Weldon Philip H. "Juke Boy" Bonner (1932-1978)

Weldon Philip H. (Juke Boy) Bonner, blues guitarist, vocalist, and harmonica player, was born in Bellville, Texas, on March 22, 1932, one of nine children of sharecroppers Emanuel and Carrie (Kessee) Bonner. His parents died when he was young, so he was raised by another family on a nearby farm. Bonner became interested in music when he was six and sang with a local spiritual group when he was in elementary school. By the time he was twelve he had taught himself to play the guitar. He quit school when he was a teenager and moved to Houston to find a job. When he was fifteen he won a talent contest held by Trummy Cain, a local talent coordinator. This led to an appearance on KLEE radio.

For the next decade Bonner worked as a one-man band in lounges, bars, and clubs throughout the South and in California. He frequently worked in juke joints accompanied only by jukebox music; hence his nickname. In 1956 he cut his first record, "Rock Me Baby," with "Well Baby" as the flip side, on Bob Geddins's Irma label. Bonner made his next record for Goldband Records in 1960 and continued to record for Liberty, Sonet, and other labels during the 1960s. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he toured Europe, where he recorded on the British Flyright and Storyville labels. His best work, however, came in the late 1960s on the Arhoolie label. Songs such as "Going Back to the Country," "Struggle Here in Houston," and "Life Is a Nightmare" reflected his impoverished youth and the dangers he had faced living in big cities. Bonner continued to tour, work local venues, and record. He was married in 1950 and was later divorced. He died in Houston on June 29, 1978, of cirrhosis of the liver. Five children survived him. Source

Restlawn Cemetery

Houston

29° 52.667, -095° 25.768

George A. Lamb (1814-1836)

George A. Lamb, participant in the battle of San Jacinto, was born in Laurens District, South Carolina, on October 3, 1814. Orphaned as a child, he made his home with a family named Bankhead and accompanied one of the sons, Richard, to Texas in 1834. There they established a farm in the western part of what is now Walker County. When Bankhead died on January 17, 1835, Lamb remained to care for his family. Lamb married Bankhead's widow, Sarah, on June 27, 1835, and adopted his two young children. He joined Capt. William Ware's Company D of Col. Sidney Sherman's Second Regiment, Texas Volunteers, on March 12, 1836, and was elected second lieutenant. He was killed in action on April 21, 1836, at San Jacinto. Lamb County was named in his honor in 1876. His widow later married Jonathan A. McGary, who became the administrator of Lamb's estate. Source

Note: This is a cenotaph. In 1881, a decision was made to place permanent memorials at the graves of those men who had been killed in the Battle of San Jacinto and buried on the battlefield. It was discovered, however, that all of the original wooden grave markers, except for Benjamin Brigham's, had rotted away and no one could remember exactly where the others rested. As a compromise, since the soldiers had been buried closely together, it was decided to place a cenotaph over Brigham's grave as a memorial to all of them.

San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site
La Porte

29° 45.232, -095° 05.363

Leonidas "Leon" Jaworski (1905-1982)

Leon Jaworski, lawyer, was born in Waco, Texas, on September 19, 1905, the son of Polish and Austrian immigrant parents Rev. Joseph and Marie (Mira) Jaworski. The family lived for several years in Geronimo, Guadalupe County, where Reverend Jaworski pastored an evangelical church, before returning to Waco, where Leon finished high school. He graduated from Baylor University law school in 1925, then attended George Washington University and received the LL.M. degree in 1926 before returning to Waco to practice law. Jaworski moved to Houston in 1930 and practiced in the firm of Dyess, Jaworski, and Strong until April 1931, when he joined the firm of Fulbright, Crooker, Freeman, and Bates. He became a partner in 1935 and managing partner in 1948; his name was added to the firm's in 1954. Twenty years later, the firm name was shortened to Fulbright and Jaworski. By the time Jaworski retired in 1981 the firm ranked among the largest in the nation; it maintained offices in Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Washington, and London. Jaworski was a leader in the legal profession and had held the presidencies of the American College of Trial Lawyers (1961-62), the State Bar of Texas (1962-63), and the American Bar Association (1971-72).

In addition to private practice, he served in the United States Army judge advocate general's department during World War II and was made chief of the trial section of the war crimes branch in the late stages of the war in Europe. In this office he directed investigations of several hundred cases concerning German crimes against persons living and fighting in the American zone of occupation. He also personally tried two cases-the first having to do with the murder of American aviators shot down over Germany in 1944 and the second involving the doctors and staff of a German sanatorium where Polish and Russian prisoners were put to death. Jaworski had risen to the rank of colonel by the time he returned to civilian life in October 1945. He later wrote about his wartime experiences in After Fifteen Years (1961).

