An Aggie Takes On Galveston County: From Aggie Land to Longest Reigning County Judge—Here Comes Galveston County Judge

By Judge Ray Holbrook’s Story and Jennifer Wycoff

As the child of a single mother growing up during the Great Depression and Second World War, it appeared that Ray Holbrook needed to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles to attain success in life. Yet despite the odds stacked against him, Ray found a way to make a name for himself in Texas.

Ray begins by chronicling his family history and childhood in California, sharing fascinating and sometimes humorous insight into the personal experiences and challenges that eventually led him into political life in the early 1960s when he ran for a position on the Texas State Board of Education. As he whetted his appetite for politics, Ray details his career path as he eventually became a Galveston County judge who instigated rare, historical, and progressive changes that included eliminating Social Security for county employees and creating an alternative program that provided employees with a tripled payout. Throughout his narrative, Ray reminds others that a life led by purpose is the best life of all.

An Aggie Takes On Galveston County is the true story of the life and political experiences of a renowned Galveston, Texas, county judge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9781663258854

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Copyright © 2023 Judge Ray Holbrook’s Story.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-5887-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5886-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5885-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023923834

iUniverse rev. date:02/28/2024

Contents

Introduction

Early Life

The Greatest Mother

My Father

On My Honor, I Will Do My Best

My Life in World War II

Flying on the GI Bill

My First Political Campaign, 1960

The State Board of Education

Mr. Walter Hall, the Finest Politician

My County Judge Political Campaign

First Success in County Government

Courthouse on Fire

Officials in My First Term

Pigeons in the Courthouse

The History of Galveston County

What is NACo?

County Memorial Hospital

South Texas County Judges and Commissioners Association

Galveston County in the 1970s

A Place of Innovation

Paul Hopkins—One of a Kind

The Lawyer Who was Never Wrong — William D. Decker

Jack Brooks Park

The Finest Health District in Texas

What Should a Large Urban County Do?

Best County Commissioners in Texas

The Ray Holbrook Park

Frank Carmona: County Commissioner and District Judge

How to Make a Republican

Freddiesville, Texas

Do We Need a Juvenile Probation Department?

The Worst County Commissioner in History

Galveston County National Awards during My Terms

Fifty Years in Politics

Social Security Reform in Galveston County, a Presidential Commission

The President’s Commission on Social Security and Another Disaster in San Diego

Testifying for Presidential Commission on Social Security, September 6, 2001

The President Comes to See Me in Galveston

CPAC—A Meeting of Radicals

Crazy Things on the Way to the Courthouse

Galveston County National Awards during My Terms

Who Was Colonel Moore of Texas City?

My Successor, Jim Yarbrough

The Ray Holbrook Building

China—The Mysterious Deadly Dragon

How Old Is 75?

The Icons of My Life

What Is the United Seniors Association?

The Right Way to have a Retirement Party

Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame Inductee, Texas A&M

Career Distinction

Texas A&M Service and Support

World War II Veterans Fly

to Washington, DC

Wrap It Up

Introduction

I have written short stories about my life, although this is my first publication. These are not, by any means, all that I have written over the years, but I believe it’s enough to give you a fairly good insight into the life I have lived as a Galveston County judge and what brought me there.

Jumping from topic to topic may not flow like a continuous story, but each reflects my thoughts at the time I composed them.

Looking back over my stories has provided me with wonderful memories of places I have been, things I have done, and people I have known. I encourage you to write your story for the generations to follow so they will know more about the life, times, and culture you have experienced.

I want to credit Jennifer Wycoff for all the work she has done to edit and publish these stories. Jennifer rewrote, reformatted, and dissected my story collection to create this book. She decided to begin with Galveston County history, as she is a historian and museum director, who appreciates the saving of history. It has been a tedious labor of love for her, and I appreciate it so much.

I am very fortunate to have lived so long and recognize the many directions my life has taken and why.

After high school, I studied chemical engineering at Texas A&M, which became a huge influence on my life to date. It was 1944, right in the middle of World War II, and the war was raging. I volunteered, then was drafted and spent one and a half years in the US Navy and really enjoyed it. When my service was completed, I went back to university to finish engineering and to run on the A&M track team for three years. I did well and loved track and band. You will see the word Aggie throughout my writing. Please understand that an Aggie is the name used for those attending Texas A&M University. This university serves agriculture and mechanical degrees. We students refer to each other as Aggies for the rest of our lives!

