the Capitol lawn. A law student named Ben Ramee was helped up on the steps of the administration building. He had suffered from polio as a child. He invoked Ben Milam’s call to arms before the battle of San Antonio in 1835: “Who will go with Old Ben Ramee to the State Capitol?” Eight thousand followed the hobbling Ben Ramee to the Capitol. Johnny Barnhart was close enough to the front of the march to watch Ben, on crutches, along with six solemn pallbearers with a black crepe-draped coffin and its signed obituary: Academic Freedom.
They appealed to Governor Coke Stevenson to intervene, but he declined. He, too, invoked Old Texas: “I’ve been around the campfire long enough to know you can’t drink coffee out of a boiling pot.”
Time magazine, November 13, 1944:
Texas
Quick to honor a hero, quick to resent a slur are the rangy sons of the Lone Star State. Hot-hearted Texans rallied in droves to the banner of scholarly, pious Homer Rainey, president of the sprawling University of Texas at Austin. Balding, unprepossessing Dr. Rainey was locked in battle with the Texas Regents . . . 8,000 marched in mute mourning from the campus to the Capitol and the Governor’s Mansion.
The day was exciting but confusing. The University regents invoked Texas tradition to fire Homer Rainey. Ben Ramee invoked Ben Milam in defense of the university president. Governor Coke Stevenson—himself an Old Texas icon—invoked the cattle culture to avoid the fracas altogether.
“Being there on that campus I met a different way of thinking,” Johnny wrote. “This did not mean a rejection of my Texas values. I’d just never been introduced to others. I realized I was part of something fabulous. I talked about this with others. Everyone felt the same.”
During that same glorious sophomore year, he was elected head pep leader for the Longhorns. He landed the job of “house mouse,” student manager of the Kappa Alpha house, the famous three-story wooden frame building on Red River Street. During the fall and spring terms, boys slept on the large screened porch, swept by wonderful breezes and magical sounds. There, Johnny wondered whether or not he was a small craft who was sailing toward the horizon. “The curtain was raised, there were all these wonderful things,” he wrote. “The equation suddenly was all different. And so I was like others who walked around in a complete mystification, a wonderful daze.”
At the end of his school year as UT head cheerleader and all-around big man on campus, Johnny’s dad wrote to him about the shootings at the Rodriguez ranch. The letter said that it was a bad business, and that the town felt terrible about the deaths. Johnny didn’t read all the details (he had too much going on in Austin), only that it was three against one. Debates about who shot first were far from the groves of academe. Nobody would shoot anybody at the University of Texas.
3
Time:
On a day in July 1945, Vail was handed a court order, told to go out to a ranch five miles west of town and get Jesusa Rodriguez’ two children. Jesusa had been divorced from Geronimo Rodriguez and was supposed to have the children for the next six months. They were living with Geronimo’s old man, Felix.
Old Felix had a shotgun in the house; whether or not he pointed it at Sheriff Ennis is still in dispute. Anyway, the sheriff let go with his sub-machine gun. Felix tottered backward, died as his uncles, Domingo and Antonio, came running from the back of the house. Ennis wheeled on the porch, fired another burst. They fell dead, too. Economical Ennis had fired only five shots—two for Felix, two for Dom and one for Tony.
Not everybody in Beeville loved the Time article. Some folks thought a Yankee’s use of Texanisms (rip-tailed roarer, sashay, heller, whup the pants off) sounded like mockery. American Legion Post 274 sent a letter to the editor protesting its unfairness to Vail and the town. The main objection was that the article dredged up the Rodriguez shooting again. It was something the town wanted to forget.
Felix was sixty-two, Antonio fifty-eight, Domingo fifty-five on the day they died. All three were born in South Texas; they had lived and worked on the John Wilson ranch for decades.
Domingo was particularly well-known and admired. He had served the previous year on the county’s grand jury. Political candidates asked his support in seeking votes among Hispanics at election time. Felix was survived by his wife; his son, Geronimo; and four daughters—Victoria, Trinidad, Lupe, and Mercedes.
There were those in town who said that the Rodriguez brothers had fired first. There were others who said they were as peaceful as anyone in the county, that none of the three would have fired a gun at a lawman.
Alfred Allee was sent to Beeville to handle the Rodriguez investigation. He interrogated Vail and the two men he had deputized to go with him—Frank Probst and Joe Walton. He interrogated Jesusita Rodriguez, the complainant ex-wife, and Victoria Rodriguez, Felix’s oldest daughter. The testimony:
Jesusita Rodriguez (the complainant, ex-wife): “Antonio fired the first shot at Vail Ennis. After that all the police started shooting.”
Frank Probst: (Questioned: Did anyone except Sheriff Ennis fire any shots?) “Not that I know of. If they did, I did not know of it.”
Joe Walton: “I saw a shotgun leveled at Vail. There was one man in the door.” (Questioned: One man or two men?) “I saw only one in the door. I saw Vail fire the machine gun blast that killed the three men.”
Probst: “I heard Felix say, ‘No, no.’ He was in the doorway, and another man was there. A 30-30 was next to the door. One of them reached for the 30-30. A shot was fired through the door. I retreated. Two more shots came through the door. Then I heard the sound of the machine gun.”
Victoria Rodriguez (Felix’s daughter): “When Vail Ennis returned, Geronimo was in the kitchen eating lunch. Antonio told him to hurry and finish lunch and bring the children. When the first bullets were fired, Geronimo had the children in his arms, bringing them to the door. My father did not have a gun—it was behind the door, where they kept it for hunting rabbits. I begged the sheriff not to shoot my father but he shot him. My father staggered to the kitchen, helped by the others, and died in my mother’s arms. His last words were: ‘Take care of the children.’”
Probst: “Coming around the right side of house I saw two men with a rifle. I heard a machine gun blast, saw the men go down. I did not see shots fired. I rushed into the house, Geronimo was crouched down. The shotgun was three feet away. I grabbed Geronimo. He kicked a woman and knocked her down. The woman grabbed for the shotgun but Vail came in and took it away from her. He broke it on the back steps. The tear gas was thick. I tried to calm Geronimo. He hit Vail in the face. I told Vail we’d better back up and see what the score is.”
Victoria Rodriguez: “After my uncles were shot, Vail Ennis and Probst came into the house and Vail Ennis said he was going to kill Geronimo. He knocked Geronimo down; Geronimo was trying to defend himself, and I was trying to help him. Vail Ennis hit me on the head and kicked me in the stomach. He told me to get out or he would kill me. I went out through the front door. The others hid in an adjacent room.”
Probst: “Outside we took the rifle from under the bodies of Antonio and Domingo. It was in Domingo’s hand. The rifle contained seven shells, one in the barrel, and the hammer was cocked. There was one shot in the shotgun.”
The grand jury issued three murder indictments against the sheriff. The trial was held in Victoria, fifty-five miles northeast of Beeville, in January. In his closing argument, the flamboyant defense attorney, Dudley Tarlton, gave a performance lasting almost two hours, citing Shakespeare and the Bible. The jury took less than two hours to find the sheriff not guilty.
