George Rupert Gause, Jr.

McALLEN-- George Rupert Gause, Jr, 77, passed away on May 14, 2024, following a brief illness. George was born in Glen Cove, NY to George Rupert Gause, and Elizabeth Moisson Dantzler Gause. He was preceded in death by his parents and sister Martha Victoria Barefoot White. He is survived by his wife of 32 years, Virginia Haynie Gause of McAllen; his nieces Martha Elizabeth Barefoot Sylvestre (David) of Phillips, ME; and Sarah Catherine Barefoot Thompson (Dave) of Benson, NC. George served as Special Collections and Archives Librarian at UTPA (presently UTRGV) for 38 years. George and Virginia were soulmates for almost 52 years, having met at Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, TN. In Fall 1973 George was employed by Pan American University at Brownsville, building book collections with a strong emphasis on Mexican American Studies. In 1977 he transferred to Pan American University at Edinburg (later UTPA and UTRGV) until he retired in 2011. George believed in providing genealogical sources in the university library years before they were commonly accepted as suitable curriculum materials. He was one of the founders of Las Porciones Genealogical Society in Edinburg. He served on Hidalgo County Historical Commission for many years. He also served on the Texas Committee of the National Register for Historical Places, enjoying travel throughout the state to historical landmarks. In the 1980s he and Virginia volunteered many Sundays cataloging books owned by McAllen International Museum (now IMAS) for their staff research library. He was also a founder of the McAllen Folk Art Society with the museum in the early 1990s and coordinated with other folk art groups in San Antonio and Austin. In 1991 and 1992 he served as guest curator at Children’s Museum Houston, helping a team recreate a Oaxacan village while another team created a parallel Chinese village. He was a member of the McAllen Centennial Celebration Committee in 2004 and a founder of PalmFest Folklife Festival. He was active in Hidalgo County Historical Society and museum groups from Edinburg to Harlingen to Brownsville. He enjoyed making travel arrangements for bus tours throughout South Texas and Mexico. Once he arranged a tour to Oaxaca where the participants traveled by train from Reynosa all the way to Oaxaca. George and Virginia traveled throughout Mexico with a fervent passion for adventure and learning how real Mexicans lived by visiting their homes. George enjoyed visiting artisans in their homes and watching them work for hours while Virginia photographed or videoed them. Thanks to close friends they got to know Mexico City, Monterrey, Oaxaca, Chiapas and other Mexican states fairly well. About 2009 George shifted his attention to studying Chinese and Taiwanese Tea Culture. In 2019 he and Virginia were privileged to tour four providences in Southwest China where their group visited tea farms and tea markets. For a while he did presentations in schools and libraries. In 2022 he and Virginia toured Spain, Portugal, and Morocco with two buses of Asians, mostly from the Houston area. In 2023 he and Virginia took a Viking river cruise along the Danube. George was a Life member of Texas Library Association and an active member of the American Library Association. He took great pleasure in attending book fairs in Guadalajara and Monterrey to buy books in Spanish for the university library. He enjoyed working with individual university students to help them formalize their term paper topics. He truly liked networking and connecting people with the information they needed. George was passionate about gardening, as well as gourmet eating. He often asked for the chef to come to his table after dining. He was fastidious about thanking people for whatever they did to enhance the quality of his life. He had a zest for history, art, music, and well set dining tables with cloth napkins! He enjoyed eating by candlelight. George’s remains will be interred in his family’s plot at Mount Hope Cemetery, in Florence, SC. A local celebration of George’s life will be held in the fall at a time and place to be determined later.

Tributes

George Rupert Gause, Jr.

May 14, 2024