Runyon, Robert

Robert Runyon was born on a farm near Catlettsburg in Boyd County, Kentucky, on July 28, 1881, the son of Floyd and Elizabeth (Lawson) Runyon. On September 16, 1901, Runyon married Norah Young in Ironton, Ohio. The couple's only child, William, was born on August 6, 1904, in Ashland, Kentucky, where Runyon had taken a job selling insurance. On December 3, 1908, Norah died. In an effort to put the impact of her death behind him, Runyon left William with his late wife's parents and went to New Orleans and then to Houston looking for employment. In early 1909 the Gulf Coast News and Hotel Company hired him to sell sandwiches, fruit, candy, and cigarettes to passengers on the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railway between Houston and Brownsville, Texas. Within a couple of months the railway offered to make him manager of Gulf Coast's lunchroom and curio shop in the Brownsville depot. Runyon accepted the position and, in April 1909, rented a room across the street from the railroad station and began a period of residency in Brownsville that continued without interruption for fifty-nine years until his death in 1968.

Arriving in Brownsville, Texas, in 1909, Robert Runyon entered a world very different from his native Kentucky. With its tropical climate and close proximity to Mexico, the town embraced two cultures and thrived on diversity. Throughout the rest of his life, Runyon took an avid interest in studying and recording this unique area. His photographs of the Lower Rio Grande Valley and Northeastern Mexico both document the region's history and stand as testimony to Runyon's affinity for the land and its people.

...