Jack Coil WRIGHT

1922 - 2016

WRIGHT, Jack Coil
Jack Coil Wright died Monday, January 25, 2016, in Austin, Texas. He was born on a farm in Ralls County, Missouri May 21, 1922 to Leonard and Elizabeth Wright who were living with her parents, John and Eva Coil, while Leonard was enrolled in graduate school at the University of Missouri.

The family moved to San Marcos, Texas, when Leonard was employed to teach at Southwest Texas State Teachers College. Jack was enrolled in the College Demonstration School and San Marcos High School where he graduated in 1939. He played basketball and tennis and was on the Student Council and in the National Honor Society in addition to editing the annual year book.

Jack enrolled in Southwest Teas State in 1939, participating in sports and serving as captain of the tennis team. He was in the Harris Blair Literary Society, Fidelis Duces, the Student Council and Alpha Chi academic society as well as president of the sophomore class. Wright was a President's Associate at Texas State University and recipient of the 2007 Alumni Achievement Award. He met his wife, Ruth Evelyn Placke in an economics class in 1940.

Wright enlisted in the Navy in November, 1941, in a program that let him finish a degree in chemistry with minors in physics and math before he went on active duty at the end of 1942. After being commissioned as an ensign, he attended gunnery school before being assigned as an officer on the light cruiser USS Milwaukee. He participated in the delivery of that ship to the Russians in Mermansk in 1944, returning to Scotland on a British destroyer. He was then assigned as a gunnery officer on the USS President Warfield and participated in the Normandy invasion. Jack then returned to the States and was assigned to an aircraft carrier, the USS Antietam, as a gunnery officer. He was released from active duty and returned from China to the United States.

Jack and Ruth were married at the Norfolk Navy Station Chapel on August 6, 1943 while he was on temporary training duty. When he was discharged from the Navy, he was employed by the Union Carbide Corporation at the Texas City plant. They moved to Texas City in January, 1947, and were involved in the disaster several months later. Jack was later transferred to the Carbide plant in Bound Brook, New Jersey. They lived in Plainfield where their daughter, Sandra Wynn Wright, was born in 1957. A year later, Jack was transferred to Chicago as Director of Development in the VisKing division of Carbide. He was later made manufacturing manager of the division. A son, John Madison Wright, was born in LaGrange, Illinois in 1959.
Union sold the vinyl plastics division to the Ethyl Corporation in 1961 and Jack elected to go with Ethyl in Baton Rouge, Louisiana as manager of the plastic films activity. He was subsequently named corporate marketing director, director of purchasing and finally appointed as a vice president of Ethyl in charge of the engineering, purchasing, logistics and medical departments. He retired in 1985.

Jack and Ruth moved to Austin where he became Vice President for Financial Affairs for the Austin Graduate School of Theology, later becoming a Senior Trustee for the school until his retirement in 2014.

Jack and Ruth were active in the Church of Christ for nearly 70 years. They were founding members of the South Baton Rouge Church of Christ. Jack served as an elder at South Baton Rouge and then at University Avenue Church of Christ in Austin.

Jack is survived by his daughter, Sandra Wright Durr and her husband Steve; son John Madison Wright and his wife Marcella; one grandson, Jackson Wright; and niece Molly Wright Abbott and her husband Terry and their son Lane.

Family will receive friends at 9:00 am and Services will follow Saturday morning, January 30, 2016, at 10:30 am at University Avenue Church of Christ in Austin. Interment will follow at the San Marcos City Cemetery in San Marcos at 2:00 pm.

Memorials may be made to the Austin Graduate School of Theology, 7640 Guadalupe Street, Austin, Texas 78752.

Arrangements under the care and guidance of Pennington Funeral Home, San Marcos, Texas, 512-353-4311. www.penningtonfuneralhome.com