Texas Valley Murders
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Jack W. Horvath's father, Bela Horvath, was a Hungarian emigrant born in 1902 who changed his name to William E. Horvath and went by the nickname Bill. He was a sharecropping farmer in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. This meant that they were "dirt poor" when Jack was born on July 21, 1938, during the Great Depression. Jack's mother, Inez (Mann) Horvath, died of kidney failure in 1945. Jack remembers the funeral clearly. His grandmother, Theresa Horvath, came and took care of him and his two younger sisters for a couple of years until their father remarried. Five years later, his stepmot...
Jack W. Horvath's father, Bela Horvath, was a Hungarian emigrant born in 1902 who changed his name to William E. Horvath and went by the nickname Bill. He was a sharecropping farmer in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. This meant that they were "dirt poor" when Jack was born on July 21, 1938, during the Great Depression. Jack's mother, Inez (Mann) Horvath, died of kidney failure in 1945. Jack remembers the funeral clearly. His grandmother, Theresa Horvath, came and took care of him and his two younger sisters for a couple of years until their father remarried. Five years later, his stepmother and father separated. His grandmother was no longer in good health to take care of him and his siblings, so they were placed in a children's home in 1952. They were fortunate to be moved to a Christian children's home, Sunny Glen Children's Home, near San Benito, Texas. Jack's first year in school there was difficult, but he gradually adapted and improved his schoolwork. A series of successes followed in school, and he was able to attend Abilene Christian College on a scholarship in 1957. There, he met his first wife, Sue Bernard. They married during the Christmas holidays of their junior year. Sue and Jack both graduated from ACC in 1962, and he began his career as a chemist working for Dow Chemical Company that summer in Freeport, Texas. Their son, Hal Bernard Horvath, was born on December 26th of that same year. Six years later, Sue divorced him to marry a cowboy so that she could do barrel racing in rodeos and such. Jack's career as an industrial chemist totaled about forty-two years, during which he was awarded four US patents. However, technical services support for salesmen was his primary job more than research work. There was an interruption in the middle when he sold insurance for six years, after which Charlotte and Jack served as houseparents back at Sunny Glen Children's Home for two years. Then he taught math and science courses in public schools for four years. Returning to work as a chemist was necessary, as his second wife, Charlotte (Pogue) Horvath, already had four children when they married. They shortly added two more, Walter Horvath and Sonya Horvath. Supporting six children cost way more than a schoolteacher's salary could cover. His career as a chemist ended when his last industrial employer, HydroChem Inc., gave him a retirement party in 2016. At seventy-eight years old, he wanted to work there for two more years, but they were planning a merger, resulting in a reduction in force, and his time to retire had come. Since then, as a retiree, he has been working on a new career as a writer. His first fiction novel, Magic Valley Murders (MVM), was published in time for the Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday marketing season. The publisher for his first novel wanted money from him (which he did not have) to pay for the advertising of the book. First-time authors have a hard time getting traction, and without advertising, only a few copies were sold in 2019. Since then, he has produced a manuscript for a second novel to be titled Texas Brave. It is not a sequel to MVM but tells the story of a Texas farmer who finds himself forced to be a warrior. He also has plans to write a third novel titled Sugar Road Children's Home, also set in the Rio Grande Valley in the 1950s. It will be a drama but not a war story. Incidentally, his father lived to be ninety-three years old. He is aiming to live to at least 100 years old, but Jack understands that none of us have a tomorrow guaranteed.
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