Raymond Lee Knight (1922-1945)

    Raymond L. Knight, Medal of Honor recipient, was born in Timpson, Texas, on July 15, 1922. His family later moved to Houston, where he graduated from John Reagan High School in 1940. He entered the United States Army Air Corps at Houston in October 1942 and received his pilot's wings and commission at Harding Field, Louisiana, in April 1944. After further training in the P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bomber, 2d Lt. Knight was assigned to the 350th Fighter Group, Twelfth Air Force, in Northern Italy, where he completed eighty-two combat missions. During his first year of combat he won the Distinguished Flying Cross, two Purple Hearts, and the Air Medal with five oak-leaf clusters. His most notable exploits, however, came in action against heavily defended German airdromes at Ghedi and Bergamo, Italy, in April 1945.

    On the morning of April 24 he led two other pilots, each flying a single-engine P-47 Thunderbolt, against the heavily defended airdrome at Ghedi. He ordered the other aircraft to stay aloft while he descended to low altitude through heavy antiaircraft fire and located eight German aircraft under heavy camouflage. After rejoining his flight, Knight led the attack and destroyed five of the enemy aircraft, while his teammates shot down two others. After returning to base he volunteered to lead a reconnaissance mission of three other aircraft to the airbase at Bergamo. He ordered his flight to remain out of range of enemy guns while he flew through the fire at low level. Although his Thunderbolt was badly damaged by intense ground fire he observed a squadron of enemy aircraft, heavily camouflaged, and led his flight to the attack. After this strafing, he made ten more passes over the field, and although hit by enemy fire twice more he destroyed six heavily loaded twin-engine aircraft and enemy fighters. He safely returned his damaged aircraft to base. He returned to Bergamo the next morning, April 25, 1945, with a flight of three and attacked an aircraft on the runway. Three more twin-engine aircraft were destroyed. His plane was heavily damaged and virtually unflyable, but he chose to attempt to return the valuable equipment to base for repair. He crashed in the Appennini Mountains and was killed. His gallant action eliminated enemy aircraft that were set to attack the Allied forces in their attempt to establish the first firm bridgehead across the Po River. He personally destroyed fourteen grounded enemy aircraft and led attacks that wrecked ten others. The Medal of Honor was presented to his widow, Johnnie Lee Knight, and his 2½-year-old-son on the stage at Reagan High School, where Raymond and Johnnie had graduated five years earlier. His remains were buried in Woodlawn Garden of Memories in 1949 and reburied in the Houston National Cemetery in a special section for Medal of Honor recipients on April 25, 1992. Source

CITATION

He piloted a fighter-bomber aircraft in a series of low-level strafing missions, destroying 14 grounded enemy aircraft and leading attacks which wrecked 10 others during a critical period of the Allied drive in northern Italy. On the morning of 24 April, he volunteered to lead 2 other aircraft against the strongly defended enemy airdrome at Ghedi. Ordering his fellow pilots to remain aloft, he skimmed the ground through a deadly curtain of antiaircraft fire to reconnoiter the field, locating 8 German aircraft hidden beneath heavy camouflage. He rejoined his flight, briefed them by radio, and then led them with consummate skill through the hail of enemy fire in a low-level attack, destroying 5 aircraft, while his flight accounted for 2 others. Returning to his base, he volunteered to lead 3 other aircraft in reconnaissance of Bergamo airfield, an enemy base near Ghedi and 1 known to be equally well defended. Again ordering his flight to remain out of range of antiaircraft fire, 1st Lt. Knight flew through an exceptionally intense barrage, which heavily damaged his Thunderbolt, to observe the field at minimum altitude. He discovered a squadron of enemy aircraft under heavy camouflage and led his flight to the assault. Returning alone after this strafing, he made 10 deliberate passes against the field despite being hit by antiaircraft fire twice more, destroying 6 fully loaded enemy twin-engine aircraft and 2 fighters. His skillfully led attack enabled his flight to destroy 4 other twin-engine aircraft and a fighter plane. He then returned to his base in his seriously damaged plane. Early the next morning, when he again attacked Bergamo, he sighted an enemy plane on the runway. Again he led 3 other American pilots in a blistering low-level sweep through vicious anti-aircraft fire that damaged his plane so severely that it was virtually nonflyable. Three of the few remaining enemy twin-engine aircraft at that base were destroyed. Realizing the critical need for aircraft in his unit, he declined to parachute to safety over friendly territory and unhesitatingly attempted to return his shattered plane to his home field. With great skill and strength, he flew homeward until caught by treacherous air conditions in the Appennines Mountains, where he crashed and was killed. The gallant action of 1st Lt. Knight eliminated the German aircraft which were poised to wreak havoc on Allied forces pressing to establish the first firm bridgehead across the Po River; his fearless daring and voluntary self-sacrifice averted possible heavy casualties among ground forces and the resultant slowing on the German drive culminated in the collapse of enemy resistance in Italy.

