John Robert (Jack) Kamrath Obituary
06/03/1941 – 08/13/2025
Jack Kamrath passed away on August 13, 2025 surrounded by his loving family and loving wife of forty-four (44) years, Sandra Lee.
Born on June 3, 1941 at Houston’s St. Joseph Hospital, Jack attended River Oaks Elementary, Lanier Junior High, Lamar High School (1959) and The University of Texas with a BBA in 1964 before joining Brown and Root Construction Co. for a four year tour in the 1966-1970 Viet Nam war construction buildup completing six contracts as internal auditor and Assistant Budget Director for RMK-BRJ. In Viet Nam, he met and married, Jeanne, with whom they had three incredible children in Houston, Claudine, Angela and Kevin with his wife, Molly and their two children, Lucy and Kai.
Jack married Sandra Lee McFall in 1980 in Houston. As Jack would continually remind his friends, “I married WAY over my head when I met Sandra Lee-the most gorgeous, loving and caring lady any man could hope to have as a life partner”. They had two fine sons Jeff and his wife, Ginger and their two sons, Rawlings and Peyton and Kyle and his wife, Jessica and their four children Harper, Charlie, June and Caroline. Sandra and Jack’s five children, their spouses and their eight grandchildren were the absolute center of his life for the next 44 years.
Taught the game of tennis by his mother, Eugenie Kamrath Gonzalez, the first tennis teaching professional at both River Oaks and Houston Country Clubs in 1937, Jack was an amazing all-sports competitor in tennis, golf, basketball and baseball and teacher/coach to hundreds of young athletes in tennis, baseball and golf. He was an accomplished all-around athlete winning the state high school tennis championship at Lamar HS in 1959 and then became UT’s top tennis player on two Southwest Conference team championship teams after achieving top ten national status as a junior rackateer. He won thirty-seven club tennis championships at River Oaks Country Club including fifteen singles titles and twenty-two doubles titles with six different partners. He then became a scratch golfer, reaching the finals of River Oaks club’s golf championship three times in 1990, 1994 and 1996 resulting in his fellow club golfers screaming “don’t let that tennis player win our club golf championship” which he nearly did. The ultimate sporting gentleman, Jack’s numerous tennis and golf competitors marveled at his highly competitive yet friendly, fair, and sportsmanlike approach to any competition. He always would follow his parents’ advice, “Friendships are more important than trophies and if there is any doubt about a line call in tennis or any sport, ALWAYS give the benefit of the doubt or point to your opponent”.
With a fifty-four (54) year career since 1970 as America’s leading, major tennis facility architect, Jack led a highly diversified and successful career as a designer, general contractor, real estate operator and patriotic educator. His hundreds of tennis facility projects under Tennis Planning Consultants, Inc., included the USTA rated No. 1 college tennis complex at Baylor University along with other major projects at numerous colleges, cities and resorts in forty-four states, Mexico and South America. Fifteen of these projects were awarded the USTA’s ‘Facility of the Year’ designation. From 1978, Jack’s general construction firm in Houston completed numerous retail, office, warehouse and residential building projects as Kamrath Construction Corporation. He also owned and operated several office/retail real estate projects during that time. As a member of numerous professional design and construction organizations, Jack’s business partners and associates consistently expressed appreciation and enjoyment of his honesty, fairness and integrity in his many business dealings and partnerships over five plus decades.
Concerned with the lack of factual, patriotic education in K-college history and social studies textbooks throughout America, with mother, Eugenie Kamrath Gonzalez and stepfather, Richard J. Gonzalez, Ph.D, Jack co-founded the American Heritage Education Foundation, Inc. (AHEF) in 1994 which became the nation’s largest provider of free, K-12 patriotic social studies lesson plans for teachers, families and students in all fifty states reaching over 270,000 teachers and families who taught an average of seventeen students each. AHEF earned numerous patriotic citizenship awards from national organizations including the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution’s Distinguished Patriot Award to Jack in 2008 for ‘leadership in preserving America’s heritage and the teaching of good citizenship principles’. AHEF continues its work today under the leadership of Jack’s daughters, Angela and Claudine Kamrath.
