Second Wind

France LaVane Weathers was born on October 30, 1918, in Moore, Texas. She was a beautiful, petite woman with unforgettable red hair. Through her brother Duard, she met the man she would eventually marry, a tall, tough-as-nails Marine who served in World War II. On November 16, 1946, she married Jack. 

Jack got into law enforcement after the war, starting out as a small town deputy in La Pryor. It didn’t take long for him to work his way up to become a Texas Ranger. The quote by Ranger Captain Bill McDonald’s “One riot, one Ranger” was true for Jack, who stopped a riot on a volatile election night in his home town of Cotulla during the late sixties. Jack was fearless and tough on the outside, but he always had a soft spot for the down and out, the underdog, a good horse, and in time, his grandkids. 

LaVane and Jack had two boys, Jack and Jimmy, and she held down the fort while Jack was often gone on assignments and investigating cases all over the state. Jack always had horses, and he leased land and ran cattle on the side, and LaVane and the boys took up the slack in that area, too, when Jack was on the road. Years later, when an old friend stopped by their house in Cotulla, he recalled driving by their place and seeing LaVane out fixing a pasture fence dressed impeccably with not a red hair out of place. 

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LaVane maintained that signature red hair throughout her life. She said if she ever got to the point where she was not in her right mind, she asked her daughters-in-law to do two things: to keep her clean, and to keep her hair styled. She loved shopping at stores like Dillards and Joske’s in San Antonio, and she would find some classic outfit she liked, and then waited until it was on sale later to buy it because her petite size would almost always still be on the racks. Her clothes never went out of style. 

Her husband Jack raised his sons to work hard, especially when it came to working cattle. But every time they worked together, no matter what they did— right or wrong, earned them a loud reaming out by their father, which turned into an expected routine— even a tradition—  when they worked together, no matter how old they got. Their shouting matches while working cattle were legendary, especially among the hired hands, most of whom were Jack and Jimmy's friends. They all had great respect for Mr. Jack, along with a healthy fear of him. 

During the late 1950s, Jack and most of the Texas Rangers gained notoriety over a period of three years taking down illegal gambling casinos along the coast, especially in Galveston. He said it hurt him to destroy all of that beautiful furniture used for gambling. Another high profile event was when Jack tracked down and brought back to Laredo a young girl that had been kidnapped and hidden on the run for several years. People felt safe with Mr. Jack around. He wasn’t afraid of going after the worst sort of criminals. 

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Early in Jack and LaVane’s marriage when their oldest son was just a baby, they lived in a one-room apartment in a hotel in La Pryor. One night, LaVane awoke to the smell of cigarette smoke and liquor, and she saw a man holding a knife leaning over the baby’s crib. She was so shocked she couldn’t speak, so she did the first thing that came to mind, which was grabbing Jack’s stomach and pinching it as hard as she could. Like something out of an old western, Jack came out of the bed fighting, and he fought the man out into the hall and into the street. The man didn’t realize that Jack was an amateur boxer, and wasn’t afraid to use his fists if need be. Turned out, the man had been making threats because Jack had killed his brother in a shoot-out, but not before that man shot off the end of Jack’s finger trying to kill the lawman.

LaVane was highly respected in her community, but she lived in the shadow cast by her larger-than-life husband. When Jack passed away in 1996, her daughter-in-law wrote her a letter to let her know that his death in no way diminished who she was and how important she was to her family and all who knew her. Her youngest son came across it recently and shared it with the author, who had forgotten she had even written it. Here is the letter: