George W. Smith (1848-1874)

    George W. Smith, Indian Campaigns Medal of Honor recipient, was born in 1848 at Greenfield, New York and enlisted with Company M, 6 US Cavalry, sometime in the early 1870s. On September 12, 1874, the third day of a siege in which a force of more than 100 Indians surrounded and attacked the Lyman Supply Train at the Upper Washita River in Texas, General Nelson Miles sent a detachment of three soldiers and two civilian scouts under Sergeant Zachariah Woodall to deliver a dispatch to Camp Supply. En route the six men were attacked along the Washita River by 125 Indians. Private Smith was one of four men immediately wounded. Throughout the day the four soldiers and two civilian scouts, after taking shelter in a ravine, continued a valiant resistance while defending their wounded. A band of twenty-five Indians succeeded in scattering the detachment's horses and the men fell back to a small knoll where throughout the day they were attacked from all directions. Without water, the men resisted and were down to 200 rounds of ammunition when night fell. Private Smith died of his wounds the following day, at which time the survivors were recovered by a relief force. His body was never recovered from the battlefield, so a marker in his memory was placed in San Antonio National Cemetery.

CITATION

While carrying dispatches was attacked by 125 hostile Indians, whom he and his comrades fought throughout the day. Pvt. Smith was mortally wounded during the engagement and died early the next day.

Section MA
San Antonio National Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.277, -098° 28.022

James Lincoln de la Mothe Borglum (1912-1986)

    Lincoln Borglum, named after his father's favorite president and called by his middle name, was the first child of Gutzon Borglum and his second wife, Mary Montgomery Williams. During his youth, Lincoln accompanied his father to the Black Hills of South Dakota and was present when the site for the Mt. Rushmore monument was selected. Although he had originally planned to study engineering at the University of Virginia, Lincoln began work on the monument in 1933 at the age of 21 as an unpaid pointer. He quickly moved into a series of more important jobs: he was put on the payroll in 1934, promoted to assistant sculptor in 1937, and promoted to superintendent in 1938 with an annual salary of $4,800. Gutzon Borglum had nearly completed the 60-foot heads of the four presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and T. Roosevelt) when he died on March 6, 1941.

    Lincoln had to abandon his father's ambitious plans to carry the work down to include the torsos of the presidents and an entablature due to a lack of funding; he left the monument largely in the state of completion it had reached under his father's direction. He was appointed Mount Rushmore National Memorial's first superintendent and served from October 1, 1941 until May 15, 1944. Borglum continued to work as a sculptor after leaving Mt. Rushmore. He created several religious works for churches in Texas including the well-known shrine Our Lady of Loreto in Goliad. He also wrote three books, My Father's Mountain (1965), Borglum's Unfinished Dream (1976) and Mount Rushmore: The Story Behind the Scenery (1977), all about the sculpting of Mount Rushmore. Like many of the men who worked on the Rushmore project, Borglum's lungs were permanently scarred from breathing in granite dust associated with the blasting. He died in Corpus Christi, Texas on January 27, 1986 at the age of 73.


City Cemetery #1
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.206, -098° 28.406

Henry Stevenson Brown (1793-1834)

    Henry Brown, early settler, trader, and Indian fighter, was born in Madison County, Kentucky, on March 8, 1793, the son of Caleb and Jemima (Stevenson) Brown. In 1810 he moved to St. Charles County, Missouri, where he was later sheriff. He volunteered for the War of 1812 and participated in the battle at Fort Clark, Illinois, in 1813. He married Mrs. Margaret Kerr Jones about 1814, moved to Pike County, Missouri, in 1819, and carried on trading via flatboat between Missouri and New Orleans. In December 1824, accompanied by his brother John (Waco) Brown, he landed at the mouth of the Brazos River equipped to trade with the Mexicans and Indians. In 1825 he was in command of a party of settlers that attacked and destroyed a band of Waco Indians at the site of present Waco. Brown was in Green DeWitt's colony in 1825 and in 1829 was in command of a company from Gonzales on a thirty-two-day campaign against the Indians. From 1826 to 1832 he engaged in the Mexican trade from headquarters in Brazoria, Gonzales, and San Antonio. At the time of the Anahuac Disturbances of 1832, Brown carried the information on the Turtle Bayou Resolutions from Gonzales to the Neches and Sabine River settlements and under John Austin commanded a company of eighty men in the battle of Velasco. He was a delegate from Gonzales to the Convention of 1832 at San Felipe de Austin and in 1833 was a member of the ayuntamiento of Brazoria. He died in Columbia on July 26, 1834. Brown County was named for him. Source

Columbia Cemetery

West Columbia

COORDINATES

29° 08.388, -095° 38.844

Douglas Reagan Ault (1950-2004)

    A native of Beaumont, Texas, Ault was a varsity baseball star at Texas Tech. He was drafted three different times in the MLB Draft, but refused to sign. He was finally signed by the hometown Rangers in 1973 as an amateur free agent. He advanced relatively quickly though the Minor League hierarchy, making the Majors in 1976 as a late season replacement. With the Rangers already having Mike Hargrove at first base, Ault became available in the 1976 Major League Baseball expansion draft where he was drafted by the Blue Jays. He became the starting first baseman in their first ever MLB game, and his actions that day turned Ault into the Blue Jays first superstar. He couldn't exceed the expectations given to him, and had an otherwise average career as a result and was out of the Majors within three years. He managed in the Minor Leagues for several years, leading the Syracuse Chiefs to a pennant in 1985. He retired in 1994, and went to the automobile business, but a series of personal tragedies and business failures plagued him in later life. Due to these setbacks, Ault committed suicide on December 22, 2004. Source

Garden of Seasons
Forest Lawn Memorial Park
Beaumont

COORDINATES

30° 07.799, -094° 05.831

Sterling Clack Robertson (1785-1842)

    Sterling C. Robertson, the empresario of Robertson's colony in Texas, was born on October 2, 1785, in Nashville, Tennessee, a son of Elijah and Sarah (Maclin) Robertson. He was given a liberal education under the direction of Judge John McNairy. From November 13, 1814, to May 13, 1815, he served as deputy quartermaster general under Maj. Gen. William Carroll, who went down to fight the British in the battle of New Orleans. After the battle Robertson purchased supplies and equipment for the sick and wounded on their return to Nashville over the Natchez Trace. By 1816 he was living in Giles County, Tennessee, where he owned a plantation. He had two sons: James Maclin Robertson with Rachael Smith, and Elijah Sterling Clack Robertson with Frances King. On March 2, 1822, he was one of the seventy stockholders of the Texas Association who signed a memorial to the Mexican government, asking for permission to settle in Texas. On November 21, 1825, he was one of thirty-two members of Dr. Felix Robertson's party that set out from Nashville, Tennessee, bound for Texas, to explore and survey Robert Leftwich's grant. Robertson remained in Texas until August 1826, when he returned to Tennessee, filled with enthusiasm for the colonization of Texas. He toured Tennessee and Kentucky in an attempt to recruit settlers.

