RIP George Bankston, Chief of Range Enforcement

This past week we said goodbye to my old Boss, George Lewis Bankston, retired Chief of Range Enforcement. George crossed over to be with our Lord 82 years after he was born in Tahoka, Texas. Prior to me knowing him as Chief of Range Enforcement, where he hired me on as an Army Range Rider, George served in the US Army as a soldier, fighting in Vietnam and earning a Bronze Star and Purple Heart, retiring after 22 years of service as a Master Sergeant.

Serving for 18 years as Chief of Range Enforcement, George always balanced the Government ownership of 1.2 million acres of Fort Bliss military reservation with stewardship of the land and animals, and the needs of the ranchers grazing cattle on BLM managed grazing units.

El Paso, Texas sits in the South end of the Tularosa Basin where the Franklin and Hueco Mountains make up the West and East borders of the basin respectively. About 70 years ago, family ranches were bought up, or the government used other tools such as condemnation and/or imminent domain, to force families to move in order to create the Fort Bliss military reservation. George Bankston understood the distrust of the government these families and their descendants still had and he took great care in ensuring they had a voice and were treated with respect.

George took the Army's Range Enforcement Agency from a group of Cowboys removing trespass humans and cattle to a professional Law Enforcement Agency trained at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center at Glynco, Georgia with increased responsibility and authority for enforcing Wildlife, Archeological and Natural Resources law, while maintaining the origins of the agency in gathering trespass cattle and moving them to their home pastures. 

The photo at above is George with his six Army Range Riders at an awards ceremony. George not only towered above people physically, his intelligence was equal to his stature.

None of this would have been possible without George Bankston having a vision and lobbying the Army for funding and authority to create what he knew to be necessary to protect and be good stewards of the land and resources we were blessed to have.

After retiring from Range Enforcement, this great big bear of a man took great pleasure in teaching Sunday School and sharing the gospel of Christ at Waddill Street Baptist church in McKinney, Texas. No doubt George is with his children Mark and Jackie who went before him, and he left this life entrusting his four adult children, sixteen grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren to Tina, his wife of 63 years. I wish I had one more phone call with George. He was interned at Fort Bliss National Cemetery with Full Military Honors befitting man who served his country and the people so well in life. God Bless.