James Edward "Pete" Runnels (1928-1991)

James Edward “Pete” Runnels, born on January 28, 1928, in Lufkin, Texas, was a baseball infielder and two-time American League batting champion who barely missed a third title. Nevertheless, Washington Post sportswriter Bob Addie described him as “one of the most obscure batting champions baseball has ever had.” Runnels (who altered the spelling of his family name) was the son of Ogden Eugene “Pete” and Lillian Margaret “Otta” (Ford) Runnells and the younger brother of Pete Runnells, Jr. Dubbed “Little Pete,” he played football and basketball at Lufkin High School, but his baseball skills were honed on local sandlots. After graduating from Lufkin High in 1945, Runnels enlisted in the Marine Corps, where he continued to play baseball. After his discharge in 1948, he played football briefly at Rice Institute (later Rice University).

St. Louis Cardinals manager Eddie Dyer, a Rice alumnus, lived in Houston during the off-season. He encouraged Runnels to pursue his interest in baseball and invited him to the Cardinals 1949 spring training camp in St. Petersburg, Florida. Runnels attended but was not offered a contract. On his way home he tried out with the Chickasha Chiefs in the Sooner State League and made the team. Chickasha was on the lowest rung (Class D) of minor league baseball, but it was a start in more ways than one, as Runnels met his wife Betty Ruth Hinton there. They were married on October 29, 1949. On the field Runnels excelled, leading the league in hits and batting .372. Moving closer to home, he spent the 1950 season with the Texarkana Bears of the Big State League (Class B) and hit .330.

His two outstanding minor league seasons caught the attention of Horace Milan and Joe Cambria, scouts for the Washington Senators. Though the latter was one of the legendary scouts in baseball and had signed a number of outstanding players, particularly in Cuba, the Washington Senators had remained perpetual also-rans in the American League and were always on the lookout for young talent. The Senators purchased Runnels’s contract for $12,500 and sent him to their Double-A affiliate, the Chattanooga Lookouts of the Southern League. Hitting .356 through June, he was promoted to the Senators and made his major league debut at the age of twenty-three on July 1, 1951, in the first game of a Sunday double-header against the Philadelphia A’s at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. As a starting shortstop the rest of the 1951 season, the left-handed-hitting Runnels batted a respectable .278. He was versatile enough to play all four infield positions, but he played mostly at shortstop and second base for the Senators, with whom he played for seven seasons. His best season was 1956 when he hit .310 with seventy-six runs batted in (RBIs), his career best. It was also his penultimate season with the Senators, as his batting average dropped eighty points the following year. Because Runnels was about to turn thirty, the Senators likely felt his best years were behind him and traded him to the Boston Red Sox on January 23, 1958.

In contrast to the Senators, the Red Sox were among the more potent teams in the American League. The 1957 Red Sox team was second in the league in runs scored (721), hits (1,380), home runs (153), batting average (.262), on-base percentage (.341), slugging (.405), and total bases (2,134). However, the New York Yankees finished first in most of these categories and won the pennant. Nevertheless, the atmosphere at Boston was a vast improvement over what Runnels had experienced at Washington, where attendance had plummeted during the 1950s and resulted in the franchise moving to Minneapolis-St. Paul after the 1960 season. At Boston, Runnels embarked on a remarkably consistent five-year stretch (1958–62) in which he never hit less than .314 and topped out at .326., averaging .320 in the process.

In 1958, Runnels’s first year with the Red Sox, he found himself in a duel for the American League batting title with teammate Ted Williams. Williams aided him in his offensive spurt. A renowned theorist of hitting, Williams fine-tuned Runnels’s approach to hitting. Also, because Runnels appeared in the second slot in the batting order, just ahead of Williams, he prospered from having more good pitches to hit, as pitchers did not want to walk him and put a potential run on base with Williams at bat. With two games to go at the end of the season in Washington, Williams and Runnels were locked in a tie at .323. In the penultimate game of the season, Runnels got three hits in six at bats, but Williams got three hits in four at bats to take a slim lead. On September 28, the last day of the 1958 season, Williams and Runnels came to bat four times each; the former got two hits while Runnels went hitless. Thus Williams won the title (his sixth and final) with a .328 average while Runnels had to settle for runner-up with .322. As a consolation, he was voted the American League Comeback Player of the Year for raising his batting average ninety-two points.