    In the spring of 1830 he signed a subcontract with the Texas Association to introduce 200 families, and on May 9, 1830, he took in Alexander Thomson as his partner. They brought families to Texas, but they were prevented from settling in the colony because of the Law of April 6, 1830. In 1831 that area was transferred to Stephen F. Austin and Samuel May Williams, but Robertson obtained a contract in his own name in 1834 and served as empresario of Robertson's colony in 1834 and 1835. On January 17, 1836, he became captain of a company of Texas Rangers. Then he was elected as a delegate from the Municipality of Milam to the convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos (March 1-17, 1836), where he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Republic of Texas. He was stationed at Harrisburg to guard army equipment during the battle of San Jacinto. Robertson served as senator from the District of Milam in the First and Second congresses of the Republic of Texas (October 3, 1836-May 24, 1838), after which he retired to his home in Robertson County, where he became the earliest known breeder of Arabian horses in Texas. He died there on March 4, 1842. His remains were removed to Austin and reinterred in the State Cemetery on December 29, 1935. Robertson was responsible for settling more than 600 families in Texas. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.914, -097° 43.630

George Washington Teel (1784-1856)

    George W. Teel (Teal), member of the Old Three Hundred, was born in Maryland on May 4, 1784, and was married in Missouri in 1823 to his second wife, Rebecca Johnson. He entered into Texas with the Stephen F. Austin colony in 1824, and on August 3, 1824, received title to a Spanish sitio of land in what is now Fort Bend County. After making some improvements to the land he transferred his title to Michael Turner. By December 22, 1824, Teel was in San Felipe, where he participated in the alcalde election, and by the fall of 1828 he was in the Ayish Bayou District, where he settled six miles west of what is now San Augustine. Sometime in the late 1820s he established a cotton gin in the vicinity of San Augustine. Teel fought in the battle of Nacogdoches, August 1-3, 1832, and was enrolled in Capt. William Kimbrough's company in the summer of 1836. Teel became a successful farmer and landowner. He took an active part in the early Methodist movement in the newly formed San Augustine Municipality. The noted Stevensons, preachers of the Louisiana circuit, held a meeting in Teel's home in 1835. He was selected as one of the fifteen trustees to form the board of the University of San Augustine. George Teel died on August 20, 1856, and his wife Rebecca died on August 10, 1866. They were buried in the family cemetery near their homesite. George Teel's will was probated in San Augustine County. In the early 1990s all that remained of the Teel family cemetery was parts of five broken monuments piled under a nearby tree. Source


Teel Family Burying Ground
San Augustine

COORDINATES

31° 32.243, -094° 12.873

Harry Henry Choates (1922-1951)

    Harry Choates, Cajun musician, was born in either Rayne or New Iberia, Louisiana, on December 26, 1922. He moved with his mother, Tave Manard, to Port Arthur, Texas, during the 1930s. Choates apparently received little formal education and spent much of his childhood in local bars, where he listened to jukebox music. By the time he reached the age of twelve he had learned to play a fiddle and performed for tips in Port Arthur barbershops. As early as 1940 he was playing in Cajun music bands for such entertainers as Leo Soileau and Leroy "Happy Fats" LeBlanc. Choates, who also played accordion, standard guitar, and steel guitar, preferred to play on borrowed instruments and may never have owned a musical instrument of his own.

    Around 1946 he organized a band that he called the Melody Boys. Perhaps in honor of his daughter, Linda, he rewrote an old Cajun waltz, Jolie Blonde (Pretty Blonde). He recorded the song in Houston in 1946 for the Gold Star label, owned by Bill Quinn, who mistakenly spelled the title Jole Blon. Jole Blon became a favorite in the field of country music and a standard number in Texas and Louisiana clubs and dance halls. It marked Gold Star's first national success and the only Cajun song to reach Billboard's Top 5 in any category. A year after Choates's recording, Moon Mullican, a Texas-born singer and piano player, made an even bigger hit with the song. Jole Blon, which Choates performed in the key of A instead of the traditional G, featured slurred fiddle notes and has been sung with both Cajun French and English romantic lyrics as well as nonsense lyrics with references to the "dirty rice" and "filé gumbo" of Cajun cuisine. Choates, who suffered from chronic alcoholism, sold Jole Blon for $100 and a bottle of whiskey. He and his Melody Boys recorded more than forty songs for Gold Star in 1946 and 1947, including Basile Waltz, Allans a Lafayette, Lawtell Waltz, Bayou Pon Pon, and Poor Hobo, but none of those records earned Choates the success he achieved with Jole Blon. He also recorded for the Mary, DeLuxe, D, O.T., Allied, Cajun Classics, and Humming Bird labels during his brief career. Choates remained popular fare on Cajun French radio stations in Jennings, Crowley, and Ville Platte, Louisiana. Choates, who could sing in French or English, became famous for his "Eh...ha, ha!" and "aaiee" vocal cries. A real crowd pleaser, he frequently played his amplified fiddle while dancing on the floor with his audience and stood on tiptoe while reaching for high notes. He merged traditional French Cajun music with the western swing music pioneered by such musicians as Bob Wills. He played jazz and blues as well as country music, including instrumental tunes like Rubber Dolly, Louisiana Boogie, Draggin the Bow</, and Harry Choates Blues. As songwriter, instrumentalist, singer, and bandleader he raised Cajun music to national prominence. One observer has characterized Choates as "a Cajun Janis Joplin." Like her, he achieved a great deal of notoriety for his raucous lifestyle. Often performing while intoxicated and oblivious of his personal appearance, he wore a formerly white hat which, according to one of his band members, "looked like a hundred horses had stomped on it and then it had been stuck in a grease barrel."

    Choates was virtually illiterate and incurred the ire of musicians' union locals for ignoring contracts. Consequently, after the union in San Antonio blacklisted him and forced a cancellation of his bookings, his band broke up. By 1951 Choates had moved to Austin where he appeared with Jessie James and His Gang, a band at radio station KTBC. His estranged wife, Helen (Daenen), whom he had married in 1945, filed charges against Choates for failing to make support payments of twenty dollars a week for his son and daughter. Authorities in Austin jailed him pursuant to an order from a Jefferson County judge who found Choates in contempt of court. After three days in jail, Choates, unable to obtain liquor and completely delirious, beat his head against the cell bars, fell into a coma, and died, on July 17, 1951, at the age of twenty-eight. Although some of his fans believe his jailers may have killed him while attempting to calm him, Travis County health officer Dr. H. M. Williams determined that liver and kidney ailments caused his death. The James band played a benefit to raise money for Choates' casket. His grave was left unmarked until 1980, when there was a surge of interest in him. Beaumont disk jockey Gordon Baxter secured funds to bury him in Calvary Cemetery, a Catholic cemetery in Port Arthur. Baxter and music historian Tim Knight of Groves raised money in 1979 and 1980 to purchase a granite grave marker with the inscription in Cajun French and English: "Parrain de la Musique Cajun" - "The Godfather of Cajun Music." His recordings have been preserved on Jole Blon, an album by D Records of Houston that contains the Gold Star issues, and The Fiddle King of Cajun Swing, a compilation of Choates's works released by Arhoolie Records of El Cerrito, California, in 1982. Rufus Thibodeaux, a well-known Cajun fiddler, recorded an album entitled A Tribute to Harry Choates in the mid-1960s on the Tribute label. In 1997 Choates was inducted into the Cajun French Music Association Hall of Fame. He is also honored as a music legend in the Museum of the Gulf Coast's Music Hall of Fame in Port Arthur. A Texas Historical Marker was dedicated in his honor at Calvary Cemetery in 2007. Source

