Clarence Albrecht working in his garden
Clarence Albrecht Nov. 24, 1918 – Jan. 8, 2014
PORT O’CONNOR – Clarence Louis Albrecht, 95, of Port O’Connor passed away Wednesday, Jan. 8. Funeral services were held Saturday at the Port O’Connor Community Center, followed by interment in the Port O’Connor Cemetery.
He is survived by his wife, Naomi Albrecht, and daughter, Janice Albrecht Stalder. In addition to his parents, Clarence was preceded in death by two brothers and their wives, Sydney and Grace Albrecht and Olin and Viola Albrecht, and by his son-in-law, Dennis Stalder.
Other survivors include a nephew, George Albrecht and wife Debbie, and five nieces, Janet Kutchka and husband Ray, Carol Curry and husband Robert, Alberta Thomas and husband Gary, Claire Barnes and husband Patrick, and Mary Gibbs.
Pastor Don Angelstein of Trinity Lutheran officiated at the Saturday services, assisted by speakers Kenneth Clark and Nancy Pomykal. Brother Donnie Martin of the First Baptist Church of Port O’Connor sang “Amazing Grace” and “In the Garden.”
The Calhoun County Veterans Honor Guard performed the military funeral honors ceremony prior to interment. Pallbearers were Tommy Smith, Calvin Ragusin, James Gibbs, Henry Anderson, Joey Lane and Robbie Hawes.
A veteran of both the World War II and the Korean Conflict, Clarence was born on Nov. 24, 1918, in Ander, Texas, to Albert and Emma Schiewitz Albrecht.
Clarence attended school in Port O’Connor through the 10th grade; then he and Hugh Hawes lived in a rented room in Port Lavaca in order to graduate from what was then Port Lavaca High School. He attended Texas Lutheran College before joining the Army Air Corps in 1941. After the war he returned to Port O’Connor and partnered with Louis Madden and Elroy Bell to build and run the South Beach Terrace.
He later described the South Beach Terrace as “something different from the regular beer joints – a real nice family place with a tropical look.”
In April of 1950 he married Naomi and in September was recalled into the Air Force for the Korean Conflict. After 21 months he returned to Port O’Connor, borrowed $3,000 from his father and built his family the home in which he and Naomi have lived since then. He then went to work for Brown & Root at the Union Carbide plant near Seadrift and worked there for 29 years until his retirement in 1980.
Clarence Albrecht U.S. Army Air Corps
Clarence was active in the Port O’Connor community throughout his life. In the 1950s he joined with Arthur Barr, Kenneth Clark and Hugh Hawes to organize the Port O’Connor Recreation Association in order to provide Port O’Connor students with a place to play basketball. The group raised funds and built the concrete slab and outdoor courts still used at the school.
When Hurricane Carla devastated Port O’Connor in 1961, the Albrechts were one of the first families to move back into town and begin living in and cleaning up a house that had had six feet of water in it. Clarence was moved by a gift of $3,037.50 that farmers in Gould, Arkansas, raised by mortgaging then unharvested crops and sent to Port O’Connor to help with rebuilding efforts. In 1969 he and other members of the old Port O’Connor Recreation Association decided it was time to pass on the gift.
The POCRA still had a balance remaining from funds raised to build the slab and raised additional funds; then Kenneth and Clarence and their wives, with help of a plane and pilot provided by the First State Bank, took the funds to Waveland, Mississippi, a small town badly damaged that year by Hurricane Camille. The plaque presented with the gift included an Edwin Markham quotation that exemplified many of the beliefs of Clarence Albrecht:
There is a destiny that makes us brothers;
None goes his way alone.
All that we send into the lives of others
Comes back into our own.
Naomi and Clarence Albrecht at a Chamber of Commerce event
Shortly after Hurricane Carla, the Corps of Engineers – after dredging out the Intercoastal Canal, which had been silted badly by the storm – dumped silt along the bay side of the canal and damaged the “nursery grounds” where fish reproduced. Clarence was then president of the Port O’Connor Chamber of Commerce and began efforts to prevent further damage to the bay.
He wrote numerous letters, and after being ignored by many groups and individuals, caught the interest of environmentalist and Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough. As Clarence observed, “He stirred up a hornet’s nest in Washington.”
After television coverage of the problem and meetings with Department of the Interior and Corps representatives, the dumping of the silt into the bay was stopped, and all dumping moved to the landowner’s side of the canal. The fish nursery grounds between Port O’Connor and Seadrift were protected.
Another problem that Clarence saw in Port O’Connor was the lack of a fire department, and he was one of the original group that started the Port O’Connor Volunteer Fire Department and later worked to get an ambulance based in Port O’Connor. For this reason, his family has asked that those wishing to make memorials in Clarence’s memory do so to the Port O’Connor Volunteer Fire Department at PO Box 732, Port O’Connor (77982).
Clarence enjoyed fishing, hunting, and gardening throughout his life and especially in more than 30 years of active retirement, but when he finally decided that he was getting too old to safely take his boat out on the bay, he donated the boat and motor to the Port POC Service Club so that they could be auctioned off to raise funds for the community that he supported throughout his life.
-Janie Albrecht Stalder
Clarence and his long-time fishing buddy and gardening ‘rival’, Dell Girard. Clarence donated this boat to the Service Club a few years ago.
