Top 5 Texans of All Time

Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson

"Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, “We, the people.” It is a very eloquent beginning. But when the document was completed on the seventeenth of September 1787, I was not included in that “We, the people.”  I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake.  But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision I have finally been included in 'We, the people.'

Today, I am an inquisitor; I believe hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now.  My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total.  I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution."
--Rep. Barbara Jordan, 1973

The Grand Finale. The piece d' resistance. The last Top 5 list for a long, long time.

This is gonna be lengthy, but y'all will just have to suck it up. Because this is where I talk about Texas.

I know its supposed to be Top 5 things that make life worth living. But that seemed a little heavy and preachy. So, I thought what better way to bid farewell to the lists than to talk about my favorite place in the whole world? The place I'll probably never leave. The place that will be my home for nearly my entire life? The greatest state among 50 great states.

Ok, geez, get on with it.

Texas!

The only state to have been an independent country. Revered in myth, movies, books, art, and music. The most famous of the United States. The only state where it means something to be from. The state that treasures its past but always looks forward.

Bluebonnets and Paintbrushes, Texas Hill Country

Numerous libraries are devoted solely to the topic of Texas. Numerous educational and research institutions exist focused solely on Texas or Texas-centric topics. Even in every third world, backwater, jungle-ridden, malaria infested pit, most everyone has heard of Texas. When I visited New Zealand, I took a tour of their national capital. The guide asked everyone to say which country they had come from. People listed off places like France, England, Australia, Germany, Japan. I said "Texas." No one said, "that's only a state," or "what do you mean," or "that's not a country." They all just got it.

By contrast, no one has ever heard of, or will ever hear of, Delaware.

I've lived in Texas for nearly 50 years, and there's four things you have to accept if you hope to understand it at all.

Colorado River, McKinney Roughs

• Texas is wild. The land is wild. Even today, you can't live in Texas and be some namby pamby sweater wearer. Well, I mean, maybe in Dallas. But it takes stones to live in Texas. Its either as hot as the surface of the sun or as cold as Derek Jeter ditching last night's conquest the next morning. The soil is pretty much dust over vast stretches. South of San Antonio consists mainly of mesquite, cactus, and wild hogs. Tornadoes, ice storms, Jerry Jones, and Neiman Marcus sales blow out huge swaths of north Texas. Hurricanes, subsidence, mosquitoes, encephalitis, and refinery smoke takes care of southeast Texas. Mountains, canyons, and plateau dominate west Texas. Piney woods and rolling hills cover the east. Despite all that, Texas is beautiful, the same way that anything wild and free is beautiful. The Texas Hill Country, Big Bend National Park, Palo Duro Canyon, Padre Island National Seashore, the Big Thicket, the Nueces River valley, Caddo Lake...these places all inspire the imagination and the senses. Consequently, the people are wild. Texas was settled by two kinds of people: Germans and Bohemians, and criminals. Its the Australia of the United States. You came to Texas basically because you had to. You couldn't get along anywhere else. So naturally, to survive you had to do what you had to do once you got here. You had to fight the land to survive. And you didn't want some pointy head bureaucrat telling you what you could and couldn't do. That attitude survives today, in spades.  "Don't fence me in." Carry guns? No problem. Low taxes, low government spending, fewer laws, few lawsuits, private property rights. Politicians come and go, but Texans basically want to live their lives the way they want to, and are prepared to fight for it. "Come and Take It" was no lie. So Texans are audacious. Translation, we tend to tear ass all over the place. Chess players and encounter group attenders we are not. Hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, shooting guns of all kinds, whooping and a'hollerin, driving fast, playing sports, racing boats, dancing, eating everything in sight, makin' noise, tellin' stories. Accidentally running over your cheating husband. Three times. Hey, accidents happen, people. Especially when you're sleeping with your receptionist.