Section Hb
Houston National Cemetery
Houston
 

COORDINATES

29° 55.831, -095° 27.041

 

Ernest Bevil Ford (1916-1991)

    Ernest B. Ford was born in D'Lo, Mississippi on February 23, 1916 to Ernest and Grace (Bevil) Ford. He graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University in 1938. A natural songwriter, he collaborated on more than two hundred songs with many different composers; some of his best-known songs being Daddy Brings Home the Bacon (and Mama's Gotta Fry It); My Itty Bitty Kitty; Hum, Mister Hummingbird and You'll Be Just as Sweet at Sixty (As You Were At Sweet Sixteen). Among Ford's co-writers represented in this collection are Geoffrey O'Hara, J. Rosamond Johnson, Billy Mills, and Doc Bechtel. Ford retired in 1981 after serving 34 years as an advertising executive with the Houston Chronicle. Ford also owned the Gulf Coast Music publishing company. On April 16, 1991, Ford died in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and buried in Houston.



Section 407
Forest Park Westheimer Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 44.379, -095° 36.528

Morgan Calvin Hamilton (1809-1893)

    Morgan C. Hamilton, government official, was born near Huntsville, Alabama, on February 25, 1809. He was the brother of A. J. Hamilton. He began work as a clerk in a mercantile establishment and moved to Texas in 1830. In 1837 he moved to Austin. He moved to Washington-on-the-Brazos in 1842 and returned to Austin in 1845. For six years, 1839-45, he served in the war department of the Republic of Texas, first as clerk and in 1844-45 as secretary of war. In Austin he had a mercantile business until 1852, when he sold out and retired from active business. Hamilton was an uncompromising Republican, violently opposed to secession. During Reconstruction he was appointed state comptroller in 1867 and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1868-69. His participation caused some controversy at the convention, since he was part of a Radical Republican faction that called for the disfranchisement of all former Confederates. He was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1870 and served until 1877. After retirement from public life he traveled extensively. During his last years he resided in Brooklyn, New York, and made occasional trips to Austin. He never married. Hamilton died on November 21, 1893, while visiting in San Diego, California. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Austin, and his fortune was divided among his relatives. Source

Section 2
Oakwood Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 16.565, -097° 43.565

George Washington Smyth (1803-1866)

    G. W. Smyth, early Texas surveyor and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, son of a German millwright father and a Scots-Irish mother, was born on May 16, 1803, in North Carolina. After moving to Alabama and Tennessee as a child, he left for Texas in 1828 against the wishes of his parents. He crossed the Sabine River on February 11, 1830, and briefly taught school at Nacogdoches before securing an appointment in 1830 as surveyor for Bevil's Settlement from Thomas Jefferson Chambers, surveyor general. In 1832 Smyth and seven other Bevil-area residents, upon hearing of the Anahuac Disturbances, went to the scene but arrived after the excitement was over. Smyth married Frances M. Grigsby in 1834; they had seven children. Smyth became surveyor in 1834 for George A. Nixon, recently named commissioner of the Zavala, Vehlein, and Burnet colonies. He also served as land commissioner at Nacogdoches, where he remained until the office of land commissioner was closed on December 19, 1835. He was appointed first judge of Bevil Municipality by the General Council of the Provisional Government.

    After being elected a member of the Convention of 1836 by the residents of Jasper Municipality, Smyth signed the Texas Declaration of Independence and raised sixteen men, but they arrived at San Jacinto after the battle was over. Smyth and his family took part in the Runaway Scrape. Mirabeau B. Lamar appointed Smyth to the boundary commission that was to set the Texas-United States boundaries in 1839. He was also elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1844 and avidly supported annexation. In addition he took part in the convention that drew up the Constitution of 1845. Smyth became the second commissioner of the General Land Office in March 1848, a position he retained for four years. As Democratic elector for president, he voted for Franklin Pierce in the 1852 election. The following year he won a seat in the Thirty-third United States Congress, but he did not seek reelection in 1855. He returned to his farm in Jasper County and by the eve of the Civil War had amassed an estate valued at $27,000, which included twenty-eight slaves. Smyth opposed secession, although his sons served with Confederate troops. After the Civil War, he went to Austin as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1866. He died in Austin on February 21, 1866, and was buried in the State Cemetery. In 1936 the Texas Centennial Commission erected a marker at the Smyth home, built 100 years earlier in Jasper County at the junction of Big Run and Little Walnut Run. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.934, -097° 43.645

Robert W. Montgomery (?-1837)

    Little is known of Montgomery's private history prior to Texas; it is known that he was divorced and had a daughter, Emma Jane, living in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. He enlisted in the Texas army on February 23, 1836, as "McGready Montgomery" and was a member of Captain Henry Teal's Company at the Battle of San Jacinto. Montgomery left the army on October 10, 1836, and died in Harrisburg (now Harris) County in June 1837.

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° 45.441, -095° 22.767