Maxime Allen "Max" Faget (1921-2004)

    Max Faget was born at Stam Creek, British Honduras, on August 26, 1921. His father, noted physician Dr. Guy Faget was conducting research on tropical diseases there for the British government at the time (he later developed the first successful treatment for leprosy).  Max attended San Francisco Junior College in San Francisco, California, before receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Louisiana State University in 1943. He then served as a naval officer during World War II, seeing considerable combat in the Pacific Theater as a submarine officer. In 1946, Faget went to work for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), NASA's precursor. At the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia, he designed ramjets before being assigned to the propulsion-and-performance team that helped develop the X-l5, the experimental plane that flew later flew at Mach 6 speeds.

    When NACA was transformed into the civilian space agency NASA in 1958, Maxime Faget joined the transition team and later the Space Task Group organized to manage Project Mercury.  He headed the flight systems division that designed America's first manned spacecraft, the Mercury capsule. A manned spacecraft must protect its occupant from high G forces and atmospheric friction upon re-entry; Faget successfully argued for a blunt bodied capsule because it could slow down high in the atmosphere where the friction and heat were less. As one of the 35 engineers originally assigned to the Mercury project, Faget devoted time to follow-on programs after Mercury would end, and led the initial design and analysis teams that studied the feasibility of a flight to the Moon.

    As a result of his work Faget was appointed chief engineer at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston (now the Johnson Space Center) at the start of the Apollo program in February 1962. In this role, Maxime Faget helped to design the Apollo capsule and service module for lunar landings. Due to the problems of launching the capsule as a single unit he converted the Apollo design into two parts, a command-service module that would orbit the moon and a separate lunar-landing craft. His innovation would play a key role in the success of the Apollo lunar landings. A few months before the Apollo 11 Moon landing in July 1969, Faget organized a team to study the feasibility of a reusable spacecraft.  They produced the final design of the space shuttle that lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in April 1981.

    Max Faget retired from the space agency after the second shuttle flight in November 1981. In 1982 he helped to found one of the early private space companies, Space Industries Inc. As a visiting professor, Faget taught graduate level courses at the Louisiana State University, Rice University, and the University of Houston. He wrote many technical papers on aerodynamics, rocketry, high-speed bomb ejection, reentry theory, heat transfer, and aircraft performance. He was co-author of two textbooks, Engineering Design and Operations of Spacecraft and Manned Space Flight. Faget held joint patents on the "Aerial Capsule Emergency Separation Device" (escape tower), the "Survival Couch," the "Mercury Capsule," and a "Mach Number Indicator." Among the many awards he received was the Arthur S. Fleming Award in 1960, the Golden Plate Award in 1961 (presented by the Academy of Achievement), the NASA Medal for Outstanding Leadership in 1963, and in 1965 the Award of Loyola. In 1966 the University of Pittsburgh awarded him an honorary Degree of Doctor of Engineering. Faget died at his home in Houston on October 9, 2004.

Chapel Mausoleum

Mount Olivet Cemetery

Dickinson

COORDINATES

29° 26.370, -095° 04.586

Daniel Robert Bankhead (1920-1976)

    Dan Bankhead, the first black pitcher in major league baseball, played in Negro league baseball for the Birmingham Black Barons and the Memphis Red Sox from 1940 to 1947, then played for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1947 to 1951. During World War II, he served in the Marine Corps from 1942 to 1945. After a strong career in Negro league baseball playing for the Birmingham Black Barons and Memphis Red Sox, he was signed at age 24 by Branch Rickey to play in the Brooklyn Dodgers' farm system. Bankhead, an excellent hitter who was leading the Negro League with a .385 batting average when purchased by the Dodgers, hit a home run in his first major league at bat on August 26, 1947, in Ebbets Field off Fritz Ostermueller of the Pittsburgh Pirates; he also gave up ten hits in 3 1/3 innings pitching in relief that day. He finished the season having pitched in four games for the Dodgers with an earned run average (ERA) of 7.20. He was shipped to the minor leagues for the 1948 and 1949 seasons. Pitching for clubs in Nashua, New Hampshire and St. Paul, Minnesota in 1948, he recorded 24 wins and six losses. He returned to the Dodgers for the 1950 season, appearing in 41 games, with twelve starts, and finished with nine wins, four losses and a 5.50 ERA. In 1951, his final year in the majors, he appeared in seven games, losing his only decision, with an ERA of 15.43. After he played his final major league game, Bankhead spent time in the Mexican League, playing with various teams through 1966. He died of cancer at a Veterans Administration hospital in Houston on May 2, 1976.