Enchanted Rock

• Texas is about contrasts and contradictions. These abound. As I mentioned, the land itself is full of contrasts: beaches and mountains, grasslands and deserts, forests and plains. You name a kind of terrain, you'll find it in Texas. Maybe not tundra, but whatevs. Its a state that relishes partying and good times but also strongly embraces religion. It has a strongly racist history and yet some of its most famous and cherished figures are minorities. Its known as the reddest, redneck state, yet has multiple world-class research universities, one of the most accomplished medical centers in the world, NASA, dozens of Fortune 500 corporation headquarters, and leading artistic, musical, and performance centers.

Sunset near Abilene

That's a long way. Better stop at the winery for supplies

• Texas is big. Vastness defines Texas. Look to either side of your screen. That's Texas. When you cross the Sabine River on IH-10 going into Orange County, you see a highway mileage sign that says "El Paso 857" That's longer than the distance from El Paso to Los Angeles, and longer than the distance between Orange, Texas and Jacksonville, Florida. A drive in the northeast that would span five states usually wouldn't take you out of even one part of Texas. As such, everything Texan is bigger. Haven't you heard? "Everything's bigger in Texas." The mascot at the State Fair is named "Big Tex." In some parts of Texas, you can drive an hour...to visit your next door neighbor. We have the world's biggest rodeo, rattlesnake roundup, football stadium, honky tonk, so on and so forth. The space defines everything. Cities keep expanding outward. People want big lots, big houses, big vehicles, big TVs, big barbecue grills, big furniture. Big everything.

• Texans support each other. No matter what. You'll never see Texans rioting, or looting after a storm, or tearing down barricades, or burning stores or cars. You will see them bringing food to storm victims, or helping their neighbors, or calmly pitching in during a crisis, or greeting their new neighbors. We will take in thousands of New Orleans storm victims when no one else would. University of Texas students will donate blood, money, and other items to Texas A&M students and families affected by the Bonfire collapse, and lead memorials in their honor. Central Texas will take in Houston refugees fleeing a hurricane. Relief efforts will spontaneously spring up throughout the state to help Jarrell tornado victims, West explosion victims, Texas City disaster victims, and so forth. When a famous Texan or Texas team succeeds, we all feel pride for their success. When they fail or suffer, we all feel it. In the end, Texas isn't a place, its people. Bound to a place by tradition and respect.

Texas, though a relatively young state, has produced national and international leaders in nearly every imaginable field. We're the home of major universities, corporate headquarters, NASA, military installations, energy production, cutting edge medical treatment and research, finance, movie production, music and art, outstanding cuisine, sports, and plain ol' havin' fun. Texans have produced invaluable achievements, and produced some of the foremost leaders, in:

• politics (Ann Richards, Bush 41 and 43, Sam Rayburn, John Nance Garner, John Connolly, Henry B. Gonzalez, Jim Wright, Lloyd Bentsen)
• military (Chester Nimitz, Audie Murphy, John Bell Hood, Claire Chennault, Earl Rudder, Roy Benavidez)
• arts (Stanley Marsh 3, Elisabet Ney, Wyatt Hedrick, Tex Avery)
• science and medicine (Dr. Denton Cooley, Robert Lee Moore, Steven Weinberg, Paul Chu, Ilya Prigogene),
• music (Van Cliburn, ZZ Top, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, George Jones, Ernest Tubb, Ray Price, Bob Wills, Ornette Coleman, Willie Nelson, George Strait, Lyle Lovett, Doug Sahm, Roky Erickson, Selena, Don Henley, Jerry Jeff Walker, Steve Miller, Steven Stills, Usher, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Lee Ann Rimes, Janis Joplin, Tex Ritter, Beyoncé)
• fashion (Stanley Marcus, Jerry Hall, Lois Chiles)
• movies and theatre (Tommy Lee Jones, Farrah Fawcett, Aaron Spelling, Rip Torn, Tom Mix, Pola Negri, Dennis and Randy Quaid, Ginger Rogers, Mary Martin, Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater, Terence Malick, Cyd Charisse, Steve Martin, Carol Burnett, Jamie Foxx, Larry Hagman, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Bill Paxton, Debbie Reynolds, the Wilson brothers, Sissy Spacek, Tommy Tune)
• journalism (Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, Molly Ivins, Liz Carpenter, Walter Cronkite, Sam Donaldson, Dan Jenkins, Frank Fallon, Dave Campbell, Bud Shrake, Linda Ellerbee, Rex Reed, John Henry Faulk, Jim Lehrer)
• business (Red McCombs, Conrad Hilton, John Mackey, Ross Perot, Sid Richardson, Mary Kay Ash, Trammel Crow, Charles Butt, Mark Cuban, H.L. Hunt)
• education and scholarship (Bill Moore, Frank Erwin, John Silber, Umphrey Lee, Herbert Reynolds, Sul Ross, Earl Rudder, Edgar Lovett)
• sports (Nolan Ryan, Earl Campbell, Hakeem Olajuwon, Tom Landry, Doak Walker, Adrian Peterson, Drew Brees, Bobby Layne, Jack Johnson, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Carl Lewis, AJ Foyt, Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Lee Trevino, Michael Johnson)
• agriculture (Robert Kleberg, Charles Goodnight, Richard King)
• energy (Glenn McCarthy, Walter Fondren, Ross Sterling, George Mitchell, Howard Hughes, Sr.), law (Leon Jaworski, Joe Jamail, Tom Clark, Racehorse Haynes, John O'Quinn, Kenneth Starr, Rusty Hardin, Walter Umphrey)
• writing (Larry L. King, Larry McMurtry, O. Henry, J. Frank Dobie, Billy Lee Brammer, Horton Foote, Elmer Kelton)
• philanthropy (Ima Hogg, Ben Taub, the Hobby family)

