Woodward Maurice “Tex” Ritter, radio singing cowboy, movie starca and country music mainstay spent much of a lifetime the object of some fan adulation.

He may have spent frigid Tuesday, the 44^th anniversary of his death, largely alone.

The Heritage Museum in downtown Nederland, where many of his relics reside, was closed due to winter scheduling. The adjacent Tex Ritter Park stood empty as cold winds blew through. His gravesite at Oak Bluff Memorial Cemetery in Port Neches was unadorned by flowers, unlike many nearby graves.

But alone does not mean unloved or forgotten. Paul Smith, a Nederland museum docent, said close Ritter family members are gone, including his son, John Ritter, who made his own mark in Hollywood on the small screen in the 1970s and 1980s before his early death.

Smith said John, the younger of two boys born to Tex and his wife, DorothyFay, a former actress, used to visit Nederland and vicinity unannounced to pay respect to his father and his father’s chosen hometown on special occasions.

Smith himself remembers Tex Ritter’s death on Jan. 2, 1974, and the funeral at nearby First United Methodist Church, not far from the two-story white home where Ritter once lived. He wanted to go to the funeral that day – “Tex” Ritter was a big deal, he remembered – but the church was too packed.

“He wanted to come back here and be buried,” Smith said. “He was proud of here, like we were proud of him, kind of a celebrity who came from a small town.”

Much of Ritter’s performing years, more than four decades long, were spent not in cozy towns like Nederland but in New York and Chicago and Los Angeles and, finally, Nashville. But he didn’t forget Nederland. He was “small town” but no yokel, educated at the University of Texas and Northwestern University where he studied a variety of subjects including law.

He appeared in 85 movies, some of them substantial for their cowboy movie content, and, in his latter performing years, on network TV. His singing career – he recorded for Columbia and Decca and Capitol — included three No. 1 country hits and a performance of “High Noon,” which won an Oscar for best song.

He co-starred on the big screen with giants like Rita Hayworth and Johnny Mack Brown and, established in Nashville in his last years, was honored with inclusion in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Grand Ole Opry and had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Texas State Historical Association didn’t forget Ritter or his connection to Jan. 2. In its daily historical note, the association remembered “Rye Whiskey” and “Wayward Wind” and “High Noon” and the man who made his mark on Nederland and Beaumont and beyond.

 

Way beyond.