Bronko Lubich (1925-2007)

    Lubich was born Branko Sandor Lupsity in Batonja, Hungary on December 25, 1925. His father moved to Canada in 1926 and was eventually able to save enough money to bring his family over by boat to Montreal where they settled in December 1937. During his teenage years, he began working out with his friends at the local YMCA and took up amateur wrestling. He excelled in the sport and was selected to represent Canada in the 1948 Olympic Games, but he did not compete, having broken his arm while in another competition prior to the Olympics. Although choosing to continue his amateur career, he also started work at an aircraft factory shortly after to support his family. It was while working out at the Montreal YMCA that he met local wrestlers Harry Madison and Mike DiMitre who suggested a career in professional wrestling. He was initially trained by DiMitre and made his professional debut in 1948. At 6-foot, 175 pounds, he spent his early career as a lightweight wrestler under the name Bronko Lubich and began teaming with Angelo Poffo by the late 1950s. In 1959, during a match between Poffo and Wilbur Snyder in Detroit, the referee was knocked unconscious. When Snyder attempted a pinfall, Lubich entered the ring and knocked out Snyder with his cane and revived the referee in time for Poffo to score a pinfall instead. This was the first time a manager had directly interfered in a wrestling match and, at the time, was one of the biggest televised angles. A rematch between Poffo and Snyder at the Olympia Stadium was attended by 16,226 people.

    In 1961, Lubich made his debut in the Dallas area as the manager of Angelo Poffo. For three years, the pair would become one of the most hated "heels" in the territory. On a number of occasions, his interference saved Poffo from losing the NWA United States Heavyweight Championship. He and Poffo also held the WCWA Texas Tag Team Championship defeating Pepper Gomez and Dory Dixon in Houston, Texas on May 12, 1961. They held the titles for a month before losing them back to Gomez and Dixon on June 1. He and Poffo left the territory undefeated in 1964, Lubich moved on to Mid-Atlantic territory where he would remain for the majority of his career. It was during this time that he was teamed with Aldo Bogni, in part due to the advice of promoter Jim Crockett, Sr., with their in-ring personas portraying hostile foreign wrestlers. They were joined by manager "Colonel" Homer O'Dell, and later George "Two Ton" Harris, who quickly became one of the top "heel" tag teams in the territory. O'Dell reportedly carried a revolver and sometimes fired it behind the arena to scare off fans who sometimes waited for them outside after the event. He and Bogni were later "sold" to Harris who participated in 6-man tag team matches with them.

    Lubich would continue teaming with Bogni in the Carolinas, Florida and Stampede Wrestling up until the early 1970s. They faced many of the top stars of the era including the Flying Scotts, George Becker and Johnny Weaver, Rip Hawk and Swede Hanson, Lars and Ole Anderson and Mr. Wrestling and Sam Steamboat. He would also win the NWA Southern Tag Team Championship with Bogni defeating Eddie Graham and Lester Welch for the belts in West Palm Beach, Florida on March 11, 1968 before losing the titles to Jose Lothario and Joe Scarpa the next month. During the last two years of his wrestling career, he formed a tag team with Chris Markoff with whom he later won the NWA Florida Tag Team Championship from Ciclon Negro and Sam Steamboat in Tampa on October 25, 1969. They lost the titles to the Missouri Mauler and Dale Lewis on March 14, 1970 after a four-and-a-half month reign. In January 1971, he returned to the Dallas-Fort Worth area in what would be his last year as a wrestler. Joined by manager George "The Blimp" Harris III, he and Markoff feuded with longtime rivals Mr. Wrestling and George Scott as well as Johnny Valentine and Wahoo McDaniel, the latter team being considered one of the great "dream teams" of the era. He and Markoff were later approached by photographer Geoff Winningham to participate in a photo shoot for Life during a wrestling event in Houston.

    Lubich and Markoff won the NWA Big Time Wrestling Tag Team Championship twice before his retirement in 1972 to become a full-time manager. He managed many of the top "heels" in the area including Bobby Duncum, Sr., The Spoiler and Boris Malenko with his men frequently battling "Playboy" Gary Hart and his stable throughout the rest of the decade. When Fritz Von Erich began promoting Southwest Sports, Jim Crockett, Sr. recommended Lubich to help go into business with von Erich. He also began refereeing for the promotion and, in 1973, refereed the NWA World Heavyweight Championship match between Jack Brisco and Harley Race in Houston. He would go on to referee matches in The Sportatorium, the North Side and Will Rogers Coliseum in Fort Worth as well as weekly appearances at venues in San Antonio, Corpus Christi and Houston. Both he and Poffo had been involved in investing stocks and bonds with Merrill Lynch early in their careers and Lubich later advised other wrestlers on investing in the stock market and other financial concerns. After Kevin Von Erich decided to close WCCW in late 1990, Lubich retired from full-time professional wrestling, he refereed occasionally for Global Wrestling Federation. Although he and his wife had planned to travel following his retirement, both he and his wife, Radmila suffered from poor health. She was diagnosed with cancer in 1997 and died in 2004. Lubich as well had prostate cancer and suffered several strokes resulting in difficulty speaking. He died at his home on August 11, 2007. Source

