Charles Ferguson Herring Sr.

News Obituary Listing

Charles Ferguson Herring Sr., who would become a Texas state senator, a U.S. attorney and general manager of the Lower Colorado River Authority, picked cotton as a boy on his parents' small farm near Waco.

After high school, at the start of the Great Depression, he raised cotton alone for two years on half shares so he could afford the $20 a semester tuition at the University of Texas.

Herring died of pneumonia Thursday at Seton Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized with a broken back. He was 89.

"He was a very wise and committed public servant," said former Democratic U.S. Rep. Jake Pickle, 90, of Austin. "He was considered the dean of our contemporaries."

Herring, who campaigned for President Johnson in his first U.S. Senate race in 1948, was a willing source for Robert Caro's biography of LBJ.

"Caro spent a lot of time with my father," said son Chuck Herring, an Austin lawyer and former chairman of the Travis County Democratic Party. "He lived through and participated in a fascinating period in Texas history, and he had a vast number of stories and experiences to relate."

The senior Herring was born June 1, 1914, to a farming family in Stampede Valley, in McLennan County. He was the great-grandson of a German immigrant who came to Texas in 1843, but he gained the middle name Ferguson in honor of two of his family's neighbors: Govs. James and Miriam Ferguson.

Herring's father, Luther, who farmed until he was 94, died at a convalescent home in Bastrop in 1992 at 104.

Charles Herring graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in 1938 and was an Austin trial lawyer before being elected Travis County attorney in 1941.

In 1943, he volunteered for the Navy, was commissioned as an ensign and became commander of an assault landing craft that participated in nine major Pacific invasions in World War II. Wounded three times, Herring left the Navy as a lieutenant commander with a Bronze Star and a Navy Cross.

Returning to Austin, he divided his time between practicing law and working in Democratic politics, and in 1951, President Truman appointed him U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, an office Herring held until 1955. He was elected the next year to the state Senate and joined a filibuster against anti-desegregation bills in his first session.

He served 17 years in the Senate, working on several laws still in force, such as the State Employees Classification Act.

When he resigned from the Senate in 1973 — to become general manager of the LCRA, a job he held for eight years — U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, ran for and won Herring's old seat.

"He made a tremendous contribution to our community," Doggett said. "And his legacy lives on in his son, Chuck Herring, who remains a visible force in our community."

Charles Herring joined the river authority at a difficult time in its history, when the electric utility was facing rising fuel costs stemming from the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s.

"I loved the Senate," he told the Austin American-Statesman in 1973. "You miss it, sure . . . but there you have so little control over what you can do. You've got 31 egotists up there, so you can't do what you want to do. . . . You have to have compromises, and conferences, and all like that."

Visitation will be at 5 p.m. today at Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home, 3125 N. Lamar Blvd. Funeral services will be Monday in the funeral home's chapel, followed by burial at the Texas State Cemetery.

dstanley@statesman.com; 445-3629