People from Beaumont

Gordon Baxter (December 25, 1923 – June 11, 2005), nicknamed Bax, was a well-known Texas radio personality, an author of books and a columnist for newspapers and magazines. He was a lifelong resident of Southeast Texas, having grown up in Port Arthur where he was born.
He lived near Beaumont during most of his professional years and was probably best known locally as a radio heartland humorist in the Jean Shepherd tradition. He was also known nationally to several generations of pilots who read his columns on the joys of flying in the aviation magazine, Flying.
Baxter was entranced by aviation from childhood. At the age of ten, he paid "a 1933 fortune" of five dollars for his first airplane ride in a Curtiss Condor and was hooked on flying. Despite a slow start in the cockpit and as a writer, by the end of his writing career he had spent more than 25 years with Flying, written 13 books and contributed to a Microsoft CD-ROM title, World of Flight.
During World War II, Baxter joined the Army Air Corps, hoping to be a pilot. Baxter himself noted that his ruination as a military pilot was predicted in high school by a math teacher who told Gordon that he spent too much time dreaming and drawing airplanes and not enough time studying. In the Army Air Corps, he trained in a Stearman. He entered the Merchant Marine as an officer, but after his ship was sunk in the South Pacific, he became a turret gunner in B-17s. Once there, he became a sharpshooter in every turret position. It was only after World War II that he succeeded in soloing in a Luscombe, eventually becoming an active pilot in the late 1950s.

John Malach Shaw (November 14, 1931 – December 24, 1999) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

Charles Fountain Willis, Jr. (July 23, 1918 – March 16, 1993) was an American political campaigner and low level government official.
Willis was born in Beaumont, Texas, and earned a B.A. from the University of Florida in 1939.
During World War II, Willis was a commander in the Naval Air Arm of the United States Navy. He served as a patrol pilot, a bomber pilot, and a fighter pilot. His efforts earned the Distinguished Flying Cross three times, three Air Medals, and a Purple Heart.
After the war, Willis entered private industry and founded Willis Air Service in 1946. In 1951, Willis and Stanley M. Rumbough Jr. co-founded the "Citizens for Eisenhower" movement in an attempt to secure the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Willis continued his work for the Eisenhower campaign in 1952 by joining the campaign staff. He is credited for coining the iconic political slogan, "I Like Ike."After Eisenhower's election in late 1952, Willis joined Eisenhower's staff and served as assistant to the assistant to the president from January 23, 1953, until June 30, 1955.Following Willis' departure from the White House, he served as assistant to the chairman of W. R. Grace and Company until 1957 when he became president of Alaska Airlines.
He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia.

Carl Mark Pearcy, Jr. (born August 25, 1935) is an American mathematician whose research has been concentrated on operator theory and operator algebras. He has coauthored several books, including "Introduction to Operator Theory I", Introduction to Analysis", and "Measure and integration", all published by Springer and coauthored by Arlen Brown (and Hari Bercovici in the case of Measure and integration). Pearcy had 31 Ph. D. students at Michigan and TAMU
, several of whom are outstanding mathematicians. Pearcy's bibliography contains more than 150 papers, and his research has concerned the invariant subspace problem and the theory of dual algebras.

Billy Lee (William Lee Schlensker) (March 12, 1929 – November 17, 1989) was a child actor who appeared in many films from the mid-1930s through the early 1940s. He is probably best remembered for his performance in The Biscuit Eater.Lee's first role was in the Our Gang comedy short Mike Fright as a tap dancer in a sailor suit. He was signed under contract with Paramount Pictures from 1934 to 1941 and his first significant role was in Wagon Wheels when he was just four years old.
Lee continued acting throughout the 1930s, appearing in a number of movies (among others: Too Many Parents, Easy to Take, Three Cheers for Love, Silk Hat Kid, The Big Broadcast of 1937, Sons of the Legion, Say It in French, Boy Trouble, Night Work, Sudden Money, Nobody's Children, Hold Back the Dawn, Nevada City, Road to Happiness) and working alongside some of Hollywood's finest, including, Donald O'Connor, Lon Chaney Jr., Roy Rogers, Charles Boyer, Randolph Scott, Lew Ayres, Gene Autry, Robert Cummings, Basil Rathbone, Olivia de Havilland, John Boles, Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland and Broderick Crawford). He also did the voice of "The Boy" character in the animated portion of the Disney film, The Reluctant Dragon.In addition to being an actor, he was also a singer and dancer, appearing and singing with Bobby Breen in Make a Wish and touring with vaudeville shows. For his role in Cocoanut Grove he learnt to play the drums and formed the Billy Lee Band. The band appeared in the 1941 film, Reg'lar Fellers, in which he starred with co-star Carl Switzer.
Lee retired from film in 1943 after his last film War Dogs.Lee died on November 17, 1989, of a sudden heart attack.

Tom Tierney (October 8, 1928 – July 12, 2014) was a noted American paper doll artist. He is credited with reviving what has been described by The New York Times as the "lost art" of paper doll making during his career which stretched from the 1970s to his death in 2014. Over the course of his career, he sold over 4 million paper dolls and 400 paper doll books to readers all over the world, including one to Pope John Paul II.