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People & Organizations

Gibson, William

  • Person
  • 1948-

William Gibson is one of the most important writers of late 20th- and early 21st-century science fiction. Gibson and his postmodern/postindustrialist aesthetic have had major cultural and literary influence on the development of modern science fiction. Gibson is noted for his imagery and themes involving such topics as the often-intimate impact of computers on humans, the refashioning and development of capitalism in the shadow of an increasingly technological and computerized society, and how people live and interact within near-future urban environments.

Gibson is one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary sub-genre. As one commentator as put it, cyberpunk might be summed up as "low life, high tech", based around stories that combine advanced scientific concepts such as cybernetics, vast communication networks, and artificial intelligences, with characters who are social outsiders, misfits or outcasts and live in a thriving and heterogeneous underground society. These concepts and characters meet in plots often centered around conflicts between hackers or other people involved in information technology, and late-capitalist megacorporations. Cyberpunk stories usually take place in contemporary or near-future urban settings with dystopian flavors. Cyberpunk tends to oppose the traditionally utopian or progressive vision in futurist science fiction in favor of darker, pessimistic societies dominated by corporations and/or communication networks that reach into all areas of human existence.

William Gibson's literary career began in 1977, with the publication in Unearth of the short story "Fragments of a Hologram Rose". For the next few years he continued to focus on the short story genre, with stories that include "Johnny Mnemonic" (1981, later made into a film in 1995);  "The Gernsback Continuum" (1981); "Burning Chrome" (1982), which introduced the term 'cyberspace'; and "New Rose Hotel" (1984). His early stories were collected into the volume _Burning Chrome_in 1986.

In 1984 Gibson published his first novel, Neuromancer. The book was immediately successful and critically hailed, becoming the first novel to win all three of science fiction's highest awards: the Nebula, the Philip K. Dick, and the Hugo. Set in the "Sprawl" universe that Gibson first described in "Burning Chrome", Neuromancer tells the story of ex- computer hacker Case, who lives in the dystopian underground of Chiba City, Japan. Case and augmented cyborg Molly Millions investigate a shadowy figure named Armitage, and thereby stumble into a plot involving a super-advanced artificial intelligence.

Gibson continued to explore his "Sprawl" universe with two additional novels: Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988, winner of the 1989 Aurora Award). In the 1990s, he wrote another trilogy of novels (the "Bridge" trilogy), this one set in a near-future San Francisco and Tokyo that face the emergence of new and transformative technologies after having both been devastated by earthquakes. This series, also popular with readers as well as criticially acclaimed, includes the novels Virtual Light (1993, winner of the 1995 Aurora Award), Idoru (1996), and All Tomorrow's Parties (1999).

In 1990, Gibson collaborated with fellow cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling to write The Difference Engine. Set in an alternative Victorian England where Charles Babbage's invention of the computer has profoundly transformed British society, the novel is an early and prominent example of steampunk, an offshoot of cyberpunk typically set in an industrialized historical setting such as Victorian Britain or the American West (or a fantasy world that employs similar motifs), and which often features societies driven by steam-powered machinery (or gear-centered machinery, in the offshoot-of-an-offshoot genre "clockpunk").

In the early 2000s, Gibson produced yet another trilogy, the "Blue Ant" series of novels, consisting of Pattern Recognition(2003), Spook Country (2007), and Zero History (2010). The Blue Ant novels were the first of Gibson's works to take place in the present day. His most recent novels include The Peripheral (2014) and Agency (2020), set in a near-future world and including time travel and multiple timelines.

Gibson has also written several works of non-fiction. The most notable of these has been the semi-autobiographical electronic poem Agrippa: a Book of the Dead (1992), which is famous for having been produced on a 3.5" floppy disk and embedded in an artist's book (art by Dennis Ashbaugh). The disk was programmed to encrypt itself after a single reading and thereby be unreadable forever after, and the art was treated with photosensitive chemicals that would cause it to begin fading upon the first exposure to light. Gibson and Ashbaugh produced the work in order to demonstrate the ultimate ephemerality of electronic media and, indeed, of text itself.

Gibson was born on March 17, 1948 in Conway, South Carolina, and spent much of his childhood in Virginia. In his youth he wandered throughout the country and became involved with 1960s counterculture, eventually moving to Canada in 1967 with the vague intent of avoiding being drafted into the Vietnam War. Gibson has resided in Canada ever since. In 1972 he and his wife Deborah moved to Vancouver.

William Gibson was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2008. Besides the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Philip K. Dick Awards, he has also won two Auroras, one Ditmar, one Seiun, and one Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award. In 2019 the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America gave Gibson the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.

Giesecke, Friedrich E.

  • Person
  • 1869-

Friedrich Ernst Giesecke was born in 1869 and graduated from New Braunfels High School at age 13. He then enrolled at Texas A&M College in the Fall of 1883 at age 14. At the age of 17, Giesecke graduated in the Class of 1886 and was the ranking officer in the Corps of Cadets. After graduation, he joined the A&M faculty and two years later was named head of the Mechanical Engineering Department. Later, he helped to set up a Department of Architecture in 1905.

Giesecke designed and/or supervised the construction of Sbisa Dining Hall in 1912, the Academic Building, Chemistry Building, System Administration Building, Cushing Memorial Library, Hart Hal, Walton Hall, and 14 other buildings on campus. In 1927 he returned to A&M to resume his role as College Architect and Dean of the School of Architecture.

Glaeser, Willmund, 1897-1966

  • Person

Willmund Reaux Glaeser (7 June 1897-Aug. 1966), of Houston, Tex., was a wireless operator working out of the office of Kilbourne and Clark, on freighter ships and tramp steamers plying routes up the coast of South America, through the Panama canal (22 Jan. 1920), and up the Gulf and east coasts of the United States as far as New York. Several times during his sailing career, Glaeser also took ship for New Orleans and Galveston, Tex., then traveled by train to visit family and friends in Houston, Tex., and the surrounding area.

