Obituaries July 2026

Obituaries published in the July 2026 editon of the Texas Press Messenger.

David Crisp

VICTORIA – David Crisp, 75, a longtime newspaper man and educator in Texas and Montana, died May 16.

A native of Victoria and high school graduate there, he volunteered for the Army Security Agency in 1970, serving at bases in Missouri, California, Texas and Germany. After discharge in 1973, he spent a year traveling in Europe.

After working for a year in Denver, he attended Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, graduating with honors and earning a degree in humanities in 1978. The same year, he and Patricia Ann Garner were married in Nacogdoches.

They both worked at the Texas Capitol before Crisp took his first newspaper job as a reporter at the Palestine Herald-Press in Texas. He left that for a reporting job at the Bryan-College Station Eagle. He then returned to Palestine as top editor and later returned to Bryan as top editor.

He also attended Texas A&M University on a Lechner Fellowship, earning a distinguished graduate student award and a master’s degree in English. He later taught at A&M and at Blinn College.

In 1992 the Crisps moved to Montana, where he became a regional editor and then a reporter for the Billings Gazette. He left the Gazette in 1997 to found a weekly newspaper, the Billings Outpost, which published until 2016.

He also taught journalism and composition classes at Rocky Mountain College, where he delivered the baccalaureate address the year he retired. At Montana State University-Billings, he taught German and worked as a tutor in the Academic Support Center.

Crisp continued to write for Last Best News and occasionally for the Montana Free Press. He had written a weekly column for the Yellowstone County News since July 2022.

He won more than a dozen statewide and corporate writing awards and one national award, the 1980 American Association for the Advancement of Science writing award for smaller newspapers. His work has appeared in three anthologies.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter, two grandchildren and other relatives.

Plans for a memorial service will be announced.

Gloria Padilla

SAN ANTONIO – Gloria Padilla, whose 42-year career spanned five newspapers in four cities, the last 35 in San Antonio, died June 1. She was 68.

A native of Brownsville, she earned a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin in less than four years.

Her first job was at the Burnet County Bulletin in the Hill Country, where she was a reporter, photographer and “doer of whatever else needed doing.”

A year later, she moved to Laredo, where she worked for both the Laredo Morning Times and The Laredo Morning News from 1979 to 1982, covering city hall.

Her next stop was four years at the Corpus Christi Caller Times, where she covered federal courts, writing about South Texas drug trafficking, the Bandido motorcycle club and the undocumented people moving through and around the Sarita, Texas, checkpoint.

She arrived at the San Antonio Express-News in 1986 and remained there for almost 35 years, the first 14 as a reporter covering courts and county government, one legislative session in Austin, and higher education. Then came two decades as a columnist and member of the editorial board. Even in her new role, she continued to break news through her reporting.

After retiring in 2021, she enjoyed travel, gardening, baking and volunteer work.

In 1987, she married fellow reporter Don Finley. They welcomed a daughter, Hannah, in 1995.

In addition to her husband and daughter, she is survived by a new granddaughter as well as sisters, brothers and other relatives.

Memorial service was held June 13 at Sunset Memorial Park and Funeral Home in San Antonio.