| Notes |
- The Anahuac Progress,
Guy C. Jackson III dies at age 77
By Kevin Ladd, Director, Wallisville Heritage Park
ANAHUAC - Public service was somehow ingrained in the DNA of Guy Cade ?Jack? Jackson III, 77, who passed away on Monday evening, February 23 at Bayside Community Hospital.
His sense of public service no doubt came largely from his father, the late Judge Guy Cade Jackson, Jr., who will long be remembered as one of the most successful leaders in the history of Chambers County. Guy Cade knew how to get things done, and he was a man who always had several causes to which he was pledged at any given time. Any major project initiated in the county during the mid-Twentieth Century somehow carried Judge Jackson?s imprint.
Jack, like his father before him, was a man who got things done or sometimes tried his best to get things done. Sometimes in pursuit of some vision, he would rub people the wrong way, but he liked the public arena and he savored causes. His obituary fills to overflowing with such projects: the Chambers County Democratic Executive Committee, the Trinity River Authority, the Chambers County Bar Association, Chambers-Liberty Counties Bar Association, Texas Water Conservation Association, the Chambers-Liberty Counties Navigation District and the Houston-Galveston Area Council. The list goes on and on, and includes the Masonic Lodge, the Shriners, the Methodist Church, and any number of organizations concerned with Galveston Bay, water rights, water conservation, and the like.
Everywhere one might look today in Anahuac and many points in the county, there is a story begging to be told about Jackson. Any historical marker, for instance, that was erected during the ten years he served as chairman of the Chambers County Historical Commission bears his name. The Texas Historical Commission, which oversees all such markers in the state, sort of frowned on that, but he got it done. And his name will be there for decades to come.
There is, however, a story right there in Bayside Community Hospital, where he passed away. Way back in 1984 when it seemed as if the county might close the doors on the facility, Jackson and others including Doug Cameron, Lester Martin, Rob Clapper and Sam Hill put together a working committee that created Chambers County Hospital District No. 1. Those five men became the first board of trustees for the hospital, and Jack served as board secretary for the next five years. Doug Cameron served as president. It was an organization that worked well and exceeded everyone?s expectations.
These were, of course, over and above his professional career as an attorney, a real estate broker, and chief executive officer of the Chambers County Abstract Company.
As Rev. John Black, his former pastor, said the other day at his funeral service, Jack was a man who never minced words or held back from offering his opinions. There was, therefore, a sort of iron-hammered frankness to him that did not allow for his words to be misinterpreted. Some successful politicians can speak out of both sides of their mouths or disguise the true meaning of their words through guile or subterfuge. But when he told you something, it was just him telling you what he thought, and there is much to be said for that. He lost some important elections along the way because of it, but he ended his days with very few regrets. And when you get right down to it, he was able to look back upon his life without finding much if any hypocrisy there, and that was important to Guy C. Jackson III.
He was a bear about history. His obituary will tell you that he served his country during the Korean Conflict, but he was obsessed with World War II and the Civil War, the epic struggles that came before him. He loved to speculate and probe the early history of Anahuac, especially the Mexican Period when the battles of Anahuac were played out in 1832 and 1835. In the middle of the fort was the Plaza de Malinche, named for the mistress of Hernando Cortes, conqueror of the Aztecs. She was and is still a most controversial figure in Mexican history, and he loved to talk about her and that plaza as it related to the rest of the fort. He was devoted to the history of this nation and was especially partial to the Democratic Party?s role in that story.
He was famously devoted to his own family history. He was a grandson of Berta Nell (Briggs) and Guy Cade Jackson Jr., a great-grandson of Sarah (White) and James Jackson; and a great-great-grandson of Sarah (Merriman) and Humphrey Jackson, who came to Texas with Austin?s Colony. A good dozen years ago he became enamored with the idea of tracing Humphrey?s ancestors back to whatever ancestral home they had in Ireland. He secured the services of a professional genealogist there in the Emerald Isle, who traced the family back to Ballybay in County Monaghan.
He was born on August 16, 1931 in San Antonio, the eldest child to grace the home of Judge Guy Cade Jackson, Jr. and his wife Katherine Cook Jackson. His only brother, James Robert ?Jim Bob? Jackson and his wife Erin live in Beach City. His sister, Laura Jackson Howe, died at Kerrville several years ago.
Survivors include his wife of 47 years, Linda Cummins Jackson and children Guy Robert of Anahuac; Linda Ann of Anahuac; Steven Lynn of San Antonio; grandson Aidan Patrick Jackson of San Antonio. He and Linda were married on November 24, 1961.
He was a 1948 graduate of Anahuac High School and went on to earn his BBA at Texas A&M in May 1952. He graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in , January 1958.
He was a man who was sometimes full of bluster and bravado, but he was absolutely devoted to his friends, his family, his county, his nation, his faith, his party and his causes. We were enormously lucky to have known him and much poorer without him. Our appreciation for him will only deepen as time goes by.
(from Adam Edwards - http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=juuledwards&id=I17796)
|
1931 - 2009 (77 years)
