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Edgar Dalton Gooding

   Edgar Dalton Gooding was born along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico in the tiny community of Ingleside in San Patricio County, Texas on July 10, 1924. But his future lay about as far from the sea as one can get.

   When he was two, his parents moved deep into the heart of Texas to Kimble County. It is ironic that this future great Texas Ranger’s earliest memories would come from a county that a half century earlier had been considered the most lawless in the state. The most lawless, that is, until Major John Jones and the fabled Texas Ranger Frontier Battalion swept into the county. When they left, Kimble County’s unruly reputation left with them.

   Shortly before starting school, Ed’s parents moved back to the Corpus Christi area and Ed attended grade school and high school in Aransas Pass and Ingleside. Shortly after he got out of school, America was plunged into the Second World War. It wasn’t long before he found himself manning a machine gun and fighting for his life. Ed served eleven combat-filled months in Europe. He started on the beaches at Normandy and then was a part of Patton’s Third Army as it raced across France and then charged north to relieve the "Battling Bastards" of the 101^st Airborne at Bastogne, Belgium. Ed fought until VE (Victory in Europe) Day on May 8, 1945. He and one other soldier were the only two men from their machine gun company who had been together at Normandy so many months before and had not been killed, wounded, captured, or listed as missing in action.

   Ed likes to say that it was a good thing he loved cowboying and working the land as a child. Even though he was born along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, he would never have made a sailor. Every time he gets in a boat, he gets seasick. He didn’t get to see much of the splendor of the Queen Mary when he crossed the Atlantic going to Europe, nor did he see any of the magnificence of the Queen Elizabeth on his return voyage. He was "sick as a dog" going and coming.

   After working as a cowboy and in construction for a couple of years after the war, Ed was accepted into the Texas Department of Public Safety on December 1, 1948, as a Highway Patrolman. He was stationed near Houston in nearby Baytown. He remained in Baytown until he joined the Rangers on May 15, 1957. Like every Ranger, Ed is enormously proud of the ten years he served as a Highway Patrolman.

   Ed started his years as a Ranger near the top. He was stationed in Houston under the legendary Captain Johnny Klevenhagen, one of only thirty men to ever be named to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame in Waco. Ed says that Captain Klevenhagen had a fire burning inside him like no man he has ever known—a statement voiced by others as well. Ed says he had the privilege and honor to have served under Captain Klevenhagen for only one year before that roaring internal fire consumed him. Captain Johnny Klevenhagen died of a massive heart attack at forty-six years of age. Ed said, "We buried the Captain in 1958 on Thanksgiving Day."

   Ed served six years in Houston. During those years he worked on famous—or infamous—cases such as the ones involving the gambling casinos in Galveston. This battle with gambling halls, such as the world-renowned Balinese Room, went on for years. So long, as a matter of fact, that the Rangers kept a room continuously in the Buccaneer Hotel for three-and-a-half years.

   Of course the gambling dens weren’t all Ed worked. There was no shortage of work in Houston: the eight-month wildcat strike at the Shell Refinery in nearby Pasadena or murders too numerous to mention.

   Perhaps the most difficult case Ed was involved in was the bombing of the Edgar Allen Poe Elementary School in Houston on September 15, 1959. A deranged man, Paul Orgeron, walked onto the school’s campus with his seven-year-old son and a suitcase full of dynamite. Seconds later, Orgeron, his son, two other seven-year old boys, a teacher, and the school custodian lay dead.

   But the massive workload, plus the pressure and stress were beginning to get to Ed. In 1963 he, along with a stomach full of ulcers, transferred to Kerrville.

   Kerrville was like a breath of fresh air to Ed after the constant turmoil and go-go pace of Houston. But after seven years he decided it was time to move on to a little bigger city—Amarillo. Today Ed likes to laugh about his two years in Amarillo. But when he was actually in Amarillo, he wasn’t laughing. He had always lived or worked in either the Hill Country or South Texas where you only have, as he says, two seasons: summer and February. He was not prepared for Amarillo and its two seasons: July and winter. He was also not prepared for the wind—that eternal, driving wind. Ed says they have a saying in the Panhandle that the only things separating them from the North Pole are a few strands of barbed wire.

   If the cold weather and the wind were not enough, it didn’t help that a few days after arriving in Amarillo, Ed suffered the first of four heart attacks. It was therefore no surprise to anyone that when an opening became available in the central Texas county of Belton, Ed jumped on the move.

   Belton County was a workaholic’s paradise. Fort Hood was part of Ed’s territory. This was during the Vietnam War with all its protesters and other troubles. Ed had a run-in with Jane Fonda and her fellow travelers. Seeing as much pain, suffering, and death as Ed had in the service of his country during World War II, his feelings toward Ms. Fonda and her followers were, and are, very strong. Fortunately Ed had few confrontations with the anti-Vietnam War crowd. "Texans," as Ed says, "go by the old adage: ‘My country: I pray that she will always be in the right, but my country right or wrong’."

   Over the years Ed was kept busy with a multitude of murderers, thieves, muggers, rapists, and all-around bad people. He had been a Highway Patrolman and Texas Ranger for thirty-three years and he had finally had enough. On August 31, 1982, Texas Ranger Ed Gooding took off his Ranger badge for the last time.

   Today Ed stays busy visiting friends and working a garden he shares with retired Rangers Bob Mitchell and James Wright. He also spends a great deal of time working with his local church—work that he thoroughly enjoys. Ed just naturally likes people and people like him.

   Ed has accomplished much in his distinguished career as a soldier, Highway Patrolman, and Texas Ranger. In Ed’s opinion, however, one accomplishment stands head and shoulders above all—his marriage to his wife Lena. Sadly, after a lengthy illness, Lena died on February 20, 1995. Ed was by her side.

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