Runnels followed up with a .314 season in 1959, a creditable showing but well behind the league leader, Detroit’s Harvey Kuenn, at .353. Runnels was, however, named to the American League All-Star squad. Ted Williams, battling a pinched nerve in his neck that season, was not a contender for the batting title. In 1960 Runnels was the starting second baseman for the American League All-Star squad and won his first batting title with a .320 average. His biggest obstacle in his quest for a title was not Williams, who did not accrue enough plate appearances to qualify for the title, but stomach ulcers. Though they were particularly acute in the final month of the season, they did not daunt him in his pursuit of a batting title. Nor did they prevent him from tying a major league record for most hits (nine) in a double-header on August 30 against the Detroit Tigers. Runnels kept up the pace in 1961with a .317 average, but it was just a prelude to his best season. In 1962, at the age of thirty-four, he won his second batting title with a .326 average, his career best. Among his 183 hits (tying his 1958 total for another career high) were ten home runs. This was the only season he reached double digits in that category. This also enabled him to rack up a .456 slugging percentage, which was also his career best.

By all indications, Runnels had found a home with the Red Sox. Nevertheless, he expressed a desire to return to Texas, specifically Houston, which had been awarded a major league franchise, the Colt .45s, in 1962. Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey was sympathetic to his request and approved a trade which sent Runnels to the Colts after the 1962 season. In return, Colts General Manager Paul Richards offered the team’s best hitter, Román Mejías. At Boston, however, Mejías was a disappointment, and the 1964 season was his last. In Houston the same was true of Runnels. Playing mostly first base and second base for the Colts, he hit just .253 with a scant twenty-three RBIs, the lowest total of his career. In 1964 the results were even worse, a .196 batting average in twenty-three games. On May 19, 1964, the Colts released him. Less than two years removed from his best season, his big-league career was over.

Runnels hit .291 for his career with 1,854 hits. Unfortunately for his legacy, 1,459 of them were singles in a game that rewarded power hitters with lavish contracts. Runnels was paid to get on base and score runs, not to drive them in. Even so, his RBI totals were often disappointing. In 1960, for example, he knocked in just thirty-five runs. It was a record for fewest RBIs by a batting champion. Once on base, he was not likely to advance by stealing bases. In 1951 and 1952 he stole no bases in thirteen attempts. In the field Runnels was steady but not flashy. Notably, he led all second basemen in the league with a .986 fielding percentage in 1960 and followed it up with a league-leading .995 percentage as a first baseman the following season. His efforts never resulted in a Rawlings Gold Glove Award, however. Another factor in Runnels’s relative obscurity was his lack of high-profile heroics. He never experienced a World Series or even a pennant race (the closest he got was in 1958 when the Red Sox finished in third place, thirteen games behind the Yankees).

Runnels returned to the Red Sox to serve as a coach in 1965 and 1966 and compiled a record of 8–8 as interim manager for the final sixteen games of the latter season after manager Billy Herman was fired. Some members of the Red Sox organization felt Runnels should have been named the permanent manager, but he chose not to lobby for the job. Runnels returned to his off-season home of Pasadena, Texas, where he tended to his businesses, a service station and a sporting goods store. He also served as a deacon at the First Baptist Church of Pasadena. His most enduring pursuit was the establishment of Camp Champions, a summer camp, which first opened in 1967 in Marble Falls, Texas, and was still in operation as of 2024. Runnels founded the camp alongside Hondo Crouch, Darrell K. Royal, and Horton Nesrsta. Another Runnels legacy is the Pete Runnels Texas Shoot Out, a yearly baseball tournament at Lufkin High School. He was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1982, and the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2004.

Ted Williams once remarked, “Runnels didn’t have much power. He needed more meat on his bones. But he could put the bat on the ball and slap it through the hole.” His bat control also applied to golf clubs, and Runnels spent a lot of time golfing in retirement. At the age of sixty-three he suffered a stroke while playing golf and died a few days later, on May 20, 1991, at Bayshore Hospital in Pasadena. He was buried at Forest Park East Cemetery in Webster, Texas. Runnels was survived by his wife, Betty; three children; and five grandchildren, one of whom, Jonathan Runnels, played baseball at San Jacinto College and Rice University and also played minor league baseball during the 2008 and 2010 seasons. Source