Calvary Cemetery
Port Arthur

COORDINATES

29° 54.817, -093° 55.649

David Koresh (1959-1993)

    David Koresh was born Vernon Wayne Howell to an unwed teenage mother named Bonnie Clark, on August 17, 1959, in Houston, Texas. Initially raised by his grandparents in the Dallas suburb of Garland, the young Koresh attended the Church of Seventh Day Adventists. In his senior year, Koresh dropped out of Garland High School to take a carpentry job. While in his early 20s, he spent a short time in Los Angeles trying to make it as a rock star. When he returned to Houston, the Seventh Day Adventists kicked him out of the church. In 1981, Koresh moved to Waco, Texas, and joined the Branch Davidians on their Mount Carmel compound. Koresh then had an affair with the sect's much older prophetess, Lois Roden. In 1984, he married a teenaged Branch Davidian named Rachel Jones, with whom he would have a son and two daughters. When Roden passed away, Koresh's and Roden's son, George, argued about who would take over the Branch Davidians. Koresh left the sect with his followers and lived in eastern Texas for a while. In 1987, he and a handful of his devotees returned to Mount Carmel heavily armed, and shot Roden. Roden survived. Koresh and his crew were tried for attempted murder, but were acquitted.

    In 1990, he legally changed his name from Howell to Koresh (after the Persian king) and became the Branch Davidians' leader. Koresh's teachings included the practice of "spiritual weddings" which enabled him to bed God-chosen female followers of all ages. Koresh had a dozen children with members other than his legal wife. As leader of the Branch Davidians, Koresh claimed he had cracked the code of the Seven Seals in the Book of Revelation, which predicted events leading to the apocalypse. He told his followers that the lord willed the Davidians to build an "Army of God." As a result, they started stockpiling weapons. On February 28, 1993, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided the compound. A four-hour gunfight left six of Koresh's followers and four BATF agents dead. Believing he and the Davidians had opened the fifth seal of revelation, Koresh claimed it was time to kill God's faithful. The result was a 51-day stand-off between Koresh and federal agents, in the latter's attempt to free his hostages. On April 19, 1993, Koresh died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, after the Federal Bureau of Investigations launched a tank and tear gas assault on Mount Carmel. Source

Last Supper Section
Memorial Park Cemetery
Tyler

COORDINATES 

32° 21.243, -095° 22.091

Frederick W. Ogden (1808?-1859?)

    Frederick W. Ogden, lawyer and political figure, was born in Kentucky about 1808. He had arrived in Texas by 1839, and ultimately settled in San Augustine, where he became the district attorney of the First Judicial District. He later moved to Jefferson County; there he secured a land certificate in 1842. Voters from that county elected him to the House of the Eighth Congress of the Republic of Texas, 1843-44. During that assembly Ogden was known as an advocate of annexation. He returned to Jefferson County and was appointed a notary public on February 1, 1850. Although trained in both medicine and law, he practiced only the latter while in Texas. He and his wife, Mary, a native of New York, had at least five children. According to the 1850 census Ogden's real estate was valued at just over $1,500. A brother, James Ogden, was killed on the Mier expedition after drawing a black bean. Frederick Ogden died in Beaumont about 1859. Source


Magnolia Cemetery
Beaumont

COORDINATES

30° 06.104, -094° 06.042

Seth Lathrop Weld (1879-1958)

    Seth Weld was born on February 19, 1879 in Washington County, Maryland, the sixth child of George and Emily Weld. The family moved to Altamont, North Carolina while he was young. He enlisted in 1899, lying about his age to get in the Army, and was assigned to 39th Company, Coast Artillery at Fort McHenry. Within three years, he had reached the rank of first sergeant. In late 1905, Weld transferred to the 8th Infantry, which was scheduled to move to the Philippine Islands to fight the Philippine-American War, also known as the Philippine Insurrection. He requested the transfer even though it meant moving back to the rank of private. Weld served in the Philippine Islands from April 1906 to April 1908, with the rank of corporal at the time of the 1906 incident that earned him the medal. On December 5, 1906, he saved the lives of a wounded officer and a fellow soldier who were surrounded by about forty Philippine insurgents. Although wounded himself, he used his disabled rifle as a club and beat the assailants back until the three were rescued. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for this courageous action on October 20, 1908. The day after, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Philippine Scouts. He remained in the Army his entire life until physical disability forced his retirement as a lieutenant colonel in September 1933. A few months later, he was advanced to the honorary rank of colonel. He settled in San Antonio, where he died at the age of 79 on December 20, 1958. Source

CITATION

With his right arm cut open with a bolo, went to the assistance of a wounded constabulary officer and a fellow soldier who were surrounded by about 40 Pulajanes, and, using his disabled rifle as a club, beat back the assailants and rescued his party.

Section AH
Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 28.511, -098° 25.972

Joseph Franciscus Ehlinger (1792-1845)

    Joseph Ehlinger was a native of Alsace, France. He served under Napoleon in the European wars during the early part of the nineteenth century and acquired both a practical and theoretical knowledge of military tactics. He brought his family to America and arrived in Texas just before the war for independence, locating in the vicinity of Houston, which had not yet been laid as a town. In the War of 1836 he joined Houston’s army on the Colorado River at about the site of the present city of Columbus, and owing to his previous military experience as a French soldier was appointed drill master for the Texas cavalry. He proved a valuable man to the cause, went with Houston’s army in its retreat across Texas, participated in the battle of San Jacinto, and was present when the Texans captured the Mexican president, Santa Anna. With the success of the Texans in their struggle for independence, Ehlinger, after performing his own important share in that conflict, settled in the vicinity of Houston and became a farmer and stock man. His name is identified with the city of Houston because of the fact that he platted Ehlinger’s Addition, which is now in the heart of the city, but which, during his lifetime, was of little importance. His later years were spent quietly, and he died in Houston and is buried there. He was a member of the Catholic Church. His wife, Mary, is buried in the little cemetery on the Joseph Ehlinger League in Colorado County.

