Edith Royal, the wife of former Texas football coach Darrell Royal and the matriarch of the Longhorns program, died Monday at the age of 98.
Royal has been described over the years as a vibrant, strong woman and dedicated wife.
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On Monday, Texas head football coach Steve Sarkisian said his program hopes to honor the legacy that Darrell and Edith Royal left on the UT campus.
Darrell Royal, who died in 2012, was a championship-winning coach from 1957-76 and the namesake of Royal-Memorial Stadium. Edith Royal visited the stadium for Longhorns football games even as a widow.
"I did not get to meet coach Royal, but I got a wonderful video message from Edith when I first got the job here that I still have," Sarkisian said. "The impact that they've had here, not only at the University of Texas, but in Austin, the impact that coach Royal had on the game of football itself.
"The fact that I get to sit in the same chair he did is pretty humbling. You know, it's definitely an honor. Hopefully, we can go out and play a brand of football that he'd be proud of."
A native of Oklahoma, Edith Royal grew up poor before meeting Darrell, also an Oklahoman. They were married for nearly seven decades.
Edith and Darrell dated as he enlisted in the military and married in 1944, by the time he began playing football at OU. She cared for her husband in his final days as they lived in an assisted living facility. Former Statesman columnist Kirk Bohls wrote, in part, after Darrell died Nov. 7, 2012 :
Darrell and Edith Royal went from a pair of hard-scrabble, country kids who grew up in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl era to become one of the most prominent and celebrated couples in Texas.
As Royal took the Southwest Conference by storm and became the winningest coach in Longhorns football history with three national championships and 11 conference titles in 20 seasons, Edith was constantly by his side. As she was up until Wednesday morning, when Royal died of a heart condition at age 88. ...
“It’s pretty amazing,” Edith said (in November 2012). “For two little kids from Harmon County, Oklahoma, to do all the things we’ve done and meet all the people we’ve met, it’s something. But I would definitely say this is the fourth quarter for us.”
Royal had been struggling with the devastating affects of Alzheimer’s, and last week moved to the Memory Floor of Querencia at Barton Creek, where white-haired Edith, at 87, remains her vibrant, cheery self and lived nearby in the assisted living facility’s independent wing.
While Royal cracked a vertebra recently and was learning how to get around in a wheelchair on the fourth floor, Edith’s daily schedule had been “jam-packed” between caring for her suffering husband, staying active and tending to their four grandchildren.
Edith, a strong, independent woman, will be fine, surrounded by family and friends. As she said this week, “I grew up happy. My family treated me like a queen bee. I preferred working in the cotton fields over housework, and the harder I worked, the more they bragged on me. Who wouldn’t be happy?”
Edith Royal was known for her work with the Darrell K Royal Research Fund for Alzheimer's Disease . Darrell Royal suffered from the disease for years, and Edith created the foundation months before he died.
The couple had three children and are survived by a lone son, Sammy Mack Royal.
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This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Edith Royal, wife of former Texas coach Darrell Royal, dies at 98
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