Dorothy Bell and Thorowgood Taylor Broun were both born in 1923 and grew up in the east Texas college town of Commerce. Taylor’s father was a college professor and his mother a free-lance journalist. Dorothy’s father was a mechanic and her mother ran a fraternity house. Taylor had an older brother and younger sister, neither of whom survived until adulthood. Dorothy had a younger sister, Margaret, who married John Mason and lived her whole life in northeast Texas. Taylor and Dorothy received an excellent pre-college education at the college Training School  and grew up living virtually across the street from one another.

During World War II in 1942 the couple eloped on New Year’s Eve as 19 year-old college students and married in Hugo, OK, where there was no waiting period for a marriage certificate. Afterwards they returned to their respective homes, planning to keep the marriage a secret due to a special military program Taylor had committed to and in the face of disapproval by Taylor’s parents. However, they were quickly found out when a notice of the marriage appeared in the Paris, Texas, newspaper. They were fairly quickly separated by WWII.

Their first son was born in 1945 while Taylor was serving in the Navy in the Philippines. When the war was over, Taylor was accepted into the graduate program of the Chemistry Department at Purdue University, and the young family moved to Lafayette, Indiana. They suffered through several financially lean years of graduate school during which a daughter was born.  In 1950, Taylor graduated from Purdue with a Ph.D. in chemistry and accepted a job offer with PPG at their research center in Corpus Christi, Texas.  While Taylor and Dorothy were living in Corpus Christi, another son was born. In 1964, Taylor was transferred to PPG’s Houston Chemical facility in Beaumont, Texas, and the family moved again. Taylor and Dorothy were to remain in Beaumont for the rest of their married life.

Taylor was a devoted family man. He loved his wife and kids and he was always concerned with their welfare. During the early years of his marriage, he worked very hard to insure that the family had enough to make ends meet. While at Purdue he blew glass for the physics department and made Christmas ornaments for the tree at home. After Purdue, in addition to his job at PPG, he taught college chemistry at night at Del Mar College. During the early years, Taylor watched the family budget closely and kept a tight rein on money. Sometimes he would invite the family to go out to eat - the only stipulation being that the cost of each meal could not exceed $1. Of course, a dollar went a lot farther in those days.

Taylor’s frugality spurred an intense interest in investing in the stock market. Originally this quirk manifested itself in daily visits to Merrill Lynch on his way home from work. In later years, his youngest son convinced him that he could save an hour each day by relying on computers for the same information. In fact the purchase of a computer did not save time, but only resulted in Taylor’s tracking 200 stock issues daily instead of a dozen - and in retirement, his stock work with the computer extended to fill the entire day.

Dorothy and Taylor were raised in an age when wives were expected to take care of their husbands and their husbands were raised to expect to be taken care of.  And Dorothy always took care of Taylor.  He was a sweetheart, but when his blood sugar was low, he could be quite grumpy.  The family almost never saw this manifested, because Dorothy always had dinner on the table each evening as soon as he walked through the door from work.

Because Dorothy took such good care of him, Taylor never did learn to cook beyond the emergency opening of a can of soup, making jello, and the occasional Saturday morning Bisquick pancakes. One time when Dorothy couldn’t leave Beaumont because of her teaching schedule, he traveled to stay with his grandchildren while their parents enjoyed a few days away together. The first day he shocked the grandkids when they came home from school by asking them, “What’s for dinner?”. Prepared frozen meals had been left for them to thaw, heat and eat, but even that was too much of a challenge, so they subsisted on hot dogs and canned chili until the parents returned!

Both Taylor and Dorothy were active church members. When they moved to Corpus Christi after graduate school, they joined the downtown First Presbyterian Church where they were quite active. Among other church commitments, they volunteered as DCEs (Director of Christian Education). In Beaumont they were members of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church where Taylor served several years as Elder.

