Gabriel and Luly May's Boy

(Texarkana) Many of you may not remember Gabriel and Luly May. Gabriel was a cotton broker who used to live here in Texarkana.

I rode by their house today.



Remember the song? "Way down there in Louisiana, just about a mile from Texarkana - in them old cotton fields back home.”

Not unusual for a young man to be a cotton broker in the 1930’s in Texarkana.

In 1930, Gabriel and Luly May produced a son. Ross was an industrious young lad and soon got involved in the Boy Scouts. In fact, his parents were very proud when their son earned the Eagle Scout award. Who would have thought the son of a cotton broker from Texarkana would become an Eagle Scout? Ross even had the local Boy Scout Council office named after him.

It didn’t end there though for young Ross. In 1953 he entered the US Naval Academy and when he graduated he was President of his class. He served his four year commitment in the Navy and left to become an IBM salesman.

With IBM, this aggressive young Eagle Scout met his first year’s quota in the first two weeks on the job. But he was ignored by his supervisors as he tried to pitch his ideas to them. After five years he left IBM to form his own company.

As owner of his new data processing company, Ross was turned down 88 times before he got his first contract. I don’t know many people who would still be trying after being turned down eight times. But this guy was persistent.

His new business did pretty good. In fact, he took it public in 1968 and in 1984 his company, Electronic Data Systems (EDS),was bought out by General Motors for a cool $2.4 Billion. In 1986 Ross sold another company in which he was the chief investor for $700 million and some change.

A couple of years before that, this former boy scout from Texarkana bought one of the original copies of the Magna Carta, which now happens to be on display at the National Archives in Washington, DC along side the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

In 1992, Ross Perot announced on the Larry King show he was running for President of the United States. He didn’t win but he won 19% of the popular vote, making him the most successful third party candidate for President since Theodore Roosevelt.


Quite a guy, wouldn’t you say?

I don’t know what went on within the walls of that simple house some 60 years ago. But seeing it made me stop and think.

This son of a cotton broker from Texarkana did pretty good for himself.

Gosh I bet Gabriel and Luly May would be proud.