David “Skippy” Browning of Dallas and the University of Texas proudly wore his Olympic gold medal in the closing ceremony of the Summer Games at Helsinki, Finland on Aug. 3, 1952.
At 24 Browning was in his prime and a strong favorite to win gold again in springboard diving at Melbourne, Australia in 1956. But the Navy pilot was killed in a training flight that March when his fighter jet crashed in Kansas.
Louis Abernathy, age 11, and his little brother Temple, seven, left New York City on Aug. 1, 1911 on an unaccompanied horseback ride to San Francisco.
It was not the first epic trip for the sons of a U.S. Marshal, who rode alone to New York in 1910 to meet Teddy Roosevelt on his return from Africa. A $10,000 prize was theirs if the boys completed the transcontinental trek in 60 days, but they missed the deadline by two days.
When Louis died in Austin in 1979 and Temple passed away in Teague seven years later, the adventures of the Abernathy brothers had faded from public memory.