Ever curious about interesting physical phenomena, during the years in Corpus Taylor enjoyed blasting the family awake before dawn on a Saturday morning by playing a Purdue Band record at top volume to get them out of bed and into the car for a drive to Padre Island to look for the elusive green flash. Now for those of you who don’t know, the green flash is a rare light phenomenon which can occur at the exact moment the sun breaks the horizon over a calm sea under special atmospheric conditions. It only lasts a fraction of a second, but it’s a spectacular bright green when it does occur. Unfortunately, nobody in the family ever saw the green flash, but Taylor never gave up looking and along the way the entire family had lots of fun at the beach and developed a real taste for sand and eggs.

Another of Taylor’s hobbies was the breeding of Amaryllis. These are beautiful flowering bulb plants which he carefully hand-pollinated to bring out the characteristics he was seeking in the trumpet shaped flowers. He participated in the local Amaryllis Society and won awards for his plants. In addition to amaryllis, he had an interest in cacti. On a camping trip to West Texas, he collected several specimens, including a very large multiple fish-hook cactus that took 4 family members to carry back to the car on a tarp. Once home in Corpus Christi, Taylor constructed a 3 tiered cactus garden in the back yard to show off his cactus collection.

Dorothy was a beautiful woman, always meticulous about her appearance. In her youth, she had long hair, curled in the current fashion. After children came along, she found life easier when she did her hair up in a bun on top of her head and that is the way she wore it for the rest of her life. Her upswept hair always gave her an elegant look. In addition, she was fastidious about her nails, always keeping them carefully filed and painted. In later years, when she no longer was so concerned about finances, she indulged in the luxury of professional manicures and pedicures. She also loved clothes, but, ever concerned about cost, she became a champion shopper and was always most proud of the beautiful outfit she had purchased on sale for practically nothing!

Dorothy also particularly loved jewelry, but never felt free to indulge herself until many years into their marriage. Eventually it dawned on Taylor how much his lovely wife cared for jewelry and in later years he bought her some beautiful pieces.

Taylor’s mother, Lutie, was a free-lance photo journalist and photographed and developed her own pictures for her articles, in addition to taking pictures of the family and family events. Taylor learned a love of photography from her, and always had a camera handy from an early age. An essential requirement of all his adventures was that he had to have a camera along - but after he fell in love with Dorothy, she was ALWAYS his favorite photographic subject!

Looking through Taylor and Dorothy’s family photos, one is impressed right away that many of them involve camping and outdoor activities.  A camping vacation may not have initially been Dorothy’s idea of a good time, but Taylor loved the out-of-doors, and she quickly warmed to nature and the adventure of it all.  The first camping vacation did not come until the early 1960’s when Taylor finally had enough vacation time accrued and the money to take the family somewhere other than a visit to their parents in Commerce. He rented a little travel trailer and took the family of 5 to Big Bend National  Park.

Together they went through a series of campers, starting with a small pop-up, graduating to a 22 ft. silver Avion, and finally to a ForeTravel Motor Home.  They enjoyed many a vacation with friends and family in their assorted homes-away-from home.  In their mid-fifties, their children talked them into joining them on a backpacking trip in the Maroon-Snowmass Wilderness in Colorado.  It was a very strenuous trip, including a day with a 3500 ft altitude gain topping out at 12,000 feet on Trail Rider Pass.  Dorothy was a great sport until late in the day when the group came to a rushing creek that had to be crossed before making camp.  She didn’t see how she could make it across that creek – so her son-in-law gallantly offered to carry her across.  The moment is immortalized in a photo of the always elegant Dorothy festooned with her sun-shielding poke-bonnet, piggy-backing across that creek on her son-in-law’s back!

Taylor loved adventure and he was especially in his element when he was behind the wheel of his beloved ’69 Bronco (the first of a series of 4WD vehicles) heading off on some impassable road toward some ghost town he’d read about in one of those odd publications he used to collect. There was no mountain too high, no road too rough or steep and no destination too remote for Taylor Broun to reach. He enjoyed the beauty and grandeur of the mountains and the checkered history of the mines and ghost towns he investigated. One might suspect that he secretly enjoyed seeing the whites of his children’s and grandchildren’s eyes as he drove along mountain pass roads so steep and narrow that you had to put the car in reverse and back up to make a turn on some of the switchbacks from time to time.