As a soldier in World War I, Glaeser was first based in a training camp, Camp Logan, Tex., now Memorial Park in Houston, Tex., but probably received the majority of his wireless training when he served with Company C of the 221st Field Signal Battalion, based at Camp Alfred Vail, N. J., from which he was demobilized sometime around Feb. 1919.

The first half of Glaeser'sdiary records life aboard the freighter S.S. Sag Harbor, on which he signed 21 Oct. 1919. As of 8 May 1920, having been relieved by another radioman on the S. S. Sag Harbor, Glaeser transferred to the S.S. Chester W. Chapin, a tourist excursion ship with the New England Steamship Co., based in New York City, sailing to New Haven and New London, Conn.Glaeser transferred again 6 June 1920 to the S.S. Richard Peck, a Long Island passenger steamer which sailed down the Connecticut River to New York City and back.

Having bought stock in the Century Adding Machine Co., Glaeser eventually was offered a job to set up an exclusive "Texas Sales Agency for Century Adding Machine Co.," but it seems Glaeser thought better of accepting the offer.

Along the way, Glaeser also completed a La Salle Extension University CPA [Certified Public Accountant] course, receiving a "2A rating." By 18 Nov. 1920 Glaeser had secured a position with the New York based A. H. Bull Steamship Company in its Accounting Dept.

Godwin, Tom, 1915-1980

  • Person
  • 1915-1980

Tom Godwin is the author of three novels and about 30 science fiction stories, including what is arguably the most discussed story in the field, "The Cold Equations". The short story manuscript in this collection was published in Fantastic Universe in 1955.

Goodnight, Charles, 1836-1929

  • Person

Charles Goodnight was born 5 March 1836, in Macoupin County, Illinois. He moved with his family to near Nashville-on-the-Brazos, Milam County, Texas, in 1845. In 1857, Goodnight and his step-brother, John Wesley Sheek trailed a herd of cattle up the Brazos River to the Keechi valley, in Palo Pinto County, Texas. During this time, Goodnight became acquainted with Oliver Loving, who was also running cattle. Goodnight joined Capt. Jack Cureton's rangers, with whom he served as a scout and guide, participating in the raid on 18 December 1860 in which Cynthia Ann Parker was recaptured from the Comanche Indians. In the spring of 1866, Goodnight and Loving organized a cattle drive from Fort Belknap, Texas to the Pecos River, and up to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. This route became known as the "Goodnight-Loving Trail."

In 1869 Goodnight established his Rock Canon Ranch on the Arkansas River, west of Pueblo, Colorado, and married Molly Dyer on 26 July 1870. Goodnight eventually settled in Armstrong County, Texas, where he built a ranch house he dubbed the Home Ranch. After borrowing $30,000 from John G. Adair, Goodnight and Adair launched the JA Ranch, with Goodnight as resident manager. By Adair's death in 1885, the JA Ranch owned 1,325,000 acres, on which grazed more than 100,000 head of carefully bred cattle. As an early believer in improvement through breeding, Goodnight developed one of the nation's finest herds through the introduction of Hereford bulls. With his wife's encouragement, he also started a domestic buffalo herd, sired by a bull he named "Old Sikes," from which he developed the "cattalo" by crossing bison with Angus cattle.

In 1887, Goodnight sold his interest in the JA Ranch, and bought 160 sections in Armstrong County, Texas. He built a ranch house near Goodnight, Texas, into which he and his wife moved on 27 December 1887. He relocated his buffalo herd of 250 head to this ranch, which was organized as the Goodnight-Thayer Cattle Co. After selling his interest in the Goodnight-Thayer Co. in 1900, Goodnight limited his ranching activities to sixty sections surrounding his house. There he continued his experiments with buffalo, and also kept elk, antelope, and various other animals. Goodnight's wildlife preservation efforts gained the attention of such naturalists as Edmund Seymour, and American Bison Society member Martin S. Garretson. Goodnight also grew Armstrong County's first wheat crop, and conducted various agricultural experiments.

The Goodnights had no children. After his wife's death in April 1926, Goodnight became ill, and was nursed back to health by Corinne Goodnight, a young nurse from Butte, Montana. On March 5, 1927, Goodnight married the twenty-six year old Corinne. Shortly afterward they sold the ranch and bought a summer house in Clarendon. Goodnight died on December 12, 1929, in Phoenix, Arizona.

Gordon, Bernard

  • Person
  • 1981-2007

Bernard Gordon (1981-2007) was a noted screenwriter whose left-wing sympathies caused him to be denied overt credited work throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Under the pseudonym Raymond T. Marcus, Gordon wrote scripts for such films as Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers (1956), Hellcats of the Navy (1957), and Chicago Confidential (1957). He wrote the screenplay for the science fiction classic The Day of the Triffids (1962), which was credited to the film's producer Philip Yordan.

When the Writers Guild of America took up the task of correctly crediting pseudonymous screenwriters from the 1950s and 1960s, awarding retroactive screen credits to them, Gordon received more after-the-fact credits than any other blacklisted writer.

Gould, Steven, 1955

  • Person

Steve Gould was born February 7, 1955 in Fort Huachuca, AZ. Gould attended Texas A&M University, writing part-time as a student. After college, Gould is a free-lance writer and computer professional. His novels and short stories are well regarded throughout his career, with two short stories nominated for the Hugo Award.

Steven Charles Gould was born on February 7, 1955 in Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He graduated from Texas A&M University in 1978, and in 1990 married fellow SF author Laura J. Mixon. Before turning to writing full-time in 1990 he was the data processing manager at the Brazos Valley Community Action Agency in Bryan, TX.

Gould's first published short story was "The Touch of Their Eyes", published in _Analog_in 1980 (after Theodore Sturgeon had looked it over in 1979 and encouraged Gould to submit it to the magazine). He published his first novel, Jumper, in 1992 - _Jumper_was the first in an ongoing series by Gould (five novels and one short story as of 2014) chronicling the adventures of a group of people who have the ability to "jump", that is, to teleport themselves. It came in second for the 1992 _Locus_Award for Best First Novel and was named by the ALA as one of the Best YA Books of 1992.

