Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Dan True at his home in Clovis. Behind True, a longtime television weather personality in Amarillo, are translations of nature books he wrote.
Tributes came from throughout Texas and New Mexico last week as area nature lovers and weather watchers remembered a True legend.
Dan True, who spent 40 years forecasting rain, snow and sunshine on regional television stations and a lifetime studying the world around him, died Wednesday. He was 97.
One line in his obituary perhaps summed up his colorful personality: "There probably has never been a weather forecast when a rattlesnake is thrown out on the floor by the weatherman and a roadrunner attacks and kills it."
Described in the family's obituary as a man with "the mind of a scientist and the personality of a born showman" True left impressions on generations of High Plains residents as evidenced by social media comments on the posting of his obituary.
Some of those comments: "I will always remember him as the weatherman." "My parents never missed his 'educated estimate' weather forecast." "He was awesome." "A legend that people of the Texas Panhandle and other areas have many memories of." and "My dad thought he was the ONLY weather forecaster worth listening to."
"Dan True was so popular his ratings will never be touched," said Dave Oliver a longtime Amarillo television weatherman.
"My early days were in his last days on Amarillo television," Oliver said. "He was on from the 1950s to the early '70s, he went to work in Albuquerque then he came back to Amarillo and we worked together in 1989."
"What I remember most are all the awesome stories of early television," Oliver said.
"He was a pilot, had his own plane and he kept it out back of the television station. It had its own landing strip. This is back when there were no cell phones, communication was limited so if he saw a plume of smoke in the distance he was in his plane and up in the air."
"Dan came back for a visit around 2000," Oliver continued. "We walked to where the landing strip used to be. You could see the wheels turning in his head that if he just had a plane..."
"Dan True was the pioneer television weatherman," Oliver said.
Family members reported True lived in well over 30 communities in his lifetime and that was before he volunteered for the Army Air Corps during World War II. He settled in Clovis for his final decades, a regular roaming the city streets on his bicycle.
Nick Brady, a former Clovis radio and television broadcaster, agreed with Oliver that True was a pioneer TV weather forecaster.
"I knew him because his wife was my sister's best friend growing up," Brady said. "When he married my sister's friend I discovered who he was. I remember he always had a flat-top haircut."
Karl Terry, executive director of the Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce, remembers hearing practical advice from True's TV forecast he heard regularly as a boy.
"From Dan True we learned to be prepared. Always carry a jar of peanut butter and a blanket in your car when you traveled in case you got stranded," Terry said.
Many will also remember him as a wildlife writer.
"I read his books on observing eagles at Palo Duro Canyon," Terry said. "He was a good writer."
Sheryl Borden, who hosted a PBS TV show for more than 45 years, said she had True on her show as a guest a few times.
"He was just the authority on everything weather in the area," Borden said. "And his name, I just thought it was funny. True. Dan True. So if he said it, it just had to be true."