Court of Reflections
Restland Memorial Park
Dallas

COORDINATES

32° 55.287, -096° 44.614

David McCormick (1793-1836)

    David McCormick, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, the son of Andrew and Catherine (Adams) McCormick, was born in 1793. He moved to Texas from Hempstead County, Arkansas, in 1821. His wife and two children died in Arkansas while he was in Texas selecting land. On December 20, 1823, he voted in the election that chose Sylvanus Castleman alcalde for 1824. McCormick was among those who contributed a total of 630 bushels of corn in 1823 to pay the expenses of Erasmo Seguín, who was serving as Texas representative to the Mexican congress. He received title to a league of land in what is now Brazoria County on July 21, 1824, and voted in deputy and alcalde elections in April and December 1824. The census of 1826 classified him as a farmer and stock raiser, aged between forty and fifty, a widower with one slave. In 1831 his nephew Joseph Manson McCormick came to live with him. David McCormick died on May 10, 1836. He was buried near his home, but the body was later moved to West Columbia. In 1838 his heirs received a headright of one labor of land. Source


Columbia Cemetery
West Columbia

COORDINATES

29° 08.427, -095° 38.862

Joanna Elizabeth Troutman Pope Vinson (1818-1879)

    Joanna Troutman, designer of an early Texas Lone Star flag, was born on February 19, 1818, in Baldwin County, Georgia, the daughter of Hiram Bainbridge Troutman. In 1835, in response to an appeal for aid to the Texas cause, the Georgia Battalion, commanded by Col. William Ward, traveled to Texas. Joanna Troutman designed and made a flag of white silk, bearing a blue, five-pointed star and two inscriptions: Liberty or Death on the obverse and, in Latin, UBI LIBERTAS HABITAT, IBI NOSTRA PATRIA EST (Where Liberty dwells, there is our fatherland) on the reverse. She presented the flag to the battalion, and it was unfurled at Velasco on January 8, 1836, above the American Hotel. It was carried to Goliad, where James W. Fannin, Jr., raised it as the national flag when he heard of the Texas Declaration of Independence. The flag was accidentally torn to shreds, however, and only its remnants flew above the battle. 

    Joanna Troutman married Solomon L. Pope in 1839, and the couple moved to Elmwood, their prosperous plantation near Knoxville, Georgia, in 1840. They had four sons. Her husband died in 1872, and Joanna married W. G. Vinson, a Georgia state legislator, in 1875. She died on July 23, 1879, at Elmwood and was buried next to her first husband. In 1913 Texas governor Oscar B. Colquitt secured permission to have her remains taken to Texas for interment in the State Cemetery in Austin. A bronze statue by Pompeo Coppini was erected there as a monument to her memory, and her portrait hangs in the state Capitol. Source 

Republic Hill 

Texas State Cemetery 

Austin

COORDINATES 

30° 15.906, -097° 43.603

Charles "Chargin' Charlie" Beckwith (1929-1994)

    Charles Beckwith was born in Atlanta, Georgia January 22, 1929. An all-state football player for his high school team, he later enrolled in the University of Georgia, where he was a member of the Delta Chapter of the Sigma Chi Fraternity, and ROTC. Beckwith lettered in football for the Bulldogs, and was approached by the Green Bay Packers for the 1950-51 NFL draft, but turned it down in favor of a military career. He enlisted and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1952. After the Korean War, 2LT Beckwith served as platoon leader with Charlie Company, 17th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division in the Republic of Korea. In 1955, he was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division as the commander of the combat support company of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Two years later, after also having completed Ranger School, Beckwith joined Special Forces, and in 1960 was deployed to South Vietnam and Laos as a military advisor. He served as an exchange officer with the British Special Air Service in 1962 where he picked up many of their capabilities. He conducted war-time guerrilla operations with the SAS during the Malayan Emergency. In the jungle, he contracted leptospirosis so severe doctors expected him not to survive, but he made a full recovery within months.

