact with the rest of the battalion.

Lucian Adams earned the Medal of Honor for his heroics in combat that took place near St. Die, France, on October 28, 1944. Efforts by the Americans to rectify the situation proved slow and costly with three men from Adams’s company killed and six others wounded (including the company commander). Facing heavy fire from three German machine guns sites and infantry equipped with automatic weapons and grenade launchers, Adams, acting on his own and holding a Browning automatic rifle, rapidly moved forward firing from his hip, avoiding the full force of enemy fire, and going from tree to tree for cover. In an episode that lasted about ten minutes, the Texan dashed “like a tornado” from one machine gun position to another and knocked out three with weapon fire and grenades. When the fighting was over, Staff Sergeant Adams had killed nine Germans, taken two prisoners, knocked out three machine guns, contributed to a German retreat, and had reopened the broken supply lines in his battalion. Near the end of his life, Adams credited his mother’s prayers for having emerged from the ordeal uninjured.

On April 22, 1945, Lt. Gen. Alexander Patch presented the Medal of Honor to Staff Sergeant Adams and four others in a ceremony at Zeppelin Stadium, Nuremberg, Germany, the same location of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi rallies. Before the ceremony, army personal covered the swastika symbol on top of the stadium with an American flag. Minutes after the ceremony army engineers removed the flag and blew up the swastika.

On September 7, 1945, Adams received his discharge from the United States Army. On January, 4, 1946, he accepted a position with the Veterans Administration and worked as a benefits counselor in San Antonio for forty years until his retirement in 1986. He also served as a veterans’ affairs consultant for Congressman Frank Tejeda.

Near the end of his life, Adams suffered from heart trouble and diabetes. In 2002 he was profiled in the documentary film Hispanics and the Medal of Honor shown on the History Channel. Adams died in San Antonio on March 31, 2003. His marriage to Linda Cassias had ended in divorce; his children - Grace, Rose, and Lucian Adams, Jr. - survived him. Lucian Adams was buried with full military honors at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio. Jose Mendoza Lopez, a friend and follow Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, called Adams “a great, great man who did a terrific job. I will miss him very much.” A stretch of Interstate 37 in San Antonio is named the Lucian Adams Freeway in his honor. Source

CITATION

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty on 28 October 1944, near St. Die, France. When his company was stopped in its effort to drive through the Mortagne Forest to reopen the supply line to the isolated third battalion, S/Sgt. Adams braved the concentrated fire of machine guns in a lone assault on a force of German troops. Although his company had progressed less than 10 yards and had lost 3 killed and 6 wounded, S/Sgt. Adams charged forward dodging from tree to tree firing a borrowed BAR from the hip. Despite intense machine gun fire which the enemy directed at him and rifle grenades which struck the trees over his head showering him with broken twigs and branches, S/Sgt. Adams made his way to within 10 yards of the closest machine gun and killed the gunner with a hand grenade. An enemy soldier threw hand grenades at him from a position only 10 yards distant; however, S/Sgt. Adams dispatched him with a single burst of BAR fire. Charging into the vortex of the enemy fire, he killed another machine gunner at 15 yards range with a hand grenade and forced the surrender of 2 supporting infantrymen. Although the remainder of the German group concentrated the full force of its automatic weapons fire in a desperate effort to knock him out, he proceeded through the woods to find and exterminate 5 more of the enemy. Finally, when the third German machine gun opened up on him at a range of 20 yards, S/Sgt. Adams killed the gunner with BAR fire. In the course of the action, he personally killed 9 Germans, eliminated 3 enemy machine guns, vanquished a specialized force which was armed with automatic weapons and grenade launchers, cleared the woods of hostile elements, and reopened the severed supply lines to the assault companies of his battalion.

Section AI
Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery
San Antonio

29° 28.587, -098° 25.976

Haroldson Lafayette Hunt (1889-1974)

H. L. Hunt, oil tycoon, the youngest of eight children of Haroldson Lafayette and Ella Rose (Myers) Hunt, was born in Carson Township, Fayette County, Illinois, on February 17, 1889. He was educated at home. In 1905 he traveled through Colorado, California, and Texas. By 1912 he had settled in Arkansas, where he ran a cotton plantation that was flooded out by 1917. In 1921 he joined the oil boom in El Dorado, Arkansas, where he became a lease broker and promoted his first well, Hunt-Pickering No. 1. He claimed to have attained a "fortune of $600,000" by 1925, the year he bought a whole block in El Dorado and built a three-story house for his family. His El Dorado investments and a venture called Smackover taught Hunt lessons about the cost of wasteful practices and excessive drilling. Both fields were depleted rapidly. He also lost money on the Florida land boom, and by the time he got interested in the East Texas oilfield in 1930, he seems to have been broke again.