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° 45.457, -095° 22.760

Joan Lowery Nixon (1927-2003)

    Joan Lowery Nixon, author, was born on February 3, 1927, in Los Angeles, California, to Margaret (Meyer) and Joseph Lowery, an accountant. At the age of two, she approached her mother and asked her to write down poems she composed. Her first piece, a poem called Springtime, was published in a children’s magazine by the time she was ten. Nixon had a happy childhood living with her parents and maternal grandparents, which meant always having someone to read to her and her sisters. Her mother, a former kindergarten teacher, had the family put on puppet shows across Los Angeles for hospitals, schools, and orphanages. At age seven, she had her first encounter with mysteries, which would later become her forte, through the I Love a Mystery radio program and was hooked. In her book The Making of a Writer (2002), Nixon credited these and other early formative experiences with her choice to become a writer.

    At the end of her senior year, she was paid for her first article, a testimonial written for The Ford Times. After graduating from Hollywood High during World War II, she attended the University of Southern California. There she was a member of the Kappa Delta sorority and graduated in 1947 with a degree in journalism, much to the chagrin of her father who saw newspaper reporters as drinkers. Unable to find a job as a journalist, however, she took a job as an elementary teacher and went to night school to earn her teaching credentials. She met her husband Hershell Nixon, a naval officer and geologist, at college, and they married in 1949. The couple had three daughters, Kathleen, Maureen, Eileen, and a son, Joseph. The family moved to Texas, first to Midland and Corpus Christi, and finally settled in Houston. Nixon began her career as an author in 1964 when, after being turned down by twelve publishers, her first novel, The Mystery of Hurricane Castle, was accepted by the final thirteenth publisher.

    Throughout her life, Nixon wrote more than 140 books, some that were published in twenty different languages. Most were her renowned suspense-filled mysteries for children and young adults, but she also wrote historical fiction, nonfiction for adults, Biblical adaptations, and coauthored children’s science books with her husband. Defining herself as half-Californian and half-Texan, many of her novels are set in Texas, including A Deadly Game of Magic (1982), The Stalker (1985), A Candidate for Murder (1990), Shadowmaker (1994), Search for the Shadowman (1996), and Laugh Till You Cry (2004). Nixon was noted for empowering girls and young women. When commenting on her knack for crafting strong heroines, she said: “My girls are all self-sufficient. They may be scared to death, but they make their own decisions and do them. Some get good grades, some don’t. But they’re still smart.” She was also instrumental in getting the Girl Scouts to adopt a writing badge, and she wrote My Baby that was aimed at teenage mothers and is provided for free at hospitals, schools, and churches through the Mental Health Association. Nixon’s writing earned her much praise. She was the recipient of a record four Edgar Allan Poe awards and was nominated for an additional five from the Mystery Writers of America, an organization for which she also had served as president. The awards were for The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore (1979), The Séance (1980), The Other Side of Dark (1986) and The Name of the Game Was Murder (1993). Other honors included Two Golden Spur awards from the Western Writers of America, the Texas Institute of Letters award, and numerous state-by-state awards. The Golden Spurs were for her celebrated series, Orphan Train Adventures, for which she did original research on an overlooked historical event, the transport of more than 100,000 homeless children from New York City to new homes in the West starting in 1854, turning it into a work of fiction for young readers.

    But despite her numerous accomplishments, Nixon was most proud of letters she got from young readers saying something to the effect of: “I hated to read. But my teacher gave me one of your mysteries, and I loved it. I'm going to read everything you've ever written.” She also said she could not ask for a better award than a letter from a girl who wrote, “Thank you for the gift of reading.” Nixon, in return, encouraged young writers by publishing a how-to book and memoir on creative writing for elementary students and hosting a website where children could send in their writing that she personally reviewed and gave positive suggestions and feedback. The woman often referred to as “the grande dame of mystery fiction” died at the age of seventy-six on June 28, 2003, in Houston, due to complications of pancreatic cancer. In an interview shortly before her passing, Nixon said she did not see that times had changed drastically since she was a kid. Whether trying to cope with life during war, or having a crush on a boy, she found teens’ worries were still the same. Forever young at heart, she was able to relate to this core audience, publishing at least one book a year up until her death. Nixon is buried at Memorial Oaks Cemetery in Houston. She was survived by her two sisters, children, and numerous grandchildren. Her son Joseph (Joe) Nixon has been a representative in the Texas House. Source

Section 18
Memorial Oaks Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 46.992, -095° 36.802

Stephen William Blount (1808-1890)

    Stephen William Blount, signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, soldier, and county official, son of Stephen William and Elizabeth (Winn) Blount, was born in Burke County, Georgia, on February 13, 1808. He was elected colonel of the Eighth Regiment of Georgia Militia in 1833, served as deputy sheriff and sheriff of Burke County for four years, and was an aide-de-camp to Brig. Gen. Robert Tootle and Maj. Gen. David Taylor from 1832 to 1834. He arrived in Texas in August 1835 and settled at San Augustine. He was one of the three representatives from San Augustine at the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos and there signed the Declaration of Independence. On March 17, 1836, when the convention adjourned, he returned to San Augustine and joined the Texas army in the company of Capt. William D. Ratcliff. He reached San Jacinto the day after the battle had been fought. 

    Blount returned to the United States and in Alabama, sometime after February 1, 1838, married Mrs. Mary Landon Lacy; they had eight children. Blount brought his wife to Texas in 1839. He was the first county clerk of San Augustine County and from 1846 to 1849 was postmaster at San Augustine. He was a delegate to the Democratic state convention in 1850 and to the national Democratic convention at Cincinnati in 1876. He acquired 60,000 acres, on which he raised cotton. During the Civil War he was fiscal agent for the Confederate States of America. He was a charter member of Redland Lodge No. 3 at San Augustine, and a member of the Episcopal Church. He was vice president of the United Confederate Veterans when he died, on February 7, 1890. He was buried at San Augustine. An oil portrait of Blount by Stephen Seymour Thomas was presented to the Dallas Historical Society and placed on exhibit in the Hall of State in 1950. Source


San Augustine City Cemetery
San Augustine

COORDINATES

31° 31.936, -094° 06.582

John Allen Monroe (1898-1956)

    John A. Monroe, born on August 24th, 1898 in Farmersville, Texas, played for eight seasons in the Pacific Coast League between 1926-1933 as a member of the Sacramento Senators (1926-29), Mission Reds (1930-31), and Portland Beavers (1931-33). After hitting .295 and .296 in his first two seasons in the PCL, the left-handed hitting, right-handed throwing second baseman never hit below .321 in his six remaining PCL seasons. For his career, Monroe posted a .326 batting average in 1,295 PCL games while also collecting 1,621 hits, 309 doubles, 45 triples and 80 home runs. In 1930, at the age of 31, he set career-highs in hits and home runs with 241 and 28, respectively. 

    The following season, in 1931, he posted a career-best .362 batting average - 6th best in the PCL that season - while splitting his season with Mission and Portland. During his first full season with Portland in 1932, he helped the Beavers win their first PCL Championship since 1914. Monroe began his professional baseball career in 1920 and played in the big leagues for one season in 1921, beginning the year with the New York Giants, the World Series champion of that season, and ending it with the Philadelphia Phillies. He died on June 19th, 1956 in Conroe, Texas. He was 57 years old. In 2011, he was inducted into the Pacific Coast League Hall of Fame.


