Joe Grady Moore

Joe Grady Moore, Jr., 80, died Friday, March 11, at his home in Austin, Texas. Funeral services will be 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 15, at First Baptist Church in Austin. Burial will follow in the Texas State Cemetery. Visitation will be held from 6:00-8:00 p.m. on Monday, March 14th at Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home in Austin. Joe was a lifelong public servant and teacher. Throughout his life, he was committed to the cause of clean water and environmental protection. The night before he died, he taught a graduate class in environmental law, regulation, and public policy at Texas State University in San Marcos, where he was a Distinguished Professor of Biology. He was a deacon and Sunday school teacher at FBC in Austin, which he and his wife, Jerry, joined in the early 1950s. Joe and Jerry, who were married Nov. 13, 1948, also were members of Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas, when they lived in Richardson from 1976-1995. During his more than 35 years of service to the State of Texas, Joe taught at three universities. From 1996 until his death, he was a Distinguished Professor at TSU, formerly Southwest Texas State University, first in the Geography and then the Biology Departments. He was a Professor in the Graduate Program in Environmental Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas from 1976-89. And in 1973, he was Director of the Office of Research at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. Joe served as a Special Master or Monitor for three judges. U.S. Judge Lucius D. Bunton appointed Joe to represent the court from 1994-96 as Monitor in the Sierra Club’s suit against the U.S. Interior Department over management of the Edwards Aquifer. The suit claimed continued pumping of the aquifer’s groundwater during low rainfall damaged several endangered species. Joe also was named Special Master under State District Judge Nathan Hecht from 1983-86 to oversee the initial cleanup of a West Dallas residential neighborhood contaminated by pollution from a lead smelter. In addition, he was a Special Master for a federal district court judge in Detroit from 1979-83. Joe worked with Detroit Mayor Coleman Young to bring Detroit’s wastewater treatment system into compliance with federal law. From 1973-76, Joe was Program Director for the National Commission on Water Quality, a 15-member body headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. The commission’s charge was to evaluate the 1972 federal water pollution control statute, which Joe helped draft. He was Commissioner of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, now a part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in 1968-69, serving under U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. He served as Executive Director of the Texas Water Development Board and Chairman of the Texas Water Quality Board from 1965-68 and was instrumental in writing the state’s first water pollution control laws and regulations. Joe was an Administrative Assistant to two Texas governors: Gov. John Connally from 1963-65, and Gov. Price Daniel, from 1960-61. He was Chief Budget Examiner for Gov. Connally. Joe began his government service in 1950, as a Research Assistant to the Texas Legislative Council. He was Executive Director of the Texas Industrial Accident Board from 1952-59. He also was Finance Examiner for the Texas Commission for Higher Education, now the Coordinating Board of the Texas College and University System, from 1961-62. His awards include the 1993 Charles Alvin Emerson Medal from the Water Environment Federation and the 1989 Outstanding Public Service Award from the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies. He was made an Honorary Lifetime Member of the Water Environment Federation in 1975. Joe also belonged to the National Academy of Political Science, the Austin Society of Public Administration, and the Water Environment Association of Texas. Joe served with the 84th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army during World War II. He was a frontline medic, and was shot in the leg by a German sniper in November 1944 in northeast Belgium, for which he received a Purple Heart. Joe was born Aug. 6, 1924, in Bagwell, Texas, and was valedictorian of his senior class at Clarksville High school. He received a Master’s of Arts in Government from UT in 1950 and a Bachelor’s in Government from UT in 1949. He also completed 80 hours at the UT Law School. Joe is survived by his wife of 56 years, Jerry; daughter, Anntoinette “Toni” Moore and her husband, Phil Clymer, of Tyler; son, Joe G. Moore, III, of Austin; sister, Mary Margaret Watley and husband, Vernon, of Beaumont; brother Robert E. Moore and his wife, Rae Jeanne, of Bagwell; brother Judd Moore and his wife, Bettye, of Elgin; brother George Moore of Austin; and numerous nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by parents Joe G. Moore, Sr., and Clara Bell Spell Moore and brother Charles Moore. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be sent to the Joe and Jerry Moore Scholarship in Water Resources, Texas State University, Development, 601 University, San Marcos, Texas 78666, or First Baptist Church in Austin, 901 Trinity St., Austin, Texas 78701. Memorials and guestbook online at wcfish.com.