Successful designer, builder, educator and athlete, Jack’s deepest devotion was to his wife, Sandra, five children, three daughters-in-law, and eight grandchildren, Lucy, Kai, Harper, Charlie, June, Caroline, Rawlings, and Peyton Kamrath. Kevin’s wife, Molly, Jeff’s wife, Ginger and Kyle’s wife, Jessica, were the all-important brides to the Kamrath sons.
Jack was predeceased by his father, Karl F. Kamrath in 1988 and mother, Eugenie Kamrath Gonzalez in 2018 at the age of 105 years and will be buried at Glenwood Cemetery in a family service at a future date.
Remembrances in Jack’s memory can be made to the American Heritage Education Foundation, Inc. at www.americanheritage.org.
Jack Kamrath, in the link below, narrates the tennis family history through a podcast, photographs, and text, showcasing the remarkable story of one family’s impact on Longhorn and international tennis sports history.
Jack Kamrath’s Longhorn Tennis Legacy
• UT Tennis Star: Jack was the top player on two Southwest Conference championship teams during his time at the University of Texas in the early 1960s. He had already won the Texas state high school tennis championship at Lamar High School in 1959 before joining the Longhorns.
• Junior National Ranking: He reached top ten national status as a junior player, a testament to his early dominance.
• Family Tennis Heritage: Jack was taught by his mother, Eugenie “Jeannie” Sampson Kamrath Gonzalez, a pioneering tennis professional and the first teaching pro at both River Oaks and Houston Country Clubs in 1937.
• Club Champion: At River Oaks Country Club, Jack won 37 club tennis championships, including 15 singles titles and 22 doubles titles with six different partners.
• Mentor and Coach: Beyond competition, Jack was known for mentoring young athletes and sharing his love of sport generously. His sportsmanship was legendary—he lived by the motto: “Friendships are more important than trophies”.
While Jack Kamrath is not currently listed in the official Longhorn Hall of Honor, his contributions to Texas tennis and his role in preserving and narrating the Kamrath family’s legacy—through podcasts, oral histories, and mentorship—have made him a cultural cornerstone of Longhorn athletics.
Jack’s influence extended into tennis facility design or his role in preserving UT spo
May 8, 2018
On May 8, 2018, Karl Kamrath Sr. was inducted into the University of Texas Longhorn Hall of Fame in 1978 and the Texas Tennis Hall of Fame in 1984. Karl Kamrath Sr. (1911-1988) was an American architect and championship tennis player. Kamrath won several state and sectional singles and doubles championships in the East and Midwest during college. 1931, the Horns won the SWC with a perfect season at 10-0. All the finalists in singles and doubles were Longhorns. Bruce Barnes won his third straight Southwest Conference championship, and Karl Kamrath and Barnes won in doubles. Barnes and Karl Kamrath also won the national collegiate doubles title, and Kamrath was a singles finalist. After graduating from the University of Texas, he married fellow tennis player Eugenie Sampson in 1934. They divorced in 1975.
Memories
Jim Weaver
Jack was a good friend. His dedicated work in AHEF will hpoefully live on and grow so that students and teachers will know what it took to get this country to where it is. Otherwise they will have no idea what they have to lose. Good work Jack. It was a life well spent and I know you were grateful for the life God gave you.
Michael & Jeanne´ Bourg
August 21, 2025
Jack was the leader of our family for many decades. He always put family first and gave all around him positive guidance in challenging times. He will be greatly missed.
Robert Frost
August 20, 2025
I remember when Jack and I were ball boys at the River Oaks tennis tournament when they had the best players in the nation.
