THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • March/April 2018 43 TheCoastalBend.com Christians, i.e. Rand Morgan Boulevard and Morgan Avenue. Their son and only child, George Randolph “Randy” Farenthold, was born in 1939, more than two years before George returned to Europe to fight in World War II. In the basking years to follow, he made the most of his in-law’s business connections and thrived in the post-war boom economy. George’s marriage to Annie, however, was more of a bust, and ended in divorce in 1948. Mary Francis “Sissy” Tarlton was born October 2, 1926, to Benjamin Dudley Tarlton, Jr., and Catherine Doughtery Bluntzer—yes, those Tarlton’s and those Bluntzer’s. Her father was a prominent local attorney known for his colorful courtroom style and ninety per- cent success rate at trial, and although he never ran for political office, he was an effective power broker who managed congressional campaigns for Rep. Rich- ard M. Kleberg. Sissy’s grandfather, B.D. Dudley, Sr., was the chief justice of the Texas Court of Appeals, and the University of Texas law library is named after him, the institution where he was a professor. Sissy’s childhood and that of her siblings would be marked with tragedy when her three-year-old brother, Benjamin, Jr., whom they called Sonny, swal- lowed a quarter and died from complications of the surgery to remove it. Catherine would never be the same, and Sissy filled in as matriarch of the household when required by her mother’s emotional absence. With the perils of growing up too quickly, can come the advantages, and Sissy’s capacity for tireless work, a high standard of excellence for herself, and a will- ingness to take on responsibilities into which she had not yet aged, led her to academic and professional suc- cess in the face of odds stacked against her. Sissy graduated from the prestigious, and then all-women’s, Vassar College of Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1946, just a few years before two other would- be pioneers for women in politics, fellow Vassar grad- uates, Betty Noble (Turner), the first female mayor of Corpus Christi, and Anne Legendre (Armstrong), the first and only female ambassador to the United King- dom (along with a fistful of other first’s), all three of whom made their mark starting in the Coastal Bend. Following in the oversized footsteps of her father and grandfather, Sissy Tarlton attended the University of Texas Law School, one of four women in the 1949 graduating class, in which she earned a spot on the dean’s list. A year later she married George Farenthold and they started a family in Corpus Christi that would grow to six children, five from their marriage, and Randy from George’s marriage to Annie Morgan. Twin boys, Vincent and Jimmy, born in 1956, were passed a genetic bleeding disorder that plagued the Farenthold’s in Belgium for generations. George almost died from blood loss during a routine tonsil- lectomy as a child, and learned to rush for stitches any time he suffered anything but the mildest cut to the skin. His aunt had bled to death during her menstru- al cycle, and although the condition was not consid- ered traditional hemophilia, Von Willebrand Disease, caused by a missing blood clotting protein, was just as deadly. In the winter of 1960, twenty-year-old Randy was left to watch over his half-siblings, who were tucked away in their upstairs bedrooms. Three-year-old Vin- cent crept out of his room and into a hall bathroom, where the boy took a sleepy misstep on the children’s stool in front of the sink, causing it to give way and the child to fall, head first, onto the tile floor below. Vin- cent’s life escaped him by the time he reached the hos- pital, and Sissy would again say goodbye to a three- year-old boy whom she loved very much. George Farenthold b. 1915 Brussels, Belgium Randy Farenthold b. 1939 Corpus Christi Vincent Farenthold b. 1956 Corpus Christi Jimmy Farenthold b. 1956 Corpus Christi upper: Political conference at Vassar College, 1946 lower: 1949 U.T. Law School Graduating Class