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Harvey Dale Waller
Graveside service for Harvey Dale Waller, 56, of Center, will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday at Sardis Cemetery with the Rev. Pat Windham officiating.
Waller died Nov. 23, 2003, in Tyler.
Born Sept. 16, 1947, in Center, he was the son of Granville and Luna McSwain Waller. He was a self-employed carpenter.
Survivors include his wife, Deborah Jean Waller of Center; son, Christopher Bryan Waller of Center; daughters, Leslie Nicole Akridge and Shelia Andrea Waller, both of Center; and two grandchildren.
Watson and Sons Funeral Home, Center.
Sammie Fuller
Sammie Fuller, 81, of Cushing, died Nov. 24, 2003, in Nacogdoches Medical Center; service pending with Jenkins-Garmon Funeral Home, Henderson.
Beatrice Pitts Munk
Beatrice Pitts Munk, 84, of Nacogdoches, died Nov. 24, 2003, in Nacogdoches; service pending with Laird-McGill Funeral Home.
Benjamin Hermoso
Benjamin Hermoso, 83, of Nacogdoches, died Nov. 24, 2003, in Nacogdoches; service pending with Laird-McGill Funeral Home.
Danny Langdon
Danny Langdon, 47, went home to be with the Lord on Nov. 22, 2003. He is survived by his wife, Donna Langdon, and stepdaughter, Christine Chamblin; his mother and father, Don and Edith Langdon; his sister and brother-in-law, Donna and Randy Gehret; two brothers, Mike Langdon and Randy Langdon, and his wife, Rena; and several nieces and nephews. The family will receive friends ffrom 5 p.m. until 8 p.m. Tuesday evening at Forest Park Lawndale. Funeral services will be held Wednesday at 11 a.m. in the main chapel of Forest Park Lawndale Funeral Home. Danny was a member of Sagemont Church and a life-long resident of the Houston area.
Forest Park Landale Funeral Home and Cemetery, Houston.
Tony De La Rosa, 72
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Tony De La Rosa, a conjunto accordionist who helped to shape the Tejano music industry, has died from complications following surgery.
Funeral arrangements for De La Rosa, who died Wednesday at a Coastal Bend hospital, are pending.
De La Rosa helped to revolutionize conjunto music by adding drums and electrifying the bajo sexto or 12-string guitar in his post-World War II band, creating a new style called tacuachito.
More than 75 records bearing De La Rosa's name were issued on regional labels, during his heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, according to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times' Thursday editions.
Born in Sarita, De La Rosa lived in Corpus Christi for a number of years and played accordion at his shoeshine box before he was 14, according to his brother, Adan De La Rosa.
Tony De La Rosa amplified the conjunto sound and also is known for sparking a new dance called the tachuachito.
Rick Garcia, who produced some of De La Rosa's albums at Corpus Christi's Hacienda Records, called accordionist an innovative musician.
Marie Odee Johnson
DALLAS — A World War I veteran who celebrated her 107th birthday in July has died.
Marie Odee Johnson, thought to be the last woman World War I veteran in North Texas, died in her sleep Sept. 25 at the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
The Veterans Administration reported her death Wednesday. Services were private, and she is buried in Grove Hill Cemetery.
Johnson turned 20 in 1917, when she became one of the first women to serve in a non-nursing role in the military.
She was one of nearly 12,000 women who worked stateside in the Navy's first female division, nicknamed the Yeomanettes. They were assigned mainly clerical duties to free up men for fighting.
She was stationed in New York, where she secured tickets for sailors on shore leave, and in Washington D.C., where she was a secretary for a Marine general.
Johnson was later a stay-at-home mother until her husband died in 1948.
Born July 23, 1897, in Quincy, Ill., Johnson moved with her family to Dallas as an infant, said her daughter, Marilyn Brooks of Dallas.
Johnson had lived at the VA center since 1998.
Sam Houston Clinton
AUSTIN — Sam Houston Clinton, a former Texas Court of Criminal Appeals justice, was buried at the Texas State Cemetery Friday.
Clinton died Tuesday of complications of Alzheimer's disease. He was 81.
He was born and raised in Waco and attended Baylor University and Baylor Law School. He was a naval aviator during World War II.
A Democrat, Clinton served on the court for three consecutive six-year terms before retiring in 1996.
He had also been a criminal defense lawyer. Among his clients were Austin atheist Madalyn O'Hair and Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, the man who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
Clinton was able to get Ruby's conviction for killing Oswald reversed on appeal.
"There were a multitude of procedural errors," Clinton's former Austin law partner Dave Richards told the Austin American-Statesman. "The judge who tried the case had showed off too much and screwed it up."
Ruby, meanwhile, had died of cancer while he was in jail.
Clinton also filed and won a lawsuit to desegregate the women's dormitories at the University of Texas in the late 1960s.
U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Austin and a former Texas Supreme Court justice, said Clinton lived up to his famous name, although Clinton was not related to Sam Houston.
"On more than one occasion," Doggett said, Clinton "demonstrated the courage of his namesake. He was a fine jurist, an oustanding lawyer and a powerful voice for progresive causes."
Clinton is survived by his wife Hazel, four children, two grandchildren and a brother.
Fred J. Agnich
DALLAS — Fred J. Agnich, a businessman and geologist who served in the Texas House of Representatives for nearly two decades, has died, his son said Friday. He was 91.
Agnich died Thursday at his home. Dick Agnich said his father suffered a fall about a week ago and "didn't quite bounce back from that."
Fred Agnich was born in Eveleth, Minn. He earned a geology degree from the University of Minnesota and in the 1930s joined Geophysical Services Inc., working in Louisiana, his son said.
Agnich served nine two-year terms in the Texas House, beginning in 1971.
"He was quite active in the environmental area and was recognized for that, particularly in the conservation area," said Dick Agnich, who described his father as a conservative Republican.
Agnich's first wife, Ruth Welton Agnich, died in 1975.
Survivors include his second wife, Brooksie Penland Agnich; and three sons.
Public visitation will be Tuesday from noon-8 p.m. at Restland Funeral Home in Dallas.
Services will be at noon Wednesday at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church.
Elbert M. "Jack" Madera
DALLAS — A food services vendor who was a central figure in the investigations and indictments involving Dallas County Sheriff Jim Bowles and other elected officials last year has died at the age of 76.
Elbert M. "Jack" Madera died Monday at his ranch outside Mabank after a reoccurrence of cancer, The Dallas Morning News reported in Wednesday editions.
"The guy was a real fighter, quite a character," Madera's attorney, Joe Kendall, told newspaper. "It's a shame in the twilight of his life he had to go through what he did. His reputation was left hanging. He just wanted to try the case in court and clear his name."
He was mentioned in the news after Bowles awarded Madera's company, Mid-America Services, a five-year contract worth millions to handle food services at the jail. Other vendors had offered twice as much revenue potential to the county in their bids.
An investigation by The Dallas Morning News uncovered documents that showed Madera had treated Bowles to meals worth thousands of dollars and paid for some of the sheriff's travel in the two years before the contract was awarded.
An investigation followed in which prosecutors looked at jail contracts in 10 Texas counties. Madera was indicted this year on felony fraud charges, accusing him of submitting a forged document in a bid proposal in Kaufman County in 1997. The indictment was later thrown out.
Separate inducements against Bowles and Denton County Sheriff Weldon Lucas stemmed from the same investigation. Those indictments were also dismissed.
Services were set for Thursday in Dallas.
(Dated November 30, 2004)
