Roy Bedichek
Marker Location: Eddy Cemetery
Old Blevins Rd. Exit off IH-35
Eddy, McLennan County, Texas
Year Erected: 1998
Roy Bedichek, June 27, 1878 - May 21, 1959. Born in
Illinois to J. M. and Lucretia (Craven) Bedichek, Roy came to Falls County at
the age of six. Educated first in his parents' school at Blevins and later at
the Bedichek's Eddy Literary and Scientific Institute, he graduated from the
University of Texas in 1903. He and Lillian Greer were married in 1910; their
children were Mary, Sarah, and Bachman. Bedichek was a reporter, editor,
teacher, and homesteader before joining the staff of the University of Texas in
1917; he became the second director of the University Interscholastic League
(UIL) in 1922. For twenty-six years he tailored league policies to the American
ideal of education for every child. His use of educational competition as "a
spur to industry and a whetstone of talent" has shaped the lives of the
countless students who have participated in UIL academic, athletic, and musical
contests. A lifelong outdoorsman and animal lover, Bedichek wrote "Adventures
with a Texas Naturalist," which was published in 1947; his letters, evidence of
his enthusiastic correspondence, were collected into two books. Bedichek is
fondly remembered as a conversationalist, folklorist, and storyteller who
related all experience to the natural world. "He had the most richly stored mind
of any man I ever knew," said his friend J. Frank Dobie.