His Name Was Jack
A Sandhills Cowboy
by
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Jack Galloway died in 1987, a year after his mother and two years after his wife, Alice. When Alice, my mother, died in 1985, he wasn’t sure what he’d do without her. I said, “Write. Write a book.” Of course, that suggestion was dismissed when he said he was no writer. In 2005 I wrote about an impending book in my “Up Close” column for a local newspaper. I told my readers my dad was a writer. He had written me letters through the years because I lived 500 miles away from him and Mom. I knew he could write. So I told him to write about each of the horses in his life. I rattled a few off, “Write about Patty Ann, Old Pal, Eagle, Darky and Spike or Harding,” I said. “Then write about the people you’ve known. There was Old Poke Kidder and Floyd Jones, to name a couple.” There are only three people left on earth who can read his writing. That’s my daughter, my sister and me. We hashed around getting the stories typed, organized and printed. My sister’s boys and my children knew Granddad Jack. The great-grandchildren did not, but maybe these stories will give them an inkling of the cowboy he was. Fast forward to today and you are holding a collection of Jack Galloway’s stories and poems in your hand. Putting this together is a tribute to the man who was one of the last of his generation of Sandhills cowboys. He was a personable man who could ride a horse, rope, sing, dance and, unknown to him, he could write. Enjoy his stories. Nancy Galloway Hamar
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About the Book
Jack Galloway died in 1987, a year after his mother and two years after his wife, Alice. When Alice, my mother, died in 1985, he wasn’t sure what he’d do without her. I said, “Write. Write a book.” Of course, that suggestion was dismissed when he said he was no writer.
In 2005 I wrote about an impending book in my “Up Close” column for a local newspaper. I told my readers my dad was a writer. He had written me letters through the years because I lived 500 miles away from him and Mom. I knew he could write. So I told him to write about each of the horses in his life. I rattled a few off , “Write about Patty Ann, Old Pal, Eagle, Darky and Spike or Harding,” I said. “Then write about the people you’ve known. There was Old Poke Kidder and Floyd Jones, to name a couple.”
There are only three people left on earth who can read his writing. That’s my daughter, my sister and me. We hashed around getting the stories typed, organized and printed. My sister’s boys and my children knew Granddad Jack. The great-grandchildren did not, but maybe these stories will give them an inkling of the cowboy he was.
Fast forward to today and you are holding a collection of Jack Galloway’s stories and poems in your hand. Putting this together is a tribute to the man who was one of the last of his generation of Sandhills cowboys. He was a personable man who could ride a horse, rope, sing, dance and, unknown to him, he could write. Enjoy his stories.
About the Author
The actual author of most of these stories is Jack Junior Galloway, born in the Sandhills of Nebraska in 1919 and died in those same Sandhills in 1987, but the person responsible for this compilation of his letters, poems and stories is his oldest daughter, Nancy Jo Galloway Hamar.
Nancy Galloway Hamar married young – 18 – and left the Sandhills when her husband, Roland “Smokey” Hamar, made the decision to farm instead of ranch. They bought a small farm in Southern Iowa, expanded to a few more acres when it became available and then moved “to town” – Allerton, Iowa, Population 539 in the mid-1980’s. It was during this time that Nancy’s oldest son, Bob, was working for the weekly newspaper in Corydon, IA., and he told her that the publisher was looking for someone to help out with covering the Wayne County Fair. She took on the challenge and never looked back. She wrote a weekly column for that newspaper for over 20 years, she covered school boards and fair boards and city councils, met and wrote about interesting people every week and never ever stopped learning. She buried her mother, her father, her grandmother, her husband, her son Dave and she never stopped writing, and she never stopped learning.
A tradition in Nancy’s family – her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren – is whenever and wherever they celebrate Christmas, at the end of the evening wine is poured and toast is drank “To those who came before us and to those who will come after us”. This book is dedicated to her father and those that came after him, but this book is really about a daughter’s love for her daddy and making sure that what he wrote so long ago is preserved for the generations to come.