Texas Ranger
Joaquin Jackson
Notes from Evan Smith
"This week we reach out and touch -- and get touched by -- the long arm of the law in the person of the most famous Texas Ranger of the modern era -- a man whose grim visage and solid footing practically scream "take no prisoners" -- although, of course, in his nearly four decades as a peace officer, he took many.
Joaquin Jackson was born in Lamb County seventy years ago -- named by his father, a dry-land farmer, for a football player who had a good game that week. After high school, he thought about a life in the military but discovered he was too tall, at well over six feet, to be a fighter pilot. So instead, he became a state trooper, serving with the Department of Public Safety for nine years. In April 1966, at age 29, he joined the Rangers at a time when the problems we face today were but a gleam in someone's eye; it was a simpler world but no more safe in an old-fashioned way, and old-fashioned justice of the sort meted out by Jackson and his colleagues was exactly what Texas needed. Not long his retirement in 1993, he appeared on the cover of TEXAS MONTHLY as an emblem of the institution's days gone by, and the image was so iconic that it took on a life of its own -- and Jackson became a celebrity: the face of the Rangers. During the last decade, he's parlayed that fame into a few consulting gigs with movie projects out in West Texas as well as a second career as a private investigator. And he's written a memoir, appropriately titled One Ranger, that is the fastest-selling book ever published by the University of Texas Press." - Evan Smith, Texas Monthly Talks, Broadcast 6.16.05