Garden Park Cemetery
Conroe

COORDINATES

30° 21.033, -095° 28.828

Ambrose Mays (?-1852)

    As is often the case with early Texas settlers, little is known of Mays' history. He came to Texas in 1831, and enlisted in the Texian army on March 20, 1836 for a four month stint. He fought at San Jacinto as a member of Captain Thomas H. McIntire's Company and died in Harris County in 1852.

Note: Unmarked. 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. Ambrose Mays' is one of them.


Founders Memorial Park
Houston

COORDINATES

N/A

John Goodwin Tower (1925-1991)

    John Tower, United States senator, was born on September 29, 1925, in Houston, Texas, to Joe and Beryl (Goodwin) Tower. His father was a Methodist minister. Tower grew up in the various East Texas communities where his father preached, graduated from Beaumont High School in the spring of 1942, and entered Southwestern University in the fall of the same year. By June 1943 he had enlisted in the United States Navy; he served during World War II on an amphibious gunboat in the western Pacific and was discharged as a seaman first class in 1946. He remained active in the naval reserve from 1946 until 1989, when he retired with the rank of master chief boatswain's mate. After the war, Tower returned to Southwestern University, where he received a B.A. in political science in 1948. He worked for a time during and after college as a radio announcer at country and western station KTAE in Taylor. By spring of 1949 he had moved to Dallas and enrolled in graduate courses at Southern Methodist University. While in Dallas, he also worked as an insurance agent. He completed his coursework at Southern Methodist University in Spring of 1951 and accepted a position as assistant professor of political science at Midwestern University in Wichita Falls, a job he held until 1960. In 1952 and 1953 Tower continued his graduate studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science. While in London, he conducted field research on the organization of the Conservative party in Britain, which he used for his master's thesis, The Conservative Worker in Britain. He received his M.A. in political science from Southern Methodist University in 1953. In March of 1952 he married Lou Bullington in Wichita Falls. They had three daughters during their years in Wichita Falls; they were divorced in 1976, and Tower married Lilla Burt Cummings in 1977. They were divorced in 1987.

    In Wichita Falls, Tower became active in the Republican party of Texas. In 1954 he ran an unsuccessful race for state representative from the Eighty-first District, and in 1956 he led Texas as a delegate to the Republican national convention. By 1960 he was sufficiently well known to be nominated at the state Republican convention to run against Lyndon B. Johnson for senator in the November general election. Johnson easily won the election but was also elected vice president. William Blakely was appointed to fill the seat that Johnson resigned, and a special election was slated for the spring. Tower led in this election and beat Blakely in the runoff on May 27. As the first Republican senator elected in Texas since 1870, he was seen by many as heralding the arrival of two-party politics in Texas. He was reelected to the Senate in 1966, 1972, and 1978. Upon assuming his Senate seat, Tower was assigned to two major committees: Labor and Public Welfare, and Banking and Currency. He served on the former until 1964. He remained on the Banking and Currency Committee, which in 1971 became the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, throughout his Senate career. In 1965 Tower was assigned to the Senate Armed Services Committee, in which where he served continuously until his retirement; he was chairman from 1981 to 1984. He also served on the Joint Committee on Defense Production from 1963 until 1977 and on the Senate Republican Policy Committee in 1962 and from 1969 until 1984. He was elected chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee from 1973 to 1984. In his twenty-four year Senate career, Tower influenced a variety of domestic and foreign policy issues. As chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he worked to strengthen and modernize the nation's defenses. He was widely respected for his skills at guiding legislation through Congress. He worked to stimulate economic growth, improve opportunities for small business, improve transportation systems, and encourage strong financial institutions and systems. He was also concerned with promoting prosperity in agriculture, the energy industry, the fishing and maritime industries, and other areas of commerce particularly important to Texans.

   Senator Tower took a leadership role in Republican politics in Texas and on the national level. He supported Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, headed Richard M. Nixon's Key Issues Committee in 1968, supported Gerald Ford for president in 1976, and worked for the Reagan-Bush tickets in 1980 and 1984, and the Bush-Quayle ticket in 1988. He was a member of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 1962-63, 1969-70, and 1973-74 and was its chairman in 1969-70. He was a Texas delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1980. He also chaired the National Security and Foreign Policy Platform Subcommittee in 1972, and was chairman of the National Republican Platform Committee in 1980. Tower also maintained close ties with his alma mater, Southwestern University, and served on its board of trustees from 1968 through 1991. In 1964 he received an honorary doctorate degree from the university and was named distinguished alumnus in 1968. The Tower-Hester Chair of Political Science, named for Tower and his former professor George C. Hester, was inaugurated at Southwestern University in 1975. Tower retired from the Senate on January 3, 1985. Two weeks later President Ronald Reagan appointed him chief United States negotiator at the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks in Geneva. Tower served for fifteen months in this role and gained the Soviets' respect for his negotiating skills, knowledge of the issues, and mastery of technical details. In April 1986 he resigned to pursue personal business. Tower was distinguished lecturer in political science at Southern Methodist University from 1986 until 1988 and chaired Tower, Eggers, and Greene Consulting, Incorporated of Dallas and Washington from 1987 to 1991. Reagan again called Tower into government service in November 1986, when he appointed him to chair the President's Special Review Board to study the actions of the National Security Council and its staff during the Iran-Contra affair. The board, which became known as the Tower Commission, issued its report on February 26, 1987. In 1989 Tower was President George Bush's choice to become secretary of defense, but the Senate did not confirm his nomination because of his conservative political views and alleged excessive drinking and womanizing. The charges, counter-charges, and accusations of the hearings are chronicled in Tower's 1991 book, Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir. In 1990 President Bush named Tower chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Senator Tower died, along with his daughter Marian, in a commuter plane crash near New Brunswick, Georgia, on April 5, 1991. Source

Providence Monument Garden
Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery
Dallas

COORDINATES

32° 52.128, -096° 46.675

Nicholas Adolphus Sterne (1801-1852)

    Adolphus Sterne, colonist, financier of the Texas Revolution, merchant, and legislator, the eldest son of Emmanuel Sterne and his second wife, Helen, was born on April 5, 1801, in Cologne, although Alsace is also claimed as his birthplace. The elder Sterne was an Orthodox Jew, and Helen Sterne was a Lutheran. Sterne grew up amid turmoil. At sixteen he was working in a passport office when he learned that he was going to be conscripted for military service, forged a passport for himself, and immigrated to the United States. He landed in New Orleans in 1817, found mercantile employment, and studied law. Although he never practiced law in Texas, he acted as a land agent and primary judge in Nacogdoches. While still in New Orleans, Sterne joined the Masonic lodge, including the Scottish Rite, an affiliation of great importance to him in later years. In the early 1820s he began an itinerant peddling trade in the country north of New Orleans. He used that city as a base of operations from which he ranged as far north as Nashville, Tennessee, where he met Sam Houston. The two formed a lasting relationship, which they renewed after Sterne established a mercantile house in Nacogdoches, Texas, in 1826. Since Sterne had visited Nacogdoches in 1824, some have fixed that year as the date of his arrival in Texas.

