Exactly 172 years passed between the death of Capt. John Bird of the Texas Rangers and that of his great-great-great grandson, Kirby Lee Pope.

That’s the kind of historical tidbit that Pope would have relished — were he still around to savor it. But Pope, 68, died suddenly on May 26, while he was recovering from surgery to address his diverticulitis.

Jerry Copeland (left) and Kirby Pope have fun on the set of an October 1963 episode of “Better Living,” KWTX-TV’s home show.

A long-time “tipster” for Brazos Past and a true son of Central Texas, Pope not only lived through a lot of local history, but he helped bring those stories to the masses of the Greater Waco area throughout a 47-year-career in local broadcast television.

For example, he was just a very young audio engineer with less than two months on the job when he helped deliver the news flash to Waco viewers that President John F. Kennedy had been slain by an assassin’s bullet less than 100 miles away in Dallas.

Ranger lineage

The son of Mary Ola Hodges Pope and Weldon Freeman Pope of rural Coryell County, Kirby Pope was able to trace his family lineage back to Capt. John Bird of the Texas Rangers (his mother’s great-great grandfather).

Bird and five companions were slain by a party of Comanches, Caddo and Kickapoos in a conflict later dubbed “Bird’s Victory” or “Battle at Bird’s Creek.”

The company captain was shot through the chest by an arrow on May 26, 1839, when rallying his men. They were later buried in one large crude coffin, side-by-side, on the banks of the Little River near Fort Smith, in what is now Bell County.

Bird, born in 1795 in Tennessee, was a married father of four when he arrived in Texas in 1830. He fought with Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812, against the Comanche in 1832 and the Mexicans during the Texas Revolution in 1836.

Kirby Pope was almost “history” himself, as a child, when an F5-strength tornado struck Waco on May 11, 1953. His mother worked part-time at the Dairyette (a hamburger stand) at 18th Street and Clay Avenue, and he happened to go by after school that day to visit her.

Kirby Pope, the blond child at lower left, stands with his brother Bruce, sister Shirley (a drum major and twirler in junior high), with baby Diane in the arms of her mother, Mary. The picture was taken about 1951 in Gatesville, before their father moved the family to Waco for better job opportunities.
Kirby Lee Pope family photo

He, she and a co-worker barely had time to get into the storage room before the winds ripped the roof off the structure.

After his family came to Waco in the early 1950s so his father could find a better job than hardscrabble farming, Kirby entered the local school system, first at Bell’s Hill Elementary School and then South Junior High.

A 1961 graduate of Waco High School, Kirby Pope took a few courses at Baylor University.

“But his love of KWTX overruled any educational ambitions he might have had,” said his sister, Diane Pope Deiterman, 61.

But as a voracious reader and endlessly curious soul, he never stopped learning, she said.

His experience as an electrician’s helper during school breaks and his fascination with electronics of all sorts led to his first job in television at KWTX-TV, in October 1963.

Broadcast work

After four years, he worked a succession of jobs for TV stations in the Greater Houston area, returning to Waco in late 1969 to work two years for cross-town rival KCEN-TV as an audio director, camera operator and news film processor-editor.

From October 1972 until May 1976 , he performed similar duties for KHTV-TV in Houston, but also added part-time booth announcer to his résumé.

After an eight-month hiatus as a copper worker for Command Aire, he returned to television where it all began for him, working at KWTX-TV from March 1977 until his retirement in December 2009.

Kirby (lower left) and his brother Bruce, with sister Shirley (a drum major and twirler in junior high) with baby Diane in the arms of her mother, Mary. The picture was taken about 1951 in Gatesville, before their father moved the family to Waco for better job opportunities.
Kirby Lee Pope family photo

Pope worked in the engineering-production department, fulfilling a variety of roles: audio operator, on-air director, video tape operator-editor, film cutter, promotions editor, trouble-shooter, satellite acquisition manager, part-time graphics, producer-director for PM Magazine and unofficial station historian.

Besides Diane Pope Deiterman, Pope is survived by a sister, Shirley Pickett, and a brother, Bruce Pope.

It was Bruce, born three years before Kirby, who gave Pope his life-long family nickname of “Cub,” for the toddler found his little brother’s name too difficult to pronounce.

Additional sources: Handbook of Texas online; ODMP.org; Ancestry.com