Richard Henry "Dickey" Kerr (1893-1963)

    Dickey Kerr was a starting pitcher for the Chicago White Sox from 1919-1921. As a rookie, he won 13 games and both his starts in the 1919 World Series, which would lead to the permanent suspensions of eight of his teammates in the Black Sox Scandal. In later years, Kerr would receive praise for his honest play during the Series. In 1921, he went 19-17 and led the league in giving up only 357 hits in 3082 innings pitched. After the season, he was suspended for violating the reserve clause in his contract. Kerr attempted a comeback in 1925, pitching in 12 games and compiling a record of 0-1 in 362 innings, mostly out of the bullpen. He finished his career with a record of 53 wins against 34 losses for a winning percentage of .609. His career ERA over three-plus seasons was 3.84. After his playing days, Kerr became a baseball coach at Rice University and minor league manager for the Daytona Beach Islanders, where he met and became close friends with future Hall of Famer Stan Musial. Kerr died of cancer in Houston on May 4, 1963, just two months shy of his 70th birthday.

Section 29
Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 42.708, -095° 18.305

Floyd Davis "Pete" Mayes (1938-2008)

    Pete Mayes was born and raised in Double Bayou, Texas. The town was home to a dance hall, which played a significant part in Mayes' life. As a child he learned with a cheap guitar without a full set of strings and practiced for hours each day. Mayes was aged 16 when T-Bone Walker invited him on stage to perform. In the early 1950s, Mayes played with various bands at his local dance hall. After several years he led his own group, opening the show for touring musicians. While in the United States Army, Mayes worked with The Contrasts, which comprised three white and three black musicians. Mayes learned from watching T-Bone Walker and Gatemouth Brown, and he later cited Walker, B.B. King, Kenny Burrell, plus Lowell Fulson as major influences.

    In 1960 he relocated to Houston, and during the following decade he played with Fulson, Big Joe Turner, Percy Mayfield, Bill Doggett, and Junior Parker. Mayes also toured with the jazz musicians, Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie. Unable to make a living as a full-time musician, Mayes worked as a ranch hand and then as a painter for the Houston Independent School District. He retired from the latter job with disability pay. Mayes did perform whenever possible. He undertook tours in the 1970s and played frequently in the 1990s, even though his health had started to fail. In 1983, he inherited from an uncle ownership of his local dance hall. In 1986, Double Trouble Records of the Netherlands issued Texas Guitar Master, which included a live "Battle of the Guitars" with Joe "Guitar" Hughes. In 1996, Mayes appeared on the bill of the Long Beach Blues Festival. By the time For Pete's Sake was released (1998), Mayes was still actively managing the Double Bayou dance hall. Following years of ill health, which included heart problems, diabetes and the amputation of both legs, Mayes died in Houston in December 2008, aged 70. He was survived by his wife, son and a brother.

Section R1
Houston National Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 56.012, -095° 27.220

Frederick Benjamin Gipson (1908-1973)

    Frederick (Fred) Benjamin Gipson, author, was born on a farm near Mason, Texas, on February 7, 1908, the son of Beck and Emma Deishler Gipson. He graduated from Mason High School in 1926 and after working at a variety of farming and ranching jobs entered the University of Texas in 1933. There he wrote for the Daily Texan and the Ranger, but he left school before graduating to become a reporter for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times in 1937. A year later he worked for the San Angelo Standard-Times, then briefly for the Denver Post. Soon afterward he began to sell stories and articles to pulp Western magazines and to such slick magazines as Liberty and Look. By 1944 Gipson had published a story in the Southwest Review. Many of his short stories appearing in that journal in the 1940s were prototypes for the longer works of fiction that followed. 

    His first full-length book, The Fabulous Empire: Colonel Zack Miller's Story (1946), was moderately successful (25,000 copies sold), but it was his Hound-Dog Man (1949) that established Gipson's reputation when it became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and sold over 250,000 copies in its first year of publication. Many critics and general readers maintain that Hound-Dog Man was Gipson's best work, and it remains popular with a large audience. The Hill Country writer earned increasing attention for the rapid succession of books that followed: The Home Place (1950; later filmed as Return of the Texan); Big Bend: A Homesteader's Story (1952), with J. O. Langford; Cowhand: The Story of a Working Cowboy (1953); The Trail-Driving Rooster (1955); Recollection Creek (1955); Old Yeller (1956); and Savage Sam (1962). Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.921, -097° 43.613

Charles Stanfield Taylor (1808-1865)

    Charles S. Taylor, member of the Texas Revolutionary Committee of Correspondence and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, was born in London, England, in 1808. His parents died while he was young, and he was reared by an uncle. Taylor immigrated to the United States in 1828, and from New York City he moved to Nacogdoches where he established a mercantile business. On April 1, 1830, he took his Mexican citizenship oath in Nacogdoches and stated that he was Catholic and unmarried at the time. Taylor participated in the battle of Nacogdoches and represented Nacogdoches in the Convention of 1832. In 1833 he moved to San Augustine, where he was elected alcalde on January 1, 1834. In summer 1834 he returned to Nacogdoches, and on April 25, 1835, he was appointed land commissioner for San Augustine and issued land titles until the Texas Revolution began. He was one of the four representatives from Nacogdoches at the Convention of 1836 and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Taylor left Texas after he signed the Declaration of Independence and stayed in Louisiana until the revolution was over. Two of his children died during this time. He was appointed chief justice of Nacogdoches County on December 20, 1836.

    In November 1838 he was nominated by President Sam Houston to run the boundary line between Texas and the United States, however Mirabeau B. Lamar succeeded Houston as president, and the nomination was withdrawn. Taylor was licensed to practice law in the republic in 1839. He was appointed district attorney by President Lamar but was not confirmed by the Senate. He was a candidate for Congress in 1845 but was defeated by three votes. He was elected county treasurer of Nacogdoches County in 1850 and 1852. Taylor boarded in the home of Nicholas Adolphus Sterne when he first arrived in Nacogdoches and on May 28, 1831, married Mrs. Sterne's sister, Anna Marie Rouff, daughter of John R. Rouff of Weerenberg, Germany. She was born on March 1, 1814, and died on February 8, 1873. They became parents of thirteen children, some of which died of exposure during the Runaway Scrape. Their sons, Charles Travis, Milam, William Adolphus, and Lawrence S., joined the Confederate forces in 1861. Lawrence married the daughter of Dr. Robert A. Irion. Charles S. Taylor was chief justice of Nacogdoches County from August 1860 until his death on November 1, 1865. He was a member of Milam Lodge No. 2 and an original member of the Grand Lodge of Texas. In 1936 the Texas Centennial Commission erected a joint monument at the graves of Taylor and his wife in Oak Grove Cemetery, Nacogdoches, Texas. Source

Note: His middle name is misspelled on his stone.

Oak Grove Cemetery
Nacogdoches

COORDINATES

31° 36.166, -094° 38.952