Houston’s business community lost another of its longtime oil and gas entreprenuers on Sunday when Geneos P. “Pete” Cokinos of Beaumont died at the age of 88. Mr. Cokinos died a day after another famous Houston wildcatter, Michel T. Halbouty, who was a friend and contemporary of Mr Cokinos. Mr. Cokinos’ obituary is here.
Mr. Cokinos was the oldest of five children of the P.D. Cokinos family, which included a sister and four brothers. Mr. Cokinos and his three brothers were all veterans of the U.S. Army in World War II and graduates of Texas A&M University, and Mr. Cokinos was the first of an incredible seventeen members of that family to attend and graduate from Texas A&M. Mr. Cokinos and his brothers subsequently funded an academic Presidential Scholarship at A&M in memory of their parents.
Mr. Cokinos was the uncle of well-known Houston attorney, Greg Cokinos. Funeral services are scheduled for this evening and Wednesday in Beaumont.

One of the characters the local business community that make Houston a special place — Michel T. Halbouty — died on Saturday in Houston after a long battle with cancer. He was 95 at the time of his death. His obituary is here.
As founder, president and chairman of Michel T. Halbouty Energy Co. in Houston, Mr. Halbouty was one of Houston’s famed wildcatters who made and lost millions in the wild and wooly Texas oil and gas business over the past 70 years.
With his trademark bushy mustache, Mr. Halbouty cut quite a swath in business circles. An expert in Gulf Coast salt dome prospecting, Mr. Halbouty was inducted into the Texas Science Hall of Fame in 2002 for his contributions to geoscience. He authored four books and more than 300 articles on geology and petroleum engineering, and among the well-known oil and gas fields that Mr. Halbouty either discovered or developed were the South Boling Field in Wharton County, the South Liberty Field in Liberty County, the West Saratoga Field in Hardin County, the Pheasant Field in Matagorda County, and the Fostoria Field in Montgomery County.
Mr. Halbouty was also an important figure in the development of Texas A&M University over the past two generations. After graduating from A&M in 1930 with a degree in petroleum engineering, Mr. Halbouty earned masters’ degrees in geology and petroleum engineering the following year, and, in 1956, was the first recipient of Texas A&M?s professional degree in geological engineering. Mr. Halbouty was also a recipient of distinguished alumni awards from the A&M Association of Former Students and A&M?s Dwight Look College of Engineering. He was a an A&M Visiting Centennial Professor and a founding member of the President?s Endowed Scholars Program. For his service and contributions to the university, the building that houses the A&M’s department of geology and geophysics is named for him.
Finally, Mr. Halbouty is widely credited with persuading former president George H.W. Bush to locate his presidential library on the Texas A&M University campus in College Station.
Mr. Halbouty was also widely involved in civic affairs in the Houston area. Mr. Halbouty also served on the boards of the Houston Symphony Society, Houston Grand Opera, Greater Houston Council of Camp Fire Girls, Texas Children’s Hospital, and Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts.
Funeral services for Mr. Halbouty are pending.

Former Houston Rockets star and Basketball Hall of Famer Calvin Murphy trial on sexual assault charges stemming from claims he molested five of his daughters when they were children cranks up today in Judge Mike McSpadden‘s criminal state district court in Houston. Here are the earlier posts on the case.
The trial is expected to last about two weeks. Murphy, 55, is charged with three counts of indecency with a child and three counts of aggravated sexual assault. Each charge is punishable by up to life in prison, so Murphy’s freedom for the remainder of his life is literally at stake.
This trial is going to be ugly and very sad.

Chris Tomlin is one of the emerging stars in the world of contemporary Christian worship music, and this Austin American-Statesman article profiles this outstanding Texan on the start of his 70 city tour with fellow Christian rocker, Steven Curtis Chapman.
Chris and I became good friends and golfing buddies when he was just starting his career at my church in The Woodlands about 10 years ago, and I have watched in admiration as his music career has continued to ascend after his move to Austin several years ago. This is truly one of those success stories that could not have happened to a nicer guy.
Coincidentally, I put in a call to Chris (or “C.T.” as he is known in golfing circles) yesterday afternoon to see if he could swing into Houston and play with me in a golf game on Saturday morning with Capitol Records country music recording artist, Dierks Bentley, who is in The Woodlands to perform at the Pavilion on Saturday night. Dierks is the younger brother of another old friend of mine, Bart Bentley, who is a longtime Houston real estate attorney.
C.T. was always quite a hearthrob to many of the teenage girls at our church during his time in The Woodlands, and he apparently has not lost any of his charm in that regard. The female reporter from the Statesman gushes as follows:

With this tousled blond hair, gleaming teeth and elfin face, he’s the stuff of teeny-bopper magazines. He’s 34 but looks a decade younger. And of course he’s sporting cool shades.

Give me a break. That adulation will cost C.T. several strokes of punishment on the first tee of our next big golf game. ;^)

It never ends.

This Chronicle article reports that Texas A&M University is preparing to name Dallas Federal Reserve Bank president Robert D. McTeer, Jr. as its new chancellor in the near future. This Dallas Morning News article profiles Mr. McTeer.

After killing his neighbor three years ago and dumping the butchered body into Galveston Bay and then winning an acquittal in his subsequent 2003 murder trial, Robert Durst — an heir to a New York family’s real estate fortune — pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts of bail jumping and one of evidence tampering that will allow Durst to get out of prison in less than a year. Here are earlier posts on the Durst case.
The deal came just two hours after state appellate judge Judge Jackson B. Smith Jr. had removed removed Galveston State District Judge Susan Criss from the case. Judge Criss had refused the plea deal earlier in the week, which was yet another strange twist in a case. Judge Criss had been rebuked by the appellate court earlier this year for setting Durst’s bail at $3 billion dollars on the three relatively minor charges after Durst had been acquitted in the murder trial (the appellate court reduced the bail to $450,000). With credit for time served both before and after his murder trial, Durst will likely be freed from prison early next year under state prison system rules.
The recusal came after sheriff’s investigators testified before Judge Smith that Judge Criss had given them information in December that prompted an investigation into possible jury tampering during Durst’s murder trial. Although the investigators found no evidence of criminal activity by jurors or anyone involved in the trial, they did secretly tape-record conversations between Durst and a juror who visited him in jail after the trial. Nevertheless, Durst did admit in the taped conversation that he skipped a court appearance after he posted a $300,000 bond in the murder case in September 2001.
As a result, Durst’s defense attorneys Dick DeGuerin and Mike Ramsey maintained that Judge Criss’ involvement in the jury tampering investigation that led to Durst’s taped admission made her a potential witness in Durst’s bail-jumping case, and that such involvement required her to be removed from adjudicating the case. When Judge Criss refused to recuse herself from the case earlier this week, Judge Smith did so in about 10 minutes on Wednesday.

The Houston Press names Charles Kuffner’s Off the Kuff as Houston’s best blog in its annual Best of Houston series. A worthy selection. Congratulations, Charles!