His Name Was Jack: A Sandhills Cowboy

Jack Galloway died in 1987, a year after his mother and two years after his wife, Alice. When Alice, my mother, died in 1985, he wasn’t sure what he’d do without her. I said, “Write. Write a book.” Of course, that suggestion was dismissed when he said he was no writer.

In 2005 I wrote about an impending book in my “Up Close” column for a local newspaper. I told my readers my dad was a writer. He had written me letters through the years because I lived 500 miles away from him and Mom. I knew...