Last month in Long Beach, California, Wimberley’s Patrick Cox, Ph.D., accepted the 2025 Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Journalism Historians Association, their highest honor.
Cox is retired from the University of Texas at Austin where he was associate director of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History and taught at the UT Austin College of Journalism. He is a Distinguished Alum of Texas State University. Prior to his academic career, he was an award-winning journalist at The Wimberley View newspaper. He is the author and editor of 10 books and is the president of Patrick Cox Consultants, LLC.
Last week, Cox was the guest of honor at a hometown tribute hosted by the Wimberley Village Library and the Wimberley Literary Salon.
“We were thrilled to co-host this event because Patrick Cox isn’t just a talented author — he’s also one of our own. As a library board member,
PHOTO BY TERESA KENDRICK he’s been a big supporter of our mission, and it was really special to celebrate his work with the community,” said Library Director Carolyn Manning.
During her opening remarks for the evening’s tribute, Wimberley Literary Salon President Chick Morgan told assembled friends and wellwishers, “I have never taken a red pen to a document as I did to Patrick’s bio. Honestly, with his accomplishments, we could have gone on all night.”
Morgan’s ribbing ushered in a buoyant evening of storytelling by Cox himself. One of the stories he told was one he often related to his journalism students. “It came,” Cox said, “under the headline of Failure to communicate and lessons learned.”
“When my mother and stepfather and I started the newspaper in 1976, we did a number of things, like a paper does today, such as writing feature stories about the people who worked for local businesses. We covered ribbon cuttings, took photos, and ran a little feature story to give new businesses some extra publicity.”
”Well, there was a new and — for lack of a better word — restaurant called the Feed Bag. I think it’s where the donut shop is now. The owner came up with this clever motto that he was very proud of and insisted we put it in the paper, ‘We’re serving country fine, country fried chicken.’” “So when the paper came out, we had the story with the big picture and its caption under the photo. The caption read, ‘The Feedbag’s grand opening. Come and try their country fine, country fried children.”
“Of course, I went down to the Feed Bag because my mother and stepfather said, ‘You’re the editor, go talk to him and apologize.’ So I went down there but I was not expecting a friendly reception.”
“The owner came up and said, ‘Hey, we were waiting, hoping you were going to come today.’ And I told him I was there to apologize. And he said, ‘No, no, you don’t have to. Ever since the story came out a day or two ago, we’ve had all of these people come by the restaurant, and a lot of them said, hey, we brought our children for you.’” “So the lesson I learned from that experience was this,” he told the crowd, “you will work with all kinds of people in the community and you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to screw up, just like I did, and people will understand that no one is perfect. Just keep going forward.”
After this story and several more, Cox invited the group to enjoy another glass of wine and strike up a conversation with someone they had never met before. Following his advice, the room was soon filled with anecdotes, narratives and laughter.
“It was extra special to celebrate Wimberley’s own Dr. Patrick Cox in a jointly sponsored event between the Wimberley Village Library and the Wimberley Literary Salon. One of the purposes of the Wimberley Literary Salon is to celebrate and elevate our local writers, so even though Patrick was recently fêted in California, we wanted to show our hometown appreciation and admiration for this award and his career,” said Chick Morgan, President and Co-Founder of the Wimberley Literary Salon.