Other novels by Gould include Wildside(1996), which won the 1997 Hal Clement Young Adult Award (the 'Golden Duck'); Greenwar(1997), which Gould co-wrote with his wife Laura Mixon; and Helm(1998).

Gould was the President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 2013-2015.

Governors Chapter, NCSDAC

  • Corporate body
  • 1977-?

The Governors Chapter of the Texas State Society Daughters of the American Colonists was organized on October 29, 1977, in College Station, Texas.

Hackworth, Johnnie Mae

  • Person

Johnnie Mae Hackworth was born on November 16, 1904 in Brenham, Texas. She was one of five children born to Victor and Gertrude Ralston Hackworth. Both her parents had deep roots in Texas history (a fact of which Johnnie Mae was very proud) - her mother's parents had, in fact, been members of Austin's Colony. Hackworth attended public schools in Brenham and later in Dallas.

In 1921, under what may have been forced circumstances (i.e. Hackworth was pregnant), Hackworth married Herschel A. Watson of Dallas. The couple produced two children, Herschel, Jr. (born 1922) and John Brooks (born 1924), but were divorced in 1926. The two boys would be Hackworth's only children.

Hackworth attended the Metropolitan Business College in Dallas, and worked for a time as a secretary for the Otis Elevator Company there. She moved to Austin, where she served as secretary to Texas House Speaker Fred Miner.  In 1935-1936 she was Calendar Clerk of the Texas House of Representatives, experience on which she later drew when running for political office. After failing in 1937 to retain her clerkship Hackworth moved to Washington DC and worked briefly as a secretary for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

In late 1937 Hackworth married Edwin A. Schaufler (1871-1957) of Witchita, Kansas, a railroad executive with the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway and later with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. In the 1940s the couple moved back to Hackworth's native Brenham, where they purchased the clubhouse and land of the Brenham Country Club which would be their home as well as Hackworth's base for her religious and political activities.

After her husband Edwin's death in 1957, she turned her attention towards two particular religious occupations. In Houston she established on Lyons Avenue the Church of America, which she later renamed the Globe Church. At her home in Brenham Hackworth established the American Bible College, an unaccredited institution formed to spread the word of Christ. The ABC experienced a number of name changes over the years, including the New Jerusalem Fellowship, the House of Prayer, the Children of God, the Children of Zion (Zion Colony), and Zion On The Hill. Some of these transformations seem to have been dictated by economic exigencies, while others may have been due to Hackworth's mercurial and unpredictable nature. [The Children of God title dates from Hackworth's connection with the "Children of God" Christian youth movement in the early 1970s. Hackworth's operation was part of a statewide network of places of refuge for wandering and disaffected youths. She provided free room and board to members of the sect (as many as 150 at a time, by some accounts), and also supplied liberal doses of her own peculiar brand of religious instruction.] Hackworth used her Brenham base as a site for printing many of her newsletters, press releases and other documents and messages.

Hackworth seems to have been mentally unstable. She considered herself a prophet, and later as the actual wife of God. She was known for writing long, rambling and repetitive religious screeds (many composed while in a trancelike state, according to her granddaughter) that combined mystic visions with End Times prophecy and more traditional biblical interpretations, with a large dollop of numerology. She was obsessed with the "true" meanings of names of political and other important figures, and also was deeply concerned with ferreting out and revealing the true identity of the 'Antichrist'. Included among the people that Hackworth considered the Antichrist or some other figure of great evil were Lyndon B. Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bernard Baruch, John Connally, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. She also believed that her hometown of Brenham was the site of the original Garden of Eden.

The reasons for Hackworth's mental condition are not clear. She may have had some family history of mental instability, or her condition may have been the result of syphilis, which Hackworth once claimed had been given to her by her first husband.

Hackworth, in fact, got into serious trouble over her erratic behavior. In September 1955 she was arrested by the U.S. Secret Service for making a threat against President Eisenhower, and for a time was confined to a mental institution in Austin. She was arrested again in April 1960 for again making threats and briefly returned to the mental hospital. In September 1964 she was arrested once more, this time for threatening President Johnson. She was temporarily jailed for the crime.

Hackworth intimately combined her religious views with her political opinions, which tended heavily towards the right-wing (including an end to the concept of separation of church and state). She formally entered the political arena in 1946, when she ran against Lyndon B. Johnson for the Democratic nomination for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1960 she ran as one of a number of candidates seeking to fill Johnson's senatorial seat (vacated by Johnson when he became Vice-President). In 1964 and again in 1966 Hackworth ran in the Democratic primary for Texas governor against John Connolly. In 1968, 1972, and 1976, she ran as a write-in candidate for President of the United States. In each election her fervent Christianity and, later, her identity as a prophet, played heavily into her campaigns.

Of course, Hackworth lost badly every time. However, her political 'career' provides the Hackworth Papers with numerous examples of her political beliefs, expressed in correspondence and campaign materials.

Johnnie Mae Hackworth died in Brenham, TX on April 13, 1980. Before her death, she had married once more, in 1958 to Gustav Adoph Eckman (died 1961?).

Edwin Henry Schaufler

Edwin H. Schaufler was born on January 7, 1871 on a farm in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. In 1883 he took a job as a message boy with the Pennsylvania and Reading Railroad. He later had several jobs with the Kansas City, Southern and Northern Line, including motorman and conductor.  As General Manager with the KC Southern, he befriended railroad executive Arthur Stilwell (the namesake of Port Arthur, TX), and helped Stilwell to found the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway. Schaufler served as General Manager of that line, too, until it was acquired in 1928 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.

After acquistion, Schaufler became the assistant to the General Manager of the AT &SF's Western Line, until his retirement in 1942. He retired to Brenham with his wife Johnnie Mae Hackworth (whom he married in November 1937), and died in Houston on April 25, 1957.

