Freestone County, Texas
Obits


Bowers Funeral Home website

John Benton Fulton Jr. 
(July 19, 1914 - January 28, 2007) 

Long-time Teague resident and retired railroad engineer, John Benton Fulton Jr.
died Sunday, Jan. 28, 2007, in Dallas of natural causes. He was 92. Funeral 
services will be held on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 2:00p.m. at Bowers 
Funeral Home Chapel. Visitation will be held on Tuesday with the family present
from 5:00p.m. until 7:00p.m. at the funeral home. Mr. Fulton was born in Teague 
on July 19, 1914, but spent most of his adolescence in Waxahachie, where he 
graduated from Waxahachie High School. After two years of college he followed
in his father’s footsteps to work for the railroad, a career that he loved. He 
was hired as a fireman on the Burlington-Rock Island railroad on July 6, 1937, 
and fired for his father, engineer John B. Fulton Sr., on the Texas Rocket 
passenger train between Teague and Houston. Fulton married Teague native Sara 
Dell Pyburn in 1940. They raised two sons, John B. Fulton III and Philip Dennis 
Fulton. Fulton was promoted to engineer on Aug. 9, 1943. While he enjoyed 
working on both steam and diesel locomotives, one of his saddest duties was as 
engineer on the last steam engine out of Teague to Fort Worth on Oct 5, 1953. 
He retired from the railroad in 1979, after 42 years of service – all but one 
month of it based in Teague. He was preceded in death by wife Sara, who died in 
1984, and by his parents, John B. Fulton and Jane Riden Smith Fulton. Fulton 
moved from Teague to Dallas in 2004. One of his favorite weekend activities was
a ride to the railroad switching yards, where he’d talk about the good old days.
Fulton is survived by two sons, John of South Boston, Va., and Dennis of Dallas,
grandson John (Jack) B. Fulton IV and granddaughter Liza Brook Fulton, both of 
Virginia Beach, Va., his sister, Margaret Middleton and her husband Bob of 
Dallas, and a large extended family of both Fultons and Pyburns and many friends.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that any donations be made to the BRI 
Railroad Museum in Teague or the First Baptist Church in Teague, where he has
been a long-time member.