    Soon after moving to Nacogdoches, Sterne became involved with the Fredonian Rebellion. In spite of the pledges of loyalty required for his immigration, Sterne assisted Haden Edwards and other immigrants in their resistance to the Mexican government. He smuggled guns and other materials in barrels of coffee. Spies in New Orleans alerted Nacogdoches authorities to these activities, and Sterne was arrested, tried for treason, and sentenced to be shot. While his case was reviewed in San Antonio and Saltillo, he was incarcerated in the Stone House (now the Old Stone Fort). Because his guards were also Masons, however, he came and went as he pleased and eventually was released on the promise that he would never again take up arms against the government. Sterne adhered to the letter of this promise but not to its spirit; he assisted the Texans in the battle of Nacogdoches in 1832 and financed two companies of troops during the Texas Revolution, but did not personally again shoulder arms against the government.

    Frequent business trips to New Orleans via Natchitoches, Louisiana, brought him into contact with Placide Bossier, a prominent businessman of the region. Sterne met his future wife, Eva Catherine Rosine Ruff, on one of these visits. She was born on June 23, 1809, in Württemberg and had immigrated to Louisiana with her family in 1815. Both her parents died in a yellow fever epidemic soon afterwards, and the Ruff children found a haven in the Bossier home. With the assistance of the requirements of Mexican law, Eva succeeded in converting Sterne officially to the Catholic faith, although unofficially he remained a deist. They were married on June 2, 1828. Sterne built their home on the eastern edge of Nacogdoches near the confluence of La Nana Bayou and Bonita Creek and developed it into a seat of hospitality for the leaders of the area. Seven children were born to them there. Houston was one of many important guests in the Sternes' home. He boarded with them when he first arrived in Texas and was baptized a Catholic in their parlor. Mrs. Sterne served as Houston's godmother, but Sterne did not serve as his godfather because the date coincided with Yom Kippur.

    Sterne strongly supported the movement for Texas independence. He traveled to New Orleans in 1835 as a special agent of the provisional government and personally raised and financed two companies known as the New Orleans Greys, commanded by Thomas H. Breece and Robert C. Morris. He preceded Breece's unit to Texas and arranged for a gala welcoming banquet when they reached Nacogdoches. Sterne later claimed $950 against the republic's treasury for his recruiting expenses. He supported most of Houston's programs during the period of the republic except his benevolent Indian policy. Sterne commanded a company of militia in the battle of the Neches, July 16, 1839, and helped expel the Cherokees from East Texas. On February 19, 1840, Sterne became postmaster at Nacogdoches. He served as deputy clerk and associate justice of the county court. In 1841 he became a justice of the peace. He was deputy clerk of the board of land commissioners and commissioner of roads and revenues for Nacogdoches County. He served as a member of the board of health and was overseer of streets for the corporation of Nacogdoches.

    In 1847 he won election to represent Nacogdoches in the House of Representatives of the Second Legislature. He continued during the Third Legislature, and in 1851 advanced to the Senate of the Fourth Legislature. Sterne was a member of many private organizations, especially Masonic ones. He enjoyed dancing and an occasional drink and was fond of playing whist. Though he shared some of the faults of his day, including the keeping of slaves, he was an honest man. From September 28, 1840, to November 18, 1851, Sterne kept a diary of his daily activities, which is a valuable source of information on the period of the republic. He owned a substantial amount of land, estimated from 1840 census records at 16,000 acres, although he always complained in his diary of not having enough "monay." Though self-educated, he served as official interpreter in English, French, Spanish, German, Yiddish, Portuguese, and Latin. He died in New Orleans while on a business trip on March 27, 1852. He was briefly interred there and later reburied in Oak Grove Cemetery, Nacogdoches. Source


Oak Grove Cemetery
Nacogdoches

COORDINATES

31° 36.164, -094° 38.960

Paschal Pavolo Borden (1806-1864)

    Paschal Pavolo Borden, soldier, merchant, and surveyor, brother of Gail, Jr., Thomas H., and John P. Borden and son of Gail and Philadelphia (Wheeler) Borden, Sr., was born in Norwich, New York, in December 1806. The family moved to Kentucky, to Indiana, and, in 1829, to Texas. Borden served as an official surveyor for the state of Coahuila and Texas. On March 4, 1831, he received 1,102 acres of land in Stephen F. Austin's second colony, on Mill Creek in what is now Washington County. From 1831 to 1835 he farmed and helped in his father's blacksmith shop in San Felipe. During the Texas Revolution Borden was a member of Capt. John Bird's company from October 24 to December 13, 1835. He then served as a private in Moseley Baker's company until June 1, 1836. He fought in the battle of San Jacinto and was therefore granted 3,306 acres of land by the Fort Bend county board. In late 1836 at Columbia, he opened a general store with H. F. Armstrong, and in December 1837 he began a term as Fort Bend county surveyor, a position he combined with a private real estate enterprise. In September 1846 he was named administrator of the estate of Moses Lapham. By 1854 he was farming at Seclusion, near Egypt. Borden was married on February 3, 1838, to Frances Mary Heard, sister of William J. E. Heard; after Frances's death he married Martha Ann Stafford, on July 19, 1842. By his second wife Borden had three sons. He died on April 28, 1864. Source 

Note: This is a cenotaph. Originally this small piece of land was part of William Joseph Stafford's plantation grounds, which was known to have had a small family cemetery. The specific location of this cemetery has been lost, but in the 1960s local historians deemed this spot as the most likely area for the graveyard and several historical markers have been erected here denoting it so. His middle name is misspelled on his stone as Paolo.


William J. Stafford Cemetery
Stafford

COORDINATES

29° 36.362, -095° 35.185

Clarence Green (1934-1997)

    Blues guitarist and band leader Clarence Green was born in Mont Belvieu, Texas, in Chambers County, on January 1, 1934. He was a versatile guitarist who should not be confused with the piano-playing blues singer Clarence "Candy" Green (1929-88) from nearby Galveston. Green, the guitar player, was a stalwart of the Houston scene who fronted a number of popular bands, the most famous being the Rhythmaires, between the early 1950s and his death. The oldest son of a Creole mother, he grew up in Houston's Fifth Ward in the neighborhood known as Frenchtown. He had first started making music on homemade stringed instruments devised in collaboration with his brother, Cal Green, who later served as lead guitarist for Hank Ballard and the Midnighters and did studio work for Ray Charles and other stars, relocating permanently to California in the process. Clarence, however, opted to stay close to home all his life, choosing the security of full-time employment with Houston Light and Power, where he worked for twenty years. Nevertheless, he found ample opportunity in the Bayou City to exploit his musical talents, both on stage and in recordings. He started out around 1951 or 1952 in a group that called itself Blues for Two. Throughout the next decade the band's personnel changed often; some of the more well-known members, at various times, included fellow guitarists Johnny Copeland and Joe Hughes. Green went on to lead the High Type Five, the Cobras (not to be confused with the mid-1970s Austin-based band of the same name led by Paul Ray), and ultimately his most well-known ensemble, the Rhythmaires, which was a mainstay of the Houston scene for over thirty years.