That ’69 Bronco is a story in itself. One 4th of July weekend in the late ‘70’s, Taylor and Dorothy packed the Bronco with food, clothes, dogs and gear and headed to the beach at Boliver Penninsula to spend the holiday with their eldest son and his family. On the beach road, some teenagers picked them to play “chicken” with, driving head-on toward them at high speed and forcing them off the road. The Bronco frighteningly lurched and then rolled. When it came to a halt, upside down off the side of the road, Taylor looked to see if Dorothy was OK but he saw blood everywhere! His heart almost stopped at the sight! Amazingly though, the ‘blood’ turned out to be catsup from a broken bottle and everyone, including the dogs, escaped with just a few minor cuts and bruises. But the top of the Bronco was destroyed so Taylor drove it home with plans to fix it up with a fringed canvas top and use it for a beach buggy. But that never happened, so it lived in the garage for years, serving as a storage spot for odds and ends of woodworking projects, tools and other stuff until the eldest son finally adopted it and brought it back to life - and he enjoyed driving it for several more years.

Taylor also liked to do river trips and the family frequently spent time in Big Bend National Park when the kids were all at home. One particularly memorable excursion was to Santa Elena Canyon for a float trip down the Rio Grande. Now you understand that this was normally a two day trip with an overnight stay somewhere on a beach in the canyon. In typical “can do” fashion, Taylor decided that the family and their friends, Bob and Ann Nobles, could complete the trip in one long day. Thus there was no need to carry all the extra food and gear necessary for an overnight stay. So family and friends packed off in two canoes and a raft with some water, a bag of apples and oranges and some boltin’ biscuits and a jar of peanut butter. Well, it was a LONG day, punctuated by unexpected dips in the river when the canoes overturned, lengthy portages over piles of rocks that blocked the river and blisters and sore muscles all around. But everyone survived and it made for a great story.

Taylor was an ardent supporter of the Boy Scouts and was one of the more active fathers in his sons’ troops. They both recall many times when he was there for them, especially when they got into trouble. The youngest son tells of being rescued from false accusations by the head Boy Scout Camp leader, when his father stepped in and pointed out the erroneous assumptions. He also insisted that the leader apologize to the group of boys falsely accused. This impressed his son because as a powerless teenager he was receiving the apology of an adult. But that was Taylor Broun. He was meticulously honest and did not let the particular situation get in the way of having that honesty expressed. In respect for his years of service to the Scouts, Taylor was uniquely honored by receiving the Scout Order of the Arrow as an adult.

Taylor’s dedication to his projects was legendary. Once he got something in his mind, he was not easily deterred from moving forward. One day he and Dorothy were out in the woods cutting logs for the fireplace and he managed to cut his thigh all the way to the bone  with the chain saw. Although he was bleeding badly and would require several stitches to close the wound, he insisted that Dorothy collect all the wood that had been cut thus far and load it into the Suburban before he would let her take him to the hospital. He was not about to see his efforts go to waste.

He also believed that anything he might conceivably be able to do himself should not be hired out. He built up quite a list of undone “honey-dos” as he could also be a world class procrastinator! At one point, he promised to build his youngest son a pirogue for one of his birthdays. After several years had passed, the son inquired about the birthday boat. Taylor responded that he had not said WHICH birthday he’d have the boat built for! That boat never did get built.

Dorothy was a devoted mother and grandmother.  She was there for the children with good eats when they came home from school for lunch.  She was there when they got home from school to hear about their days.  She was always a teacher to her children and did everything in her power to see that they were successful in life. Dorothy was well known by her children and grandchildren to be ever ready with advice she felt it was her God-given duty to dispense, so that none in the family should ever go astray or get themselves in a difficult situation when her sage advice might have prevented such.

She traveled on short notice from Beaumont to Denver to help her daughter out when their first grandchild was born.  Her daughter and granddaughter came home after only one day in the hospital, but Dorothy was there from Beaumont by that evening.  The new mother was determined to take care of the baby herself and it must have been new-mother nerves that kept the 1-day old baby awake and crying until two in the morning.  Exhausted, and in tears herself, her daughter finally went into the room where Dorothy was sleeping and begged her to take the baby.  She barely woke up, reached for the baby, and nestled her into the bed beside her.  Dorothy and baby were asleep before her daughter could leave the room, standing there in amazement, sniffling to herself in the dark.

