Don Walsh (November 2, 1931 – November 12, 2023) was an American oceanographer, explorer and marine policy specialist. He and Jacques Piccard were aboard the bathyscaphe Trieste when it made a record maximum descent into the Challenger Deep on January 23, 1960, the deepest point of the world's oceans. The depth was measured at 35,813 feet (10,916 m), but later and more accurate measurements have measured it at 35,798 feet (10,911 m).
Jack Ward Thomas (September 7, 1934 – May 26, 2016) was the thirteenth chief of the U.S. Forest Service, serving during the Clinton administration years of 1993–1996.
He was born in Fort Worth, Texas. His undergraduate education and degree (a BS in wildlife management in 1957) was from Texas A&M University. He worked for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for ten years. Then while working as a USFS research biologist at Morgantown, West Virginia, he received an MS in wildlife ecology from West Virginia University. He headed a Forest Service research unit at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He received his PhD in forestry there in 1972. In 1974, he moved to La Grande, Oregon, working as the chief research wildlife biologist and program leader at the USFS Forestry and Range Sciences Laboratory.
On December 1, 1993, he was appointed Chief of the U.S. Forest Service. During his time as head of the USFS, the Northwest Forest Plan was adopted. Jack became a member of the Boone and Crockett Club in 1994. After retiring from the Forest Service, he accepted a position as the Boone and Crockett Professor of Wildlife Conservation at the School of Forestry of the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana—a position he held until 2006 when he officially retired.
He died on May 26, 2016, after a battle with cancer, at his home in Florence, Montana.
Aaron Robert Schwartz, better known as A. R. Schwartz or "Babe" Schwartz (July 17, 1926 – August 10, 2018), was an American politician, lawyer, and lobbyist who served in the Texas House of Representatives from 1955 to 1959 and in the Texas Senate from 1960 to 1981, representing his native Galveston, Texas. He was known for being a liberal "yellow-dog" Democrat.
Glenn H. Kothmann (born c. 1928) was a San Antonio, Texas politician. He represented Bexar County as a Democrat in the Texas House of Representatives and Texas Senate for 26 years between 1957 and 1987. Kothmann is a 1950 graduate from Texas A&M University, where he was a varsity athlete.
Jerome LaMarr Johnson (born September 21, 1935) is a retired four-star admiral of the United States Navy who commanded the United States Second Fleet, Joint Task Force 120, and NATO's Striking Fleet Atlantic from 1988 to 1990. He served as Vice Chief of Naval Operations from 1990 to 1992.
Johnson has endorsed the false conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was rigged to favor Joe Biden and claims that the United States "has taken a hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government."
Graham Boynton Purcell Jr. (May 5, 1919 – June 11, 2011), was a United States representative from Texas' 13th congressional district.
Born in Archer City in Archer County, a part of the Wichita Falls metropolitan statistical area, Purcell attended public schools and received his Bachelor of Science from the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas in 1946, and his LL.B. in 1949 from Baylor Law School in Waco, Texas.
Purcell served in the United States Army during World War II from 1941 to 1946 and served thereafter in the United States Army Reserve.
He served as judge of the Eighty-ninth Judicial District Court of Texas from 1955 to 1962. He was a delegate to the 1960 and 1964 Democratic national conventions, which met in Los Angeles and Atlantic City, New Jersey, respectively to nominate the Kennedy-Johnson and the Johnson-Humphrey tickets, both of which prevailed in Texas.
Purcell was elected to the Eighty-seventh Congress, by special election, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of fellow Democrat, Representative Frank N. Ikard. He was reelected to the five succeeding congresses (January 27, 1962 – January 3, 1973). In 1966, when John Tower won his second term as U. S. senator, Purcell defeated the Republican Dillard Carlisle "Bunny" Norwood (1913-1993) of Wichita Falls.
On November 22, 1963, Purcell was riding in the motorcade's third vehicle behind U.S. President Kennedy during the assassination in Dallas, Texas.
Although Texas gained a seat as a result of the 1970 Census, Purcell's 13th District was dismantled, and his home in Wichita Falls was merged with the Panhandle-based 18th District of Republican Bob Price for the 1972 elections. The new district was numerically Purcell's district—the 13th—but was geographically more Price's district. Purcell retained only one-third of his former constituents. Forced to run in territory that he did not know and that did not know him, Purcell was defeated by nine points.
In 1993, House bill HR 2292 was passed designating the federal building in Wichita Falls as the Graham B. Purcell Jr. Post Office and Federal Building. Purcell resided in Wichita Falls until his death at the age of ninety-two.
Charles Frederick Rogers (December 30, 1921 – disappeared June 23, 1965) was an American seismologist, pilot, and murder suspect who disappeared in June 1965 after police discovered the dismembered bodies of his elderly parents in the refrigerator of the Houston home all three shared, in what the media later dubbed "The Icebox Murders". Rogers has never been found and was declared dead in absentia in July 1975. He remains the only suspect in the murders, which are still considered unsolved.
James Henry "Red" Duke, Jr. (November 16, 1928 – August 25, 2015) was a trauma surgeon and professor at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, where he worked on-site since 1972. He was instrumental in introducing Memorial Hermann's Life Flight program and bringing a level I trauma center to Houston.
Duke had a nationally syndicated television spot called Texas Health Reports or Dr. Red Duke's Health Reports, which aired on local television stations in the United States for fifteen years.
Alfred Clair Haynes (August 31, 1931 – August 25, 2019) was an American airline pilot. He flew for United Airlines, and in 1989, came to international attention as the captain of United Airlines Flight 232, which crashed in Sioux City, Iowa, after suffering a total loss of controls. Having recovered and returned to service as a pilot, Haynes retired from United Airlines in 1991, and subsequently became a public speaker for aviation safety.
George Phydias Mitchell (May 21, 1919 – July 26, 2013) was an American businessman, real estate developer and philanthropist from Texas credited with pioneering the economic extraction of shale gas.