Haley, Alex

  • Person

Alex Murray Palmer Haley was born August 11, 1921, in Ithaca, New York, and reared in the small town of Henning, Tennessee. He was the oldest of three sons born to Bertha George Palmer and Simon Alexander Haley. When he was born, both parents were in their first year of graduate school, Bertha at the Ithaca Conservatory of Music, and Simon at Cornell University. They took the young Alex to Henning, where he grew up under the influence of women who inspired his search for his past. He remembers listening for hours as his family reminisced about an African ancestor who refused to respond to the slave name "Toby." "They said anytime any of the other slaves called him that, he would strenuously rebuff them, declaring that his name was 'Kin-tay.'" These initial stories would serve as the basis from which the Roots saga grew.

Not a stellar student in high school, Haley graduated with a C average at the age of fifteen. He then entered Alcorn A & M College in Lorman, Mississippi. After a short period, he transferred to Elizabeth City State Teachers College in North Carolina, from which he withdrew at age seventeen.

His experiences after college contributed directly to his growth as a writer. In 1939 he enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard as a mess boy. To alleviate the boredom he experienced while cruising in the southwestern Pacific aboard an ammunition ship, he began writing. His first venture included writing love letters for his shipmates. He expanded his range with articles that he submitted to several American magazines. A series of rejection slips followed before his first article was accepted for publication by This Week, a syndicated Sunday newspaper supplement.

When Haley retired from the coast guard at the age of thirty-seven, he had attained the position of the chief journalist. Although he had dutifully served twenty years in the coast guard, he was not permitted to collect his pension checks--those were given as child support to Nannie Branch, whom he had married in 1941. They had two children, William Alexander, and Lydia Ann. They were separated for several years before getting divorced in 1964, the year he married Juliette Collins, whom he subsequently divorced; they had one child, Cynthia Gertrude.

Determined to continue his avid interest in writing, Haley moved into a basement apartment in New York City's Greenwich Village where, as a freelance writer, he lived a penurious existence. He was in debt and saw no brightness in his immediate future: "I owed everyone. One day a friend called with a Civil Service job that paid $6000 per year. I turned it down. I wanted to make it writing. My friend banged the phone down. I owed him too. I took psychic inventory. I looked in the cupboard, and there were two cans of sardines, marked two for 21 cents. I had 18 cents in a sack and I said to myself that I'd keep them." As a reminder of what he had to endure to get to where he is today, Haley framed the coins and cans and displays them in his private library; he calls them a symbol of his "determination to be independent," and vows that they will always be on the wall.

Haley's life soon took a turn for the better. The day after taking inventory of his circumstances, Haley received a check for an article he had written. This small reward fell short of the recognition he desired, but it did presage the beginning of assignments from more and more magazines, one of which was Reader's Digest, where he later published the first excerpts from Roots.

From the Dictionary of Literary Biography-a Thompson/Gale Database

Hall, Earl Oxford

  • Person

Earl Oxford Hall, Class of 1934, was a native of Crawford Texas. He attended Texas A&M College from 1930 to 1934, graduating with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He was employed by Texas Power and Light until he volunteered for service in the Army Air Force. After training in California, he was stationed at Hickam Field in Hawaii, and was on station during the attack on 7 December 1941. His unit participated in the Battle of Midway. The 42nd Bombardment Squadron (Heavy) was transferred to Plaines de Gaiacs, on New Caledonia, and flew missions from there, Espiritu Santo, Efate, and Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. He and his crew were shot down on 1 February 1943, off the coast of Choiseul Island in the Solomons.


The Earl Oxford Hall collection is the result of a quest for knowledge by his family. The quest started, as many did in World War II, with the receipt of that dreaded telegram: “The Secretary of War desired me to express my deep regret…”

The stories of the time after the telegram – the days, weeks, months of anguish, refusal to accept, of hope however fragile, are lost in the mist of time. The letters to the Air Force, asking for details – details the Air Force did not have, or would not send. Letters to the families of other crew members, hoping they had learned something. Letters from squadron mates, offering a detail here, a story there, sometime conflicting. As time marched on, both hope and contacts dwindled, leaving only the faintest residual dream of someday knowing what had happened to the lost serviceman. Mothers and fathers died, never knowing what had happened. Living with fading hope and uncertainty is another, hidden, casualty of war.


Earl’s father, H. T. Hall, wrote letters to the Army Air Corps, the Secretary of War, and his congressman, always pleading for any information on the fate of his missing son. His letters most often returned no information. Sometimes a scrap of information would come in. A letter would say “They were bombing Munda Point,” or “We didn’t know where they were going.” Letters from squadron members, from air corps acquaintances, from, family members in the Air Corps, from Earl’s fiancé, Mary Tabitha Johnson, and from the families of other members of the bomber crew gradually built a story of what happened, until the Hall family believed that Earl Hall was shot down on a mission to Munda Point, and was last seen going down with only one engine left, 200 miles from the nearest land, the last plane lost on the mission. The story seemed true, and became part of the family oral history.

The Hall family, especially his father, H. T. Hall, never gave up hope. He had reason. In December 1942, the family had received another telegram reporting Earl Hall missing in action, followed within days by a letter correcting the mistake.

The families of the crew members wrote back and forth among themselves, and to anyone they knew who might know something. They hoped that a contact might have knowledge of the mission, they shared stories they had heard, and they clung to hope that the crew were prisoners of war on a Japanese-held island.

The letters gradually ceased to be exchanged. The war ended. Finally, as of January 11, 1946, the Army Air Corps notified the families that the crew had been declared lost and presumed dead. With no reasonable hope, with no new information from the Air Corps, the families withdrew into their daily lives, and searched no more.

There were many families who shared some version of this story. World War II resulted in some 80,000 servicemen who remain “missing in action” to this day.

In the Hall family, Earl’s effects were shared with family members, leaving a packet of letters and papers, and a few artifacts, packed away and rarely examined.

