John Kenneth Spain (1946-1990)

    Ken Spain, Olympian, was born October 6, 1946 in Houston, Texas, the son of John Franklin and Dorothy Leak Spain. After graduating from Austin High School in Houston, he enrolled at the University of Houston where he played for the Cougars. In 1968, he was selected to be on the basketball team representing the United States in the Olympics at Mexico City. The team went on to win 9-0 in competition and earned a gold medal for the U.S. In 1969, he was selected as the 20th overall pick (5th pick, second round) by the Chicago Bulls of the NBA and was drafted by the Oakland Oaks of the ABA. He was also selected as an end by the Detroit Lions in the 1969 NFL draft, but never played football professionally. 

    He played in eleven American Basketball Association games during the 1970-71 season for the Pittsburgh Condors before retiring from sports entirely in the early 70s. Spain died of cancer on October 11, 1990 in his hometown and posthumously named by the University of Houston for their Hall of Honor.

Section 4
Rosewood Memorial Park
Humble

COORDINATES

29° 57.685, -095° 16.095

James Power (1778-1852)

    James Power, empresario and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, was born in 1778 or 1779 in Ballygarrett, County Wexford, Ireland. In 1809 he immigrated to New Orleans, where he lived for twelve years and worked as a merchant. In New Orleans he learned from Stephen F. Austin of the empresario contracts being offered by the Mexican government and, in 1821, moved to Matamoros. He subsequently moved to Saltillo and became a citizen of Mexico. There he dealt in mining equipment and formed a partnership with James Hewetson. In 1828 Power and Hewetson received an empresario contract to settle 200 Catholic families, half Irish and half Mexican citizens, on the coast of Texas between the Lavaca and Guadalupe rivers. The contract was subsequently modified many times; by the early 1830s the Power and Hewetson colony included lands between Coleto Creek and the mouth of the Nueces. 

    In the fall of 1835 Power participated in the Lipantitlán expedition and could not take his seat at the Consultation, to which he had been elected as representative from Refugio. He represented Refugio at the Convention of 1836 and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. He used his influence to persuade the 1836 convention to seat Sam Houston and also served on the committee that drafted the Constitution of the Republic of Texas. As Gen. José de Urrea's army advanced into the state, Power was sent to New Orleans to raise supplies for the Texas army. In 1837 Power founded the town of Aransas City by his home on Live Oak Point in present-day Aransas County on the Gulf Coast. He opened a mercantile and post office, built a wharf, and established a customs operation. With his partner Henry Smith, Power promoted the town and became mayor after its incorporation in January 1839. The town declined, however, and ceased to exist by the mid-1840s. He represented Refugio in the Second Congress and at the Convention of 1845. Power was first married to Dolores de la Portilla, daughter of Felipe Roque de la Portilla, in 1832. They had two children. After her death he married her sister, Tomasita, and fathered five more children. Power died on August 15, 1852, at his home, where he was buried. Subsequently, his remains were reinterred in Mount Calvary Cemetery in Refugio. The site of his homestead, Live Oak Point, was marked by the Texas Centennial Commission in 1936. Source 


Mount Calvary Cemetery
Refugio

COORDINATES

28° 18.132, -097° 16.978

Isaac Newton Moreland (?-1842)

    Isaac N. (J. N.) Moreland (Mourland), soldier and jurist of the Republic of Texas, was born in Georgia. He moved in the fall of 1834 to Texas and established himself at Anahuac. Soon thereafter he moved to Liberty, where he served as secretary of the ayuntamiento. On April 17, 1835, he became one of the four signers of the Liberty Resolutions, which called on Texans to respect the laws of Mexico and to refrain from resisting the payment of customs duties. However, Moreland was the author of the Anahuac Resolutions, signed on May 4, 1835. These protested what the citizens of the area considered to be unjust and arbitrary taxation by customs officials. This document was forwarded to the political chief of the jurisdiction and to the governor of Coahuila. Andrew Janeway Yates, Augustus Chapman Allen, and Moreland wrote a letter of protest against the seizure by Mexican navy captain Thomas M. (Mexico) Thompson of a sloop that they had chartered to transport freight to Velasco and Thompson's apparently arbitrary blockade of the mouth of the Brazos River. In October 1835 Moreland joined the Texas army. In a letter to Governor Henry Smith dated November 31, 1835, Col. James W. Fannin, Jr., recommended Moreland for a commission in the Texas army. On December 20, 1835, Gen. Sam Houston appointed Moreland a captain of the First Regiment of Infantry in the regular army and ordered him to Harrisburg to establish a recruiting station. His appointment was approved by the General Council on March 10, 1836.

