Early Life and Career
Yarborough was born in Chandler in Henderson County west of Tyler, the seventh of nine children of Charles Richard Yarborough and the former Nannie Jane Spear. He was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1919 but dropped out to become a teacher. Yarborough instead attended Sam Houston State Teachers College and worked his way into the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from the University of Texas Law School in 1927 and practiced law in El Paso until he was hired as an assistant attorney general in 1931 by the state Attorney General and later Governor James V. Allred.
Yarborough was an expert in Texas land law and specialized in prosecuting major oil companies that violated production limits or failed to pay oil royalties to the Permanent School Fund for drilling on public lands. He earned renown for winning a million dollar judgment against the Mid-Kansas Oil and Gas Company for oil royalties, the second largest judgment ever in Texas at the time. After Allred was elected governor, he appointed Yarborough to the bench in 1936, making him the 53rd District judge for Austin's Travis County. Yarborough was confirmed in that office by an election later the same year. Yarborough's first run for state office resulted in a third-place finish in the Democratic primary for state attorney general in 1938 against the sitting lieutenant governor. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II after 1943 and achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Read more about this topic: Ralph Yarborough
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“To make life more bearable and pleasant for everybody, choose the issues that are significant enough to fight over, and ignore or use distraction for those you can let slide that day. Picking your battles will eliminate a number of conflicts, and yet will still leave you feeling in control.”
—Lawrence Balter (20th century)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)