Section 210

Forest Park East Cemetery

Webster

29° 30.826, -095° 07.439

Philip Singleton (1781?-1836)

On August 19, 1824, Phillip Singleton, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, received title to a league of land at the mouth of Yegua Creek on the west bank of the Brazos River in what is now southeastern Burleson and northeastern Washington counties. The census of March 1826 classified him as a farmer and stock raiser aged between forty and fifty. His household included his wife, Susanna (Walker), two sons, and three daughters. In 1828-29 Singleton settled on the north side of Buffalo Bayou and built a log house that was afterwards bought by Lorenzo de Zavala and became Zavala's first home in Texas. Source

Note: This is a cenotaph. While the details of his death are uncertain, family lore relates that he was killed by Indians while hunting and his body never recovered.


Glendale Cemetery
Houston

29° 43.210, -095° 16.523

Helen Lucy Corbitt (1906–1978)

Helen Lucy Corbitt, American chef, cookbook author, and the doyenne of food service at Neiman Marcus in Dallas, was born in Benson Mines, New York, to Henry James Corbitt and Eva (Marshall) Corbitt on January 25, 1906. Stanley Marcus called her the Balenciaga of food. Dallas author Prudence Mackintosh named her the tastemaker of the century and credited her with delivering Texans from such foods as canned fruit cocktail and overcooked, limp vegetables. Corbitt’s fame as a food legend rests primarily on her fourteen years at Neiman Marcus, but that is misleading. She had an established career in food service long before she went to Neiman’s.

Helen and her younger brother, Michael, grew up in the comfortable home of a prominent lawyer and a dressmaker who had her own business. Food was a central part of family life, and they always employed good cooks, but Helen’s mother baked their bread. Helen apparently learned to cook some basic dishes as a child. She graduated from Skidmore College with a B.S. in home economics in 1928.

One of Corbitt’s first jobs was as a dietitian at Presbyterian Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, between about 1930 and 1934, followed by a similar position at the Cornell Medical Center in New York City. But she was bored in New York. A job hunt during the Great Depression was unsuccessful until 1940 when she received an offer in Texas. Her first reaction was, “Who the hell wants to go to Texas?” She went because it was the only opportunity offered. Corbitt joined the staff of the University of Texas at Austin where she ran the University Tea Room and taught quantity cooking and restaurant management. Located in a small cottage, the tearoom was the laboratory or practice restaurant for her classes. There, she likely began experimenting with dishes she became known for, such as chicken bouillon and popovers. Asked to do a convention dinner using only Texas products, she reacted with an unprintable phrase and then came up with one of her signature dishes: Texas caviar - black-eyed peas served in a sauce of oil, vinegar, garlic, and onion.

In 1942, discontent with Texas and homesick, she accepted an offer from the Houston Country Club but intended to work there only long enough to get the money to return east. After six months, she finally unpacked her suitcases. She enjoyed cooking fine food for the club’s appreciative members, but it was wartime, and the Houston Country Club fell on hard times. In 1948 she moved on to run the Garden Room at Joske’s, the first Houston location for a San Antonio furniture store that later became a department store. It was the only job from which Corbitt was ever fired. As she put it, she and the management differed on philosophies about food and cost. While at Joske’s she also ran her own catering service and sold sauces and dressings under a trademarked label.

In 1952 construction magnate Herman Brown, an old friend, called her back to Austin to manage food service at the Driskill Hotel, where she could once again serve great food for appreciative Texans, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson among them. Mrs. Johnson particularly liked what Corbitt called her flowerpot cakes. She worked at the Driskill as their director of food service between 1952 and 1955.

Stanley Marcus of Dallas’s famed Neiman Marcus specialty store began “courting” Corbitt in 1949 with a telegram offering her a thousand dollars a month, along with an undetermined bonus at year’s end and some participation in the profits from the catering business. He wrote that he was sure she could develop additional income from a local newspaper column and from other consultation jobs if not in conflict with the interests of Neiman Marcus. She put him off for seven years before she accepted his offer to run the Zodiac Room, the upscale restaurant on the top floor of the specialty store in downtown Dallas. Dining service at Neiman’s was neither showing a profit nor serving quality food. Periodically, Marcus called her, but each time she turned him down. That changed one night early in 1955 when, tired of the hotel business, she called to ask, “When do you want me there, Stanley?” and he replied, “Tomorrow.” She began work at Neiman’s that September. 