    At the battle of San Jacinto, Moreland served with the "Twin Sisters" under Lt. Col. George Washington Hockley, although Moreland later wrote to Mirabeau B. Lamar that he had been "the oldest officer in rank of the Artillery for duty, at the Battle of San Jacinto." A man named Haskell, who signed himself as an army surgeon, wrote from the field that "Capt. Moreland commanded a cannon, and the duty was well performed; the first shot carried away the enemies powder box, and wounded the adjutant general and several others." After San Jacinto, Moreland was assigned to command Fort Travis at Galveston. On July 20, 1836, he was promoted to major, and on October 29, 1836, Sam Houston appointed him commandant of the garrison at Galveston. Moreland was discharged from the army on April 27, 1837, and moved to Houston, where, on May 29, he announced his partnership in the practice of law with David G. Burnet. By 1840 he owned two Houston city lots, a slave, and a gold watch, in addition to 600 acres in Harrisburg County. On January 30, 1840, President Lamar appointed him chief justice of the Second Judicial District, then Harrisburg County, to succeed Benjamin Cromwell Franklin. He held the post until his death, on June 9, 1842. 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

COORDINATES

29° 45.451, -095° 22.733

Albert Bel Fay (1913-1992)

    Albert Bel Fay, businessman, Republican party leader, and United States ambassador, was born on February 26, 1913, in New Orleans, the son of Charles and Marie Fay.  His father was vice president and traffic manager of the Southern Pacific Railroad. The family moved to Houston in 1928, and Fay graduated from the old San Jacinto High School there. In 1936 he earned a B.S. in geology from Yale University and received a commission as an ensign in the United States Naval Reserve. During World War II he commanded a submarine chaser in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. He next served on the staff of the Submarine Chaser Training Center in Miami and then as first lieutenant on the USS Yokes at Okinawa.  In 1938 Fay and his brother Ernest founded the Seabrook Shipyard, which built submarine chasers and rescue boats during World War II. Fay was also founder and vice president of Eagle Lake Rice Dryer (Texas); founder of Lake Arthur Rice Dryer (Louisiana); co-founder, vice president, and director of the family-owned Bel Oil Corporation (Louisiana); a vice president and director of the Lacassane Company; a partner of Quatre Parish Company (Louisiana); a director of Gates Learjet Corporation; and a member of Lloyd's of London. In 1972 his petroleum interests included holdings in Texas, Louisiana, and several other states, as well as in Canada and New Zealand. He also had real estate interests in Nicaragua and the Little Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. In 1992 his business interests included ranching, timber, marinas, and banking. Fay's work with the Republican party began at the precinct level in 1952, during the presidential campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower. By 1960 he had become a Republican national committeeman.

    In 1962 and 1966 he was the Republican nominee for Texas land commissioner. In the latter race he won the endorsement of the AFL-CIO executive board and the Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations. He lost both races to Jerry Sadler. One of the issues on which Fay distinguished himself from Sadler was in his support for national parks in Texas. He supported the movement for a park on Padre Island in 1962 and in the Guadalupe Mountains in 1966. In 1969 Fay was ousted as national committeeman. Three years later he ran against five other candidates for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. He made it into the primary runoff but lost in that election to Henry C. Grover, who was defeated in the general election by Dolph Briscoe. In the primary campaign Fay argued for a national park in the Big Thicket, a state park on Mustang Island, and a recreational area along Armand Bayou. He also urged the development of a comprehensive water plan and advocated reducing property taxes on the homes of the elderly. He served as chairman of the state Republican finance committee, a member of the national Republican finance committee (1968-76), a member of the state Republican executive committee, and a member of the executive committee of the Republican national committee. He was a delegate to the Republican national conventions of 1960, 1964, and 1968; he served as co-chairman of the state delegation in 1960 and vice chairman of the state delegation in 1964.

    In October 1969 President Richard M. Nixon appointed him to the thirteen-member board of governors overseeing the Panama Canal Company. He retained that position until 1976, when President Gerald R. Ford named him ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago. He served in that capacity until 1977. Fay was a director and president of the Houston Museum of Natural Science, a director of the American Brahman Breeders Association, a vice president of the Houston Branch of the English Speaking Union, and a member of the Yale alumni board. He was also a licensed pilot and a yachtsman. He won the 5.5-meter world championship in HankØ, Norway, in 1983, defeating twenty-five other helmsmen from around the world. He was also a three-time winner of the Scandinavian Gold Cup and the United States Nationals. Fay served on the United States Olympic Yachting Committee, the United States Naval Academy Sailing Advisory Council, and the board of trustees of the Yale University Sailing Association. He married Homoiselle Randall Haden on February 3, 1935, and they became the parents of three children. He was a Presbyterian. Fay died in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico, on February 29, 1992, and was buried in Houston. Source

Section J

Glenwood Cemetery

Houston

COORDINATES

29° 45.973, -095° 23.014