    Upon his return from England, he presented a detailed report outlining the Army's vulnerability in not having an SAS-type unit. For several years, Beckwith submitted and re-submitted the report to Army brass, only to be repeatedly thwarted in his efforts. SF leadership at the time thought that they had enough on their hands and did not need the trouble of creating a new unit. Meanwhile, as the 7th Special Forces Group's operations officer, Beckwith went to work revolutionizing Green Beret training. SF at the time focused on unconventional warfare, and especially foreign internal defense: i.e. training indigenous personnel in resistance activities. Beckwith restructured 7th's training, basically rewriting the book on American special ops training from the real-world lessons he had learned with the SAS. Beckwith also had learned that a symbol of excellence like a beret had to be earned. Officers were being assigned to Special Forces straight out of war college with no prior special ops experience and were given their Green Beret on arrival. The hard-nosed and practical training standards that Beckwith instituted would lend themselves to the birth of the modern Q-Course. In Vietnam, Beckwith commanded a Special Forces unit code-named Project DELTA. He was critically wounded in early 1966 (he took a .50 caliber bullet through his abdomen). It was so bad that medical personnel triaged him as beyond help for the second time in his military career. This time, again, Beckwith made a full recovery and went on to overhaul the Florida Phase of the US Army's Ranger School. Beckwith transformed this phase from a scripted exercise based upon the Army's World War II experience, into a Vietnam-oriented jungle training regimen.

    In 1968, LTC Beckwith returned to Vietnam, taking command of the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry (Airborne), 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. For the nine months that he commanded the 2/327, they saw many successes in combat operations, including: Huế, Operation Mingo, Operation Jeb Stuart, Operation Nevada Eagle, and Somerset Plain. The toughest job the battalion had was clearing a seven kilometer stretch along Route 547, eventually defeating the determined NVA defenders so that Fire Support Base Bastogne could be established. From 1973 to 1974, LTC Beckwith served as Commander, Control Team "B" with the Joint Casualty Resolution Center located at RTAFB Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, and promoted to Colonel. Under the Command of BG Robert C. Kingston, JCRC's sole mission was to assist the Secretaries of the Armed Services to resolve the fate of servicemen still missing and unaccounted for as a result of the hostilities throughout Indochina. JCRC had a predominantly operational role - the carrying out of field search, excavation, recovery, and repatriation activities. Afterward COL Beckwith was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina where he commanded training operations. Although Beckwith had presented proposals throughout the 1960s for a superbly elite, highly autonomous direct-action unit, the idea had sat on the shelf for a decade. Finally, in the mid-'70s, as the threat of international terrorism became imminent, Beckwith was appointed to form his unit. Delta Force was then established on November 17, 1977, by Beckwith and Colonel Thomas M. Henry, as a counter-terrorism unit based on the model of the British Special Air Service, but with a greater focus on hostage rescue in addition to covert operations and specialized reconnaissance. It was the first unit of its type designed specifically to react to international hostage events such as the airplane hijackings which were a common occurrence of the era. Delta Force's first mission, Operation Eagle Claw, was the assault on the captured American embassy in Teheran, Iran early in 1980. The mission was aborted due to helicopter failures during a sandstorm and a subsequent crash which led to several deaths. After this, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment was formed to provide transport for Delta Force and other special operations units. JSOC was also formed, directly based on Beckwith's recommendations during Senate investigations into the mission's failure. Following his disappointment at the failure of the Iranian operation, Beckwith retired from the Army. He started a consulting firm and wrote a book about Delta Force. On June 13, 1994, he died at his home of natural causes. His remains are interred at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.
Section 9
Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 28.632, -098° 25.513

Jacob Littleton Standifer (1818-1902)

    Jacob Standifer was born September 11, 1818 in Union County, Illinois, the third son of Anderson and Elizabeth Standifer. After his father died unexpectedly, Jacob and the rest of his family migrated to Texas in 1829. Later that year, Jacob was given a land grant in Bastrop County (then Mina Municipality) and the family settled there. In 1836, at seventeen years old, Jacob, and his brothers William and James, enlisted in the Texas militia. The brothers were assigned to Jesse Billingsley's Company of Volunteers and marched eastwards towards Harrisburg. On April 21, 1836, after the Texian soldiers discovered they were mere a few hundred yards away from the Mexican soldiers, and their leader, Santa Ana, the call to battle was given. It only took twenty minutes for them to completely turn the Mexicans, either killing them or holding them as prisoners of war. The Battle of San Jacinto ended the revolution, and once Santa Ana was found hiding in tall grass a few days later, he was forced to sign an official document recognizing Texas as a separate, independent nation. The brothers returned home. Jacob married Maria Eggleston Millican sometime before 1849 and had four sons. When she died, Jacob married Martha Childs, on June 27, 1872. He died on January 7, 1902 at his home at the age of eighty-three of unknown causes and buried in the town cemetery, where he lies today

Elgin City Cemetery
Elgin

COORDINATES

30° 20.885, -097° 22.678