During this heyday of fashion at Neiman Marcus, women wore hats and gloves to lunch and gazed at Neiman’s models who sashayed through the dining room. Corbitt’s philosophy of food matched Marcus’s fashion sense: if you please the most discriminating customer, you’ll have no trouble pleasing those who are less discriminating. Corbitt’s food pleased the palate and filled the restaurant. Neiman’s food soon became as famous as its fashion, but food service still lost money. Marcus did not care because all those diners had to go through his store to get to the restaurant - and they shopped, coming and going.

Many celebrities, including Bob Hope, Princess Margaret, the Duke of Windsor, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, dined in the Zodiac Room, but the typical Neiman Marcus customer of that day was a middle-class housewife. Corbitt predated the revolutions sparked by Julia Child and Betty Freidan. In her view, post-World War II women still belonged in the kitchen, and Helen Corbitt served them simple, straightforward dishes that they could duplicate in their kitchens. Among her signature dishes were fruit salad with poppy seed dressing, individual baked Alaska, and the Duke of Windsor Sandwich (chicken breast, mango, chutney, and cheddar). During the late 1950s Corbitt also produced the syndicated food column suggested by Marcus in his telegram offering employment.

A plaque in her kitchen read, “This is the kitchen of Helen Corbitt. I am the Boss! If you don’t believe it . . . Start Something!” Marcus liked to wander unannounced into various departments in his store. She would have none of it. Once, exasperated with her employees, she fired the entire crew. As they made their way to the elevators, it occurred to her she had a restaurant full of hungry people. She called security, had her staff blocked from exiting, and they returned to work. On another occasion, she made opera diva Maria Callas and a party of thirty go to the end of the line when they were late for a reservation.

Helen Corbitt was at Neiman Marcus only fourteen years. While there, she gave lectures and conducted occasional cooking classes, notably one for select businessmen that met in her apartment. She proved that Texas men wanted more than steak and potatoes. Corbitt also taught classes to benefit the Dallas Symphony and raised more than $150,000 for that institution. She retired in 1969 and began a new career as a food consultant - traveling, teaching, and speaking in public.

Corbitt was the author of several cookbooks: Helen Corbitt’s Cookbook (1957), Helen Corbitt’s Potluck (1962), Helen Corbitt Cooks for Looks (1967, written when her doctor advised her to lose weight), Helen Corbitt Cooks for Company (1974), and Helen Corbitt’s Greenhouse Cookbook (1979, recipes from the spa jointly operated by Neiman’s and Charles of the Ritz). She also edited and wrote the preface for a cookbook, Mexico Through My Kitchen Window (1961) by Maria A. DeCarbia, home economics consultant for the giant J. Walter Thompson Agency. In her cookbooks, Corbitt adapted the recipes for the housewife cooking at home.

Several honors were bestowed upon Helen Corbitt during her lifetime. According to Patricia Vineyard MacDonald, who compiled The Best from Helen Corbitt’s Kitchens in 2000, the professional honor she most treasured was the Golden Plate Award from the Institutional Food Service Manufacturers Association, received in 1961. In 1968 she received the solid gold Escoffier plaque from the Confrérie de la Chaine des Rôtisseurs, the world’s oldest gourmet society. In 1969 she was presented the Outstanding Service Award by the Texas Restaurant Association. She received an honorary doctor of letters from Skidmore College as a distinguished alumna and trustee, and the University of Dallas awarded her its Athena Award for “indomitable spirit and impeccable character.”

Helen Corbitt died of cancer on January 16, 1978, in Dallas. She never married. She was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Dallas. Source

Patio Mausoleum
Calvary Hill Cemetery and Mausoleum
Dallas

32° 86.674, -096° 87.471

John N. O. Smith (1815-1851)

John N. O. Smith, soldier, state legislator, and newspaper publisher, was born in Massachusetts in 1815. Smith came to Texas prior to 1836. On February 1, 1836, he enlisted for service with Sam Houston’s forces in the Texas Revolution. He served as a sergeant major and participated in the battle of San Jacinto. He served until May 1, 1836. On April 12, 1838, Smith received a grant for one-third league of land in Harris County for his service in the revolution, but he lost his certificate and obtained a replacement certificate in 1840 and sold his headright certificate in 1845. Smith was also the original grantee for 320 acres of land in present-day Erath County in 1847.

