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he would spend about three days a
week on the golf course. He found,
however, more satisfaction in gardening, where he could see the fruits of
his labors. He and wife Betty have
a small greenhouse at their home
in Fort. Worth, just large enough to
accommodate their tropical plants
during the winter months. Whether
in Dallas, Fort Worth, Oklahoma,
Weatherford or Washington, Wright
has always had somethi ng growing.
“When I was in military service,
we were in northern Australia, about
90 miles south of Darwin. The officer’s showers, behind the tents where
we were living, had runoff water that
just ran downhill, so I dug some irrigation trenches and planted tomatoes
so we could have fresh tomatoes. I
sure did,” Wright says chuckling.
DECEMBER 2015 PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
No Place Like Home
Wright’s father was a resourceful provider, working off and on
directing chambers of commerce
while trying to start a company to
help promote small business across
the country. Even during the Great
Depression, he was able to provide
for his family, but they moved often
to follow the work. During the family’s first stay in Weatherford, for one
brief year, the experiences Wright
had stayed with him for a lifetime
and he longed to return.
Wright says he attended nine
schools in seven cities. Despite forming attachments everywhere he lived,
he says if anyone had asked him to
name one place as home he would
have said, “Weatherford!” without
hesitation.
“My childhood was a happy one
in spite of all of the moving around,
which I hated— I hated to leave any
place and the friends I had made in
the past year. But it probably was
good for me because it taught me
how to adjust to new situations and
make new friends. It probably did me
a service early in life,” Wright says.
“I have come to believe that most of
those things that I thought were disastrous were blessings in disguise, and
each one sent me in a direction that
was good for me.”
His parents, who met at the Parker
32
County Fair, both had spent most of
their youth in Weatherford. When
the family moved to Oklahoma
late in 1933, his mother promised
they would one day move back to
Weatherford. Her pledge was fulfilled
in 1939, following a stint in Dallas
where Wright says he was thrilled to
have been able to attend the same
school three years in a row. Back in
Weatherford, his parents bought a
large home at the corner of Oak and
Waco Streets, which is still known
as the Wright House. Wright and his
father planted a row of sapling pecan
trees that today shade the entire yard.
“That was the first home our family had owned in my lifetime,” Wright
says. “I had lived some in my grandparents’ home in Fort Worth, but my
mother and father and two sisters and
I lived in rented homes all the time
until I was 16, when we moved to
Weatherford and bought that house. I
was so proud; you can’t imagine how
proud a kid could be going home.
When I resigned from congress, I had
in mind buying the old family home
but the owners back then didn’t want
to sell it.”
The Art of Manhood
Boxing matches and ball games
became father-son outings when the
younger Wright was 5 or 6 - which
is the age he also remembers receiving his first pair of boxing gloves. His
first “serious” book was a gift from
his father - Jack Dempsey — The Idol
of Fistiana by Nat Fleischer. It was
about Dempsey’s life, with blow-by
blow descriptions of all his championship bouts. Young Wright almost
memorized the contents, and holding
the book, he would read aloud into
a make-believe radio microphone,
emulating noted boxing broadcaster
Graham McNamee.
“My father had been a professional boxer in his youth in 1920-21.
I became fascinated with boxing
because Dad had such an interest in
it,” Wright says.
Wright’s mother refused to marry
the elder Wright until he gave up the
ring. Boxing had given him a nest
egg, with which he started a tailor,
cleaning and pressing business. As a
tailor, he had the expertise to sew a
bag out of canvas for his son, which
they hung from a tree in the back
yard.
When Wright was 10, his father
promised him if he didn’t make either
of his little sisters cry for a solid
month, he would get him a genuine,
regulation punching bag.
“Well, I did that. My little sisters
cooperated; they knew they weren’t
supposed to cry because I wouldn’t
get my punching bag,” he says. “In
a vacant lot beside my grandfather’s
house [in Fort Worth] we put up four
posts and some rope. The boys in the
neighborhood would come down and
we’d box.”
Wright participated in the AAU
(Amateur Athletic Union), which was
the forerunner of the Golden Gloves,
traveling to Oklahoma and Florida.
He boxed all through high school in
Dallas. As a young adult living again
in Weatherford, he became a boxing
coach.
“In those years in Weatherford, a
young man who was doing all right
financially was expected to donate
a certain amount of time to service
activities. So I got to be a Sunday
School teacher, and I got to be a
scoutmaster and I got to be a boxing
coach for the Golden Gloves,”
Wright says.
One of his students was a young
Larry Hagman, son of Broadway
legend and Weatherford resident
Mary Martin and Weatherford attorney Ben Hagman.
Hagman, whose parents divorced
when he was 5, had lived on the
east and west coasts, first with his
grandmother and then with his
mother until his junior year of high
school. Much like Wright’s father,
Ben Hagman wanted his son to play
football and box - although Larry was
more interested in acting.
“Jim kept saying, ‘Jab, jab, jab,
jab!’ Well, I jabbed, but I’d go up
against country boys and they didn’t
know jabbing; they only knew about
windowing, which is to hit you at
least 30 times for every time you
hit them,” Hagman laughs. “I did
it for six months or something like
that, long enough to get me into the
Golden Gloves. But after I got the
[sense] kicked out of me a couple of
times, I got smart and said, ‘Boxing is
not for me.’”