Travis D Jackson

Born in Shreveport, La., to Blanche Higdon, a single mother, by age 8 or earlier, he was selling garden seeds and Saturday Evening Post magazines in his neighborhood. “Nobody had money,” he recalled of those Great Depression times, and, “I couldn’t sell anything.” His mother moved to Monroe, La., and preteen Travis went to work clerking, handling the cash register and delivering orders for New South Drug Store. “I got $6 a week working every night except Sunday.” One of Travis’ favorite stories to tell was of lingering at home to hear the day’s final moments of a favorite radio serial and then having to run to work at the drugstore. Although he was fast, he sometimes arrived late, but he wasn’t fired (“my sales and the cash always balanced”). Nonetheless, the older woman at the store, “would chew me out.”

Again living in Shreveport, as a 16-year-old student at Fair Park High School, his beloved stepfather Dick Simmons landed Travis a summer job as an ironworker helping to build the veterans hospital. Travis was proud to hold a card as a member of the ironworkers union and proud that he had the courage and skills to walk the beams, tie the rods and cut pipe with a torch. Later, Dick told him that the newspaper was hiring, and Travis began a career of more than 40 years as a newspaper printer, rising from apprentice to respected member of the Typographical Union International. He liked to tell of “hanging the elevator,” typing news stories into the Linotype machine faster than the typesetter could produce the lead lines of words.

Among his other jobs, he sold men’s clothing at JC Penney’s and drew artwork for the El Paso Herald-Post and Sunland Park Race Track in El Paso. His horse portraits in pencil show an eye for detail and great skill. “I wanted to be a cartoonist,” he said of his young dreams.

He was nicknamed “Tommy” as a lap-size child by his Grandpa Willie Higdon, an Arkansas farmer whom Travis greatly loved and respected. Travis was known among his Louisiana and Arkansas kin by that name.

Kind, generous, patient, empathetic, reliable, witty, patriotic, and honest as an adult, he was peaceful and untroublesome as a child. He accepted Jesus Christ as his savior about age 12, and although a classic barefoot boy playing football in the neighborhood, fishing and swimming, he hewed to his faith and its message of love throughout his life.

Travis was graduated from Fair Park High School, where he played football. He credits those dashes to his drugstore job (“I had speed”) with his abilities as a wide receiver. He remembers the coach saying that if he would forgo graduating, the coach would put him on the varsity team the following year and help him get into college. “But, sir, I’ve got to get a job,” he remembers saying, and college never was an option, although Travis’ sharp and creative mind showed itself during all of his 88 years.

At 18, he married Hazel Faye Cox, 16, and indicative of his sense of responsibility, bought maternity insurance ahead of the arrival the following year of the first of their four children. He loved to tell how he and she met a young Elvis Presley in Shreveport at the “Louisiana Hayride” show at the dawn of the singer’s career. That marriage ended in divorce after 26 years, and in 1981, he married Mary Ellen Botter, who shared his life for 38 years. They met in The Denver Post composing room, where news pages are assembled, he a printer and she an editor. Acquaintanceship slowly grew into friendship, then after two years of dating (“while we made up our minds”) became love. They had only beagles as children during their marriage.

There was equanimity and joy in Travis’ and Mary Ellen’s marriage as they shared home and garden, work and travel, hounds and church. He spoke often of his and Mary Ellen’s honeymoon to Europe, of the dear Steiner family in Switzerland they would visit, of the beauty of Kauai, of the Cook Islands, of Elephant Butte State Park in New Mexico where they had a leasehold and of domestic trips. He loved adventures (even as simple as to watch birds near home), was boundlessly curious, and savored learning. He was passionate about football and during the John Elway years held season tickets for the Denver Broncos games. He could call a play before it happened on the field.

Travis loved to dance, and before illness stole his fleetness of foot, he would glide Mary Ellen around their kitchen. Travis was friendly and felt greatly blessed by his neighbors. He was the first male resident of the Stone Creek community in Prosper, moving into the developing neighborhood in December 1997, and he watched out for its future families as their homes were being built. He was appreciatively known as “the sheriff.”

He was flexible and unafraid of change and was one of the first printers at The Denver Post to involve himself in computer typesetting. In tough situations, he would announce, “No hill for a climber” and forge ahead. That creed held him in good stead as he bravely faced health crises over the years, including a heart attack, surgeries, falls and the two strokes that first stole mobility and then claimed him.

Travis is survived by his wife, Mary Ellen, of Prosper, Texas; children Suzanne Jones of Port Townsend, Wash., John Jackson of Parker, Colo., Cynthia Muhlnickel of Grants Pass, Ore., and Melinda Jorgensen of Denver, Colo.; seven grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren; cousins, Linda and Bill Bradford of Shreveport; loving and appreciative in-laws Betty and Bruce Pryor of Argyle, Texas, and family, Ginny and Bill Worthington of Las Cruces, N.M., and family, Anne Schramm of Plano, Texas, and family, and the family of the late Judy Haight Persinger; and beloved neighbors and friends. Among the latter, four were of invaluable help and devotion during his last months. They are Ron Bosmans, Mike Carter, Dave McCabe and Shawn Wallace. His love for Rhea’s Mill Baptist Church in McKinney and its great-hearted staff and attendees, especially members of the Discovery Class, only increased in his final months.

“Thank the people. They were kind,” he said shortly before his passing.

Memorial gifts may be made to the building fund of Rhea’s Mill Baptist Church or to the animal-rescue or veterans organization of your choice.