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January 6, 2010
Fero service Saturday
A memorial service celebrating the life of Kelly Fero will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at Austin’s First Unitarian Universalist Church, the family announced this afternoon.
Fero, 57, a well-known political consultant, spokesman and strategist to a generation of top state Democratic officials, was found dead Monday at his North Austin home.
No cause of death has been announced, but close friends said a heart attack is suspected.
The church is located at 4700 Grover.
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December 28, 2009
Emma Barrientos, wife of retired senator, dies
Emma Barrientos, a champion for the arts in Austin and wife of retired state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, died early Monday morning.
Barrientos, 67, was a driving force behind the city’s Mexican American Cultural Center and served on the boards of the Austin Museum of Art and Mexic-Arte Museum.
“We all believed that the arts bridges communities, and I think that was her way of bringing the arts to every segment of the population,” said Travis County District Clerk Amalia Rodriguez-Mendoza, who knew Barrientos for 40 years.
Barrientos wanted cultural options for her five children but there were few, said Velia Sanchez, one of Barrientos’ closest friends.
So the two women helped to establish the Ballet Folklórico de Texas, a Mexican folk dance school and company.
Barrientos, like her husband, was an activist and fought to ensure that the talents of Latinos in Austin were acknowledged and celebrated, Sanchez said.
And she played an active role in Sen. Barrientos’ campaigns and was instrumental to his career in the Texas Legislature that spanned more than 30 years, friends say. In 1999, she served as the president of the Texas Senate Ladies Club, an organization of senators’ wives.
“It was definitely a partnership there that went long and deep for many, many years,” Rodriguez-Mendoza said.
She retired in 2007 after working 30 years for Travis County in various roles, the last with Constable Bruce Elfant.
Barrientos died after developing a staph infection near her heart that led to cardiac arrest. Information about funeral services for Barrientos has not yet been released.
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October 26, 2009
Teel Bivins, former ambassador and state senator, dies in Amarillo
Teel Bivins, whose political successes as a state senator and then ambassador to Sweden were curtailed by a draining disease, died Monday afternoon at his Amarillo home, surrounded by family and friends, a family spokeswoman said.
Sharon Miner said Bivins died at about 2 p.m. after a years-long battle with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. He was 61.
Bivins was diagnosed with the disease in 2004 while serving as President George W. Bush’s appointed ambassador to Sweden. He resigned from that post in 2006 and came back to Texas.
After joining the Texas Senate in 1989, Bivins became a student of public school finance, later serving as chairman of that body’s education panel and then as chairman of its budget-writing finance committee.
I remember him as a gentle presence in public, though it’s my memory too that at least once he marked the end of a 140-day regular legislative session by throwing a party at Austin’s Continental Club. I didn’t make it to the scene, but (again, if memory serves) I believe the senator encouraged dancing in a kind of conga line.
Your memories? I am drafting a story for Tuesday’s newspaper.
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July 8, 2009
Memorial service set for Creekmore Fath
A memorial service for Creekmore Fath, the Austin lawyer and long-time Democratic activist who died June 25, are set for 11 a.m. Thursday at Weed-Corley-Fish funeral home at 3125 N. Lamar Blvd., his sister-in-law, Shudde Fath, advises.
Expected speakers include Sissy Farenthold, whose gubernatorial campaigns were managed by Fath, and Bernard Rapoport of Waco, the Democratic benefactor. A light reception will follow.
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June 25, 2009
Creekmore Fath, Austin lawyer-activist-collector, dies at 93
Creekmore Fath, an Austin lawyer who was a lion in liberal Democratic circles, died early today of heart failure, his lawyer, Ron Weddington, said. He was 93.
Fath, who was born in Oklahoma, attended the University of Texas where, he once wrote, he beat out future Gov. John Connally for a lead part in a play. He also became friends with future U.S. Rep. Bob Eckhardt, who became Fath’s law partner in an office in Austin’s Littlefield Building.
Fath famously assisted President Franklin Roosevelt for several years in Washington and, decades later, helmed gubernatorial primary campaigns for Frances “Sissy” Farenthold, then of Corpus Christi, in 1972 and 1974. He was involved in many other campaigns including Ralph Yarborough’s campaigns for governor and the U.S. Senate.
Weddington said: “He was always, in my view, on the right side of every political race. And unfortunately for the country and the state, he and we were not all that successful.”
In her 1972 run, Farenthold outpaced then-Gov. Preston Smith and then-Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes and made a runoff against Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde, who won election that fall.
Farenthold said Fath’s wide-ranging contacts helped her get lift-off in her first run for governor, which he agreed to chair only after she raised $25,000 in start-up money.
“He had such a wide acquaintance; it was just extraordinary,” Farenthold said. “He could pick up the phone and call I don’t care what county it was, he’d know somebody there.
“There would have been no campaign without Creekmore.”
Fath, whose wife, Adele, preceded him in death, also accumulated tens of thousands of books that he kept in a personal library behind his house. He had a renowned collection of Thomas Hart Benton lithographs, which he started by spending $5 from his first law client’s payment of $300 on a work entitled “I Got a Gal on Sourwood Mountain.”
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January 16, 2009
Robena Duncan, senator's mother, has died
A sad twist to a dramatic week in the Texas Senate: Robena Formby Duncan, whose five children include Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, died Wednesday after a stroke. She was 87.
She had been living in Richardson, I’m told by Duncan’s office, which also said the senator got word of her passing from his sister during Wednesday’s tense wrangling over making it easier for the Senate to require voters to present a photo ID at the polls.
Visitation is scheduled from 7 to 8 p.m. Monday at the Sullivan Funeral Home, 1801 Houston Street in Vernon. A public service will take place at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the First United Methodist Church of Vernon, 3029 Wilbarger, in Vernon.
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November 25, 2008
Mattox eulogized, buried
In a service touched with humor, Jim Mattox was remembered today for his courage as a public official and for helping people who had nothing to do with the 18 years he served in the Texas House, U.S. House and as Texas attorney general.
His son, Jimmer, told more than 1,000 mourners at Austin’s First Baptist Church that Mattox, who died in his Dripping Springs home of a heart attack last week, “did not lose the common touch. He loved everyone big and small.”
Mattox’s coffin, draped in a Texas flag, was carried in a horse-drawn hearse from the downtown church to the Texas State Cemetery. Mattox’s body was lowered into a grave up shaded Republic Hill from the late Gov. Ann Richards, who bested him in the Democratic Party’s 1990 gubernatorial primary runoff.
Jimmer Mattox recalled his father carrying a filled gas can in his truck and a tow strap in case he came across drivers in trouble.
Attorney Lou McCreary, Mattox’s former executive assistant, said Mattox was once hit by a car while helping another motorist. He said Mattox got up from the pavement to console the driver who knocked him down.
Jimmer, a high school student, said: “I never dreamed that I would lose my Dad this early in my life.”
Mattox’s son and others at the service wore white-on-red campaign-like buttons stating: “Jim Mattox, 1943-2008, The People’s Lawyer,” referring to Mattox’s treasured two terms as the state’s chief lawman.
At the cemetery, people standing in a circle up to 20 deep were invited to share their memories at a reception this afternoon at Scholz Garten near the Capitol.
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