And on and on.

And I didn't even mention how we have the best women. Beyond those mentioned above, we have Lady Bird Johnson, Laura and Barbara Bush, Oveta Culp Hobby, Joanne King, Susana Dickinson, Nellie Connolly, Carrie Marcus, Miriam "Ma" Ferguson, Katherine Anne Porter, Bonnie Parker, Sarah Hughes. And Jessica. And Jaclyn. Top that.

The Top 5 Texans embody these attributes in every way. They symbolize everything that makes up Texas, and everything that has ever made Texas. Both good and bad.

5. Matthew McConaughey. The most bro-tastic guy ever. Ah, just kidding. Obvs. This isn't Men's Health. "Alright, alright, alright."

5. Sam Houston. First President of the Republic of Texas. Commanding General of the Texas Army that defeated Santa Anna at San Jacinto. To my knowledge still the only person ever to have been elected to the US Senate from two different states. Governor of the States of Tennessee and of Texas, the latter post from which he resigned rather than take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy. First in a long, long line of great Texas statesmen. Despite the prevailing sentiment against the Natives, Sam Houston spent much of his childhood among the Cherokee Indians of Tennessee, and was a lifelong friend of the native peoples. Like many, many other great Texans, he came to Texas as a broken, down alcoholic who ran out of options in his native Tennessee, hoping to rebuild his life. He had a Cherokee wife, ran a trading post, and was so bad off the Cherokees called him "Big Drunk." He came to Texas and within three years assumed command of the Texas Army, which was little more than a collection of farmers fleeing the army Santa Anna had sent to put down the fledgling Texas rebellion, though wounded badly at San Jacinto. Within a few months, he had beaten Santa Anna and negotiated an accord that allowed the new Republic to commence. After a long career as President, Senator and Governor, he resigned as Governor rather than support the Confederacy. Ol' Sam was a great storyteller, and was quick to turn a phrase. When he was baptized in a river he was told it would wash his sins away. He responded, "Lord help the fish down below.” When David G. Burnet, who stood 5' 1" to Houston's 6', challenged him to a duel, he refused, saying "I refuse to fight downhill." He could be eloquent as well. When local authorities refused to let him speak during his 1857 campaign for Governor in the courthouse, he told the crowd to follow him to a large oak tree on a hill just outside of town, "on the soil of Texas. I have a right to speak there because I have watered it with my blood." To this day, schools, streets, hospitals, counties, and the fourth largest city in the nation bear his name. And, fitting for such a towering figure, the first word uttered from the surface of the moon was his name, "Houston."