During the time in Beaumont, they thought Taylor might go blind as a result of botched cataract surgery and not be able to work. Dorothy took up the challenge to go back to college after nearly 25 years to finish the degree that was interrupted when they got married.  She got that degree and went on to teach science for 20 years, mostly at Marshall Middle School in Beaumont, serving many years as the head of the Science Department.  She was a mentor to the younger teachers, and many of them turned to her for advice and support through the years. She loved teaching students and devoted time during her vacation travels collecting rock samples, both because she found them interesting, but also to bring to school with her to show her students that there was much more cool stuff to learn about earth science than petroleum engineering.  Nobody ever visited the house on Clinton St. without being impressed with the collection of rocks, both inside and out!

In addition to rocks, one of Dorothy’s special interests was birds. She always had a bird-feeder in easy view from inside the house and took great delight in watching her birds come and go, enjoying the food she provided. Even after she broke her hip and had to move to an assisted-living apartment, she enjoyed seeing the birds coming to the feeder her son set up for her outside her window.

Two months after Dorothy had a stroke in 1997, Taylor was diagnosed with melanoma of the eyes and liver.  One of the ways she was affected by the stroke was that she had a hard time with direction and location, and was terrified of getting lost.  All the same, she did her best to get Taylor back and forth from Beaumont to Houston for his radiation and chemotherapy and take care of him when he was suffering from the intensive treatments.  At the same time, he had made the decision to undergo the debilitating chemotherapy and radiation treatments that offered no hope of cure, only extension of life - all so he could be around as long as possible to take care of Dorothy.

After Taylor died in September of 1997, Dorothy was devastated and as a result of the stroke it was not at all clear that she was capable of living on her own.  But she was stronger than she thought she was.  She really did not want to give up her home and move to be near one of her children, even though it would have made life much easier for her.  Ultimately, she pulled her life together and lived independently for another 9 years. She celebrated her 75th birthday on an Alaska cruise with two of her children, their spouses and a friend. She planned her own gala 80th birthday party at a lovely tea room in Beaumont, a party attended by almost all her family and a host of friends.

Taylor was frugal up until the day he died and Dorothy spent accordingly. After Taylor was gone, Dorothy was shocked to find out how much all their years of scrimping and saving and investing had really paid off and  they had amassed a nest egg sufficient to support her in comfort for a very long time. She was sorry to think that they had not done more to enjoy what they had while he was still with her.

Dorothy loved dogs.  She was legendary in the family for her devotion to the long sequence of pet dogs and their returned love for her.  After she broke a hip in 2006, she moved to Dallas to be nearer family and she had to give up her beloved dog, Smokey.  But about that time, her son’s family adopted a new Weimaraner puppy and named him Diesel.  Diesel regularly visited Dorothy at her apartment, and it was always the high point of her day.  One time, Her daughter flew in from the east coast to visit and when she first walked in, Dorothy greeted her not with, “Well hello dear daughter – so nice of you to travel all this way to visit”, but, “Is Diesel coming to visit today?”

You would have to say that in this family, ‘the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree’. Dorothy and Taylor’s children and grandchildren have followed in their footsteps, having variously shown interest in gardening (including cacti and amaryllis), rock collecting, photography, bird-watching, Scouts, camping, 4-wheeling, and woodworking, Several studied and chose careers in the sciences/math. One son followed the investing interest with his own career in finance. Everyone has had pets of various shapes and sizes.

In spite of marrying young, parental opposition, early financial stresses, assorted family crises and, toward the end, health problems, Taylor and Dorothy were a devoted couple for 54+ years.  On the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary in 1993, they celebrated with a tearful renewal of their marriage vows surrounded by family and conducted by an old family friend, the Rev. Allen Kraft, in a very moving ceremony.  The ceremony was followed by the reception with friends and family, dancing and the wedding cake they never had when they eloped 50 years before. Throughout their life together and beyond, they were an example to their children and all who knew them of what a good marriage was supposed to be.