Page 5 - ACTL Journal Fall24

That’s why we publish these In Me- moriams. To remember and honor the departed, of course. But more, to inspire the living. We are interesting people. We should be proud.
Take Jack Maroney, who passed away six months shy of his one hundredth birth- day. Jack was a freshman at the University of Texas on December 7, 1941. He tried to enlist the next day but he was too young. He had to wait a bit but finally got into the Marine Corps. While Jack manned a 20mm anti-aircraft gun on the USS Enterprise in the Pacific, his ship engaged in twelve separate battles serious enough to earn battle stars – that is, real, serious combat.
While Jack was fighting off attacking kamikazes, one of which he shot down fifteen feet before it would have hit his gun crew, his girlfriend, Genevieve Joyce James, herself had left college to go on USO tours to entertain troops through- out the US in a singing group named The Jiving Jills. While still in high school, Joyce had been a featured headline performer on Dallas Radio.
After the War, Jack and Joyce were married and Jack returned to College at SMU, where he played varsity baseball and golf and graduated in 1948. To support his growing family, Jack found a full-time job in Austin as an insurance adjustor while he went to law school part time. It took nine years, but Jack got his law
degree in 1957. Then a doctor-of-laws degree in 1959. Then fifty years of practice. President of the Travis County Bar. President of the Tex- as Association of Defense Counsel. Texas State Chair of the College.
Jack died on May 18, 2024 – Joyce’s nine- ty-ninth birthday. Joyce passed four days later. They were married nearly seventy-nine years. Buried side-by-side, they will be together forever.
C’mon. Wouldn’t you have loved to have met Jack? To ask him about his experiences on the Enterprise? Wouldn’t you have loved to have met Joyce? To see if she had any recordings of
The Jiving Jills?
And then there is Howard K. (HK) Berry, Jr. HK’s father never went to law school. He was a policeman, but he took the bar exam and passed it. HK served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force after getting his undergraduate de-
gree and financed law school on the GI Bill. HK, of course, was a Fellow. So was his father, the former policeman, Howard K. Berry, Sr. And so is his son, Howard K. Berry, III.
C’mon. Wouldn’t you have loved to have met HK, to have talked to him about his family?
Or how about Sam Nukes, who served as a seaman during World War II and then as a gunnery officer on a seaplane tender in the Korean War? Or John Anderson, who was an advance man for Bobby Kennedy, and who had to organize RFK’s funeral train? Or Ed Bronson, who repre-
sented Carol Burnett in a high-profile libel suit? Or Ste- phen Colbert’s father-in-law, Joe McGee? Or Laughton
Whitehead, who played in the band that wrote the song Thunderbird, which was stolen by ZZ Top and record- ed as the first cut of their platinum album Fandango?
Don’t you wish you had met these peo- ple, had a chance to get to know them?
And don’t you feel a little pride in be- longing to an organization that has such interesting folks in its ranks?
Oh, I still don’t read traditional obitu- aries. I read the ones on our departed Fellows because I have to, to assem- ble the facts. But I hate the way tra- ditional obituaries are written. The departed was never merely tolerated, he or she was “adored” or “cherished.” The survivor was never simply the de- ceased’s spouse, he or she was “loving” if not “devoted.” Traditional obituar- ies list the names, ages, eye color, and hat size of every person the departed was ever related to by blood, marriage or mail order.
OK, traditional obits do these things because people expect them, are used to them. Traditional obits have their place. But our In Memoriams are a lit- tle different. They count children and grandchildren but don’t name them. They name spouses with adjectives that do not try to quantify the degree of spouseness. In Memoriams are a little different because their purpose is, yes, to honor and remember, but also to inspire.
And that’s why we read them. To re- joice that these people lived. And to think, I wish I had known these peo- ple. Maybe I should come to a meeting and get to know some of them before they have passed.
Bob Byman
FALL 2024 JOURNAL 4