The wars on opposite sides of the world fought by Charles Baum of Whitesboro and Leonard Riley of Denison were very different, but both were extraordinary examples of courage, steadfastness, and faith. Theirs are two of those sixteen million stories, and they bear remembering.

John Astin Perkins was born into a well-to-do, well-connected McKinney family in 1907. Educated at Yale, the University of Texas and the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts, he moved to Dallas upon finishing his education and began to design and build houses.

Just 17 miles southeast of Sherman on US 69 and SH 11 in extreme east Grayson County, Whitewright is a prototypical Texas town with one foot in the past and the other firmly planted in the here-and-now. Settlers from Kentucky established the area in the late 1800s. Whitewright was a land rich for cultivation and cattle, a wilderness of grasses, flowers and forest.

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was born in LeClaire, Iowa, in 1846. During his early life he herded cattle and worked as a driver on a wagon train, went on to fur trapping and gold mining, then joined the Pony Express in 1860. After the Civil War, Cody scouted for the army and gained the nickname “Buffalo Bill” as a hunter.

Over four generations, the Nuckols clan moved west from Virginia to new farms. But all that changed when Virgil Nuckols was transformed from a farmer to the Texas Kidd.

The Corps of Discovery had not yet started up the Missouri on their epic journey to the Western Sea, but Capt. Lewis already was working to fulfill the mandate of expedition when he sent this letter and a packet of cuttings to Pres. Thomas Jefferson.

Drive across the Red River Bridge from Denison into Oklahoma without paying a toll, and you have State Representative Jake J. Loy to thank. Go fishing or to a livestock show at Loy Park, and you have County Judge Jake J. Loy to thank. You can even listen to a recording of trumpet player Tommy Loy, and you can thank a doting Uncle Jake J. Loy.

Most folks don’t give much thought to the trees, bushes, shrubs and plants that grow all around them. They are part of the landscape and are just there. But in an urban environment, what grows there was usually planted there by someone for some specific purpose, and the seed or the cutting that they planted came from a nursery.

Bill Boyd was born in Fannin County, Texas. He was one of Hollywood’s first “Singing Cowboys.”