Section B
Houston National Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 55.733, -095° 27.066

Ben Thompson (1843-1884)

    Ben Thompson, gunfighter and lawman, was born in Knottingley, Yorkshire, England on November 2, 1843, the child of William and Mary Ann (Baker) Thompson. His family emigrated to Austin, Texas, in the spring of 1851. He initially worked as a printer for various Austin newspapers. At age fifteen he wounded another boy during an argument about his shooting abilities. In 1859 Thompson traveled to New Orleans to work for a bookbinder and intervened on behalf of a woman being abused by a Frenchman. He reputedly killed the offender in a subsequent knife fight. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted on June 16, 1861, in Col. John (Rip) Ford's Second Texas Cavalry regiment. He participated in two actions, the battle of Galveston Bay, where he was wounded, and the Confederate defeat at La Fourche Crossing, Louisiana. On November 26, 1863, he married Catherine L. Moore, the daughter of a prominent Austin merchant, Martin Moore. After his marriage he returned to the army and served till the end of the war. In May 1865 Thompson fatally shot a teamster in Austin after the man pulled out a shotgun during an argument over an army mule. Later arrested by federal soldiers, Thompson broke jail and left the state to join Emperor Maximilian's forces in Mexico. Fighting until the fall of the empire in June 1867, Thompson received several promotions for gallantry in action. He then returned to Texas and slightly wounded his brother-in-law, Jim Moore, who was abusing his pregnant sister, Thompson's wife. Thompson was sentenced on October 20, 1868, to four years' hard labor and sent to the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, where he was held for two years until his conviction by a military tribunal was deemed illegal and he was pardoned by President U. S. Grant. 

    After his release, he left Texas for Abilene, Kansas, undoubtedly hoping to change his fortunes. In 1871 he opened the Bull's Head Saloon with his Civil War friend, Philip H. Coe. The pair ran the drinking and gambling establishment while Abilene prospered as a railhead for the cattle drives originating in Texas. Thompson was involved in a buggy accident in Kansas City which also injured his son and his wife, who had her arm amputated. While Thompson was recovering, his partner Coe was killed in a shootout with Abilene marshal "Wild Bill" Hickok. In the summer of 1873 Thompson was working as a house gambler in an Ellsworth, Kansas, saloon with his younger brother Billy. On August 15, during a drunken altercation with other gamblers, Billy shot and killed Ellsworth sheriff Chauncey B. Whitney, a friend of the Thompson brothers. Billy Thompson fled Kansas and avoided authorities until 1876, when he was returned to Ellsworth, stood trial, and was acquitted. The jury ruled that the shooting was an accident. Aside from a visit to Kansas in the spring of 1874, Ben Thompson made his living as a gambler in various Texas cities between 1874 and 1879. On December 25, 1876, Thompson was at Austin's Capital Theatre with several friends when a fight erupted. When Thompson tried to intervene on behalf of one of the troublemakers, theater owner Mark Wilson emerged with a shotgun. In the ensuing fracas, Wilson fired at Thompson and was killed by three fast return shots. Thompson was found to have fired in self-defense. 

