In the early 1970s I was a reporter for the Tyler Morning Telegraph and preached on Sundays at a little church near Tyler in a tiny town called Perryville.
A nice elderly couple whom I only knew as Mr. and Mrs. Price were members of the church.
After I had been preaching there for a few weeks, Mr. Price, shaking my hand as he went out the door at the end of the Sunday morning service, said, “We won’t be here next Sunday. We are going to Uvalde to spend the weekend. The governor and I are going fishing.”
As I was driving home from church, I wondered why Texas Gov. Dolph Briscoe would invite an old farmer from Perryville for a weekend at his ranch.
A few weeks later, the Prices invited my family and me to come to their home for lunch after church.
Mr. and Mrs. Price lived in a rather small white wooden house on a few acres of farmland about a mile from the church.
Toward the end of the meal, Mr. Price said to me, “I guess you have heard of my son Ray.”
I stared at him in awe.
“Ray Price is your son?” I asked, almost in disbelief.
We then went into the living room. His wife went into another room and returned with a stack of Ray Price albums and some scrapbooks.
Ray Price had toured with Hank Williams and later made a name of his own. He had several top tunes during his career, including “Heartaches By The Number,” “Release Me” and “Crazy Arms.”
Mr. Price told us he went to visit his son at his horse ranch near Mount Pleasant just last week.
“While we are at the barn looking at his horses, Ray told me he had recorded a song last week that would make him a million dollars,” Mr. Price said.
It did. It was “For the Good Times.”
Ray Price died in 2013 at age 87. He had over 100 hits during his career and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996.
As to Dolph Briscoe, this governor made his mark in Texas history. He was the last Texas governor to serve a two-year term and the first Texas governor to serve a four-year term. He was governor of Texas from 1973 to 1979.
He had served in the Texas Legislature from 1949 to 1956 and returned to politics in 1972 to run for governor.
I personally never thought Dolph Briscoe was a good politician or a good public speaker. However, he seemed to never have any trouble being easily elected or re-elected.
I interviewed him both while I was working at Tyler and later at the Lufkin Daily News.
He always gave brief answers to my questions. But he always had a man standing or sitting beside him, saying, “Dolph, wouldn’t you also like to say….” and Briscoe would reply , “Oh yes.”
Briscoe was a very godly man and I admired him for that. He and his sweet wife Janey, with some praising them and some criticizing them for it, often prayed with people visiting with them at the state capitol.
Janey died in 2000 and Dolph died 10 years later at age 87.
Briscoe, being a farmer and rancher himself as well as a banker and politician, used his influence as governor to get several bills passed which greatly benefited farmers and ranchers in Texas.
Both while in office as the 41st governor of Texas and later, he continued to stay in touch with many farmers and ranchers across Texas, including the one in Perryville.
Source: Freepik.com