When I graduated, it was not a good year for engineers. It was difficult finding the right job in 1949, so I stayed at A&M to get a master’s degree in chemical engineering. I worked in the Cottonseed Research Laboratory. I got my master’s in 1952 and was hired at Monsanto Chemical Company in Texas City for $400 per month. I dated some local girls and then married a Texas City schoolteacher named Mary Ann Fite in 1954. We had three children (born; 1955, 1957, and 1960). We built our first house on the corner of Twenty-Fourth Avenue in 1957. I was energetic and wanted to do more things in life so I decided to get my law degree. I began in 1953 and graduated in 1959, a little slow as I was working full time, having children, and attending night school.

While working in research engineering and the Patent Department for twelve years at Monsanto, I decided to take a risk and go into private law practice in 1964. The patent law business was slow, and we did not have people banging down the doors to get patent services. Private law practice was a challenge so we struggled financially, and Mary Ann had to go back to teaching.

I decided to run for the Texas State Board of Education in 1960 and was elected as the board member representing the Ninth Congressional District for a six-year term. I enjoyed the board of education very much and met many good people through it, and was gaining confidence by learning the ropes in government relations. In 1966, with encouragement from several sources, I ran for Galveston County judge. It was a heated and difficult election. I won in a runoff in June 1966 in Democratic primary. A lot of my financial support came from my good friend, banker Walter Hall. I was young, so working hard at campaigning every day was not that difficult for me, and it proved successful. That political win assured me I could make it in a tough world, so it became my career for the next three decades and beyond, as I am still involved today.

There was no Republican opponent when I was sworn in as county judge. Judge Bill Stone gave me the oath of office, and we had a party in the jury assembly room of the courthouse on January 1, 1967. It was a fantastic event that I remember well.

None of the county officials then in office is around today, as only two are still alive. During the party, one of the newspaper reporters dumped a bottle of soap into the fishpond in front of the courthouse. A Confederate statue stands there, surrounded by bubbles and suds everywhere. What a great day for us all.

My future turned out to be quite good. I did not have an opponent until 1974 and then did not have one for the rest of my tenure until I retired in January 1995, after a twenty-eight year run. It was a very fortunate time; politics are not as calm now as it was then. It was interesting that all, except for one or possibly two, of the thirty elected officials in the courthouse got along extremely well. We were all Democrats back then, with some being liberal but most being conservative. It was a time in Galveston County that seemed like the best of all possible worlds, at least that is my story.

We tend to remember the good things in life unless things were really traumatic. I have been truly blessed by God with very good health, financial security, and I never lost an election. How much more can you ask for?

County Judge

One judge will be elected by the voters from each county to serve on the Commissioners Court as the county judge. A county judge is the presiding supervisor of the Commissioners Court and the highest-level governor over the county government. The duties include, providing safety, protection, public transportation, parks, hospitals, jails, prisons, all needed building, zoning, waste water, permit regulations, levying and collecting taxes, and managing municipal organizations.

An elected county judge presides over the county court for a four-year term and has judicial functions as provided by law, who may be replaced in cases of judicial disqualification or recusal. I was honored to serve the county of Galveston for nearly thirty years in office and have enjoyed participating in county matters since then out of my own home office!—Ray Holbrook

Early Life

I was born in San Bernardino, California, on January 20, 1927. I lived in California for fewer than ten years, but where you are born and spend your early years has a lasting effect.

My dad, Charles Ray Sr., was superintendent of schools in San Bernardino and, at age thirty-two was the youngest superintendent in California. He was born March 1, 1891, in Washington State. My mother Irma Mae Higgins, was born in San Saba, Texas, on December 8, 1894. She was a schoolteacher in San Fernando Valley when she met my dad. My dad had a degree from the University of Washington in Seattle. He later got a doctorate degree from Stanford University, and my mother got her teaching degree from Sul Ross in Alpine, Texas, in 1938.

We lived in a small wooden house on Arrowhead Drive in San Bernardino on the way up the hill to Arrowhead Springs, a plush spa in the 1920s and 30s, in the mountains. It was vacant for many years.

I have very little memory of living in San Bernardino, yet I do recall playing in the backyard with few clothes on and riding my tricycle on the sidewalk. On one occasion, I was riding my tricycle with my little bulldog when a truck stopped. A man of Hispanic ethnicity got out, ran over and picked up my bulldog, ran back to the truck, and took off. I never saw the dog again, and my mother did not know what to do.

