By Tracy Gupton
Today, July 1, 2026, is National Postal Worker Day across America. The dedicated workers who deliver our mail on a daily basis don’t get the credit they should. Plenty of criticism is thrown at them when our letters and bills are delayed or lost in transit, but how often do we ever tell our postal workers thank you for the work they do?
A new large mural on the front of the Jenn’s Climate Controlled Storage building on East Brazos Avenue is catching the eye of many drivers and pedestrians in downtown West Columbia. Especially when the pretty lady was involved in creating the mural, standing atop a scaffold or ladder. Some of the more senior residents of our fair town may have memories of the West Columbia Post Office being located inside that building. But the majority of West Columbia citizens will only recall when the post office occupied the building further down East Brazos Avenue where The Turquoise Saddle is now.
This writer’s memory only goes back that far as I will be celebrating my 70th birthday next year. And the post office in West Columbia relocated in 1960 from being inside the old Farmer’s Grocery Store to its new location next door to what is now Prosperity Bank. I was a kid when I went into Dooley Galloway’s First Capitol Bank where the Columbia Historical Museum is now with my Daddy in the 1960s for my father to ask Mr. Galloway for a loan. By the time I was old enough to drive the bank had moved into its current building. That is where my father, Rex Gupton, accompanied me to seek my first car loan from bank officer Cecil Bird. That would have been around 1973 when I was 16, had just gotten my driver’s license and found a cool used car in Mr. Goolsby’s car lot on Highway 36 just outside the city limit sign going to Brazoria. That was the first and only time my Daddy had to cosign a loan for me.
My Daddy’s father’s name now appears on the new downtown mural that was painted recently. Samuel Morris “Buff” Gupton was West Columbia’s postmaster for 20 years, from 1935 until his retirement in 1955 (two years before I was born). My grandfather was born at home in West Columbia in 1886, the second of S.D. and Dora Gupton’s nine children. His father, Samuel Doc Gupton, owned a store and meat market in East Columbia along the west bank of the Brazos River back in the days when most goods were imported and exported up and down the river. My great-grandmother, Dora Jansen Gupton, was the daughter of Danish immigrants (Heinrich and Maria Jansen of Copenhagen, Denmark) who came to this area of Texas in 1848.
“Buff” Gupton started school in 1894 in a one-room schoolhouse in West Columbia, according to his 1961 newspaper obituary. He died August 30, 1961, at the age of 75 in his West Columbia home which is now owned by his grandson, the author of this story. As a young man, “Buff” Gupton worked with his father in their East Columbia store and later ran a drug store in Lane City in Wharton County. He met his future bride, Eula Meadows Gupton, while residing near Wharton in the Boling area. They later owned stores in Van Vleck and Glen Flora before returning to West Columbia in 1919, the obituary says. They were living in Iago in Wharton County when their first child, former District Judge Thurman Morris Gupton, was born 11-11-11 (November 11, 1911), and their daughter, Ruby Nell Gupton Fontenot, was born in Van Vleck in Matagorda County in 1914.
By the time my father, Rex Gupton, came along in 1921, his parents were back in West Columbia where “Buff” had taken over his father’s business and moved it to downtown West Columbia due to the big oil boom luring more and more people to the area, coming to where the jobs were. “Buff” and Eula Gupton added two more sons after my father, Marvin Aubrey “Hank” Gupton arriving on Christmas Eve 1922 and Samuel Doc “S.D.” Gupton joining the family in 1925. Eula and “Buff” had nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren when the former postmaster passed away 65 years ago. I was one of the grandchildren, along with Thurman and Gladys Gupton’s daughters Dolores and Peggy Lou, S.D. and Nina Nadine Gupton’s son Kirby and daughter Denise, Hank and Terry Gupton’s son Raybourne Ricks “Hank” Gupton and Angie, and my siblings, Cody and Kelli Gupton. Ace and Cindy Brandt, the children of Dolores and Lloyd Brandt, were just little kids when their great-grandfather died.
Phyllis Van Kerrebrooke served as acting postmistress in West Columbia when my grandfather decided to retire from civil service. He was 69 when he retired. Frances E. Renfro was selected the following year to be West Columbia’s full-time postmistress. She had lost her husband, Johnny Renfro, the previous year when the former West Columbia High School head football coach passed away at 48. Her newspaper obituary states that, “She graduated from the College of Industrial Arts in Denton, taught school in Damon in the early 1930s and served as West Columbia’s postmaster following the death of her first husband, John Edwin Renfro.”
Frances Elliott Dial Renfro Berger was the widow of Dr. Bruce Berger when she died at 90 December 22, 1998, after a lengthy illness. Mrs. Berger was a native of Goliad, Texas, born in 1908, the only child of Stuart Tyler Dial and Mary Alice Cardwell Dial. An only child herself, Frances and Johnny Renfro only had one child, daughter Mary Jean Renfro Romero. The two former schoolteachers met while Frances Dial and Johnny Renfro were both employed by the Damon School District. Johnny coached sports in Damon before being lured to West Columbia to become the Roughnecks’ head coach. He later went into business for himself, owning and operating a successful beer distributorship in West Columbia. The Roughnecks baseball field is named Renfro Field after the local high school’s former coach.
When Frances Berger passed away 28 years ago, she was survived by her daughter, Jeanie, and son-in-law, George A. “Tee” Romero; two grandsons, John Renfro Romero and David Liles Romero; and a great-grandson, Cale Asher Romero.
The new mural in downtown West Columbia also features Frances E. Renfro’s name and years of service, along with my grandfather’s. I found a newspaper clipping of Mrs. Renfro’s retirement announcement that was from either The Brazoria County News or The Brazosport Facts. In it, the story states that Frances E. Renfro is announcing she will retire as West Columbia’s postmaster effective June 9, 1972, “after 16 years of service at the local office.”
“Her career started in June, 1956, when she succeeded Mrs. Phyllis Van Kerrebrooke, acting postmaster at the time,” the newspaper story said. “Mrs. Renfro moved to Brazoria County from Goliad in 1932 and taught school in Damon. Her husband, John E. Renfro, was a teacher and coach in Damon. They were married in 1933 and moved to West Columbia in the mid-1930s where he also served as a coach. When Mrs. Renfro started work at the post office in 1956 it was located in part of the building now occupied by Farmer’s Grocery.”
There used to be a post office in East Columbia that was located along the street that skirted the west bank of the Brazos River. My grandmother, Pauline Giesler, and her son, Howard Giesler, lived along the banks of Varner Creek near the Brazos River in East Columbia many years ago. That is where my mother, Verna Giesler Gupton, grew up. My grandfather’s meat market and grocery store was located in the same area of East Columbia as the old post office. The Columbia Historical Museum, 247 East Brazos Avenue in West Columbia, has a photograph on display of the interior of the old S.D. Gupton and Son store. My grandfather and great-grandfather are both pictured standing near the counter in their store.
My friend and classmate, Linese Beal Tejada, who still lives in East Columbia with her husband David, has a picture of her father, Dixie Beal, posing in front of the old East Columbia Post Office during the World War II era in the 1940s. Does anyone know when East Columbia residents stopped getting their mail at that post office and started picking up mail in West Columbia?
