News-Info-Alerts

Re: Former POW Passes

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 06, 2002

"J.C. Court, longtime Fort Bend constable
By ERIC HANSON
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle

STAFFORD -- J.C. "Buster" Court, who survived 3 1/2 years as a prisoner of the Japanese and served three decades as a Fort Bend County constable, died Monday at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He was 82.

Court, who endured what became known as the Bataan Death March, had suffered health problems including kidney and heart ailments in recent years, said
his wife, Mildred.

"He loved his community and serving it," she said. "He was a good, wonderful man."

Born on Nov. 10, 1919, in Bryan, Julian C. Court was a year old when his family moved to Stafford, southwest of Houston. He worked in the family grocery business until he joined the Army Air Corps in 1940, serving as a mechanic with the 21st Pursuit Squadron.

In a 1985 Chronicle interview, Court said his unit landed in the Philippines just a few weeks before the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and that the squadron's aircraft never arrived.

He spent the next four months in ground fighting and was captured in April when U.S. forces surrendered.

Court was one of thousands of American and Filipino troops who made the forced march that killed many of them. They were made to walk for miles in the blazing sun to camps with little water or food and were subjected to brutal treatment.

The following year he was shipped to Japan for slave labor.

"I got whipped quite often," he told the Chronicle. "They would beat you with rifle butts and kick you when you were down."

After spending several years recovering after the war, Court ran for constable against an entrenched incumbent in 1950, said Stafford Mayor Leonard Scarcella, Court's second cousin.

Court, who also married that year, won the election.

Scarcella said Court was so respected and liked by the residents of his precinct that he was easily re-elected many times.

When Court ran for Fort Bend County sheriff in 1964, so many voters penciled his name on write-in ballots for constable that, although he lost the sheriff's race, he was re-elected as constable, Scarcella said.

Court retired in 1980 and spent his last years hunting, fishing and spending time with his family.

Scarcella said Stafford's new police and fire department headquarters, which is under construction, will be named in honor of Court.

In addition to his wife, Court is survived by sons Kenneth A. Court and Julian J. Court.

Services were held Thursday in Missouri City. Burial was in Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery. "