Ben Procter: Texas History Professor (1927–2012)

Ben Hamill Procter, historian, was born on February 21, 1927, the second son of Leslie C. and Hazel Frances (Barnes) Procter, in Temple, Texas. A Latin scholar, Leslie Procter served as the superintendent of schools in Temple and as president of Temple Junior College (now Temple College). Both parents stressed academics as well as athletics on their boys Leslie Clay Procter, Jr., and Ben. The Procter family moved to Austin in 1939. As a youngster, Ben Procter took six years of Latin. At Austin High School he lettered in four sports and graduated with academic honors in 1945. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the United States Navy and served for fifteen months during and after World War II.

Football Career and Post-graduate Education

Discharged from the military in September 1946, Procter entered the University of Texas at Austin, where he excelled in football and in the classroom. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and earned a B.A. degree in history in 1951. Under Longhorn head coach Blair Cherry, Procter played football for three years and was a member of the Southwest Conference championship team in 1950. As a wide receiver from 1948 to 1950, he led the team in receiving. During his collegiate career he gained more than 1,380 yards, averaging better than 16.8 yards per catch, and scored thirteen touchdowns. He was twice named an All-Southwest Conference end. A teammate of the 1948 squad, Tom Landry, later experienced success as the coach of the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League (NFL). In 1987 Procter was inducted into the Longhorn Hall of Honor. In 1950 he was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL and briefly played for the team before being benched by a back injury. Except for a short stint with the Washington Redskins in 1952, this marked the end of his football career.

Procter returned to the classroom and began his graduate studies in history at the University of Texas. For his master’s thesis he wrote a biography of Sidney Sherman, an army officer who had won fame during the Texas Revolution at the battle of San Jacinto. Procter received his M.A. degree in 1952. That year, on July 21, he married University of Texas graduate Phoebe Carole Burch. The couple had one son, Ben Rice Procter.

With two degrees from the University of Texas, the Texan traveled east to pursue his Ph.D. at Harvard University. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Procter studied under several prominent historians, including Arthur Schlesinger, Sr.; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.; Samuel Eliot Morison; and Frederick Merk. Merk directed Procter’s dissertation, a biography of Texas Democratic leader and Confederate postmaster general John Henninger Reagan. In 1961 Procter received his Ph.D. from Harvard.

Academic Career

While working on his doctorate, Procter accepted a position as a history instructor at Texas Christian University (TCU) in 1957. He remained at TCU for the next forty-three years until his retirement. He earned a reputation for his tough courses and animated lectures. It is estimated that as many as 10,000 students attended his courses in American, Texas, and American Western history. He is also credited for bringing a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, a chapter of Phi Alpha Theta (an honorary history fraternity), and the Ph.D. program in history to TCU.

For five decades Procter produced studies that established his reputation as a leading scholar of Texas history. The University of Texas Press published his first major work, Not Without Honor: The Life of John H. Reagan (1962), a study that won the Summerfield G. Roberts Award for best book in Texas history. Together with Jim Pearson and William Conroy, Procter wrote the Texas history textbook Texas: The Land and Its People (1969). He focused on the Sharpstown Stock-Fraud Scandal in his next book. With journalist Sam Kinch, Jr., Procter wrote Texas Under a Cloud (1972), winner of the Texas Writer’s Roundup Award. Procter and Archie P. McDonald edited The Texas Heritage (1980), a Texas reader that ran through four editions. Procter authored The Battle of the Alamo (1986) and Just One Riot: Episodes of Texas Rangers in the 20th Century (1991). He also contributed articles, chapters, and book reviews to numerous scholarly publications.

The Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) named Procter a Fellow in 1968. From 1979 to 1980 he served as the president of the TSHA. Procter worked as an associate editor of the New Handbook of Texas (1996) and contributed ten articles to the Handbook of Texas. He also served on the council of the Western History Association and on the state review board of the National Register of Historic Places. He was president of the Southwestern Social Science Association and of Phi Alpha Theta. Procter was an active member of the Democratic party. From 1974 to 1982 he served as chair of the District 12 Democratic convention. He was a personal friend to Speaker of the House Jim Wright. In 1965 Procter was named an admiral in the Third Texas Navy (see TEXAS NAVY). In 1973 he was named a Piper Professor by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation. In 1993 the Sons of the Republic of Texas selected Procter for membership in the Knights of the Order of San Jacinto.

Near the end of his academic career, Procter directed most of his efforts on a two-volume biography of William Randolph Hearst. He had been interested in doing a study of Hearst since the early 1960s. Unlike earlier Hearst studies, Procter made use of previously unavailable papers held at the University of California at Berkeley. Oxford University Press published William Randolph Hearst: The Early Years, 1863–1910 (1998) and William Randolph Hearst: The Later Years, 1911–1951 (2007). Phi Alpha Theta awarded Procter’s final study its Best Book Award. Historian, friend, and fellow Texan Archie P. McDonald called both studies Procter’s magnum opus.

After forty-three years of service, Procter retired from TCU in 2000. At the age of eighty-five, Ben Hamill Procter died from complications of Parkinson’s disease on April 17, 2012, at his home in Fort Worth. He was survived by his wife of sixty years and his son. His remains were cremated and left in the care of his family.