Dr. Michael E. DeBakey

4. Dr. Michael DeBakey. Most people don't think "world class medical center" when "Texas" comes up. But they should. Dallas boasts the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, one of the nation's top medical schools. The Texas Medical Center in Houston, led by the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, the University of Texas Health Science Center, the  Baylor College of Medicine, and the Methodist and St. Luke's Hospitals are on the cutting edge (no pun) of medical research, education, and care. Every year, the Medical Center and other Texas medical institutions treat thousands from all over the world. Countless people from other states and nations travel to Texas, and particularly to the Medical Center, to seek groundbreaking treatments. Dr. Michael DeBakey led the way in the Medical Center in attaining this status. Born in 1908 in Lake Charles to Lebanese immigrants, he graduated from Tulane Medical School. While still in medical school, he developed the roller pump, an essential component of the heart-lung machine that makes open heart surgery possible. He performed his residency and internships in New Orleans, where in 1939 he was one of the first doctors to connect smoking with cancer. After serving in WWII, where he helped establish the MASH unit concept, he joined the Baylor College of Medicine faculty, serving as Chairman of the Surgery Department for nearly 50 years, and later became President and then Chancellor of the College. The College was on academic probation among accreditation societies, and broke, when he arrive in 1948. Today it is among the finest medical schools in the world. His career included a number of landmark first procedures, and was one of the first surgeons to perform a coronary bypass surgery. He helped develop the artificial heart. He invented a surgery to repair the aortic dissection, using a Dacron graft to repair the artery, a surgery that he himself would undergo some 50 years later. He was one of the first to surgically treat blocked carotid arteries. He was one of the first to perform a heart transplant. He treated world leaders, such as Boris Yeltsin, the Shah of Iran, the Duke of Windsor, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. He helped found the VA Hospital system to care for returning war veterans. He helped found other Medical Center institutions, including the Methodist DeBakey Cardiac Center, which treated my own heart ailment. He helped support the original 1965 Medicare legislation. Dr. DeBakey practiced medicine until the day he died, nearly 100 years old. The inventions and procedures he helped pioneer are now commonplace. These procedures, these institutions, these devices, have saved millions of lives. People all around the world have gone on to have families, create great works, and enjoy longer and happier lives than they would have, all because of Dr. DeBakey.



Congresswoman Barbara Jordan

3. Barbara Jordan. Another larger than life figure. She was born in 1936, and grew up in Houston's impoverished Fifth Ward as the youngest of three girls. Her father, a warehouse clerk, helped her attend Texas Southern University, where she graduated magna cum laude. She graduated from prestigious Boston University Law School thereafter and passed the Massachusetts and Texas bar exams. She practiced law in Houston until 1967, where thanks to federal voting rights legislation and redistricting that created more opportunity for minority candidates, she became the first African-American elected to the Texas Senate since Reconstruction, and the first black woman ever.  Rather than becoming a lightning rod, however, she was a pragmatist and worked to gain her colleagues trust and admiration, a feat many Senators never accomplish, to obtain legislation favorable to her district. She was elected to Congress in 1973, the first Southern black woman to achieve that feat. She rose to national prominence during the Watergate hearings, where even though a freshman (back in the days when a member had to have been in Congress for several terms to have any real sway), her powerful questioning and advocacy helped galvanize the nation against Nixon. Her speech at the hearings represents one of the most powerful instances of oratory in that body's history, and maybe in American history. People forget, but for quite awhile after Watergate broke, Nixon's popularity remained unaffected. It was only after Leon Jaworski and the House Judiciary Committee began uncovering evidence that connected Nixon to the break in and the larger "dirty tricks," and as hastened by Jordan's and Sam Ervin's relentless pursuit of the truth that the tide turned against Nixon. She had been considered as a potential Vice Presidential candidate that year, and several others thereafter. The Democratic Party chose her as the keynote speaker for the 1976 Convention, where she delivered a powerful speech on unity, equality, and accountability. One delegate even voted to nominate her for President despite the fact she had never been a candidate. She served in Congress only six years. Though in later years, she was mentioned for prominent Cabinet appointments, she began to suffer health problems. So she returned to Texas and became a Professor at the University of Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs. She was the commencement speaker at my own University of Texas graduation in 1986. I still remember her theme phrase "conviction values" ringing through the years, in her magnificent, authoritative, booming voice. The campus features a statue of her near the Texas Union building. Barbara Jordan came along at a unique moment in history, where the Imperial Presidency, emboldened by the Cold War, threatened to distort Constitutional precepts. One of the primary functions of a legislative body is to hold the executive accountable. At a time when few were willing to take on President Nixon, Barbara Jordan did so in a thunderous, steeling way. As the product of the 1960s invigoration of Constitutional civil rights, she fittingly and ultimately became the voice for Constitutional government. Barbara Jordan showed minorities and women that they could accomplish anything they set out to do. And as a lesson to those who have followed in her wake, she also proved she could obtain her goals in a collaborative way in partnership with others rather than as a shrill voice always pronouncing judgment.

