James “Oliver” Dulaney, of Splendora, Texas, recently passed away, in a house that he built on a street named after him, following a prolonged period of “winding down”. The cause was determined as inevitable and unavoidable old age, with his doctors and nurses all agreeing that he only lasted as long as he did due to his hard-headedness.

One of seven children, Oliver came into this world on Groundhog’s Day in 1937 during the depths of the Great Depression. He was born in a log-cabin belonging to a relative named Oliver Spear, who also shared the same birthday, so in a gesture of appreciation he was given the name Oliver. His father, Allen Colean Dulaney, was from a family of fishermen that followed the catch, and his mother, Minnie Lou Sallas, was from the nearby hamlet of Plum Grove, Texas, where her family owned and operated the Sallas Grocery store.

Oliver spent most of his life in and around Splendora, named after the splendor of its flora, but enjoyed his fair share of travel and adventures including firing the rifle of Billy the Kid, befriending the musician Ernest Tubb, sailing a banana boat through the Panama Canal, nearly freezing to death in North Dakota, and nearly dying from the heat in Death Valley, California.

He reluctantly yet dutifully served two years in the United States Army. It was mostly an uneventful military career, though he made some good photographs in uniform, made a German friend named Rudy Folkens, and made it with a much older woman down in the West Texas town of El Paso. All of these stories would be retold many times during his life, gradually growing more heroic and elaborate with each re-telling.

After completing his patriotic duty he returned to Splendora to marry his hometown sweetheart, the much younger Mary Carolyn “Carol” Hood, on June 4th, 1965. Later in life, Oliver would sometimes refer to Carol as his “Old Lady”, but as she was more than once mistaken as his daughter, the term “Trophy Wife” might have been more appropriate.

Shortly after their wedding, with his new bride on the back of his Harley Davidson, Oliver rode in the rain to Pasadena, Texas to interview for a job. For the next 33 years he worked for Brown & Root in Baytown, Texas, until his retirement in 1998.

On a swath of resistant East Texas land near the railroad, in an area known with good reason as the Big Thicket, he cleared a dirt road, naming it after himself, and there on several acres Oliver and Carol would build a life together. Over the years their compound in Splendora would be called home by them and their two children as well as Oliver’s parents and Carol’s parents and brothers and cousins and nieces and nephews and friends and tenants and in-laws and chickens and horses and pigs and turkeys and ducks and turtles and fish and hamsters and parakeets and a succession of good dogs and a few cats and one alligator named Al.

Oliver had many talents and interests and was good at most everything he put his mind to, including gardening, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, wood carving, photography, drawing (he designed his own gravestone), and painting - having his first painting exhibition when he was 80 years old. In his golden years he enjoyed writing, and would spend hours at his desk documenting his memoirs which would weave seamlessly between fact and fiction.

Oliver outlived his parents and most of his siblings, many of his in-laws, all of his aunts and uncles, and his favorite nephew Bobby Gene Hood. He is survived by his wife of 61 years Carolyn Hood Dulaney of Splendora, his son Scott “Alton” DuLaney, an artist, curator and television personality of Houston, Texas, his daughter Dr. Laurie Elaine Wolf Dulaney, a veterinarian of Austin, Texas, her husband Chuck Cruse and their daughter Jessie Wolf Cruse, Oliver’s only grandchild, also known as Little Miss Thing for obvious reasons. Additionally he leaves behind his youngest sister, Charlotte Dulaney Baker of League City, Texas, numerous nephews and nieces including Angela Hood Hodges of Kingwood, Texas, who he considered practically his third child and her two boys Landen Earl Hood and Raiden Kyle McClesky and dozens of cousins and all his bingo buddies at the East Montgomery County Senior Center.

Oliver was an avid collector - some might even say a hoarder, though he would disagree - and he was a tireless genealogist, tracing his lineage back multiple generations. He collected artifacts and stories from his family in an effort to preserve their history. On Sunday morning, July 12, 2026, at the ripe old age of 89, after a good long full life, Oliver departed this world, passing forever into those stories and that history.