Frank Octavius Mancuso (1918-2007)

    Born May 23, 1918 in Houston, Texas, Frank Mancuso began playing baseball in 1937 in the minor league system of the New York Giants. After hitting .417 for Fort Smith in 1938, the Giants moved him up to their major league roster for the entire 1939 season as a third string catcher, but he did not get into a single game during the regular season. That disappointment was offset by the opportunity he had to warm up pitcher Carl Hubbell, and sharing the company of other great Giants like OF Mel Ott and manager Bill Terry. He was sent back to the minors before the 1940 season. After hitting .300 or more in three minor league seasons, Mancuso entered the U.S. Army as a paratrooper at Fort Benning, Georgia in December 1942. In 1943, he suffered a broken back and leg when his chute opened late and improperly. He almost died from his injuries and was subsequently discharged from the service for medical reasons. A part of his injury was an unfortunate condition for a catcher, where in looking straight up caused him to lose the flow of oxygen to the brain, and he would pass out. As a result, he never regained all of his mobility after the parachute jump and was never responsible for catching pop-ups. Mancuso spent the rest of his life with back and legs pains, but he worked himself back into shape and returned to baseball in 1944 as one of two catchers for the only St. Louis Browns club to ever win an American League pennant. He shared duties with Red Hayworth, hitting .205 with one home run and 24 RBI in 88 games. The Browns lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1944 World Series in six games, but Mancuso hit .667 and collected one RBI in injury-limited pinch-hitting duty. 

    His most productive season came in 1945, when he posted career-numbers in games (119), batting average (.268), RBI (38) and runs (39). In 1946 he hit .240 with a career-high three home runs in 87 games. He played his last major-league season with the Washington Senators in 1947 at the age of 29. From 1948 to 1955, Mancuso earned further respect as a catcher for top minor league clubs like Toledo and Beaumont, among others, and with the 1953 Houston Buffs, a minors club that preceded the Colt .45s & Astros. He also played winter baseball in the Venezuelan League during the 1950-51 and 1951-52 seasons. In his first season, he hit .407 with 49 RBI and also became the first player in the league to hit 10 home runs in a 42-game schedule. In a four-year major league career, Mancuso played in 337 games, accumulating 241 hits in 1,002 at bats for a .241 career batting average along with 5 home runs, 98 runs batted in and a .314 on-base percentage. He posted a ,987 fielding percentage as a catcher. In his seventeen-year minor league career, he played in 1,267 games, accumulating 1,087 hits in 3,936 at bats for a .276 career batting average along with 128 home runs. 

    After baseball retirement, Mancuso served for 30 consecutive years (1963-93) on the Houston City Council. During his political life, he gave of himself generously to the needs of the young people and to causes benefiting disadvantaged children. He also supported the creation of Lake Livingston and Lake Conroe reservoir to meet the city's long-term water needs, the construction of Houston Intercontinental Airport, and was chairmanship of a special committee that recommended the Houston Fire Department have its own ambulance service.  In the late 1990s, Harris County built the Frank Mancuso Sports Complex, a facility that reaches out to the needs of inner city kids, in his honor. His 2003 induction into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame reunited him with his older brother, Gus Mancuso (1905-1984), as the second member of the family to be inducted. Mancuso died August 4, 2007 in Pasadena, Texas at the age of 89. Source

Section 55
Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 42.903, -095° 18.129

Oliver Jones (1794-1866)

    Oliver Jones, Texas pioneer, Indian fighter, and public official, was born in New York City in 1794. He served in the War of 1812 and was taken prisoner by the British. He became so disturbed by the failure of the United States to secure release for himself and his fellow prisoners of war that after the conflict he resolved to live no longer under such a government. He made his way to Mexico City, where he met Stephen F. Austin and was persuaded to travel with him to Texas in 1822. As one of Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, Jones received title on August 10, 1824, to a league of land on Cedar Lake Creek in what is now western Brazoria County and a labor on the west bank of the Brazos River in land now part of eastern Austin County. The census of March 1826 classified Jones as a farmer and stock raiser with six servants. 

    In 1829, as a captain in the colony's militia, Jones led a company of fifty volunteers on an expedition against Waco and Tawakoni Indians from the Brazos River to the Colorado and then to the mouth of the San Saba. From 1829 to 1830 he served as alguacil, or sheriff, of Austin's colony.  By 1833 he had become a client of William B. Travis at San Felipe de Austin. As a delegate to the Convention of 1833, he advocated a separate state government for Texas within the Mexican confederation. As a representative of Texas in the legislature of Coahuila and Texas in 1834, Jones, with his colleague José Antonio Vásquez and Supreme Court judge Thomas J. Chambers, issued a public appeal for a convention at Bexar to consider the establishment of a more satisfactory government for Texas. After the Texas Revolution Jones represented Austin County in the House of the Second Congress of the Republic (1837-38), and in the Senate of the Third (1838), Fourth (1839-40), Sixth (1841-42), and Seventh (1842-43) congresses. He was chairman of the committee appointed to produce a flag and seal for the republic and also served as a delegate to the annexation convention in 1845. 

