In the early 1900s, two families in Scurry and Kent counties in West Texas united in a marriage of fourteen-year-old Gladys Johnson to twenty-one-year-old Ed Sims. Billy Johnson, the father, set up Gladys and Ed on a ranch, and the young couple had two daughters. But Gladys was headstrong and willful, and Ed drank too much, and both sought affection outside their marriage. A nasty divorce ensued, and Gladys moved with her girls to her father’s luxurious ranch house, where she soon fell in love with famed Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. When Ed tried to take his daughters for a prearranged Christmas visit in 1916, Gladys and her brother Sid shot him dead on the Snyder square teeming with shoppers. One of the best lawyers in West Texas, Judge Cullen Higgins (son of the old feudist Pink Higgins) managed to win acquittal for both Gladys and Sid. In the tradition of Texas feudists since the 1840s, the Sims family sought revenge. Sims’ son-in-law, Gee McMeans, led an attack in Sweetwater and shot Billy Johnson’s bodyguard, Frank Hamer, twice, while Gladys—by now Mrs. Hamer—fired at another assassin. Hamer shot back, killed McMeans, and was no-billed on the spot by a grand …

Transcript of an interview with Alfred Edgar Greer, North Texas State College and Geezle fraternity member alumni. The interview traces Greer's background in Snyder, Texas; public school education in Decatur, TX; two-years of study at Decatur Baptist College, where he starred for and captained the basketball team; continued academic pursuits at North Texas State College in public school administration (BS, 1951; MS, 1954) and his membership in the Geezle Fraternity; association with the Geezles and their shared values that permeated his life; 36-year leadership and teaching career in public education in eight school districts in Texas.