John Hayward Randolph (1908 - 1972) was an American artist and author best known for the 'Texas Brags' series of books, published between 1944 and 1972. Before World War II, Randolph was in advertising. He joined the 124th Cavalry , a unit of the Texas National Guard, in 1942. The unit was soon federalized and became the last unit in the United States Army to be mounted on horses and mules. Originally posted at Fort D. A. Russell during the winter if 1943-44 near Marfa, Texas, Rudolph was bored out of his mind guarding the Mexican border, according to his wife. While in Marfa, Randolph began thinking about an advertising campaign he had worked on before the war for Jax beer that was called 'Texas Brags and Drinks Jax Beer'. He soon wrote his wife and asked her to send him his files from that campaign and began working on the manuscript for the first edition of Texas Brags while not on duty for four months. He sent the finished manuscript to his wife just before his unit was transferred to Fort Riley, Kansas in preparation for deployment to India to clear the Japanese from the Burma Road. Before leaving, Randolph arranged for his friend Mark Storm to illustrate the manuscript and for the finished product to be published by the Anson Jones Press. Once he got back to the United States in 1945, 160,000 copies had sold.



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