In the late 1990s, Veal Hall Evans, Earl’s sister, asked her younger brother, Weldon, if he could find out where Earl died, and what had happened on 1 February 1943. So the quest, after a pause of over four decades, resumed.

The first order of research was to obtain the service record of Earl Hall. The official form was completed, and mailed to the Air Force Records Center. A reply arrived in due time. “We regret to inform you that the records for Earl O. Hall were destroyed in a fire in St. Louis in 1973. A key source was no longer in existence.

Concurrently, a search for published histories of the war in the South Pacific started to yield results. A book, Grey Geese Calling, was a history of the Eleventh Bombardment Group, with a chapter on the 42nd Bombardment Squadron, Earl’s squadron. The Military History Collection of the Cushing Library at Texas A&M had a copy of the book; Grey Geese Calling had a good history of the unit, from the duty station at Hickam Field in Hawaii, through the move to the Pacific, and on to the end of the war. It included a short description of the fate of the planes on the bombing mission of 1 February 1943. The description was detailed, but, as it turned out, not very accurate.

Other books and publications revealed details about the Army Air Force in the South Pacific, about conditions on the islands, and details about the war. Histories of the Seventh and Thirteenth Air Forces provided some details.

In 2003, a new book, Fortress Against the Sun, appeared, detailing the role of the B-17 Flying Fortress in the air war against Japan. An excellent history of the air war, it also carried another version of the loss of the Hall bomber and crew. It offered specific details, but is different from the story discovered later.

Research continued, tracking down unit histories, checking sources that might be helpful, but rarely were, and recording bits of information and cryptic citations to air force documents. Searching for Air Force documents led, via the World-Wide Web, to the Air Force Historical Unit at Maxwell Air Force Base. Queries and searches of their catalog resulted in a list of possible resources.

One of the first was a Missing Air Crew Report (MARC), detailing the 1 February 1943 mission, with the target listed as Munda Point. This document was the source of most of the information provided to the families, but, as we shall see, it was incorrect in naming the target.

The World-Wide Web had come into its own by this time. Every search seemed to turn up some new information source, or some new detail not previously known. An informative source was the “World War II Air Force Chronologies” detailing missions flown in the various theaters of war. The “Pacific Wrecks Database” was discovered, detailing the locations had details of WWII artifacts and crash sites. It ultimately yielded reports on the three aircraft lost on 1 February 1943.

In the meantime, the Air Force Historical Association (AFHA) personnel located a “History of the 11th Bombardment Unit, which confirmed two details: Earl Hall had been promoted to Major in January 1943, and he had been named Commander of 42nd Bombardment Squadron.

Soon after that, the AFHA located a microfilm of the looseleaf daily mission report of the 42nd Bombardment Squadron (H), giving a detailed chronology of actions from 18 June 1942 through 1943. A photocopy of the document (AFHA IRIS No. 44028) was obtained from the AFHA, and is in the collection.

Among the other searches, efforts to find the families of other crew members had been made, but no contact had been made. In September 2006, a phone call came. “Are you the Hall that sent e-mails about the 42nd Bombardment Squadron? My great-uncle was the Co-Pilot on your brother’s plane.” Arnold Guerrero was searching for the same bit of history as I was. He had the remaining papers of his great-uncle, including his Journal, and his flight log, from Hickam Field through 27 January 1943, and a number of photographs of members of the 42nd. The flight log was particularly interesting to correlate with the mission notebook of the 42nd. Each contained information lacking in the other, allowing us to see a more complete record of the South Pacific war for this unit.

Finally, in July 2007, I sent a final query to the AFHA at Maxwell Air Force Base. I had seen a cryptic reference to “A-2 Intelligence Reports” and one footnote that seemed to indicate they might be informative. The request went in for the “A-2 Report of 1 February 1943.” In August, an envelope arrived from Maxwell. On the same day, a random web search of Buin, a Japanese base, turned up many hits. One, on the first page, was a United States Navy Action Report. “The Navy” – skip it! Well, why not it - is for February. There was a brief report of an Army Air Force mission to Shortland Harbor – noting the loss of three of the four bombers. Then to the envelope. The AFHA had located the “A-2 Report.” As I read through it, a note referred to the mission, referring to “Appendix E.” There, finally, was the document that described the mission and air battle, with details of the mission, the flight path, and the approximate areas where each of the three planes were shot down. The report was two and one-half pages in length, as reported by the one surviving bomber pilot and crew.

The quest for what happened on 1 February 1943 was ended, and the final resting place of our relatives was known as accurately as it possible.

Hall, Mike

  • Person
  • 1955-2008

Michael Hall was a major figure in Canadian fandom, having been particularly active from the 1970s-1980s. The fanzines he edited included Schmagg, Laid, New Wave Video Snacks, Schamgg Monthly, and Excuses, Excuses. He was also a founding editor of The Monthly Monthly, which ran from 1979-1980 (plus an additional Bimonthly Monthly which lasted until December 1980/January 1981).

Hall was a native of western Canada, having been born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, from which he moved to Edmonton in 1979, and finally to Fort McMurray, AB in 1994. From 2004-2008 he was the managing editor there of Fort McMurrary Today, the local newspaper.

Hanes, Dorris

  • Person

There is very little biographical information on Colonel Hanes in these papers. His rank designation was 05198, Quarter Master Commander (QMC). Hanes also was reassigned in 1943 to be Commanding Officer, General Depot G-45. Letters written to Colonel Hanes indicate that he was married to Mary Evelyn, living in Washington, D.C.

Harris, Loula Bell

  • Person

Loula (Lou Bell) Harris was born Loula Bell in 1889 to Rosa Tennessee Fox and Samuel Slade Bell. In 1914 she married Oliver P. Harris

She was involved with the Texas Club from 1934-1939 and was a socialite and philanthropist. Her interests included cooking, fashion, and parties. She moved to New York and continued to correspond with the Texas Club about social events.

