If you knew Maury Maverick Jr., it’s impossible to drive down Broadway, past Brackenridge Park, and not imagine him on his morning walk — nature’s child and freedom’s apostle striding to the drumbeat in his head, on the lookout for stray dogs in need of care, and thinking about life’s underdogs and the marginalized who need a voice to amplify theirs. Maybe his voice.
As a state legislator, attorney and Express-News columnist, Maury’s life was about using his voice for those in the shadows of the Constitution’s sunlit promises. He was one of American liberalism’s pre-eminent and unapologetic advocates.
Civil liberties had no greater defender. Injustice and ignorance had no fiercer adversary.
“Fearless” is how poet Naomi Shihab Nye describes him. “Unafraid of what others might say of him or think about him. He was a true advocate for others (Palestinians, for example) because he did not fear blowback.”
Jan Jarboe Russell, journalist and former Express-News columnist who knew him as well as anyone, wrote, “There was no greater patriot in America than Maverick. He loved this country so much that it hurt.”
He didn’t love the South Texas heat. When Naomi suggested he summer someplace cooler, he said, “Oh, I couldn’t do that. It’s too much of a minor ego trip to be a Maverick in San Antonio.”
Maury’s great-grandfather, Samuel Augustus Maverick, was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and a wealthy landowner. He didn’t brand his longhorns, so when one strayed from the herd, it was called a “maverick.” His father, Maury Maverick Sr., was a two-term New Deal congressman and San Antonio mayor.
Today would have been Maury’s 100th birthday. He and his wife, Julia, who died last year, had no children of their own. But because of the paternal interest he took in younger people, there are many of “Maury’s children,” including the Vietnam War-era conscientious objectors he defended pro bono, Jan, Naomi, former Express-News writer Bob Richter and myself.
Maury took credit for “discovering” me, and he was right. I was either unemployed or a community organizer — little difference in pay — the first time I met him in a typewriter shop in the late 1980s or early 1990s. I introduced myself, and the first thing he said to me, in that gruff voice, was, “Black people need another Malcolm X!”
I was down with that, though I thought it an unusual greeting. Learning I wanted to be a journalist, he took some of my few published pieces to Richter at the Express-News Editorial Board. One thing led to another, which eventually led to a career. Maury remained a source of encouragement, dispenser of books, and fount of advice and phone calls pretending to be Frederick Douglass, Sam Houston or G.J. Sutton.
One of Maury’s most famous legal cases was that of I.H. “Sporty” Harvey, a Black boxer from San Antonio. Together, in 1954, they overturned the Texas law prohibiting professional boxing matches between white and Black fighters.
In 1997, Maury phoned me. “Kiddo,” he said, “do you think you could drive me to Sporty Harvey’s funeral on Thursday?”
He was one of the few white people in Bethel United Methodist Church. Hard of hearing, he’d turn to me and ask, loudly, “Huh? What did he say?”
When the minister asked if anyone wanted to say a few words, Maury rose, stumbling past others in the pew to get to the aisle. I slumped in my seat.
Once he was in the pulpit, the church became his. Within seconds, his rumbling drawl was rolling over a growing chorus of “Amen!” “Tell it!” “Preach!”
“I had two college degrees,” Maury thundered. “But that black man,” he pointed to Harvey’s gray casket, “with a sixth-grade education taught me more than I taught him!”
By the time he finished, half the church was standing, and I was sitting up, proud and smiling, like, “Yeah, I’m the one who drove him here.”
In January 2003, knowing he was about to be hospitalized for major surgery, I wrote a birthday column about him. He couldn’t believe the positive reaction.
“Kiddo, you’re not pulling a sick old man’s leg, are you?”
On Jan. 28 he died at 82.
“I miss the sound of Maury’s voice,” says photographer Michael Nye, Naomi’s husband and another of “Maury’s children.” “I miss his wit and teasing. A voice that floated with seriousness and sudden humor.”
A few years later, at Julia Maverick’s request, Jan, Naomi, Bob and I spent a couple of Sundays cleaning out Maury’s office, a little stand-alone in his backyard. The dusty books, correspondence, photos, files and political memorabilia made it akin to being immersed, for several glorious hours, in a museum of family, San Antonio, Texas and U.S. history.
We were like children going through our late father’s things and marveling, anew, at the life he led. It bonded us closer to Maury and to each other.
Happy birthday, kiddo!
cary.clack@express-news.net
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