On April 24, 1842, he married Margaret Farrell. In September 1842 Smith was elected captain of a company for a new foray against Mexico - the Somervell expedition - but remained in Gonzales County due to illness. Around this time he settled in Houston, Harris County, and established himself in the newspaper business. In 1841 Smith published the Houstonian. From December 1843 to October 1844, he published a newspaper which was issued under several titles, including The Citizen, the Weekly Citizen, and the Texian Democrat. He was also president of the first Typographical Association of Texas.

In 1846 Smith served as representative for Harris County in the House of the First Texas Legislature. He was a member of the Education Committee, Public Printing Committee, and several select committees, and he chaired the Select Committee on An act for the incorporation of all Lodges of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, of the State of Texas. Politically, Smith was a Democrat, his constituency consisting of “Farmers, Mechanics, and Working Men.” Smith died in Houston on May 5, 1851, and was buried in City Cemetery (now known as Founders’ Memorial Park) in Houston. Source

Note: Unmarked. 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. John Smith's is one of them.

Founders Memorial Park
Houston

N/A

John Salmon "Rip" Ford (1815-1897)

John Salmon (Rip) Ford, soldier, elected official, and newspaper editor, son of William and Harriet (Salmon) Ford, was born in Greenville District, South Carolina, on May 26, 1815. He moved to Texas in June 1836 and served in the Texas army until 1838, rising to the rank of first lieutenant under John Coffee (Jack) Hays. Ford settled in San Augustine and practiced medicine there until 1844, when he was elected to the House of the Ninth Congress, where he introduced the resolution to accept the terms of annexation to the United States. In 1845 he moved to Austin and became editor of the Austin Texas Democrat; he was later in partnership with Michael Cronican.

During the Mexican War Ford was adjutant of Hays's regiment and in command of a spy company; he was commended for gallant service by Gen. Joseph Lane. While serving as adjutant, Ford acquired the lasting nickname "Rip." When officially sending out notices of deaths he kindly included at the first of the message, "Rest in Peace"; later, under the exigencies of battle conditions, this message was shortened to "R.I.P."

In 1849, with Robert S. Neighbors, Ford made an exploration of the country between San Antonio and El Paso and published a report and map of the route, which came to be known as the Ford and Neighbors Trail. Later in 1849 he was made captain in the Texas Rangers and was stationed between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, where he had numerous Indian fights during 1850 and 1851.

In 1852 he was elected to the Texas Senate; again he became an editor and, in partnership with Capt. Joe Walker, established the State Times, which was published in Austin until 1857. Early in 1858 he accepted a commission in the state troops and defeated the Indians in two major battles on the Canadian River. Late in 1859 he was sent to the Rio Grande, where he commanded operations against Juan N. Cortina. In 1861 Ford served as a member of the Secession Convention, commanded an expedition to Brazos Santiago, initiated a trade agreement between Mexico and the Confederacy, and was elected colonel of the Second Texas Cavalry, with a command in the Rio Grande district. Between 1862 and 1865 he discharged with tactful moderation the duties of commandant of conscripts, while at various times he was engaged on border operations protecting Confederate-Mexican trade. In May 1865 he led Confederate forces in the battle of Palmito Ranch, the last battle of the Civil War.

In 1868 Ford moved to Brownsville to edit the Brownsville Sentinel. In 1872 he was a delegate to the Democratic convention in Baltimore. He was a special sergeant-at-arms when Richard Coke was inaugurated as governor in 1873 and quelled a riot of Austin citizens who were aroused against the radicals and Edmund J. Davis. In 1873 Ford served as a cattle and hide inspector of Cameron County, and in 1874 he was mayor of Brownsville. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1875 and served in the Texas Senate from 1876 to 1879, when he was appointed superintendent of the Deaf and Dumb School (later the Texas School for the Deaf). While in the Senate he urged the promotion of immigration to Texas and popular education, supported in part from the sale of public lands.

Ford spent his later years writing reminiscences and historical articles and promoting an interest in Texas history. As a charter member of the Texas State Historical Association, he contributed one of the first articles published in its Quarterly. He died in San Antonio on November 3, 1897. Source

Confederate Cemetery
San Antonio

29° 25.200, -098° 27.822