    While attending Congress in Austin in 1840, Jones became acquainted with Mrs. Rebecca Greenleaf Westover McIntyre, whom he soon married. After annexation the couple established residence at Burleigh, a plantation on the Brazos River a few miles from Bellville, where Jones became a successful cotton planter. There Anson Jones, a political ally who referred to Oliver Jones as his adopted cousin, was a frequent guest. Jones resided at Burleigh until 1859, when he purchased a home in Galveston; he remained in the Houston vicinity for most of the rest of his life. He died in Houston at the residence of Mrs. Sarah Merriweather on September 17, 1866, and was buried in the city's Episcopal and Masonic Cemetery beside his wife, who had died on Christmas Eve the previous year. The bodies of both Rebecca and Oliver Jones were reinterred in the State Cemetery at Austin in 1930. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.936, -097° 43.642

Charles Courtice Alderton (1857-1941)

    Charles Courtice Alderton was born June 21, 1857 in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of five children to English parents. Alderton attended Framlingham College in England, studied medicine at the University of Texas, and worked as a pharmacist in Waco, in a shop called "Morrison's Old Corner Drug Store", which had a soda fountain. Alderton noticed that customers were tiring of the traditional flavors of sarsaparilla, lemon and vanilla, and so to try and revive sales, began experimenting with new flavor combinations, eventually settling on a 23 ingredient mix combined with phosphoric acid to give it tang. It was first sold on December 1, 1885, and was ordered by asking the soda attendant to "shoot a Waco". Alderton gave the formula to Wade Morrison, who named it Dr. Pepper.

    It was introduced to almost 20 million people while attending the 1904 World's Fair Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri as a new kind of soda pop. Its introduction in 1885 preceded the introduction of Coca-Cola by one year. From around 1885 to 1891, the drink could only be served at fountains or the drugstore, where the syrup was mixed with the carbonated water and served individually. The popularity of the beverage influenced the drugstore owner and manager, Wade Morrison and Robert S. Lazenby to form the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Co. in 1891 to bottle the drink. In 1906, a three-story building was built at the corner of Fifth and Mary for the purpose of bottling and shipping the new drink. In 1922, the base of operations moved to Dallas after the formation of the formal Dr. Pepper Company. Local bottling production continued until around 1965, when operations were moved to a more modern facility. 

    Alderton married twice. His first wife was Lilian "Lillie" E. Walker, whom he married in October 1884. It was announced in the Galveston, Texas newspaper. They married at the residence of J. B. Walker (Lillie's father) with Methodist Rev. Mr. Young present. After Lillie died in 1916, he married Emilie Marie Coquille on December 20, 1918 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Alderton died in 1941. On May 11, 1953, an F5 tornado struck downtown Waco, devastating the city. Although it did not sustain a direct hit, the bottling building was among the casualties of the tornado. The building was repaired with a lighter colored brick but not restored, and business was back to as usual until the move in 1965. At Waco’s centennial celebration of the invention of Dr. Pepper in 1985, ideas of creating a museum to tell the story of Dr. Pepper production in Waco sprang up. On May 11, 1991, the thirty-eighth anniversary of the tornado, the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute opened. Source

Section B-1
Oakwood Cemetery
Waco

COORDINATES

31° 32.021, -097° 06.371

August Rodney "Gus" Mancuso (1905-1984)

    Gus Mancuso was an American professional baseball player, coach, scout and radio sports commentator. He played as a catcher in Major League Baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals (1928, 1930-32, 1941-42), New York Giants (1933-38, 1942-44), Chicago Cubs (1939), Brooklyn Dodgers (1940) and Philadelphia Phillies (1945). He was known for his capable handling of pitching staffs and for his on-field leadership abilities. He was a member of five National League pennant-winning teams, and played as the catcher for five pitchers who were eventually inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was regarded as one of the top defensive catchers of the 1930s.

    In 1946, Mancuso became the player-manager of the minor league Tulsa Oilers and in 1948 took over as manager of the San Antonio Missions. In 1950, he was hired as the pitching coach for the Cincinnati Reds, then began a career as a broadcaster in 1951 with his hometown Houston team in the Texas League. He later moved to St. Louis where he worked with play-by-play announcer Harry Caray on the Cardinals' radio network until 1954, when he served as a scout for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Houston Colt .45s. In 1962 Mancuso was seriously injured in a traffic accident which killed his wife, Lorena. In 1981, he was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1981 and elected to the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame in 1984. He contracted emphysema in 1984 and died at the age of 78 in Houston. Source

Section 55
Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 42.826, -095° 18.138