My girlfriend was Carol Stanley. That was a very strong relationship. We were in the same grade in school. She lived up the hill in a very nice split-level house. Mostly, we played house by turning over the furniture and hanging blankets over them. That must have been a lot of fun because I have a clear, vivid memory of many days there. I am amazed now that her mother let us do all that.

I attended Bayview School through the third grade, and then my parents started having marital trouble. We moved to a suburb of Santa Cruz named Capitola. It was a nice house, but I don’t know why we moved. I think my dad was about to be eased out of Santa Cruz, and my parents were about to get a divorce. I’m not sure why my dad lived with us in Capitola all the time. The few times I ever saw my grandfather Holbrook was in Capitola. He had come to see us from Washington State on the train. When he left, my mother baked a ham for him, and he took it on the train and ate it all the way to Washington.

Santa Cruz was a wonderful little town. It was a beach resort and a fishing center. It probably had a population of twenty to twenty-five thousand. I learned to swim in the Pacific Ocean with the seaweed and with water temperatures around fifty to sixty degrees. Sometimes, we went to Fisherman’s Pier to buy crabs and fish. There were no shrimp. That is where I rode my first roller coaster. It seemed so unstable then, all wooden and rickety.

My mother and I left Santa Cruz in 1936, I assume she and my father were divorced by then. We went to my mother’s parents, W. W. and Rhoda Higgins, in San Benito, Texas. We drove there that summer by ourselves in about five days in a 1935 Ford sedan. That trip was not unusual, as we had made it several times before. It was really hot with no air-conditioning. This ended my life in California, the Golden State.

The Greatest Mother

My mother, Irma Mae Higgins, was born December 9, 1894, in San Saba, Texas, to William Washington Higgins and Rhoda Jamison Higgins.

She was married twice, but I have no details on the first one. She married my dad in 1924 in San Bernardino, California, and I was their only child. I’m sure she wanted more, but I do not think my dad wanted any more children. My mother showered all her attention on me, and I benefitted from it.

My mother was raised in Houston, where my grandfather Higgins was a schoolteacher and principal. There was one other daughter, Wilma, who was three and a half years older. They lived in a big home on Main Street, across from where a big Sears store was. My mother graduated from old Central High in downtown Houston in about 1912. She attended the College of Industrial Arts.

In the fall of 1938, after Mom got her degree, we returned to San Benito and moved into an upstairs apartment over a house, near the junior high that I attended in the seventh grade. That was where I learned more about playing tennis and I played a lot. That was the year I learned that girls were pretty and very interesting.

It was also in San Benito that my mother had such a terrible time teaching. She had about fifty Hispanic children in a first-grade class, and they could not speak English. There was no bilingual education in the public schools in the 1930s. She was exhausted and frustrated every day, and she was not very good with discipline. I don’t know how she kept going, but she taught there for the entire year. At the end of the year, she got good news! She got a job in the Goose Creek Independent School District in Goose Creek (now Baytown) and would make more money. My grandparents still lived on the citrus farm out from San Benito, and we would live with them. Goose Creek was an excellent school district, and it was a good move.

We moved to Baytown in September 1939, and I went to Baytown Junior High in the eighth grade. We had a garage apartment of three rooms very near the junior high, and Mom taught first grade at Baytown Elementary. I graduated from junior high in the spring of 1940 and went to Robert E. Lee High the next year. We had moved into a four-room, white wooden house on the corner of Main and Magnolia. That is when I became friends with Ed Stanton, who lived just two blocks away.

Mother taught school in the Highlands for ten to fifteen years. She went to the University of Houston and got a master’s degree in 1946 and became a speech therapist. She did speech therapy work for the school district in various schools for about the last ten years before she retired. She traveled between schools, testing students with hearing problems and working with them to get treatment. She retired in 1964 when she was seventy. I went to her retirement party at the Baytown Country Club when I was on the State Board of Education, and I made a speech.

