Famed Texas Author Larry McMurtry Dead at 84
Famed Texan and Pulitzer Prize winning author Larry McMurtry died Thursday, March 25th, 2021 at the age of 84.
McMurtry was born on June 3rd, 1936, in Archer City, Texas into a ranching family. His education including attending the University of North Texas in Denton (back when it was known as North Texas State University) and Rice University.
McMurtry was the author of the Lonesome Dove series of novels, Terms of Endearment, and he co-wrote the screenplay for the movie Brokeback Mountain.
ABC News reported that McMurtry died of heart failure and that he will be buried in Texas.
A number of McMurtry's writings were developed into movies or television mini-series, including: The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, Montana, Memphis, Lonesome Dove and The Evening Star.
The 1986 novel Lonesome Dove was a Pulitzer Prize winner, and it spawned three follow-up novels. Lonesome Dove followed a group of retired Texas Rangers in a cattle drive from Texas to Montana during the 1870s. The Lonesome Dove mini-series starred Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover, Diane Lane and Anjelica Huston. It aired in 1989 on CBS.
President Barack Obama awarded McMurtry the National Humanities Medal in 2015. The Dallas Morning News recounts Obama's comments about McMurtry while presenting the award.
"He wrote about the Texas he knew from his own life and about the Old West he heard about in stories on his grandfather’s porch," Obama said. "In Lonesome Dove, he told a story of two ex-Texas Rangers in the late 19th century, and readers learned something essential about their own souls even if they had never been out West or been on a ranch."
Legendary author Stephen King called McMurtry "a great storyteller" in a tweet:
McMurtry married twice during his life. He married Jo Ballard in 1959, and their son James McMurtry was born in 1962. The pair divorced in 1966. In 2011, McMurtry married Norma Faye Kesey, the widow of author Ken Kesey.
Information concerning funeral and memorial services were not announced on Friday.