March 2005

Obituaries

Liz Brandt
Liz Brandt, 79, died Feb. 20, 2005 at her home in La Porte. She was a former Houston Chronicle society editor and Houston’s first female TV weather reporter.

Jerry Hall
Jerry Hall, 78, died March 6, 2005 in Austin.
Hall worked at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and Austin Statesman before becoming press secretary for Gov. Preston Smith.
He helped cover Charles Whitman’s shooting spree atop the tower at the University of Texas in 1966.

Clyde E. Johnston
Clyde E. Johnston died Feb. 12, 2005 at Navarro Regional Hospital.
He was a reporter for the Corsicana Daily Sun and wrote a weekly opinion column. Later he was press aide to  
Texas agriculture commissioner John Whit, director of the State Democratic Executive Committee under Gov. Price Daniel and assistant to Congressman James J.J. Pickle in Washington, D.C.

Henry Ed Luker
Henry Ed Luker, 81, whose father A.H. Luker was president of Texas Press Association from 1924-25, died March 5, 2005 at the Cartmell Home for Aged.
Luker’s father was editor of the Grapeland Messenger from 1905 until retiring in 1953. Luker and his brother Merle took over from their father and Luker served as editor of the Messenger until 1968. Luker penned the column “Candid Shots.”
Luker sold the Messenger in 1968
to Weldon and Sandra Kerby.

Ruby Malone
Ruby Maurice DuBose Malone, 88, died Feb. 10, 2005.
She was a partner in the Devine News. Her grandfather William Lafayette DuBose bought the newspaper shortly after its founding in 1897. He later asked his sons Matthew DuBose, Ruby DuBose’s father, and Charlie Paine, current owner Kathleen DuBose Calame’s grandfather, to join the partnership.
The News was then passed down through the generations.

Ernie Makovy
Ernie Makovy, 55, died March 6, 2005. He was an editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram where he worked since 1989. He had worked at the Dallas Times Herald for 18 years and at the Waco News-Tribune while attending Baylor University.

Doug Meed
Doug Meed, 77, died of cancer Feb. 17, 2005 in a San Antonio hospital.

Meed wrote books about the history of Texas, Mexico and the Southwest and worked for newspapers in San Antonio, Corpus Christi and Houston, mostly on the police beat. He worked for the San Antonio Light in the early 1950s.

Leonard Sanders
Leonard Sanders, 76, died Feb. 19, 2005 in Kindred Hospital Southwest. He had been recovering from recent back surgery.Sanders was a former Fort Worth Star-Telegram books editor whose novel “Fort Worth” captured the city’s early history. He worked at the Star-Telegram from 1969-79. His 1976 spy thriller “The Hamlet Warning” became a national bestseller.

Peggy Watt
Peggy Watt, 67, died Feb. 25, 2005, in Amarillo. She was a longtime community correspondent covering the lives of people in Hedley and her col
umn “Watt’s Happening” was a mainstay of The Clarendon Enterprise for about 20 years.

Bob Wilson
Bob Wilson, 81, died Feb. 16, 2005
after an extended illness.
Wilson was a news editor for the Brady Standard-Herald for 33 years. His first job was reporter at the Abilene Reporter-News where he worked until 1952.
He left Brady in 1964 to join the San Antonio Express-News as telegraph editor. He moved back to Brady in 1976, and the next year again became the news editor for the Standard-Herald.