Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2009 > October > 12 > Entry
Through the Night & Beyond with Ray Farabee, Part 1
I prepared just one hardball question for former State Senator Ray Farabee.
“Are you really such an Eagle Scout?” I demanded.
“I never made Eagle,” Farabee corrected me. “I only made Star.”
One might expect more ego and bluster from a man who worked his way up from lye-soap poverty and family tragedy in Wichita Falls; won debates, speaking contests and academic scholarships; took local, state and national student leadership roles; built a commercial legal practice in his home town; served multiple terms as senator in Austin; was named repeatedly to Texas Monthly’s “Best Legislators” list; rose to become the University of Texas System’s chief counsel; raised a family, including a future state representative, and married, in sequence, two leading Texas women, the late Helen Farabee, champion of the state’s mental health programs, and Mary Margaret Farabee, currently among Austin’s most admired fundraisers and activists.
Lanky, jug-eared, grinning and, by all accounts, squeaky clean, Farabee comes off like a North Texas version of Abraham Lincoln or Barack Obama. (He’d cringe at these comparisons, but this is my column, not his.) Back in the 1970s, a certain crusading magazine was totally smitten with his good-government, centrist lawgiving.
“Texas Monthly was always extremely kind to me,” Farabee says. “I’m not sure anybody was as good as they said I was. Still, you don’t mind hearing people say nice things. And it’s vastly better than being on the ‘Worst’ list.”
More to come …
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