Jane's Window: My Spirited Life in West Texas and Austin

04. D. J. Sibley

56 D.J. Sibley, who became my husband, was an only child. He was eleven years older than i. While we were growing up, i did not know him well, though he loved riding horseback with my mama and her friend, Myrtle Mendel. When he was a little boy, D. J. often rode a burro he had bought for fifty cents. D. J. pretty much grew up in the saddle, riding back and forth to his family’s ranches. at a time when millions of other little boys only fantasized about being cowboys, he grew up being a real one. When Dr. Phillip King’s geological survey was mapping the Glass Mountains near Fort Stockton, D. J. followed the crew around, fascinated by their work. The surveyors liked the boy, and began asking him the names of local mountains. When D. J. answered them with great authority, the surveyors were impressed. if a mountain had never been named, D. J. made up one on the spot, and the surveyors wrote it down and put it on their map. D. J.’s father was named Jacob. in the biblical tradition, the seventh son would become a doctor. The family’s reliance on Bible teaching was hardly surprising. The father was a traveling preacher—Church of Christ, if my memory serves. His mother was an invalid, and although the family did not have much money, they possessed a powerful thirst for education and an unquenchable desire to succeed. as the youngest of twelve children, Dr. Sibley was determined to become prosperous, and never to do without. One of his older brothers , andrew, an established ear, nose, and throat specialist, helped to 4 a D. J. Sibley 57 D . j . S I b l e y finance Dr. Sibley’s college education . He enrolled at the University of Tennessee at Memphis, then transferred to vanderbilt University in nashville, from which he was graduated first in his class. after graduating from Texas Dental School in 1910, he remained on the faculty as professor of prosthetic dentistry. When he was offered a prestigious position teaching at Washington University in St. Louis, he was unable to accept the job because he “broke down”—to use the vernacular of the day—with tuberculosis . Back then, TB was the equivalent of a complete physical breakdown. Leaving those afflicted unable to work for months or even years, it was often fatal. Characters in nineteenth-century operas and literature often expired romantically from tuberculosis, but there was nothing romantic about the disease. it was called “consumption ” at that time because it literally consumed the bodies as well as the day-to-day lives of its sufferers. Dr. Sibley’s doctors suggested that he start a dental practice in a small town where he would have a limited workload. He chose Bertram, Texas, about forty miles north of austin, where he became acquainted with John Potts, a local merchant. John had met his future wife, emma, in a dramatic fashion. as a petite young girl living in Liberty Hill, Texas, she was riding her horse on the main street of town when the animal spooked and started running away. Potts saw what happened, ran after the horse, caught up with it, grabbed the reins, and took control of the animal. eventually, he married the young rider he had saved so dramatically. Their daughter, effie D. J. as a young boy with “Beans,” his Boston terrier, outside the Stockton Hotel 58 C H A p T e R 4 Potts, was the town beauty; newcomer Dr. Sibley fell in love with her. They married. Their only child, D. J., was born in Bertram in 1913. When Dr. Sibley’s TB did not improve in Bertram, his physicians recommended a regimen of outdoor exercise, advising him that fresh air would help restore his health. However, that conventional wisdom was the exact opposite of what he needed medically. Desperate to get better , Dr. Sibley followed his physicians’ advice. He spent several months camping along the nearby Guadalupe River with his wife, small son, and his in-laws—only to find himself in a near-death state. Finally, he entered Homan Sanitorium in el Paso, where he was given bed rest for an entire year, at last receiving the quality medical advice and care he needed. While his father was fighting for his own life, D. J. and his mother lived in a...