She was also a member of the Peoples Mandate Committee (dating 1935-1975), a campaign for peace and freedom by ending the war and oppressive governments. She was a member of the New York American Homemaker’s Club.

Harrison, Harry

  • Person
  • 1925-

Harry Harrison is a highly regarded writer of science fiction, most prolific in the 1960-1990 period, and was an editor for a number of anthologies. Harrison is best known for his "Deathworld" series and his "Stainless Steel Rat" series of novels.

Harrison, Payne

  • Person

Payne Harrison, Jr., is a writer of several noted technothrillers. He was born in 1949, the son of Payne Harrison, Sr., who graduated from Texas A&M in 1924 at the age of 19 and as the youngest graduate in the history of the university. Harrison, Jr. attended Texas A&M from 1967-1971, during which time he served as a member of the Corps of Cadets. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism and subsequently served for two years in the U.S. Army as a public relations officer.

After completing his Army service, Harrison returned to A&M, where he obtained a master's degree in political science. He also earned an M.B.A. from Southern Methodist University, and worked as a reporter and a financial consultant before beginning his literary career.

Harrison's first technothriller was Storming Intrepid, released in 1989. The book tells the story of a attempt by Soviet agents to hijack the (fictional) American space shuttle _Intrepid._A sequel, Thunder of Erebus, set in Antarctica, followed in 1991. Harrison wrote two additional novels, Black Cipher(1994) and Forbidden Summit(1997), before taking a hiatus from writing. He returned to the technothriller genre in 2010 with Eurostorm.

Hill, Ethel Osborn

  • Person
  • 1878-1979

Born November 3, 1878, died April 2, 1979.
1975 Poet Laureate of Texas

Hill, Kate Adele, 1900-1982

  • Person

Kate Adele Hill, leader in home demonstration work in the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, daughter of William Hickman and Beatrice (Boyce) Hill, was born on November 19, 1900, in Manor, Texas. In the early 1900s the family moved to a ranch in Kerr County and later to Schleicher and Tom Green counties, where Kate received her early education from governesses. She graduated from San Angelo High School in 1917 and attended the University of Texas in 1920–21 before receiving a B.S. in home economics, with a major in foods and nutrition, in 1925 from the College of Industrial Arts (now Texas Woman's University). During pauses in her college studies she taught school in Sonora and worked in social welfare.

Hill initiated her career with the Extension Service in 1925 as county home-demonstration agent for Cameron County in San Benito. She carried out a typical agenda of demonstration activities designed to improve the lives of rural and small-town women: sewing, canning, landscaping, home design, and so on. In June 1929 she became a district agent and began supervising county home-demonstration agents throughout Central Texas. In October 1934 she transferred to the Edwards Plateau and Big Bend; in that area she traveled 2,000 miles a month in her supervisory duties. Impressed by the tenacity of the women whom she met in the semiarid region, Hill began writing sketches of women who had settled in the area in the 1880s and 1890s for Cattleman magazine. She collected twelve sketches and privately published them in 1937 as Home Builders of West Texas. She then returned to the Texas State College for Women, where she received an A.B. degree in sociology in 1939.

She continued as a district agent in two other West Texas districts until 1951, when she joined the state office of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service in College Station as studies and training leader. She received a master's degree in rural sociology and agricultural economics from Texas Tech University in 1951 and a Ph.D. from Texas Woman's University in general home economics in 1957. She privately published her doctoral dissertation under the title Home Demonstration Work in Texas. From 1958 until her retirement on August 31, 1963, Hill served as a reports analyst for the Extension Service. After her retirement she wrote and privately published A. L. Ward-Texan, 1885–1965 (1967) and Lon C. Hill, 1862–1935: Lower Rio Grande Valley Pioneer (1973). She also wrote poetry.

Kate Hill was president of the Texas Federation of Business and Professional Women's clubs in 1938 and president of the Texas State College for Women Alumnae Association from 1956 to 1958. She was also a member of the American Home Economics Association, Texas Home Economics Association, and Texas Agricultural Workers Association. She was named Distinguished Woman of Texas in 1962 and was president of the Texas Literary Council in 1966. In 1971 she received the Distinguished Alumnae Award of Texas Woman's University. She was a Methodist and a Democrat. Hill moved to a retirement home in San Angelo and died there on October 30, 1982.

Rebecca Sharpless, “Hill, Kate Adele,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed September 13, 2023, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/hill-kate-adele.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

Hoffmann, Heinrich, 1885-1957

  • Person
  • 1885-1957

Heinrich Hoffmann, Sr. (1885-1957) was a noted German photographer and proprietor of a photographic agency, and a rare “close” friend and confidant of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Hitler made Hoffmann his exclusive photographer, which over the course of the 1930s and 1940s allowed Hoffmann to create a massive and unequaled photographic archive of Hitler and other Nazi leaders. In addition to the millions of images in Hoffmann’s collection, he also owned several watercolors that had been painted by Hitler as a young man. Hoffmann and his wife Therese Baumann had two children: Henriette (1913-1992), who married Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach in 1932; and Heinrich, Jr. (1916-1988).

In 1937, Hoffmann, Sr. gifted the family’s photo archive proprietorship to his son Heinrich, Jr. The archive at that time consisted of 2.5 million photographs and 350,000 glass plate negatives. Hoffmann, Jr. operated the Hoffmann Presse until 1945. As the Allied armies began closing in on Germany in that year, Hoffmann, Jr. stored most of the photographic archive at a castle in Winhoring, in eastern Bavaria. Meanwhile, Hoffmann, Sr. hid the Hitler watercolors and the rest of his own art collection at a second eastern Bavarian castle, in Dietramszell. Both father and son were arrested by the United States Army in May 1945. Hoffmann, Sr. was tried as a war profiteer (he had grown rich off royalties for the use of his photographs) and jailed until mid-1950. His son was held by the Army until May 1949.

