Author Introduction: Bob Huffaker

Meet Bob:

BOB HUFFAKER broadcast the JFK motorcade, then the sad scene at Parkland Hospital. He broadcast television's first murder on CBS from the police garage when Jack Ruby shot Lee Oswald, then interviewed the slain assassin's mother and other principals in the case. He was a Warren Commission witness, and he covered Ruby's murder trial and finally his death. Huffaker's courtroom interview with Ruby won the Texas Association of Broadcasters award, among others, and he was editor of his and his colleagues' broadcasts that won the RTNDA's 1963 national award for on-the-spot reporting.

Huffaker produced an early documentary on Texas Black Muslims that drew national attention. A former Army officer and policeman, he specialized in investigative reporting.

He left broadcasting in 1967, earned the Ph.D. and taught as an English professor until 1980, when, as investigator for the Texas Legislature, he exposed his former department at Southwest Texas State University for falsifying class records. In 2004, that university, now Texas State University, inducted him into its University Star hall of fame for his defense of press freedom when he taught there and headed its student publications committee from 1974 through 1980.

In the 1980s, Huffaker was a Texas Monthly editor, having served as an editor of Studies in the Novel, Studies in American Humor, and The Modern Humanities Research Association Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature. His book John Fowles (G.K. Hall & Co, 1980) is still cited as seminal scholarship about the novelist's work. In addition to Texas Monthly, Huffaker's work has appeared in Southern Humanities Review, The Dallas Observer, True West, Senior Beacon, and Texas Parks & Wildlife.

Huffaker lives with his wife, Veva Vonler, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where they both write and study nature, history, literature and cinema. Their son Kevin Huffaker is a sculptor and specialist in greenhouse design near San Marcos, Texas, and their son Zachary Vonler, a computer programmer and software designer, is serving in the US Navy.

Comments

[Frank S. Wagner]

It sounds like you are having an exciting weekend in Austin and I plan on being there. I hope to meet up with you again.
Three years ago my hometown's school board planned to to tear down my old elementary school and I wrote a lengthy letter to the principal letting her know what a remarkable place this was. I wrote about the day in the third grade when we learned about President Kennedy's assassination. That chapter was entitled 'The Most Horrible Day in My Life.' The letter was circulated around amongst my old childhood friends and many thought it was interesting. Then year's later one of my English professors at the university once known as Southwest Texas State University turns out to be one of the pivotal characters of that tragic time. So many people say they remember every detail of that day with great accuracy. That's what happened to me. That November weekend turned me into a life time news junky.