Howard Hughes, Jr.

2. Howard Hughes. Our very own Charles Foster Kane. Not many people seem to remember Howard Hughes, or even know he was a Texan. Ok, for a time, Howard Hughes was the richest man in the world. The Bill Gates of his day. But Howard Hughes was born and died in Houston. He led a life that makes someone like Richard Branson look positively sluggish. His father, Howard Sr., invented the rotary drill bit, which was responsible for unlocking most of the oil in Texas. Through good business sense he built the Hughes Tool Co. into a thriving company. He died while Howard Jr. was still a teenager, but left him most of his fortune and the company. Howard Jr. was an inventor at an early age. He built Houston's first radio transmitter at age 11, and the first motorized bicycle at age 12. He began to fly planes at age 14, and audited classes at Cal Tech. He briefly attended the Rice Institute, but after marrying, he moved to Los Angeles to make movies. He won an early Academy Award for Directing, and produced numerous other movies over the next few years, such as Hell's Angels, The Outlaw (the one with Jane Russell lying in the hay...what up, girl?), and the original Scarface. He acquired struggling RKO Pictures and built it into one of the major studios of its time. While in California, Hughes created Hughes Aircraft, which pioneered early American aircraft development and later became Hughes Aerospace. He famously built the "Spruce Goose," the world's largest airplane. His planes set new speed and distance records, and were important in developing fighters and bombers during World War II. Hughes himself was a test pilot, and set many records in craft he helped develop. He bought TWA Airlines, and built it into one of the world's largest airlines. Other pursuits included the Hughes Medical Institute, acquiring and running nearly half of the Las Vegas hotels and casinos during the 1960s (thereby running the mob out of town for a time), and the Glomar Explorer. Sadly, his later life was marked by obsessive compulsive disorder, physical pain, drug use, and depression, which gave rise to substantial public ridicule. He may have spent most of his life elsewhere, but Howard Hughes was the classic huge Texas personality: restless, distracted, ambitious, insistent, and way over the top. He built an empire that both glorified himself and employed thousands. He developed innovations that helped America through the war and to develop as the economic superpower it became. And, in the end, what's a little weirdness among friends?

President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968

1. Lyndon Baines Johnson. The greatest Texan of all. I didn't even much like his politics. I remember very clearly when he died in 1972, our elementary school sent us all home that day. The assistant principal, a bustling young black man named Mr. Baines (ironically), had to hold back his tears as he announced to us that that day was not a holiday, not a day to play, not a day for fun, but a day to mourn, to reflect, and to celebrate the life of a hero. Such was the respect that LBJ still commanded in Texas and particularly among minorities, while the Vietnam War still raged on. This is my favorite Johnson photo, and maybe my favorite photo of any President. He's listening to a tape his son-in-law, Capt. Charles Robb, sent from Vietnam. Captain (later Senator) Robb was describing the conditions there. This wasn't some maniacal war criminal bent on murdering innocent civilians, uncaring what toll it took on American soldiers and their families. This was a man who felt every death and who took all the violence personally. This was a man who struggled with the awesome weight of his responsibilities, but who carried on because he had no choice. That's a quintessential Texan trait.

