Jerry Wayland Horton

Jerry Horton was born May 24, 1938 and died on September X, 2021, the fourth child of Wayland and Estelle Horton. At the age of four, he contracted polio, which affected his right leg, and spent many years using a leg brace and crutches, undergoing periodic surgeries at San Francisco’s Shriners’ Hospital to halt growth in his good leg. As a result of that surgery, he jokingly asserted that he was really a 6’ 2” man in the body of one 5’ 8”, a source of some chagrin but also of deep gratitude for the Shriners. He went on to climb mountains, real and figurative, despite his handicap.

The first in his family to attend college, he flunked his first year but went on to receive a Ph.D. from the University of Texas in Education through the Community College Leadership Program, just in time to apply his knowledge to the creation and building of Down Home Ranch, a community for adults with intellectual disabilities. Dr. John Rouche, his mentor, quipped that other graduates went to other campuses but only Jerry built his own.

Jerry met his future wife Judy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, while both were in graduate school. He married Judy and her three young daughters in an outdoor ceremony on a beautiful fall afternoon overlooked by the Flatiron Mountains, on September 22, 1973. The new family departed next day for a Tufts University-sponsored two-year teaching stint at the Universidad Nacional de El Salvador, the first of many adventures they would share. Cut short by the increasingly dangerous political situation in that country, they returned after six months. Two years later they moved to Austin, where Jerry earned his Ph.D.

When Jerry and Judy were looking forward to an empty nest, their three daughters respectively 24, 20, and 15 years old, they were surprised to find an egg in it. Fourth daughter Kelly was born in 1984 with Down syndrome. When Kelly was born, Jerry said, “Now we find out who we are as a family.” He went on to create the dream and the reality of Down Home Ranch, now home to Kelly and XX others with intellectual disabilities who wanted to live on a “real Texas Ranch” as well as hundreds of weekend-respite and summer week-long Ranch Camp campers.

Jerry was an incredibly talented, motivated, inspiring and persuasive man. Kelly calls him “my handsome father” and he was that above all else. He could be exhausting in his relentless drive to implement new ideas and programs at the Ranch. It was his life’s dream and legacy, and most of all, his gift to our daughter Kelly, who was the love of his life and “first rancher.”

Jerry loved golf. He played with the PGA Senior Golf Association of Austin on Tuesdays and on Thursdays at Star Ranch, come rain, hail, or scorching temperatures. It was his happy space. The family thanks the many golfing buddies who shared these experiences with him.

He was also a true, loving, engaging, interesting, exasperating husband—in every wonderful sense of that word—to Judy. On their journey together they came under the umbrella of God’s amazing grace and love, beginning at “the little church by the interstate,” St. George’s Episcopal, and continuing at St. Louis Catholic, where a funeral Mass will be held Monday, September 20, 2021, at 10:30 a.m.

Jerry is predeceased by grandson Noah Welch, a brother and two sisters. He is survived by daughters Carolyn Welch (Bryan), Martha Adams (David Heard), Janis Vasquez (David) and Kelly, granddaughters Jessica Vasquez, Adrianna Vasquez-Barrientos (Elias), Caitlin Linscheid (Aaron), Rachel Adams-Heard, and Alex Adams Heard, great-grandchildren Adam and Coen Linscheid and—born the day Jerry died—Emma Marie Vasquez Barrientos as well as numerous cousins.

Memorial gifts may be made to the Down Home Ranch Gala Fund, 20250 FM 619, Elgin, TX 78621.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.cookwaldenfuneralhome.com for the Horton family.