When Jack told you something, it was the real thing. And he tried to inspire others to do the same. He was a forward thinking guy for the time, and he put a lot of himself into what was good for our industry.
The name Jack Cawood was halfway magic in McAllen 40 years ago.
That name meant handshake deals you could rely on, where the contract really was more of a formality. It meant crusades against things like potholes and frivolous lawsuits that were, often as not, successful. It meant solving hard problems with the subtle powers of charisma, competence and character.
Cawood, who died Jan. 9 at the age of 92, is remembered by those who knew him as one of the quieter founding fathers of the modern McAllen business scene, a man who welded a reputation of honesty with an old-fashioned sense of civic duty to do what he could to improve the city of McAllen, and the lives of its residents.
His family is planning a memorial service to celebrate his life, and to reminisce this Saturday. The celebration will begin at 2 p.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church at 2500 N. 10th St. in McAllen.
A real estate broker for most of his career, Cawood made an imprint on the community through business and a laundry list of civic organizations he was involved with.
“He was just a cornerstone of the McAllen you see today. Obviously with the realtors, but with the business community in general,” said Paul Schwab, former president of Valley Mortgage Company, and one of Cawood’s mentees.
Cawood was, Schwab said, “nothing but a gentleman and a class act.”
“When Jack told you something, it was the real thing,” Schwab said. “And he tried to inspire others to do the same. He was a forward thinking guy for the time, and he put a lot of himself into what was good for our industry.”
Cawood’s life before McAllen, as his son Paul Cawood tells it, sounds almost more like an adventure novel than the early days of a future realtor.
He grew up in the hills of Kentucky, and as a kid would spend his days riding the backwoods, delivering people groceries from his grandfather’s store on horseback.
After his parents divorced, Cawood moved to the Rio Grande Valley, exiting high school for a time and joining the Civilian Air Patrol, hunting for Nazi U-Boats in the Gulf of Mexico.
Cawood joined the U.S. Air Force as an officer after college. They sent him to Alaska.
One of his achievements, stuck in the snow and the cold of 1950s Alaska, was winning enough money playing poker to afford a flashy new car.
Cawood was thinking somewhere exotic sounded nice after that frigid assignment. The Air Force would only go as exotic as Idaho.
The consolation was meeting Air Force nurse Margaret Louise Berens, who Cawood married when their active duty ended. They were married for close to 60 years.
The Cawoods came to the Valley to make their home.
Despite his business sense, Cawood could be just a little bit silly from time to time. Paul remembers his brother once put dirt, or something, into the gas tank of the family’s car. Cawood resolved to get it out with a vacuum cleaner.
It sucked in a good deal of fumes and exploded right when Margaret was getting home.
Margaret was the commonsense partner in the marriage, Jack was the flair.
Generally impeccably dressed, their kids would laugh about Margaret being the one tapping her foot waiting to go out while Jack got dressed.
“He was the social butterfly,” Paul said.
That charisma translated to a successful career. By the 1960s Jack was a real estate broker. He’d go on to start Action Realty, going on to develop neighborhoods in McAllen and Harlingen, even being named Realtor of the Year by the Texas Association of Realtors in 1983.
“He had three passions: his love of real estate, his love of country and his love of the community,” Paul said. “Real estate was always his passion, but it wasn’t the passion.”
Cawood’s real passion, perhaps, was people.
As a businessman, he could see where there were problems. He was interested in making it better for everybody.
He mentored kids through the Boy Scouts. He helmed the Lion’s Club, and sat on the hospital board.
It wasn’t the type of service that gets streets and buildings named after you, but Cawood wasn’t in it for the recognition.
He was in it to leave McAllen better than he’d found it, whether that meant official civic involvement or unofficial volunteerism.
Cawood kept a running list of potholes in town that he would update the city manager about. He was a petition starter and a prodder; not in a nagging way, but in a way that sparked genuine reform. He disdained frivolous lawsuits so much that he organized a group to push for reform at the Capitol.
He held his own class of businessmen to high standards as well, pushing for legislation supporting higher ethical standards for realtors.
“As a businessman, he could see where there were problems,” Paul said. “He was interested in making it better for everybody.”
Within a telephone call he got it done. That’s how well respected he was in his town.
At one point, a friend says, the city found out over 1,000 street lights in town weren’t working.
Someone got the idea to send Cawood up to Austin, to talk to the Utility Commission of Texas. It worked, and the lights turned on.
An avid outdoorsman, Cawood relished instilling that same passion in others in the community.
Bill Stocker, a friend, remembers Cawood taking his son out to shoot his first deer.
Thousands of good deeds and a reputation for honesty made Cawood almost supernaturally charismatic.
Stocker remembers a falling out in town that had led to a lawsuit. Cawood was acquainted with both sides, and somebody talked him into getting on the phone with them to talk them down from wasting money in court.
“Within a telephone call he got it done,” Stocker said. “That’s how well respected he was in his town. The stories people have on Jack — he was so blatantly honest, so professional about what he did …He was just remarkable.”
Cawood’s life, Paul said, was a life spent being respectful and receiving respect in turn.
“His friends — his contemporaries — would call him Jack,” Paul said. “But everybody else would call him Mr. Cawood. And it’s not surprising.”
