Those three sets of proper nouns, “Texas Rangers,” “Texas Capitol” and “Granddad” don’t seem to have much in common–but for me they do.
Sure, the Texas Rangers get their funding every two years from the Texas Legislature meeting in that big sunset red granite structure dominating the view up Austin’s South Congress Avenue, but that’s not the connection I’m talking about. My tie to both entities, the Rangers and the Capitol, came through my late grandfather, L.A. Wilke.
As a Texas newspaperman in the teens, twenties and thirties of the last century, Granddad knew a lot of the old-time rangers, men already famous or about to be. Two of the more noted rangers Granddad dealt with were Capt. John R. Hughes, a legendary border ranger who served from the mid-1880s to 1915 and Capt. Frank Hamer, who in the spring of 1934 presided over the violent demise of the outlaw couple Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.
My interest in Ranger history, a passion which led to seven of my 30-plus non-fiction books, directly traces to the stories Granddad used to tell me about Captains Hughes and Hamer and other rangers he knew. Later, as a newspaper reporter, I got to meet various rangers from another generation of state lawmen. Later still, as chief of media relations for the Texas Department of Public Safety (which includes the Rangers), I met and became friends with many from yet another generation of rangers.
Legends and Lore of the Texas Capitol, my latest book, also can be backtracked to Granddad. When I was a boy, Granddad proudly informed me that his father — my great-grandfather — had been one of the workers who helped build the Capitol back in the 1880s. (No, he was NOT one of the convict laborers pressed into service by the state.) In the early 1950s, about when he took me to the Capitol for the first time, Granddad started doing research for a book on the building’s history. For whatever reason, he abandoned the project.
Fortunately, he kept his research materials. I still have those papers, which were helpful in the writing of my book. Of course, it took a lot more research than that to get Legends and Lore of the Texas Capitol written, but what I inherited from Granddad gave me a good start.
Beyond all this, Granddad gets the credit for first interesting me in newspaper work and freelance writing. After two decades in the trenches as a reporter for three Texas dailies, I moved on to state government communications work. However, I’ve never quit being a writer and intend to keep at it for as long as I can.
So welcome to my new website. I’ll be posting periodic updates on my books, events and occasional ruminations on writing and the writing life. Shoot, I might write about darn near anything that seems interesting.