This is the history of the University of Oklahoma vs. the University of Texas football rivalry from 1900, when it began, to 1980. It contains 292 photos or illustrations. An account of each game is given, with a major chapter devoted to each game beginning in 1946, when the rivalry became an intense one through OU's "Grapes of Wrath" reaction to create a powerhouse football team through whatever means, through the 1979 game. There is an Epilogue, plus appendices listing all of the Oklahoma All-America players and all the Texas All-America players through the 1979 game, the Associated Press Top 10 poll at the end of each year, beginning in 1936, when the AP poll started, through 1979, the same for the United Press International poll, beginning in 1950, when the UPI poll started, Oklahoma's year-by-year record of wins, losses and ties through 1979, the same for Texas, and a 10-page, double-column Index of names of players and coaches for both schools.
Robert Heard, 69, has written eight books, including the three offered in this application. His first two books, Dance With Who Brung Us: Quips & Quotes from Darrell Royal, 1976, and You scored one more point than a dead man: The Irresistible, Sardonic Humor of Abe Lemons, 1978, sold out years ago (3,500 hardbound copies of each).
A lawyer by training (Baylor, 1955, where he served as the President of the Law School Student Body), Heard practiced for two years with the admiralty law firm of Royston, Rayzor and Cook in Houston, 1955-57 (he won all three lawsuits he tried in court). A 40-year journalist, Heard worked two years, 1957-58, for the Waco News-Tribune (Texas); five years for the Long Beach Independent (Calif.), 1959-1963 (he got one-on-one interviews with Eleanor Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, among others, in 1962; and 14 years with the Associated Press in Los Angeles, Houston and Austin, 1963-1977. He worked one year with the Texas AFL-CIO as public relations director and editor of the 300,000-circulation tabloid Labor News. He served as Texas Capitol correspondent for the San Antonio Express-News, including writing a Sunday column, 1983-85. He also wrote a weekly column for The Texas Lawyer for two years, 1986-88.
On Nov. 21, 1999, Heard unveiled a Texas Historical Marker at Ennis TX for 1st Lt. Jack Lummus, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously for singlehandedly wiping out three Japanese pillboxes on Iwo Jima on March 8, 1945, before stepping on a land mine that inflicted fatal wounds. Heard applied for the marker and directed the project.
Heard taught an upper-level course, Media Law and Ethics, at the University of Texas in 1975. He has written dozens of magazine articles.
The winner of several journalistic awards, Heard received a special citation from the Austin Headliners Club for his coverage for the AP of the University of Texas Tower sniper in 1966 (Heard numbered among the wounded).
As a kid in the summers of the 1940s, Heard worked on his grandmothers and uncles ranches in the hills of northern Uvalde County in Southwest Texas. He served as a second- and first-lieutenant with the First Marine Division in Korea in 1952.
Heard is married to his second wife and has one surviving son from his first marriage, Tom Heard, an actor in Hollywood.
