got extended,” he said with an infectious
grin, his blue eyes sparkling.
Webb’s decades of work as an educator
and his initial years as a mechanic at his
brothers’ service station acquainted him with
ranchers across West Texas. He became par-
ticular friends with the Mitchell family. “I
was blessed to drive Tom Mitchell and his
wife Mamie on several trips to Waco to the
Methodist Children’s Home there – the Tom
Mitchell home for 30 boys and the Mamie
Mitchell Home for 30 girls. That was
extremely fortunate for me because my wife
Laurel and I had to adopt children, and I
asked him to put in a good word for us. They
called me a year later and said they had a
baby girl, eight days old.”
Webb’s association with the Methodist
Children’s Home has continued as well: he’s
a member of their governing board and now
helps to oversee programs for about 1,400
children from Texas and New Mexico.
That baby girl became his daughter
Diane, who lives now in Dripping Springs.
He and Laurel adopted three other chil-
dren: another daughter Krista lives in
Round Rock, where the family gathered
for Thanksgiving 2012. His son James
lives in Marfa; another son died young.
His wife died in 2009. Many local friends
joined the family to celebrate Brit’s 84th
birthday on July 24 of 2012.
Among the ranching families from
Marfa’s earlier days, he remembers the
Fowlkes brothers, Preston, Manny and
Edwin, who had holdings south of
Marfa, and the Smith brothers, Kenneth
and Teryl, who had ranches to the north
of town. Hart and Amy Greenwood
“were great friends and customers,” he
said. Their ranch is now part of Cibolo
Creek holdings.
He recalls the late Courtney Mellard,
who ranched south of Marfa, as a major
cattle-buyer in West Texas who “shipped
trainloads of Highland Herefords to
Iowa.” And during his years in Valentine,
he dealt frequently with the Brite family,
who still own “probably one of the largest
generational ranches in the country,” he
said.
But as the years went by, absentee
ownership changed the ranching culture.
“We don’t know these people because
they live out-of-state. Ranching has
changed to where they use 4-wheelers.
Back then ranch families didn’t earn
much, and now it costs lots more to have
a family living on a ranch...in earlier
years, they had someone to cook and
clean, even teachers for the kids. Or they
had to move into town for the school
year. Even now ranches are just too far-
flung to run school buses. Today there
are some ranch kids that are home-
schooled, which gets them out of a lot of
driving. But they still come to town for 4-
H. The ranching business has changed a
whole lot.”
West Texas cattle have changed too,
Webb noted. “The Highland Hereford
was famous all over, but now the ranchers
have a lot of Angus – they found that cer-
tain breeds cross-bred better than
straight Hereford. The Brite ranch is still
prominent in selling Hereford bulls, but
not many have pure Herefords anymore.”
Webb laments that fact: “I don’t think
there’s anything prettier than a white-
faced calf. Wayne Baize up at Fort Davis
is such a good artist,” he said, adding
that “He paints Herefords.”
Occasionally Brit sees the children of
ranch families he’s known through the
years. “Today most of those kids are
retiring or have already retired, and I’m
still running a tire shop...” His face crin-
kling into a grin, then a grimace, he
added: “The tires and wheels seem to be
heavier than they were a few years ago.”
Fort Davis, Texas
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Cenizo
First Quarter 2013
9