48 THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • March/April 2018 TheCoastalBend.com immy Farenthold never fully recovered from the childhood death of his twin brother, ac- cording to his mother, Sissy, in a 1992 interview. While she succeeded in protecting Jimmy from the combined danger of his inherited bleed- ing disorder, and his daredev- il tendencies, there was little influence she could impose on him as an adult. With his hap- py, outgoing exterior came a magnetism that attracted press and political support- ers to his mother’s campaigns as a kid, and a healthy following of party friends and hangers-on once he was on his own. Fueled by plenty of cash, cars and houses in Austin, Houston and Corpus Christi at his disposal, it wasn’t long before Jimmy Far- enthold was a party scene unto himself. While the first signs of serious trouble for Jimmy started at age sixteen, when he was kicked out of St. Stephen’s school in Austin for being a troublemaker, by his mid-20’s, he had been in multiple bar fights, one landing him in a dumpster, and was drinking heavily and doing copious amounts of cocaine, and then heroin, especially during his time in Corpus Christi. Eventually, Jimmy was bouncing around, home to home and be- tween friends and extended family, but ended up with his mother, staying in her River Oaks home where she would find him passed out in her kitchen after days- long binges on crack cocaine. Jimmy asked Sissy to pay for his treatment at a posh, West Palm Beach, addic- tion center, which she agreed to do. In May 1989, at age thirty-three, he took a flight to Florida, and has never been seen or heard from since. Twenty-nine years later, Jimmy Farenthold is still listed as a missing person. Randy Farenthold’s son, Blake, graduated from St. Mary’s Law School in San Antonio, and practiced law at the Kleberg Law Firm in Corpus Christi, before oper- ating a website development business. In 2010 he de- feated six-term Democratic incumbent, Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, for the District 27 seat in the U.S. House of Rep- resentatives, by 799 votes, in the Tea Party wave that turned control of the House over to the Republicans. Sissy is not known to have publicly commented on Blake’s political career, saying only that he is a gentle- man and has always been known to be respectful to family and his community. But in every way possible, Rep. Blake Farenthold is the political antithesis of his famous step-grandmother. As a legislator, she supported immigrant farm workers’ right to unionize, while Blake was anti-union and, some would say, anti-immigrant. Sissy ran for gov- ernor on a platform of political reform and against cor- porate control of government regulation, while Blake is anti-regulation and voted for large corporate tax cuts. Sissy Farenthold was an outspoken and effective femi- nist, who led by example, graduating among four wom- en in a law school class of 220, and serving as the only woman in the 1969 Texas House of Representatives. Rep. Farenthold was accused of sexual harassment by a former communications staffer, Lauren Greene, in 2014, who was paid a settlement of $84,000 out of a lit- tle-known, taxpayer-funded congressional account. In the “#MeToo” wave that swept through the entertain- ment industry and Washington politics in 2017, Faren- thold was offered no support from his party to continue serving, ending his congressional career this year. In July, 2012, federal marshals, supported by the Corpus Christi Police Department’s SWAT team, served a warrant on the home of Sue Farenthold, Blake’s sister and Randy’s daughter, in the posh South Shore Estates neighborhood. A stand off ensued after four individu- als barricaded themselves inside, and eventually Far- enthold, along with three men, one of them a known gang member wanted for murder, gave themselves up. Guns, ammunition, heroin and methamphetamines were found inside the home. While the current Farenthold generations have es- caped the tragic loss of life that haunted those before them, their public image and circle of influence appear as though they will fade away in a most dubious last act. Disease, addiction and, sometimes, poor judgment, afflicted four generations of Farenthold’s, from time to time, not unlike any family any of us may know. TCB J