AUDIE MURPHY is deservedly famous as the most decorated soldier of World War Two, a distinction that made him a revered Texas hero. He remained in the public eye until his untimely death in North Carolina plane crash on May 28, 1971.

He was number six in a house full of children born to poor share croppers, Emmett and Josie Bell Murphy. Everyone agrees that Audie came into this world on June 20th at a farm near the tiny crossroads of Kingston, located in Hunt County, Texas, although most people believe the year to have been 1924 while others contend it was 1926.

AN OLD ADAGE goes that “Success has many parents while failure is an orphan.” In Audie’s case, the same is true when it comes to his boyhood hometowns. The abject poverty and hardship of the Great Depression kept young Audie on the move with his family around Hunt County, one step ahead of the bill collector so to speak.

AUDIE ATTENDED school in the hamlet of Celeste. When his father deserted them, his mother and the children moved to Farmersville. Here Audie dropped out school to become a farmhand and store clerk in support of the family. Orphaned in 1936, Audie then went to Greenville where he worked in a radio repair shop until the start of the war, at which time he joined the Army.

Once the war was over and Murphy returned to Texas a certified hero, each of the four neighboring Hunt County places claimed him as their own. Today, Greenville, Farmersville, and Celeste have fine marble or bronze monuments dedicated to him, each respectively commemorating the famed warrior as their heroic hometown boy. Greenville and Farmersville also both celebrate with friendly rivalry a gala hometown Audie Murphy Day on his June birthday. Kingston is so small that it hardly exists except as a wide spot in the road, so there are few people there to remember him today. It does, however, have a State of Texas historical marker to denote Audie’s birth there as a local son.

ALL OF THIS goes to prove that Texas is still, in some ways, bigger and better than the other states of the Union. In the other 49 states, war heroes are presumably permitted to have only one hometown each. Here is the magnificent Lone Star State, our greatest World War Two hero has four of them.

All Things Historical is a syndicated weekly column in over 70 East Texas newspapers. It is provided as a public service by the East Texas Historical Association. Light T. Cummins is the Texas State Historian and the Bryan Professor of History at Austin College in Sherman.