After her retirement, Mom continued to live in the Highlands. She was very lonely. In the late 1960s, she sold the house and moved to a smaller house on Clear Lake Road in Highlands. She had a porch built on it and had it fixed up. I should have helped her with that purchase and construction, but I was in my first term as county judge and much too busy. I wish I would have paid more attention to her. We never really appreciate what our mothers do for us until they are gone. I did not know how little money she had growing up, but even so, she saved and invested. When she died on July 29,1989, she left about $50,000 in an MIT mutual fund to my three children, and I assumed the joint ML account, which was in both our names, of perhaps $20,000. She never made more than $10,000 a year teaching, and she gave me the down payment so we could buy a house. She saw that I had an education, sent me to Texas A&M, paid for my freshman year, and generally gave me everything. She was a wonderful woman, who had great faith and gave so much of herself to others. I hope to see her when my time comes.

My Father

My dad was C. Ray Holbrook Sr., born February 28, 1891, in Melton, Oregon. He had a very unhappy childhood. His mother Anna Mariah Higdon, died when he was two years old, and he was raised by a stepmother, Eva, who was not interested in him. He left home when he was about sixteen. I don’t know how he supported himself while finishing high school and then went to college.

His father was John Allen Holbrook, who was a Seventh-day Adventist evangelist and preacher. My father’s grandparents were Jesse and Mary Ann Holbrook. John Allen and his brother, Glosson, both married Higdon sisters, and it is thought some of the Higdon family were distant relatives.

The purpose of this story is to tell a little about my father and his life. I wish he had given me more details about his early years, but he did not. I did not live with him past the age of ten and had not been close to him.

After he finished school away from home, he attended the University of Washington and got a BA degree then an MS degree around 1915. I know he taught school and was probably a principal in 1923. He became superintendent of schools in San Bernardino, California, in 1930.

In 1924, he married my mother, Irma Mae Higgins, who was a teacher in the Imperial Valley at the Ramona School, which was in the San Bernardino school system.

In 1936, the school board fired my dad, my parents got a divorce, and that summer, we moved to Texas. I don’t know how my dad made it financially, but he managed to get into Stanford and got his doctorate of education degree in about 1939. I spent the spring of 1938 with him in Los Gatos, which was close enough to Palo Alto for him to go to Stanford. We had a rented house, and I rode my bike to school for the last part of the sixth grade. My lunch usually was a fried egg slapped between two pieces of bread. He was very strict and would get mad at me for not wearing socks to school and would loose his temper. I didn’t wear them because they were very all dirty.

On one occasion, I was riding my bike while holding four one-gallon glass jugs in order to redeem them at a store. I fell and broke the bottles, and I cut my wrist quite seriously. Someone stopped and took me to a hospital. I got my wrist sewn up and still have the scars today.

It was in Los Gatos that my dad met a teacher named Gladys Kendrick. They were married in December 1941 in Palo Alto, where my dad had gone to work in 1940 for the school district as a business manager and director of adult education. I first met Gladys while I was in navy boot camp in San Diego in 1945. Gladys and my dad got along quite well and remained married until he died in 1970. She lived until 1988, and we continued to visit her in Bakersfield until that time. She was a much more dominant personality than my mother, so my dad was not as apt to stray from the fold. Also, after 1962, when her brother Harold died, she had quite a bit of money that she inherited, and that made Gladys an even stronger personality. Her brother had invested in West Texas oil properties and hit big on many of them. Gladys eventually inherited it.

My dad’s job in Palo Alto went well for several years, although he began clashing with a new superintendent, as my dad’s strong personality and ego got in the way. The superintendent finally fired him as business manager in the late 1940s, yet my dad stayed on as director of adult education because of tenure. He sued the school district, and after about ten years, he won the case in the California Supreme Court. They ruled the two jobs were one, and tenure protected him unless there was cause for dismissal. I never appreciated what he went through and what a landmark case it was. It is cited many times now in other tenure cases.

He was a superior school administrator, but he had a hard time taking orders and was a womanizer. By the time he went to Bakersfield for his next position, he was sixty and knew he had to perform. He did well, and became assistant county superintendent by the time he retired in 1961. I went to his retirement party and made a speech.

In 1967, Dad and Gladys visited us in Texas City. I had just taken office as county judge, and we were eager to show off our kids and the courthouse. There was a reception at the Flagship Hotel in Galveston for Senator John Tower, so I took my dad to it. He was thrilled to meet Senator Tower since he was a hard-rock Republican in California. The downside of that trip was that he had developed Parkinson’s disease and already had some tremors.

After their trip, they decided he would have brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to stop the tremors. It consisted of a super-cold probe injected into the brain to