Herbert Ray Roberts entered into Texas on May 28, 1913, in Collin County near McKinney, Texas, in the ranching town of Westminster. He served a long and distinguished career as a Texas state senator, and in the U.S. House of Representatives.
McKinney in North Texas was not the sprawling suburbia on the border northeast of Plano before WWII that it is today. Ray graduated from McKinney High School, and attended North Texas University (UNT), Texas A&M University, and University of Texas (UT). Ray earned a BA in agribusiness at UNT.
Cotton was king in Collin County in the first half of the 1900s. The cotton yield was 16 bales in 1860 and 4,371 bales by 1870. Its first textile mill, The Texas Cotton Mill Company, opened in 1910 and manufactured printed cloth. Before entering politics, Ray earned his living as a farmer and in agribusiness ventures.
At the time Ray was growing up, McKinney, not Plano, was the commercial center of Collin County. Ray was the oldest child born to Roy Clifton and Margaret Emma Burton Roberts. Ray served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1945 and returned to active duty in the Naval Reserves in the Korean Conflict.
By 1938, Ray’s father, Roy Roberts, had bought what is known today as the Smith-Roberts House in McKinney. Ray had a younger sister, Evelyn, and a younger brother, Roy Geldon. Ray and Geldon lived there with their parents in 1938.
Ray eventually married and divorced Juanita Roberts and Elizabeth Bush Roberts, and was married to Jean Massey Robert until his death. One of the most traumatic events in Ray’s life was riding in President Kennedy’s motorcade with his wife, Dallas Mayor Earle, and Mrs. Dearie (Elizabeth) Cabell four cars behind the presidential limousine on November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated.
Ray was not required to testify at the Warren Commission. The Commission never interrogated about Kennedy’s assassination. However, Dearie testified at the Warren Commission. She stated that Ray told her, "That is a 30-06.", and that Roberts had told her that he had smelled the distinct odor of gun smoke, as did several others in the motorcade.
Ray Roberts’ Political Career
Ray making his political connections in the 1930s with one of the future most enigmatic U.S. presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson (L.B.J.). Ray served on the National Youth Administration, a New Deal WPA agency created to provide work and education for men and women between the ages of 16 and 25. There, he worked as a district manager under L.B.J.
Ray once reported to an L.B.J. biographer that, "[L.B.J.] inspired us to work so hard that we didn't know it was work. In 1938, L.B.J. insisted on buying Ray’s new Oldsmobile for his upcoming first race for congress. Before his naval service, Ray worked on U.S. Representative’s Sam Rayburn’s staff from 1941 to 1942.
Ray received three battle stars in the Pacific Theater and four in Europe. Ray was stationed on the aircraft carrier, The Hornet, when the Japanese torpedoed it. The Hornet finally sunk and Ray and crew survived in shark-infested waters for two hours until rescued by a retreating destroyer.
Sam Rayburn also carried out a long, distinguished political career, and in 1941 was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ray began learning the ropes of U.S. Congress procedures. Ray then served in the Navy and returned to Collin County to farm. 1954 found Ray running for the Texas senate seat in District 9.
Ray won the 1954 Texas senate election. Sam Rayburn passed away on November 16, 1961, while representing Texas' 4th congressional district as a Democrat, a seat Sam had held since 1913. Sam was a three-time speaker of the U.S. House.
Ray won Sam’s House seat to the Eighty-seventh Congress in a special election in 1962. Then Vice President, L.B.J. met Ray at the National Airport in Washington D. C. in February 1962. Ray Roberts was known as moderately conservative as U.S. Representative. L.B.J. counted on Ray for a liberal vote when needed.
The District 4 voters reelected Ray nine times. Later in Ray’s career, his record became more conservative, which reflected the views of his constituents. Ray retired from Congress in 1981 after serving in the 87th to the 96th Congress consecutively. He returned to ranching and farming in Denton County until his death in 1992.
Throughout his political career, Ray legislated for water conservation. In May 1976, Texas Monthly reported,
“Ray Roberts may be the only man in Congress who sends recipes to his constituents. People have prepared entire dinners from the information supplied in the ‘Cook’s Corner’ section of his newsletter, he [Ray] notes proudly. Last fall, for example, he explained to the people of Sam Rayburn’s old congressional district how to prepare Yams in Orange Cups, a dish he considered ‘perfect for the holidays.’”
Roberts was chair of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs from 1975 through 1981. He was a member of the Water Resources subcommittee of Public Works. He was the primary sponsor of seven enacted bills. Congress enacts very few bills that are presented to the House floor for a vote:
- H.R. 8018 (96th): A bill to rename a reservoir and dam in the Little Miami River Basin, Ohio, as the “William H. Harsha Lake” and “William H. Harsha Dam”.
- H.R. 13809 (95th): An Act to designate the “George Mahon Federal Building”.
- H.R. 13808 (95th): A bill to designate the Omar Burleson federal building.
- H.R. 11579 (95th): An Act to designate the Veterans’ Administration center located at 1901 South First Street, Temple, Texas, as the “Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center”; and for other purposes.
- H.R. 3199 (95th): Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments
- H.R. 9577 (94th): A bill to designate the Veterans’ Administration hospital in Loma Linda, Calif., as the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans’ Hospital.
- H.R. 974 (93rd): A bill designating the Texarkana Dam and Reservoir on the Sulphur River as the “Wright Patman Dam and Lake”.
Ray focused on these issues during his terms in the U.S. House, the Armed Forces and National Security, Education, Government Operations and Politics, Health, and Labor and Employment. Ray Roberts lived to see the proposal and approval of his namesake lake, Lake Ray Roberts, in Denton and Cooke Counties.
Ray worked diligently on the approval to establish a dam on the Elm Fork of the Trinity River in North Denton County. When Ray discovered this lake would be named for him in 1980, he said, “I’m humbled to know my name is worth a dam—and a reservoir”. Ray kept current on all the dams, lakes, and rivers in Texas throughout his career.
Roberts once said, “I think I have built more dams and reservoirs in a shorter period of time than anyone from Texas since Lyndon Johnson.” The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1965 authorized Lake Ray Roberts. Construction began in 1982 after Ray had passed away, and impoundment began in 1987.
Lake Ray Roberts lies between I-35 and U.S. 377 between Valley View on the northwest, Tioga on the northeast, Sanger on the southwest, and Pilot Point on the southeast. It boasts of two state parks, The Ray Roberts Lake State Park Johnson and Jordan Branch Units, hiking trails, several boat ramps, a marina, and largemouth and white bass, crappie, and catfish fisheries.
