Fred M. Clifford

The world has lost one its best. Fred Murdaugh Clifford started life on December 10, 1929 in St. Petersburg, Florida, spent a good deal of it raising his kids in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and ended it with a lifetime of great stories, loving memories, and dedicated friends in New Braunfels, Texas on January 18, 2021.

Fred’s start was not an easy one. His father left soon after Fred was born, leaving Fred’s mom, Dorothy, with a new baby in the throes of the Great Depression. Because of these difficult circumstances, Fred grew up in a group foster home until he was around 12 years old. After graduating high school, Fred joined the Air Force, where he served during the Korean War on an airplane responsible for finding and rescuing downed pilots. He received several service commendations during his time in the Air Force and was honorably discharged on September 14, 1953. When not rescuing pilots, Fred spent some of his spare time visiting South Korean tea rooms and getting in fights with sailors (who can’t drink beer like airmen) resulting in damage to his nose that gave him a bit of a tough-guy air.

Things got better and then they got great. While Fred was attending the University of Texas after serving his country, he met a young beauty from Karnes City, Texas at a YWCA dance. Anyone who knew Fred will know that his sense of humor, always a bit of a smart aleck, and his genuine interest in other folks was irresistible and charming. Also, those baby blue eyes didn’t hurt his chances either.

That young lady, Betty Lou Rosenbrock, married Fred on October 28, 1961, in Austin, Texas. Soon after, Fred and Betty packed their bags to start Fred’s long career as an electronic technician at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Fred found the job with the help of one of his life-long friends, Tom Ogelsby, who would later be “Uncle Tom” to Fred and Betty’s kids along with his wife Jan as “Aunt Jan.” Tom and Jan, along with their kids, Jill and Scott, were an integral part of the extended family in Albuquerque.

Fred was a helluva dominoes player and took no prisoners when playing Hearts, but his best and true calling was as a husband and a dad. His son, Dwain, was born 1966 followed by his daughter, Karen, in 1968. The details are lost to history, but Fred invented a game he called “whippersnapper” to play with his kids. The rules were simple: roll up some newspaper, suspend the prohibition about jumping around on the bed, and just beat one another’s bottoms silly until someone cried uncle or died laughing.

The 1970s saw Fred and Betty start square dancing with a club called the Mountain Doers, which had the salutary benefits of getting to travel all over the country for dances and meeting many new friends such as Vern and Betty Gibbs, Fred and Kathy Allen, and Marv and Betty Bauder, to name just a few that became lifelong friends and traveling companions. Fred and Betty hosted several Hawaiian-style luaus in the basement of their house in the Sandia Mountains with the whole Mountain Doer club in attendance. Food, music, and laughter permeated the whole house during these parties. There’s an old legend that some children (no names will be mentioned to protect the not-so-innocent) at one of these parties and spiked the punch with a bottle of beer to get the adults drunk, but that probably didn’t happen.

Fred and Betty took their kids on numerous camping trips to Colorado, trips to Florida and Dallas to visit Fred’s mother, stepfather, and aunts, and annual visits to see Betty’s extended family in and around Kenedy and Port Lavaca, Texas. The family also took one very long, and very memorable, trip all the way up the California coast into Washington for a National Square Dance Convention and back down through Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. This trip took place in the family’s F-150 pickup with camper shell, leaving the family with great memories of giant slugs you never see in New Mexico, eating raw oysters straight from the shell, and waterfalls. Lots and lots of waterfalls; Fred loved waterfalls!

Fred was always there for his children. He taught them how to play baseball, how to swim, and how to do algebra. He took them skiing and sledding in the winter and fishing and camping in the summer. He taught them the value of hard work and a good joke. Fred loved to play his guitar for anyone inclined to listen, especially the song Froggy Went A-Courtin’. He also loved to watch the Olympics - summer or winter, it didn’t matter; he just loved to watch the pageantry and athleticism. Life wasn’t always easy. Money wasn’t always plentiful. But there was always an abundance of love and laughter in the Clifford household.

Fred retired from Sandia in 1994, when Betty convinced him (maybe, required him) to return to Texas to be closer to her family and farther from snowy winters. Fred and Betty bought a house in the beautiful Hill Country of Texas only a stone’s throw from the site of prior family reunions in Starke Park in Sequin, Texas. It was here that Fred was finally able to keep his end of a bargain with God. After raising his family with a good job for many years, Fred set about volunteering for CASA, Habitat for Humanity, and the Lion’s Club, tutored reading for elementary school kids, and helped with many volunteer opportunities at his church. In addition to keeping his mind active with volunteer work and church, Fred also kept his body healthy by swimming multiple times a week and walking daily.

In Fred’s retirement, he found a rekindled interest in history, tackling some of the longest and heaviest tomes available about Lewis and Clark’s expedition, the Revolutionary War, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, and anything -- really, anything -- about British history, including Winston Churchill but most of all Queen Elizabeth, for whom Fred harbored the greatest admiration and interest. Complementing this interest in history, Fred and Betty took a great many trips with the Elderhostel group, which allowed them to visit places all over the world while learning from experts about the history of those places.

As longtime residents of New Braunfels, Fred and Betty made a long list of friends in their community, especially at their church, New Braunfels Christian Church. Fred made it a habit to meet regularly for coffee with buddies like Lavaine Kester, Boyd Durham, Fred Golike, and Bill Alldaffer. It was these visits, or just playing dominoes with friends and family, that found Fred at his most lovable and happiest.

Fred leaves a long list of people that love him, including his wife of 59 years, Betty; his kids, Karen and her husband Patrick Kelly, and Dwain and his wife Kristin Garrett; his granddaughter Veronica Ford (formerly Sara Clifford); sister-in-law Sandra Lauw, and her husband Henry; sister-in-law Clarice Sanchez and her daughters, Melissa and Tiffany; brother-in-law Walter Rosenbrock Sr., his wife Velmer, and their children Curtis, Danny, Jeff, and Sherry; sister-in-law Bernice and Joe Cryer, and their children Debbie Remmers and her daughters, Misty and Sharon, and nephews Joe “Bud” Cryer and his wife, Peggy, and their son, Chad and wife Rachel, Michael Cryer and his wife, Velvet; cousin Barbara “Barby” Andrews; and of course, his “little sweetheart”, Terry Lynn Langley.