San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
‘Goat gland’ doctor’s son was teased as a cadet
Second of two columns
Last week’s column traced the rise to wealth and fame of “goat-gland” surgeon and borderblaster radio pitchman John R. Brinkley, who migrated to Texas after he lost both medical and radio licenses in Kansas.
The family settled in Del Rio and also had ties to San Antonio, where they kept a house near the end of the “rejuvenation” specialist’s flashy heyday.
His son, John R. “Johnny” Brinkley III, enrolled at Peacock Military Academy at age 12 in early 1939, Donna Peacock writes in “Parade Rest,” a history of the Woodlawn-area private school for boys.
“He should have blended in easily — just another uniformed figure among many,” says Peacock, granddaughter of school founder Wesley Peacock. “But then, no other boy there had his own bodyguard or a floodlight outside his barrack-room window, or still another guard who patrolled the campus at night.”
Peacock goes on to say that “the boy was not a good mixer, and although hazing was never permitted at the Academy, he was nevertheless the brunt of schoolboy teasing, and his guards (were subject to) typical pranks.”
Cadets made goat noises at the boy and dropped bags of water on the guards on watch below their dorm-room windows. “It was a case of notoriety by association,” Peacock says.
Perhaps trying to help his son by providing some celebrity perks, Brinkley Sr., a longtime benefactor of Boys Town in Nebraska, brought its charismatic founder, Father Edward J. Flanagan, to Peacock.
When Flanagan came to San Antonio to visit local boys’ clubs and religious institutions, he also visited the secular school, “at the request of Dr. John R. Brinkley, on whose yacht Father Flanagan had spent a few days,” says the San Antonio Light, March 20, 1939.
At the school, Flanagan
met some high-ranking cadets and “praised Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney and other actors for their sympathetic performances” in the 1938 movie
‘Boys Town.’ ”
‘Glory years’
The following year, young Brinkley lived with his bodyguard off-campus in a house rented for them at 507 W. Magnolia Ave.
“Academy staff enjoyed a brief taste of the Brinkley glory years,” says Peacock.
When “Gone with the Wind” opened here Feb. 7, 1940, the elder Brinkley “hosted a dinner party at the St. Anthony Hotel for the entire faculty.
“After the meal, the guests found a string of taxicabs lined up outside to transport them in style to the Texas Theatre.”
Shortly after this time, the Brinkleys’ charmed existence began to crumble.
There were challenges to his medical license, wrongful death lawsuits,
a libel suit that didn’t go his way, mail-fraud charges, bankruptcy and the loss of his XERA license.
Returning in his private plane from unsuccessful negotiations in Mexico City, he had a heart attack, which led to a swift cascade of health woes.
The doctor who suggested his treatments could help patients live to 100 had a leg amputated as a result of a blood clot.
Gangrene set in, and a further amputation was required. Brinkley was rushed to San Antonio in a private ambulance to be treated by a local heart specialist.
The house on Magnolia became the family’s new home base — when he wasn’t in the Nix Hospital and his wife, Minnie Brinkley, wasn’t testifying in federal court in Little Rock, Ark.
During his illness, Minnie Brinkley says in the “Goat Gland” documentary, the former surgeon was studying correspondence
courses in Christian ministry, in hopes of regaining his radio audience with prayer and sermons.
From his sickbed, Brinkley wrote a January 1942 letter to his Little Rock attorney enumerating reasons why he couldn’t pay him.
Near the end
As quoted by Lee, he says his wife had to borrow the money to make her most recent court appearance, noting that, “unless we get some relief, we will not be able to educate our son,” presumably referring to Johnny’s Peacock tuition.
The elder Brinkley died at 59 on May 26, 1942, and was buried in his wife’s family plot in Memphis, Tenn.
His son left Peacock and graduated from Del Rio High School.
He went on to Yale University, where he studied psychology and Spanish, and later to law school at the University of Texas.
He served in counterintelligence for the Army while stationed in Germany and then for the CIA in Cuba, according to the Del Rio News-Herald,
Oct. 22, 1976.
Johnny Brinkley, who struggled with alcoholism, also practiced briefly as a lawyer, had a photography studio in New York and worked for the lumber company his father had owned.
Married in 1959, he became the father of a daughter, Angela, of whom he won custody after a divorce.
They stayed in Del Rio, and his mother helped to bring up her granddaughter.
Minnie Brinkley, who was let off with fines and probation for her part in the mail-fraud case, had a trust to sustain her and remained in the family mansion.
She tried to sell it in 1949, placing an ad in the Wall Street Journal, but got no takers at her asking price of $375,000.
The younger Brinkley
died Oct. 21, 1976, by suicide at home in Del Rio, where he was found by his mother and daughter. His mother died in 1980.
The Del Rio house, which has since passed out of family hands, is recognized with a Texas Historical Commission marker.
SALUTE TO A SCHOOL:
Alumni of Peacock Military Academy (1894-1973) and Donna Peacock, granddaughter of its founder, will share their memories of the Woodlawn-area campus with a program starting at 10 a.m. March 18 in the community room of the Patrick Heath Public Library, 451 N. Main St. in Boerne.
Observing the 50th anniversary of the school’s closing, historical images and artifacts also will be on display in the library’s ground-floor gallery.