The Three Hoffmann Property Groups

  1. The Photographic Archive (Main)
    In May 1945 both castles were requisitioned by the U.S Army for use as officers’ billets, and the Hoffmann photos and art were discovered. The photographic archive was seized by the Army. A large portion of the archives was sent to Nuremberg for use by the War Crimes Commission from 1945-1949 and was subsequently transferred to the Army’s Historical Division in Frankfurt in April 1949. The entire archive was shipped to the United States in October 1949, to the Army’s German Military Documents Section in Alexandria, VA. On May 31, 1951, the U.S. government’s Office of Alien Property vested ownership of the Hoffmann archive in the Attorney General under the authority of the Trading with the Enemy Act. The photographs themselves have been held by the National Archives and Records Administration since 1962.

The Hoffmanns had been aware that the photographs were in the Army’s possession – both father and son were summoned to Nuremberg to help catalog the archive there and identify images for use in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Hoffmann, Jr. claimed that he had been told the images would be returned to his family once the Army was finished with them. Between 1949 and 1951 he wrote numerous letters to the Army protesting the removal of what he believed to be his family’s property to the United States.  He even made a visit to the United States in 1971 to view the collection at the National Archives. In 1982, Hoffmann, Jr and his sister Henriette Hoffmann Von Schirach contracted with Texas businessman Hitler art expert Billy F. Price, wherein the Hoffmann heirs agreed to convey ownership of the photographs (which they believed they still legally possessed) to Price in exchange for Price’s aid in removing the materials from U.S. government possession.

  1. &The “Time-Life” Photographic Archive*
    The Hoffmann photo archive in the holdings of the National Archives was not, however, the entirety of the original collection. In May 1945, a portion of the archive was stolen from Hoffmann’s Berlin photo studio by two photographers for Life _Magazine_and held in the Time-Life archives until 1981, at which time Time-Life, Inc. offered and transferred the images to the U.S. Army’s Carlisle Barracks at Carlisle, PA.

  2. The Hitler Watercolors
    In May 1945, the U.S. Army discovered at Dietramszell both Hoffmann, Sr.’s four watercolors that had been painted by Hitler as well as the rest of his extensive art collection. The paintings were all sent to a central collecting point in Munich and in1949 to another at Wiesbaden. In 1951 the four Hitler watercolors were transferred to the Army Historical Division (now the Center for Military History) in Alexandria, VA, where they remain.

In 1982 Billy F. Price, founder and president of Price Compressor Company in Houston, was doing research for his book Adolph Hitler: The Unknown Artist. The book was a de facto catalogue raisonne of Hitler’s artistic work, a product of Price’s fervent interest in Hitler-as-artist and his belief that something of Hitler’s psychology might be understood through his art. In the course of researching the book, Price came across evidence of the four Hoffmann-owned watercolors in the Army’s possession. He contacted Henriette von Schirach, at which point she and her brother conveyed ownership of the watercolors (and the aforementioned photographs) to Price, and Price agreed to press the Army and the government for the return of the Hoffmann materials and/or compensation for damages.

  1. The Case
    In 1982-1983 Price, through his lawyer, Robert I. White, filed multiple administrative claims against the U.S. Army for the return of the photographs and the watercolors. After the Army refused, in August 1983 Price and the Hoffmann heirs filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas under the Foreign Torts Claims Act for the return of the items.

This filing marked the start of two decades of different cases and subsequent appeals filed in assorted federal district and circuit courts, either by Price, et.al., or by the U.S. Government. The White Papers are structured into series based on the individual cases in the prolonged suit. (See Scope and Content Note)

In the end, the case ended unsuccessfully for Price and his fellow litigants. In 2002 the United States Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal (designated as Case #01-1111) from a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (designated as Case #00-1131), that found for the Government. A few remaining issues requiring resolution in lower courts were dealt with additional filings in federal court. The entire case was brought to its ultimate conclusion by a final denial by the Supreme Court for the Hoffmann heirs’ petition for a writ of certiorari in 2004.

The final decision was, as in many such cases, determined by a number of technical, obscure-to-the-layman legal points. However, in summary, the Government successfully made the case that both the photographs and the Hitler watercolors legitimately belonged to the United States as confiscated spoils of war, under the terms of numerous interagency and international agreements, including the 1945 Potsdam Agreement, the 1951 Vesting Order issued by the U.S. Army and the 1954 settlement treaty between the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany. The materials all remain to this day the property of the United States and are held by the U.S. Army and the National Archives and Records Administration.

Hopkins, Sewell Hepburn, 1906-1984

  • Family

Sewell Hepburn Hopkins (1906-1984), a marine biologist best known for his research into the effects of oil spills on marine life in the Gulf of Mexico, was born 24 March 1906 in Nuttall, Va., the son of Nicholas Snowden Hopkins and Selina Lloyd Hepburn Hopkins. He received a B.S. in 1927 from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., followed by the M.A. in 1930 and the Ph.D. in Zoology in 1933 from the University of Illinois. In 1930 Hopkins married Pauline Cole and they had two sons, Thomas Johns Hopkins (b. 28 July 1930) and Nicholas Arthur Hopkins (b. 4 Sep. 1936).

Hopkins was appointed as a Biology Instructor at Danville Junior College in Virginia (1933-1935), but in 1935 he transferred to the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, now Texas A & M University. Hopkins remained on the faculty at Texas A & M University as an Instructor, then Associate Professor until 1947, when he was promoted to Professor of Biology, a position he held until his retirement in 1972.

Perhaps the highlight of Hopkins' career was when he was appointed Director of Research Project 9 with the Texas A & M Research Foundation (1947-1950). His research interests included parasitology; taxonomy, morphology and life history of trematodes; life history of crabs; oyster biology; and ecology of estuaries. Hopkins was made Professor Emeritus of Texas A & M University in 1972. He died 15 Nov. 1984.

House, Thomas W., 1814-1880

  • Person
  • 1814-1880

Thomas Wilson House was born on March 4, 1814, in Somersetshire, England. House came to the United States in 1835 and later moved to New Orleans.