OK, millions of words have been written about President Johnson, but its difficult to cut it short because he led a fascinating life at nearly every age.  Robert Caro's four volume work provides the definitive resource.  Johnson was born in Gillespie County, Texas in a house with no electricity, and ascended to live in the White House and become the most powerful person in the world. He graduated from the then Southwest Texas State Teacher's College in San Marcos, and later taught school. He became Congressman Richard Kleberg's secretary, and began meeting people all throughout official Washington. In the first of a long string of fortuitous decisions, he married Lady Bird Taylor, a cultivated, affluent woman from East Texas. She helped run his early campaigns, drawing on her experience as a journalist to make sound decisions as against Johnson's innate impulsiveness. After Johnson won election to Congress on a New Deal platform, his manner and brashness alienated many Democratic members, and the administration. But he had an in with Texas oil millionaires, and was able to spread that money throughout Washington to help members facing difficult re-election campaigns. Money buys friends, and LBJ saw his influence growing. While in Congress, he championed the Rural Electrification Act, which brought electricity to rural areas including his native Hill Country, and later listed it as among the accomplishments of which he was most proud. He briefly served in a combat position as a Naval officer during WWII, but returned to Washington once the military prohibited serving Congressmembers from participating in war zones. The 1948 Senate election against Coke Stevenson, which he won by the razor thinnest of razor thin margins through Duval County vote fraud, earned him the nickname "Landslide Lyndon." But, that was just another example of a Texan doing what it took to succeed. For all the caterwauling over that election, everyone forgets that back then, vote fraud was just a common thing. Coke Stevenson did it too. LBJ was probably the greatest Senate majority leader of all time. Within a few short years he became Majority Leader. His mastery of the Senate exceeded all others. Alternatively imposing and flattering, he could work a colleague like no other. The "Johnson Treatment" became legendary, in which he used his imposing frame to lean into someone's personal space and command their attention through cajoling, flattery, threats, exuberance, pleading, commands, and so forth. He knew everything going on in Washington, knowledge he used to push through his agenda. He agreed to become JFK's running mate after his own Presidential campaign fizzled, and immediately regretted it. He felt like he had become useless, and had no role in the administration given the Kennedy advisors' disdain for him (particularly Robert Kennedy).


The Treatment, with Sen. Richard Russell

He never thought he would become President, but didn't apologize when he did. He appointed the Warren Commission. Assailed in its time, the Commission is now (I believe) regarded as having conducted a superb investigation and analysis during an incredibly difficult period in American history. He immediately moved to push President Kennedy's stalled legislative agenda. Using his legislative expertise, he pushed through his Great Society agenda: Medicare, Medicaid, the Anti-Poverty Act, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, the Voting Rights Act, the Immigration Act of 1965, he created the National Endowments for the Arts, and for the Humanities. He kept the Six Day War from escalating, despite Soviet/Egyptian furor. He helped tamp down violence after the MLK assassination. Of course, there was...the War. What can I say? Except this. People forget the politics that led us into the War. Barry Goldwater and the Right were screaming about appeasement of the Soviets. Kennedy had been humiliated at the Bay of Pigs. We had "lost" China and half the State Department was purged as a result. McCarthy had ultimately been put down but the fervent "better dead than red" sentiment that he exploited remained very strong. Korea had been viewed by many as an unacceptable stalemate, and Kennedy had after all committed the nation to "pay any price, bear any burden...oppose any foe" to assure the survival of liberty. That's the "read my lips no new taxes" of the 1960s. What was Johnson supposed to do? Just give in? Politically not an option at the time. Of course, totally bungling and mismanaging the thing should have been off the table too, but those instincts that had served him so well in the Congress utterly failed him as Commander in Chief. Delegation, command, discipline....these things are not the legislative way. Wars don't come with personal, one on one solutions, nor are they won through mediation. But you'll notice it took foreign policy experts Nixon and Kissinger five more years to extract us from Vietnam. I'm not sure how it would have been different if Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt had been in charge. But Johnson's failure was a glorious one, over the top, momentous, in some ways gallant. A very Texan kind of failure.

So there you have it, the end of the list, and of the Top 5 lists.

I'll just assume we've all had enough to last for a long time.

NEXT-a report on the Don and Birdie Reeder Global Emergency Fund