    Mixing blues, jazz, and soul music - and playing in all manner of venues, from small clubs in the old wards to grand corporate affairs downtown and in private mansions - the Rhythmaires are remembered not only for Green's precisely swinging performances on electric guitar, but also for the many female vocalists they developed and featured over the years, including Iola Broussard, Gloria Edwards, Luvenia Lewis (who married Cal Green but did not follow him to the West Coast), Trudy Lynn, Faye Robinson, Lavelle White, and others. Starting in the late 1950s and continuing through the 1960s, Green also did regular session work as a guitarist at various studios, the most notable being Duke Records, where he backed artists such as Bobby Bland, Joe Hinton, and Junior Parker and released a few singles, including Keep On Working, under his own name. In 1958 he had recorded his first single, Mary My Darling, for the C & P label, which later leased it to Chicago-based Chess Records. In the following years he made numerous records for a variety of other small labels, including Shomar (which released his Crazy Strings in 1962), All Boy, Aquarius, Bright Star, Lynn, Pope, and Golden Eagle. His backing personnel on these tracks varied from session to session but occasionally included notable Texas blues musicians such as Henry Hayes, Wilbur McFarland, Teddy Reynolds, Ivory Lee Semien, and Hop Wilson. Green did not always receive proper compensation for his many recordings, especially as they began to reappear on compact disc in the 1990s. In 1994 he became a co-plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed against one of his former producers on behalf of fifteen Houston blues musicians or their descendants. Just days before Green died of natural causes in Houston on March 13, 1997, a federal jury ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. In the final months of his life Green was especially focused on performing gospel music in the context of religious worship, especially at the Frenchtown institution known as Buck Street Memorial Church of God in Christ, where he served as a deacon for many years. Green had a daughter, three sons, and several stepchildren. Source

Garden of Memories
Paradise North Cemetery
Houston

Harold Joseph "Hal" Woodeshick (1932-2009)

    Born on August 24, 1932 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Woodeshick signed with the Philadelphia Phillies as an amateur free agent in 1950. His time with them consisted of only one inning pitched for the Carbondale Pioneers, the Phillies' North Atlantic League team. He split his 1951 campaign with a pair of independent minor league clubs: the Duluth Dukes of the Northern League and the Youngstown A's of the Middle Atlantic League. He joined the New York Giants organization in 1952, winning thirteen decisions that year with the Kingsport Cherokees of the Appalachian League and fourteen in 1955 with the Danville Leafs of the Carolina League. He served in the United States Army during the two years between those seasons. He was selected by the Detroit Tigers in the minor league draft on November 27, 1955. A twelve-game winner with the Charleston Senators in 1956, he made his major league debut later that year on September 14 with a loss against the New York Yankees. His only other appearance with the Tigers came ten days later on September 24 in another start at home which resulted in him yielding four runs again and earning his second straight loss. He returned to the minors in 1957, dividing his time between Charleston and the Augusta Tigers. He was traded to Cleveland Indians on February 18, 1958. Woodeshick split the 1958 campaign between the Indians and its top farm team in San Diego, and began the next one with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He was dealt to the Washington Senators on May 25, 1959. After that franchise moved west and became the Minnesota Twins, he was picked in the 1960 MLB expansion draft by the second Washington Senators on December 14, 1960.

    He returned to the Detroit Tigers just under six months later on June 5, 1961. Woodeshick was on the Houston Colt .45s roster for the expansion team's inaugural opening day in 1962. The acquisition was a big risk because Woodeshick was prone to wildness with his pitches and had problems with his fielding. He spent most of his first Colt .45s spring training working to correct his inability to make accurate throws to the first baseman after cleanly fielding ground balls. He started in 26 of his 31 appearances in 1962. In the Colt .45s' second-ever regular season contest on April 11, its first at night, he pitched eight innings and endured a one-hour rain delay in the fourth to earn a victory over the Chicago Cubs. He finished the campaign with a 5-16 record due to a pair of nagging injuries. A slow-healing throat infection had left him out of playing shape at midseason. By the time he was released at year's end, his back pain was so debilitating that his wife had to drive him back to their Pennsylvania home. After two spinal taps failed to provide a cure, his problem was remedied by a chiropractor who prescribed an exercise regimen. He returned to the Colt .45s as its first-ever legitimate closer in 1963, winning eleven games with a team-leading ten saves and a 1.97 ERA. Woodeshick pitched two scoreless innings in the 1963 MLB All-Star Game, striking out Joe Pepitone in the sixth and Bob Allison and Harmon Killebrew in the seventh. His best year in the majors was 1964 when he led the senior circuit in saves with 23. A trade deadline deal on June 15, 1965 sent him to the Cardinals. As a member of the 1967 World Series Champions, Woodeshick's only appearance in the Fall Classic was a scoreless bottom half of the eighth inning in Game Six. His professional baseball career ended when he was released by the Cardinals on October 20, 1967, only eight days after The Series concluded. Hal Woodeshick died on June 14, 2009 after a long illness and was buried in Houston.

Botanical Garden
Memorial Oaks Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 46.734, -095° 36.893

Benjamin W. Wightman (1755-1830)

    Ben Wightman was born in Norwich, Connecticut on August 31, 1755, and served with the Tyron County Rangers of New York in the American Revolution. He married Esther Randall and became a Baptist minister. Benjamin and Esther had nine daughters, Jerusha, Lydia, Eunice, Lucy, Susan, Esther, Margaret, Amy and Clarissa, and two sons, Elias and Dimmis. In 1828 Elias, a surveyor for Stephen F. Austin, brought a group of colonists from New York to Matagorda - including his parents, Benjamin and Esther, and his sisters, Jerusha and Margaret. They traveled down the Mississippi River by flatboat to New Orleans, then sailed on the schooner Little Zoe to Matagorda, where they landed on January 1, 1829, the first sailing ship to enter the port. The first year they lived in a small stockade built by Stephen F. Austin. Esther Randall Wightman died of typhoid fever on June 20, 1830 becoming the first person buried in the Matagorda Cemetery. Six weeks later, on August 1, 1830, Wightman followed her.

