John “Jack” Beaty Summers passed away peacefully in his sleep on July 3, 2021, in Houston, Texas, after an extended illness. He was a resident of Westbury and enjoyed a long career as an information technology pioneer. For 30 years, he was employed by Texas Eastern in Houston, which was acquired by Duke Energy in 1996. He retired from Duke Energy in 1998. Jack was known as a kind, gregarious man with a hearty belly laugh who loved a good pun.
Jack was born May 10, 1941, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Jack’s family moved to Houston in 1943 when his father, the late John Homer Summers, served as the choirmaster and organist at St. Paul's United Methodist Church in what is now the Museum District. The family returned to Little Rock in 1946 when the elder Summers took a similar position with First United Methodist Church, and for his children to be closer to their grandparents.
Jack was an angelic child with blond curly hair so beautiful that his mother, the late Evelyn Joyce Beaty Summers, resisted cutting it until people kept mistaking him for a girl. When he started speaking, Jack pronounced “mama” as “Bobo,” and his mother adopted the nickname for the remainder of her life with not just her children but also her grandchildren.
Jack and his sister, Carole, dubbed “Ta-Tal,” were quite close as children. During the polio epidemic in the late 1940s and 1950s, they would vacation at their grandmother’s home in Malvern, Arkansas, where they busied themselves with board games such as Chinese checkers. The two also shared a room with bunk beds before the family settled into their long-term home at 510 N. Rose St., in Little Rock.
Jack played football in junior high, and then attended Little Rock’s Central High School when it was the site of national headlines in September 1957 after a riot erupted over desegregation. He graduated from the University of Arkansas - Fayetteville in 1963 with a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and earned a Master of Science in Management in 1985 from Houston Baptist University.
In college, Jack joined the ROTC at the University of Arkansas, enabling him to enter the Army as a 2nd Lieutenant after graduation. During his military service, he was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, and in Vietnam.
He married Clarissa Lea Hopkins on September 4, 1963, at First United Methodist Church in Little Rock. He retired from the military in 1968. He then went to work for Texas Eastern in Shreveport, Louisiana, where their two daughters were born. In 1976, the young family relocated to Houston as Jack moved up the corporate ladder with Texas Eastern.
Jack enjoyed several hobbies. Back in the early days of the internet, he was an active member of the Houston Area League of PC Users (HAL-PC), a group that helped people learn how to use online resources and personal computers. HAL-PC was founded in 1982 with about 20 members and, according to their website, at one time claimed to be the world’s largest PC user group. In their Southwest Houston office, they held workshops on how to use PCs and the Internet, and helped members with hardware and software issues, boasting a large volunteer network that offered assistance with more than 85 software programs. The group, which also hosted internet service and published a monthly online magazine, was dissolved in 2014, as volunteer participation waned with the advent of social networking.
In the mid- and late-80s, Jack was an active member of the Sharpstown chapter of the Texas Center of Racing Pigeon Clubs. He forged lifelong friendships with several colleagues there, who remember him as a “prince of a guy.” He also delved into genealogy, tracing his family tree back to the American Revolution by identifying Private Edward McDaniel of South Carolina, on his father’s side.
He is survived by his wife, Clarissa; daughters Heather Summers Parsons (James) of Austin, and Laurel Mack (J.T.) of Mesquite; sister Carole McCune of Houston; as well as many nieces, nephews, and friends.
Services will be held at 11:00am on Thursday, July 29, 2021, at Earthman Bellaire Funeral Home with military burial at Houston National Cemetery on Monday, August 2, 2021. In lieu of flowers, please consider making a gift to the United Way of Greater Houston, a non-profit Jack supported throughout his career.
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