Monday, June 8, 2009

Larger Than Life Character

Sometimes in this life you’re fortunate to meet people with such interesting histories, personalities and idiosyncrasies that any fiction writer creating such characters would be told they were too improbable to ever be believed.

A. Preston McGraw was one of those people.

When I learned last week that “Mac” had died in a Texas nursing home at the age of 94, it brought back many memories of a newsman who not only covered history, he became part of it.

The story goes that Mac was assigned to cover Lee Harvey Oswald’s graveside service in Dallas, which ironically took place on the same day that the man he assassinated, President John F. Kennedy, was being buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The only people at Oswald’s graveside were the reporters, federal agents, police, and five members of the Oswald family.

The funeral director said Oswald couldn’t be buried unless there were volunteers to be pallbearers. Mac felt sorry for the family and thought that if he stepped forward, he’d get better access to Oswald's widow – and better quotes for his story. That didn’t happen, but Mac did earn his place in history.

I first met Mac when I joined United Press International, then the world’s second-largest wire service, over three decades ago in the news agency’s Dallas bureau. He was in his ‘60s then, nearing retirement as he worked the radio side, providing news briefs to be read on air by broadcasters in a nine-state region of the Southwest. I knew immediately that the man was a character.

He called just about everyone “sport” and when he answered the telephone, he spoke in such a slow southern drawl that he stretched out the initials U-P-I longer than it took to spell the words in their entirety—at least twice. His laugh, which was really more of a loud cackle, was unforgettable and when it roared through the newsroom, we knew a hilarious story was coming.

Mac especially loved weird and unusual news stories and none was stranger than the tale of Leroy Laffoon. No one who heard him tell the story could ever forgot it.

Here it is in its briefest form: Leroy Laffoon returned to his trailer outside Fort Worth, Texas, one day to find it had been ransacked and his dog had been killed. Leroy suspected the culprits were two prostitutes who hated his dog. Leroy decided to get even. He put the dog’s body in the freezer for an undetermined amount of time, tracked down the whores and then beat them to death with his frozen dog.

It is a story of an unusaul, but oddly satisfying, sort of justice. Mac loved the Leroy Laffoon story. So did every reporter who heard it from him. When news spread last week that Mac had gone to the big newsroom in the sky, versions of the Leroy Laffoon tale were recounted once again in Mac’s name.

He would have loved that.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

leroy lafoon was actually a hired killer working for a man and woman that had suspected two women had burglarized their home and killed their dog, a daschound, in the process. they claimed to have frozen the dog andvowed to beat whoever was responsible to death with the dog. they suspected two women they had befriended at a bar along the jacksboro highway, near fortworth,tx. this area was infamous for its seedy honkytonks that catered to the undesirables. instead of carrying out their original plan, they hired leroy lafoon to do the job. the two women were beaten to death, but it's not clear what they were struck with.

Anonymous said...

Leroy(Slim) to those close to him was my uncle by marriage The women were after methamphetamines wich he was very talented at manufacturing wich they never found the rest of the tale is fairly accurate.

Anonymous said...

Leroy(Slim) to those close to him was my uncle by marriage The women were after methamphetamines wich he was very talented at manufacturing wich they never found the rest of the tale is fairly accurate.

Anonymous said...

P.S. And as his nephew I can say he did use a frozen dog.

Anonymous said...

As I recall, Mac's retellings concluded thusly: "When frozen dogs are outlawed, only outlaws will have frozen dogs."