Jaworski successfully represented Lyndon B. Johnson in the case that allowed Johnson to run for both the Senate and the vice presidency in 1960. After Johnson became president in 1963 he appointed Jaworski to important positions on the President's Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, and the Permanent International Court of Arbitration. Jaworski's most widely remembered public service occurred in 1973 and 1974 when he headed the Watergate special prosecution force charged with uncovering the facts surrounding the Republican break-in at the national Democratic party headquarters during the presidential campaign of 1972. In July 1974 he argued the case of United States v. Nixon before the United States Supreme Court and won a unanimous decision ordering President Richard Nixon to turn over to the district court magnetic audio tapes that implicated him and members of his staff in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. Shortly thereafter, President Nixon resigned from office. Jaworski published his account of the Watergate prosecution as The Right and the Power (1976). In 1977 Jaworski was called back to Washington to serve as special counsel to the United States House of Representatives Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. In what the press referred to as "Koreagate," he developed cases of misconduct in an influence-buying scandal that resulted in disciplinary action against six members of Congress and two private citizens.

Jaworski became a trustee of the M. D. Anderson Foundation in 1957 and was later on the boards of the Texas Medical Center and the Baylor College of Medicine. He was the president of the Houston Chamber of Commerce in 1960 and a director of the Bank of the Southwest; Anderson, Clayton, and Company; Southwest Bancshares; and Coastal States Gas Producing Corporation. Among his many other activities, Jaworski promoted the building of the Astrodome, belonged to the Philosophical Society of Texas, and received many honorary degrees, including an LL.D. from Baylor in 1960. He coauthored two autobiographical volumes, Confession and Avoidance: A Memoir (1979) and Crossroads (1981). On May 23, 1931, Jaworski married Jeannette Adam of Waco; they had three children. Jaworski was a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Houston. He died of a heart attack at his ranch near Wimberley on December 9, 1982, and is buried in Houston. Source

Section 3A
Memorial Oaks Cemetery
Houston

29° 46.941, -095° 36.903

Edwin Hawley "Eddie" Dyer (1900-1964)

Edwin Hawley Dyer, baseball player and manager, son of Joseph Dyer, was born in Morgan City, Louisiana, on October 11, 1900. After attending public schools there, he enrolled in Rice Institute, Houston, where he played football and baseball. He was a member of the class of 1924 but did not graduate until 1936, after playing with various minor-league baseball teams. As manager of the Houston club of the Texas League he won league championships in 1939, 1940, and 1941, and in 1942 he was named minor-league manager of the year for his direction of the Columbus, Ohio, team. Thereafter, he joined the St. Louis Cardinals and was manager of that club when it won the World Series in 1946 by beating the Boston Red Sox four games to three.

After twenty-three years as a player, manager, and coach, Dyer moved to Houston in 1948 and opened an insurance office. He relinquished managership of the Cardinals in 1950. On January 2, 1962, he suffered a stroke and on April 20, 1964, died of a heart attack. His survivors were his wife, the former Geraldine Jennings of Timpson, a son, and a daughter. Dyer was buried at the Garden of Gethsemane in Houston. He was described in the Official Encyclopedia of Baseball as a "slow-speaking and quick-thinking Texan" and was considered one of the best teachers and developers of young baseball talent. He discovered such men as Stan Musial, Howard Pollet, and Jeffre Cross. Pollet and Cross were associated with him in his Houston business. Source

Section 53
Forest Park Lawndale
Houston

29° 43.032, -095° 18.227

John Prince Coles (1793-1847)

John P. Coles (Cole), one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred, was born in Rowan County, North Carolina, in 1793. He married Mary Eleanor Owen in Georgia in 1821. The couple moved to Texas as an Old Three Hundred family and reached the Brazos River in the spring of 1822. Coles received title to 8½ leagues of land in the area of present-day Burleson, Washington, and Brazoria counties on August 19, 1824. His cedar log cabin became the center of a community known as Coles' Settlement. Coles maintained a public house, where David Crockett was reported to have lost eighty dollars in a poker game on his way to the Alamo. According to inaccurate local tradition, when the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence rode from Washington-on-the-Brazos to spend the night at Coles' Settlement, the name of the village was changed to Independence. The census of March 1826 listed Coles's wife, a son, two daughters, five servants, and four slaves and noted that Coles was building a mill on Yegua Creek. Three other children were later born to the family.

Coles was alcalde of Washington Municipality in 1828 and a delegate to the Convention of 1833 at San Felipe de Austin. On July 2, 1835, he signed a petition for the organization of Washington Municipality. During the Texas Revolution he moved his family east of the Neches and then joined William Warner Hill's company, in which he served from July to October 1836. Coles was elected chief justice of Washington County in December 1836 and represented the county in the Senate of the Fifth Texas Congress, 1840-41. He died on January 19, 1847, and was buried at Independence. His original cabin was in good restored condition late in the twentieth century. Source

Old Independence Cemetery
Independence

30° 19.720, -096 21.664