Arthur "Buddy" Temple III (January 26, 1942 – April 14, 2015) was a businessman from
Lufkin
Lufkin is the largest city in Angelina County, Texas and the county seat. The city is situated in Deep East Texas and about 60 miles west of the Texas-Louisiana border. Its estimated population is 35,021 as of July 1, 2019.
Lufkin was founded ...
Texas House of Representatives
The Texas House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Texas Legislature. It consists of 150 members who are elected from single-member districts for two-year terms. As of the 2010 United States census, each member represents abou ...
and on the
Texas Railroad Commission
The Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC; also sometimes called the Texas Railroad Commission, TRC) is the state agency that regulates the oil and gas industry, gas utilities, pipeline safety, safety in the liquefied petroleum gas industry, and sur ...
. He failed in a bid for his party's
gubernatorial
A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political r ...
nomination in
1982
Events January
* January 1 – In Malaysia and Singapore, clocks are adjusted to the same time zone, UTC+8 (GMT+8.00).
* January 13 – Air Florida Flight 90 crashes shortly after takeoff into the 14th Street Bridge in Washington, D.C., Un ...
.
Temple was born to the wealthy lumberman Arthur Temple Jr. (1920–2006), and the former Mary MacQuiston (born 1919) in Texarkana, Arkansas. He was reared in Lufkin, the seat of
Angelina County
Angelina County ( ) is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. It is in East Texas and its county seat is Lufkin.
As of the 2020 census, the population was 86,395. The Lufkin, TX Micropolitan Statistical Area includes all of Angelina Cou ...
in
East Texas
East Texas is a broadly defined cultural, geographic, and ecological region in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Texas that comprises most of 41 counties. It is primarily divided into Northeast and Southeast Texas. Most of the region con ...
. In 1960, Temple graduated from the
Lawrenceville School
The Lawrenceville School is a coeducational preparatory school for boarding and day students located in the Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. Lawrenceville is a member of the Eight Scho ...
Princeton
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...
, New Jersey. He then briefly attended the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
from 1960 to 1961, when he joined the U.S. Army, in which he remained until 1963. He worked in various businesses, including his family-owned Temple Industries from 1964 to 1966, when he ran Exeter Investment Company as Vice-President, President, and chairman from 1968 to 1982, and, again, from 1986 to 2002.
In 1966, he was elected to the school board in Diboll in Angelina County. In 1972, he was elected to the District 6 seat in the Texas House and served from 1973 to 1981 from Angelina, Newton, Shelby, and San Augustine counties. Representative Temple co-sponsored the 1973 State Code of Ethics, with financial disclosure for elected and appointed officials, an issue highlighted by the Sharpstown banking scandal of 1971.
He was elected to the Railroad Commission in 1980 and was named chairman from 1985 to 1986. Temple and Texas Land Commissioner
Bob Armstrong
Joseph Melton James (October 3, 1939 – August 27, 2020) was an American professional wrestler, better known by his ring name, "Bullet" Bob Armstrong. In the course of his career, which spanned five decades, Armstrong held numerous championship ...
lost the gubernatorial nomination in 1982 to Mark Wells White, then
Bill Clements
William Perry Clements Jr. (April 13, 1917 – May 29, 2011) was an American businessman and Republican Party politician who served two non-consecutive terms as the governor of Texas between 1979 and 1991. His terms bookended the sole ...
of
Dallas
Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...
.
Temple is a member of the board of directors of Temple-Inland, Inc., the chairman of the board of First Bank & Trust, East Texas, and board chairman of the T.L.L. Temple Foundation. He is a past chairman of the advisory board of the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute.
In 1962, Temple married the former April Clover; the couple had one child, Whitney Sage Temple (born 1966). In 1970, he wed the former Ellen Clarke Hurst, and they have two children, Susan Helen Temple (born 1971), and Hannah Lea Temple (born 1972). Mrs. Temple has from a previous marriage a son, John Hurst (born 1967). Ellen Temple, a former educator and free-lance writer, was a regent of the
University of Texas System
The University of Texas System (UT System) is an American government entity of the state of Texas that includes 13 higher educational institutions throughout the state including eight universities and five independent health institutions. The UT& ...
under the administration of former Governor
Ann Richards
Dorothy Ann Richards (née Willis; September 1, 1933 – September 13, 2006) was an American politician who served as the 45th governor of Texas from 1991 to 1995. A Democrat, she first came to national attention as the Texas State Treasurer, w ...
. Her business was the Ellen C. Temple Publishing, Inc., of Lufkin.
In 1992, Buddy and Ellen Temple purchased a ranch near Freer in Duval County east of Laredo, Texas. On April 14, 2015 at 5:30 pm, Temple died at the age of 73 in Lufkin. He had a long battle with cancer.