Hunt is in the famous photograph that immortalizes the drill test for Daisy Bradford No. 3 and the opening of the East Texas oilfield. On November 26, 1930, he made a deal with Columbus M. "Dad" Joiner that made him owner of the well and all Joiner's surrounding leases. Hunt used $30,000 that belonged to P. G. Lake, a clothier from El Dorado, and planned to make subsequent payments from revenue to buy out Joiner. He knew Joiner was beset by problems of oversold interests in the well. By December 1, 1930, Hunt had his own pipeline, the Panola Pipe Line, to run oil from the East Texas field. By 1932 the Hunt Production Company had 900 wells in East Texas.

In 1935 H. L. Hunt, Incorporated, was superseded by Placid Oil Company, and the shares were divided into trusts for Hunt's six children. In late 1936 Hunt acquired the Excelsior Refining Company in Rusk County and changed the name to Parade Refining Company. It was residue gas from this company's lines that caused the New London School Explosion on March 18, 1937. Most of the people involved in that catastrophe were employees of H. L. Hunt. In 1937 or 1938 the family moved to Dallas. On April 5, 1948, Fortune printed a story on Hunt that labeled him the richest man in the United States. It estimated the value of his oil properties at $263 million and the daily production of crude from his wells at 65,000 barrels.

On November 26, 1914, Hunt married Lyda Bunker in Arkansas. They had six children. On Armistice Day 1925 a Franklin Hunt married Frania Tye (probably short for Tiburski) in Florida. They had four children. On November 11, 1975, after H. L. Hunt had died, Mrs. Frania Tye Lee filed a civil complaint against Hunt in which she revealed the history of their relationship. They had married in 1925 and lived together in Shreveport until 1930, when they moved to Dallas. In May 1934 "Franny" had discovered Hunt's other marriage. Hunt apparently shipped her off to New York and in 1941 provided trusts for each of the four children. A friend of his, John Lee, married her and gave his name to the children. Lyda Bunker Hunt died in 1955. In November 1957 Hunt married Ruth Ray and adopted her four children, who had been born between 1943 and 1950. Ruth Hunt admitted in an interview that H. L. Hunt had, in fact, been their real father. H. L. and Ruth Hunt became Baptists.

In his later life Hunt promoted "constructive" politics in two radio shows, Facts Forum and Life Line, which he supported from 1951 to 1963. In 1952 Facts Forum endorsed Senator Joseph McCarthy. In 1960 Hunt published a romantic utopian novel, Alpaca, and in 1968 he began to process aloe vera cosmetics. He died on November 29, 1974. Source

Monument Garden
Sparkman Hillcrest Memorial Park
Dallas

32° 52.054, -096° 46.729

John Joseph "Johnny" Keane (1911-1967)

John (Johnny) Joseph 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

29° 47.009, -095° 36.871

 

Washington Hampton Secrest (1809-1854)

Washington Hampton Secrest, soldier, was born in Tennessee in 1809 and moved to Texas with his brother Felix G. Secrest in 1835. During the Texas Revolution he enlisted as a private in Capt. Henry W. Karnes's company of Mirabeau B. Lamar's cavalry corps but most often was on detached service as a scout with Erastus (Deaf) Smith. In this capacity he was with Moseley Baker at the time of the evacuation and burning of San Felipe, and, when Baker authorized the troops to loot the town before it was put to the torch, Secrest chose a small Bible belonging to Sumner Bacon as his part of the spoils. Years later he joined the Methodist Church at Rutersville; he claimed that he had read the Bible every day since the fall of San Felipe. According to the recollections of pioneer memoirist Dilue Rose Harris, Secrest was one of the men who captured General Santa Anna after the battle of San Jacinto. After that battle Secrest was elected captain of the Washington Cavalry Company, a post he held from June until the company was disbanded on October 23, 1836. For his services he was granted a headright in Colorado County in 1838. He married Comfort Robinson in Colorado County on November 25, 1837, and the couple had four children. By 1841 he was living in Fort Bend County, where he was authorized a league and a labor of land on January 16, 1850. On September 22, 1842, Sam Houston commissioned Secrest to raise a company of rangers in response to Rafael Vásquez's raid on San Antonio. Secrest was characterized as something of a daredevil, and Houston wrote to him, "Your characteristic activity, caution and valor will be of great use, and contribute much to the success of our arms." In 1850 he identified as a sportsman and lived in Fort Bend County, where he owned one slave. On July 10, 1852, the Texas State Gazette erroneously reported that Secrest had been shot and killed at Columbus, Texas, during an altercation with a man named Taylor on June 21. On July 17 the newspaper rescinded that report and stated that Secrest had been stabbed but was recovering. He died of natural causes on February 3, 1854, and he was buried at the Navidad Baptist Cemetery in Schulenberg. Source


Navidad Baptist Cemetery
Schulenburg

29° 38.496, -096° 53.264