Section B
Matagorda Cemetery
Matagorda

COORDINATES

28° 42.082, -095° 57.346

Jose Mendoza Lopez (1910-2005)

    Jose Mendoza Lopez, Medal of Honor recipient, was born on July 10, 1910, the son of Cayetano and Candida Mendoza de Lopez. Although military records list his birthplace as Mission, Texas, he was born in Santiago Atitlán, Mexico. In 1935 he purchased a false birth certificate in order to join the United States Merchant Marines. His early years were difficult. Lopez never knew his father and had been told by his mother that he had drowned. After his mother’s death from tuberculosis when he was eight and with no way to support himself, the boy headed to the Rio Grande Valley. As a youngster, Lopez attended little school and worked in the cotton fields around Brownsville to support himself while living with an uncle or other friends. In his teens, Lopez hitched a ride on a freight train and ended up in Atlanta, Georgia. A local boxing promoter, impressed with Lopez’s athleticism, arranged some amateur fights for the youngster. Needing shoes, Lopez turned professional. From 1927 to 1934 Lopez, billed as “Kid Mendoza,” compiled a record of fifty-two wins and three losses in the lightweight division. Years later, he stated that the highlight of his boxing career was when he shook hands with Babe Ruth in Atlanta before a bout. From 1935 through 1941 Lopez found employment in the Merchant Marine working on ships and traveling the world. After a period of employment in Hawaii, he was on a ship headed to the United States when he heard of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

    After his arrival in California, authorities wanted to arrest him until he convinced them he was Mexican not Japanese. In 1942 Lopez returned to Brownsville and married his girlfriend, Emilia Herrera; she was his wife of sixty-two years until her death in 2004. Together they had four daughters and a stepson from his wife’s previous marriage. With his wife’s support, he enlisted in the United States Army and spent a brief time at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio before going to Camp Roberts (California) for basic training. Assigned to Company K of the Twenty-third Infantry Regiment, Second Infantry Division, Lopez’s unit trained in Northern Ireland where it prepared for the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe: D-Day. Described as short and stocky, the five-foot-five, 130-pound Lopez excelled in combat. Assigned to a weapons platoon, he set foot in Normandy on June 7, 1944. Although wounded on D-Day plus 1, Lopez refused treatment and evacuation and was determined to remain with his unit. He participated in the hedgerow action near Saint-Lô, the fight to take Brest, and was involved in steady combat in France and Belgium for the rest of 1944. For his efforts, Lopez was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

    On December 17, 1944, Sergeant Lopez witnessed the Germans launch their offensive in the Ardennes against Allied forces in the Battle of the Bulge. Situated with Company K near Krinkelt, Belgium, Lopez took action on his own. Holding a heavy machine gun, Lopez found cover in a shallow hole and positioned himself. Taking aim at the soldiers surrounding a German Tiger tank, he immediately fired and killed ten of the enemy. Despite enemy fire from the tank, Lopez held firm and killed twenty-five additional Germans who were attempting to outflank him. He avoided blasts from the tank until one landed close enough for the concussion to lift him off the ground and throw him backward. Lopez recovered quickly, avoided being outflanked by the Germans again, reset his weapon, and fired to protect Company K. Then, using the dense forest for cover and constantly on the move, Lopez continued to fire and kill Germans. Eventually he met up with a few of his fellow soldiers to establish another defense point, where he continued fire until his ammunition was exhausted. In an operation that lasted from 11:30 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., Lopez killed more than 100 enemy soldiers - more than any other American serviceman during World War II. His efforts stabilized the flank and provided time for his company to regroup which eventually caused the Germans to bypass Krinkelt.

    In a ceremony in Nuremberg, Maj, Gen. James A. Van Fleet presented Jose Mendoza Lopez the Medal of Honor on June 18, 1945, for his “gallantry and intrepidity, on seemingly suicidal missions in which he killed at least 100 of the enemy, were almost solely responsible for allowing Company K to avoid being enveloped, to withdraw successfully and to give other forces coming in support time to build a line which repelled the enemy drive.” With the end of the war in Europe, Lopez returned to Texas and worked for the Veterans Administration in San Antonio. Shortly after the war, upon a visit to Mexico City, he was honored with la Condecoracion de Merito Militar, Mexico’s highest award for military valor, by Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho. Lopez also took great pride when Mexican President Miguel Alemán Valdés invited him to Mexico City and honored him with the Order of the Aztec Eagle in 1948. In 1949 he reenlisted in the United States Army and was assigned to the Second Infantry Division. At the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, Sergeant Lopez returned to combat until a ranking officer, learning he was a Medal of Honor recipient, ordered him to the rear. For several months, he retrieved bodies and registered them for burial until being reassigned to Japan. Lopez remained in the military serving as a recruiter and working in a motor pool where he was responsible for its maintenance operations and crew. In 1973 he retired with the rank of master sergeant.

    In retirement, Lopez remained active and spent time with his wife, children, and grandchildren in San Antonio. The Mexican-born Lopez also took the opportunity to talk with young people about his love for America. He found civilian employment, sometimes holding two jobs at a time. To stay in shape, Lopez jogged until he was eighty-eight and met with a physical trainer three times a week until early 2005. In January 2004 Lopez attended the inauguration of President George W. Bush; having attended earlier ones for: John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. In his final years, Lopez was hindered by frail health and used a walker. Before his wife’s death in 2004, he devoted much effort to taking care of her. On May 16, 2005, he died of cancer at the home of his daughter, Maggie Wickwire, in San Antonio. At the time he had been the oldest surviving Hispanic Medal of Honor recipient in the United States. Lopez, a Catholic, was buried with full military honors at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio. Jose M. Lopez Middle School in San Antonio and Jose M. Lopez Park in Mission were named in his honor. A statue of Lopez also commemorates the veteran in Veterans Park in Brownsville. Source 

CITATION

On his own initiative, he carried his heavy machine gun from Company K's right flank to its left, in order to protect that flank which was in danger of being overrun by advancing enemy infantry supported by tanks. Occupying a shallow hole offering no protection above his waist, he cut down a group of 10 Germans. Ignoring enemy fire from an advancing tank, he held his position and cut down 25 more enemy infantry attempting to turn his flank. Glancing to his right, he saw a large number of infantry swarming in from the front. Although dazed and shaken from enemy artillery fire which had crashed into the ground only a few yards away, he realized that his position soon would be outflanked. Again, alone, he carried his machine gun to a position to the right rear of the sector; enemy tanks and infantry were forcing a withdrawal. Blown over backward by the concussion of enemy fire, he immediately reset his gun and continued his fire. Single-handed he held off the German horde until he was satisfied his company had effected its retirement. Again he loaded his gun on his back and in a hail of small arms fire he ran to a point where a few of his comrades were attempting to set up another defense against the onrushing enemy. He fired from this position until his ammunition was exhausted. Still carrying his gun, he fell back with his small group to Krinkelt. Sgt. Lopez's gallantry and intrepidity, on seemingly suicidal missions in which he killed at least 100 of the enemy, were almost solely responsible for allowing Company K to avoid being enveloped, to withdraw successfully and to give other forces coming up in support time to build a line which repelled the enemy drive.

Section AI
Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 28.579, -098° 25.976