In 1938, House co-opened the House and Loveridge, bakers, and confectioners business in Houston, Texas. In 1939, House opened a business with Charles Shearn. In 1840, House married his partner's daughter and started accepting bank deposits at the business. He is known for making and selling the first ice cream in the city of Houston. House's business continued to grow, with one side of the store being confections, and the other side holding dry goods. In 1853, House bought James H. Stevens and Company's Dry Goods for $40,000 and changed the name to "T.W. House and Company". The company was the largest of its kind in the state. House accepted cotton as a form of payment, and as a result, he formed his own private bank. In 1872, House obtained a sugar plantation at Arcola and maintained a 70000-acre ranch in LaSalle County. House continued to farm cotton on the side and became a leading cotton merchant.

During this time, he helped organize the Houston and Galveston Navigation Company. House also worked with the Texas Transportation Company, the Houston Direct Navigation Company, as well as the Buffalo Bayou Ship Company. In 862, House was elected mayor of Houston, where he served one term. In 1866, House organized the Houston Gas Company, the city's first public utility. House also contributed to the city's first street railway, the Board of Trade and Cotton Exchange, and various railroads, including the Houston Texas Central. During the Civil War, House aided the Confederacy during the Civil War by obtaining supplies from Mexico and organizing blockade runners. House died on January 17, 1880.

Hunt, Oliver J.

  • Person

Oliver Joel Hunt, or “Joel Hunt” was born October 11, 1905 in New Mexico territory. He graduated from Waco High and was the second All-State Halfback. He entered into Texas A&M College 1924. Joel Hunt played as the Quarterback and Halfback for Texas A&M between 1925-1927. He was awarded a ‘T’ letterman for Baseball and football. Joel Hunt played in the Shrine East-West Football Game in San Francisco in 1927. Joel Hunt also played baseball and went on to play professional baseball with Laurel, MS; Fort Wayne, ID.; Houston, TX; Rochester, NY; Columbus, OH, and the St. Louis Cardinals. He coached football in various college and professional teams from 1928 to 1955. He retired from coaching in 1956 and passed away in 1978.

Hunter, Gwen

  • Person

Gwendolyn Faith Hunter was born Gwendolyn Prater in the bayou country of Louisiana, but as a young girl moved to South Carolina, where she has spent the majority of her life. She enjoyed writing from an early age, and began serious writing in the mid-1980s. Hunter graduated from York Technical College (Rock Hill, SC) with a degree in allied health technology and worked for many years as a lab technician at York General Hospital and at Chester County (SC) Hospital.

A chance meeting at the Chester County Hospital in 1983 introduced Hunter to police officer Gary Leveille; both were interested in becoming writers, and the two collaborated (under the pseudonym 'Gary Hunter') on two crime thrillers featuring Washington DC cop Garrick Travis: Death Warrant (1990) and Death Sentence (1992).

Following the publication of these works, Hunter struck out on her own as a solo writer. As Gwen Hunter she produced her first solo novel, Betrayal, in 1994. The book was the first in a 3-book series of Gothic dramas about the DeLande family of southern Louisiana (followed by False Truths [1995] and Law of the Wild ([1997]). Another series of thrillers, set in South Carolina with Dr. Rhea Lynch as the main character, followed between 2001- 2003: Delayed Diagnosis, Prescribed Danger, and Deadly Remedy. In addition to these, Hunter has written several stand-alone novels, including Ashes to Ashes (1996), Shadow Valley (2005), Bloodstone (2006), Blackwater Secrets (2006), Sleep Softly (2008), and Rapid Descent(2009). Her most recent novel as Gwen Hunter was the 2012 work His Blood Like Tears*, a story of Jesus Christ seen through the eyes of Mary Magdalene.

Under the name of Faith Hunter, Hunter began a new career as a novelist of urban fantasy starting in 2006, with the publication of Bloodring, the first in her Rogue Mage trilogy.  The series, which also includes the novels Seraphs (2007) and Host (2007), is set in a post-apocalyptic America ravaged by battles between angel-like "seraphs" and demons. The series' main character is Thorn St. Croix, a "rogue mage" who has escaped captivity and now lives among the general population, hiding from those who fear her powers.

In 2009, Hunter published Skinwalker, the first in a new urban fantasy series set in New Orleans about Jane Yellowrock, a shapeshifter (hence, a 'skinwalker') of Cherokee Indian descent who hunts vampires. The series, which to date consists of 15 novels (the latest, Final Heir, in 2022) and a number of short stories, has been well received by critics and readers alike. A spin-off series, Soulwood, began publication in 2016 with the novel Blood of the Earth- the main protagonist is Nell Ingram, a practitioner of magic who draws her powers from the very Earth itself and who is employed as a member of a US government unit tasked with policing paranormal activity. The series consists of five books to date, the latest being 2020's Spells for the Dead.

Hunter has been critically acclaimed for her literary work. The novel Sleep Softly received the 2008 Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award for Best Contemporary Mystery Novel. Shadow Valley was a finalist for the 2006 Mary Higgins Clark Award, and Blood of the Earth was nominated for the 2017 Dragon Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

Hunter is married to Rod Hunter, and the two reside in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Hutson, Charles Woodward, 1840-1936

  • Person
  • 1840-1936

Charles Woodward Hutson was a professor of English and History at A&M from 1893-1908. He was an artist and author who taught at numerous Southern universities over the course of 40 years. He was born in South Carolina in 1840. During the Civil War, Hutson served in the Confederate Army in Virginia as a member of Hampton’s Legion, and later with the Beaufort Artillery under General J.E. Johnston. He died in New Orleans in 1936.

Hyde, Barbara McMurrey

  • Person

Eldest daughter of William Cruse McMurrey, subject of the William Cruse McMurrey Collection

Jackson, A.A.

  • Person

A. A. (Al) Jackson IV is a long-time fan and sometimes writer of science fiction. He has been an employee of NASA in Houston for many years. He has been active in the fan community of Texas for decades.

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