Saddened Texans File Past
Bier of Governor Jester

by O. B. Lloyd, Jr.

[The Daily Times Herald, Dallas; July 12, 1949; Page 1]

Austin, July 12, (UP) Somber saddened Texas in an ever-lengthening line filed quietly past the bier of Gov. Beauford Jester, paying their final respects today to the man whose unexpected death lunged the state into sorrow.

In the first hour an estimated 1,000 persons moved slowly into the Capitol's Senate chamber and walked softly across the buff green carpeting to the flag draped metallic silver casket.

Hundreds of floral tributes banked the chamber.

Brief services were to be held today in the Senate chamber at the Statehouse, with the Rev. Edmund Heinsohn, pastor of Austin's University Methodist Church, officiating. Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court J. E. Hickman was to eulogize the state's fallen chief executive.

Further services will be held Wednesday at 11 a.m. in Jester's native Corsicana, where a city wide day of mourning will be observed.

The Corsicana service will be held in the First Methodist Church where Jester worshiped when "at home." Dr. Erwin F. Bohmfalk, the Corsicana pastor, will officiate.

The late governor's body will be lowered to its final resting place in Oakwood Cemetery, in the family plot where lies his father George T. Jester, once a Texas lieutenant governor and his son's inspiration along the political trail that led to the highest state office Texas could bestow upon a citizen.

There was no conversation as friends, acquaintances, high state officials and the plain folk of Texas paused to honor their fallen chief executive in Austin.

In the line were shirt-sleeved, bareheaded men, pig-tailed little girls, farm women and military personnel.

Whole families came together. A few carried cameras.

At the entrance, many of the persons paused long enough to sign their names. Five books were being used to handle the flow.

As the slowly moving line filed from the Senate chamber, a few of the men and many of the women hastily wiped at their eyes.

Around the Capitol corridors to direct the thousands of Texans were 75 blue-uniformed state police.

At each end of the grey satin-tufted casket, two enlisted men of the Texas National Guard stood rigidly braced at attention.

The governor was dressed in a dark blue suit. On the lapel was his military ribbon awarded for service overseas in World War I.

His favorite tie, a gift from his family, was neatly knotted.

On it, emblazoned on a dark blue background, was the lone star of Texas and at the bottom a sprinkling of bluebonnets.

At the head of the casket was a four-foot cross of white lilies. Off a few feet, at the foot, was a shield of white daisies, a remembrance from men with whom he served at Camp Leon Springs in World War I.

Other flowers were brought in by a constant parade of Capitol Bldg. porters.

Overhead, to the left, the flag of the United States gently waved in a breeze, filtered through open windows of the Senate chamber.

At the right, overhead, was the flag of Texas.

A cavalcade of roaring military planes brought the body of the 56-year-old Governor home to the capital city last night from Houston, where his death was discovered when a train pulled up at the Southern Pacific Station yesterday morning.

The body rested overnight in the Rose Room at the executive mansion.

Today it was moved into the Senate chamber at the Statehouse to lie in state.

Pallbearers included Ike Ashburn and James P. Nash, both of Austin, R. W. Henderson and James Rockwell, Houston; Suttle Roberts and A. F. Mitchell, Corsicana; Aubrey Alexander, Fort Worth, and Paul Brown, Harlingen.

Rockwell is a member of the University of Texas board of regents while Mitchell is a state highway commissioner. Brown is state fire insurance commissioner. The other pallbearers are all engaged in private business.

Messages of condolence from all parts of the nation, from friends and acquaintances of Jester in all walks of life, flooded into Austin.

Among the expressions of sympathy was one from President Truman To Mrs. Jester, the President messaged: "I am shocked and saddened by the sorrow which has come to you with such sudden and tragic force. To you and to the members of your family and to the people of the great State of Texas whom he served so faithfully and well, I offer this assurance of heart felt sympathy."

There were hundreds of others.

Further services will be held.

The body will be flown to Corsicana following the Austin services in "the Bluebonnet, " the state plane which carried the remains to Austin last night.

A 20 plane escort, fighters of the Air National Guard, flew alongside the gleaming silvery Bluebonnet as Brig. Gen. Harry Crutcher of Dallas piloted the big plane on its sad mission.

Jester's widow, and two of their three children Joan and 10-year old Beauford, Jr. will fly to Corsicana in a private plane. Their second daughter, Mrs. Howard Burris, flew directly to Corsicana from her New York home.

Jester had become an international figure when a heart attack overtook him and ended his life as he slept in a Pullman berth moving southward from Austin in the early hours of Monday.

From Mexico City, President Miguel Aleman of Mexico said "His death was very saddening. He was a good friend of the Mexicans and was working for the welfare of his people."

They had met several times, the last in April at Matamoros, Tamaulipas State, when Aleman passed through the border regions on a tour of the northeastern section of his nation.

The new governor of Texas Allen Shivers, elevated from his elected position of lieutenant governor, hurried to Austin yesterday from his farm retreat at Woodville in Tyler County.

He said he would delay taking the oath of office until after the Jester funeral.

Shivers, 41, said "Generally speaking" he expected to enact no changes of policy from the line followed by the Jester administration.

"We were interested," he said "in the same things."

Shivers became Texas' 38th governor, the eighth lieutenant governor to move up to the gubernatorial chair, but the first in the Lone Star State's history to take the high office by cause of death of an active governor.

As the body of Jester came home, some 200 somber persons were waiting, in an atmosphere of stunned silence, at Bergstrom Field for the Bluebonnet to land.

  See Also: Jester Funeral Program