George Dolan

Fort Worth Star-Telegram Columnist - Deceased
Sept. 24, 1923 - Nov. 26, 1988

Hall of Fame Class of 2022

George Dolan may have been Forth Worth Star-Telegram’s face to West Texas, but his whole persona wriggled its way to readers south of the Red River and east of the Pecos, too.

Dolan was a beloved humorist with a cackling laugh said to be in E Flat and had a wit as dry as the Texan sand. He parlayed this humor in his daily column for over 30 years and spanning four decades.

George Bernard Dolan was born in Temple in 1923. By the age of 16, he was working at the Temple Daily Telegram. WWII made him a B-17 navigator and he returned to the Daily Telegram after the war.

He became a general assignment reporter at the Star-Telegram in 1948.

His page-one column “This is West Texas” began in 1957 and later, the name was changed to George Dolan.

Dolan covered it all – stock shows, rodeos, farm and ranch news, political speeches and even Fort Worth’s gangland crime in the 1950s. This was the final decade of Amon Carter’s leadership at the Star-Telegram and Carter decreed that the paper’s domain would include “every farmer and rancher, every pump jack and jackrabbit … after all, Fort Worth was where the West begins.”

Dolan wrote many times about the Brownwood Mafia. When asked if it was the real mafia or civic group, Dolan responded “It bears some resemblance to both. While it may lack some of the killer instinct of your average civic booster group, it does have all the charm of the real Mafia.”

Fort Worth Star-Telegram/George Dolan Memorial Scholarship is awarded at Texas Christian University each year and a resolution by the Texas House of Representatives was bestowed on him, too.

He passed away at his home after battling cancer on Nov. 26, 1988 at the age of 65. He was still writing his column up until a few months before his death.