    The Leadville, Colorado, silver strike lured Thomson to visit Colorado several times during the spring and summer of 1879. There he joined a group of Kansas gunmen led by Bartholomew (Bat) Masterson who were hired by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in a right-of-way dispute with the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. Well paid by the Santa Fe for his services as a hired gun, Thompson returned to Austin and opened a gambling hall above the Iron Front Saloon on Congress Avenue. According to Lafayette Rogers, a local patron of the Iron Front, "Ben...never run a crooked game in his house." Thompson's acknowledged honesty, loyalty, generosity, and prowess with a revolver impressed the citizens of Austin enough that they twice elected him city marshal. First winning office in December 1880, he proved to be an excellent officer, some claiming that he was the finest marshal that Austin had known up to that time, and was re-elected in November of the following year. In July 1882, while still serving as marshal, Thompson quarreled over a card game in a saloon in San Antonio, where he killed the prominent sportsman and owner of the Vaudeville Theatre, Jack Harris. He was indicted for the murder and resigned as marshal. After a sensational trial and acquittal, he returned to Austin to a hero's welcome and resumed his life as a professional gambler. On the evening of March 11, 1884, Thompson brashly returned to the Vaudeville Theatre with his notorious friend John King Fisher, deputy sheriff of Uvalde County. Word of their arrival in San Antonio preceded them. Within minutes of stepping into the Vaudeville the two were shot and killed from behind. Many believed that Harris's friends and partners, Joe Foster and William Simms, arranged the assassination. Thompson was survived by his wife, Catherine, and two children, Ben and Katy. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery. Austin newspaper editors engaged those of San Antonio in a free-wheeling, nasty debate after a coroner's jury in San Antonio ruled the killing self-defense and no one was ever charged with the murders. Source

Section 1

Oakwood Cemetery

Austin

COORDINATES

30° 16.552, -097° 43.631

Samuel Paschall (1815-1874)

    Samuel Paschall, San Jacinto veteran, was born in Tuscumbia, Franklin, Tennessee on December 8, 1815. In 1835 he emigrated to Little Rock, Arkansas. On January 28, 1836, he arrived at Velasco on the schooner Pennsylvania, having been recruited for the regular army of Texas by Captain Amasa Turner in New Orleans. He served in the army from February 13, 1836 to June 30, 1837 and was in Captain Turner's Company at San Jacinto. He afterward settled at Houston and engaged in his vocation of cabinet maker and carpenter. He married Bridget O'Reilly on September 21, 1839. On April 21, 1860, Paschall was named among the vice presidents of a convention held on the San Jacinto Battlefield, endorsing Sam Houston for President of the United States as "the peoples candidate". He died June 6, 1874 and buried in Saint Vincent's Cemetery.

St. Vincent's Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 45.549, -095° 20.644

Milford Phillips Norton (1794-1860)

    Milford Phillips Norton, lawyer, publisher, judge, and civic leader, the son of Peter and Aseneth (Blossom) Norton, was born in 1794 at Readfield, Maine. He was admitted to the bar and practiced at Bangor and Readfield. In 1830-31 he was state land agent; in 1838 he served in the Maine legislature and was on the commission to locate the northeast boundary of the state; he was a member of the state Senate in 1839. Norton was married first to Sarah Ann Gilman and after her death to Mary Stevens Russell. After financial reverses due to suretyship, Norton moved to Texas in early 1839 to look after his father-in-law's lands. He decided to remain in the republic permanently and sent for his family. He formed a law partnership with Alexander H. Phillips and practiced at Galveston until December 26, 1840, when the firm's business required his removal to Black Point in Refugio County, where a client, Joseph F. Smith, was planning the townsite of Saint Mary's. The Norton family resided at Black Point until September 1841, when they moved to Montgomery County, where Norton practiced at Bayou City. Norton was appointed postmaster of Houston and moved there to assume his duties on January 8, 1844. At the same time he bought the Civilian, which he renamed the Democrat and turned into an Anson Jones-for-president and annexation organ. 

    Shortly after Jones's election President Sam Houston appointed Norton judge of the Sixth Judicial District. He assumed office on September 8, 1844, but the validity of the recess appointment was challenged. Norton considered the argument well-taken and resigned but was elected by Congress at the next session. He was chairman of the Convention of 1845. After annexation he requested of Governor J. P. Henderson a transfer to the Western District of Texas. The governor acceded, the nomination was confirmed on April 14, 1846, and the Nortons moved to Corpus Christi. At the end of his term Judge Norton and his family moved to Refugio County, where his son, Henry D. Norton, had established a store at Copano. Norton practiced law at Copano until Henry L. Kinney, who was arranging to embark on his filibustering expedition against Nicaragua, employed him to return to Corpus Christi and manage the Kinney business. When Judge James Webb died in November 1856, Norton accepted appointment as judge of the Fourteenth District but continued to manage Kinney's affairs until 1858. Norton was an outstanding civic leader and prominent Mason. He died at San Antonio on June 8, 1860. Source 

City Cemetery #5
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.279, -098° 27.947