Mark Singleton
August 17, 2025
I had the good fortune of becoming friends with Jack over two decades ago. He immediately took me under his wing and inspired me with his inclusive, calm and friendly demeanor. It was always a privilege to be kindly taken as his guest to the River Oaks Tennis Tournament. We celebrated many birthdays too. He recently motivated me to hit golf balls with him. However, he then wisely and quickly turned me over to a patient golf pro willing to work with a beginner. Just a few months back Jack routinely was hitting the greens within 10 – 20 feet of the pin. Early in our relationship he again kindly included me in his June 29, 2009, meeting with former Education Secretary Dr. Paige, former Secretary of State James Baker, and his Mom, which obviously instilled into him his competitive spirit. It changed my life. See the attached pictures. More recently I captured a picture of Jack with his daughter Angela, and Christian statesman / author Bill Federer. I wish I had taken more pictures of our American Heritage Education Foundation development efforts. It was an honor to work with Jack on so many levels. We were more than friends. I respected him as my confidant. He will be sorely missed by me, his family, and other friends, like me, who he generously embraced as his extended family.
Rose Brodersen
August 17, 2025
Jack, Sandra, and family. My name is Rose Brodersen from California and I am Rita Griffin’s sister. Over the 40 plus years I have seen your family on my way up steps to see my sister. I remembered how happy and joyful your family was. I am saying prayers for Jack and his family during this
difficult time. I know he is flying high with the angels.
Robert and Rita Griffin
August 17, 2025
We were fortunate to be Jack´s next door neighbor and friend for 44 years.
His family was our family and we
shared happy times of our children growing up together. We are devastated by the passing of this kind and good friend.
Lanier Whilden
August 17, 2025
Jack was one of the sweetest and kind gentlemen one could hope to know. He was very special to all who knew him.
Robert W Dillard
August 17, 2025
What a man! He will be, and already is, sorely missed. I was able to meet and talk with him at length at one of our DEKE fraternity reunions in Fredericksburg a few years ago and was completely impressed with his humanity, openhearted manner, and wisdom. A real joy to know and discuss life with and even in death he was still teaching. His death has reawakened my determination to more actively maintain the connection made with our fellow travelers in the journey of this life. Robert Dillard UT DEKE 1970
August 16, 2025
May the love of friends and family carry you through this trying time. Sending our prayers
Ross D. Margraves, Jr.
August 16, 2025
Jack and I attended K-12 together and remained friends throughout the years. Jack was everything as said in his obituary and much more. Jack you will be missed. Ross Margraves
The link to the Kamrath family oral history and podcast, as told by Jack Kamrath, is at the link below.
https://texas-lsn.squarespace.com/the-kamrath-family-by-jack-kamrath
Jeannie Sampson, Kamrath, Gonzalez
The Texas Tennis Museum and Hall of Fame mourn the loss of 2012 inductee Eugenie “Jeannie” Sampson Kamrath Gonzalez, who passed away on Sunday, May 6, 2018, at 105. In her youth, in the 1920s and 1930s, Jeannie was the leading tennis player in the Midwest Section of the US Lawn Tennis Association and competed for many years at the US National Championships in Forest Hills, New York. While attending UT-Austin in 1931, she was invited by famed University of Texas tennis coach Dr. D. A. Penick to play tennis on the UT Varsity men’s tennis courts and was the first female player to be so honored.
Allowing a woman to practice tennis on the UT men’s Varsity tennis courts was unheard of then.
In 1932, 1933, and 1934, she was a women’s finalist at the fledgling Houston Invitation Tennis Tournament, which became the River Oaks Invitational Tennis Tournament and is now the USTA Clay Court Championships. As a member of River Oaks Country Club beginning in 1938, she and her first husband, Karl Kamrath, were instrumental in strengthening the club’s national invitational tournament by helping to bring some of the nation’s top amateur tennis players to the River Oaks Invitational Tennis Tournament.
For her accomplishments in playing and service to the game of tennis in Houston and Texas, Jeannie and her father were jointly inducted into the Texas Tennis Hall of Fame in 2012.
Below is a YouTube link to an honor Jeannie received. Go to the 4:25 mark to hear.
Like other Houston tennis enthusiasts, she played a pivotal role in founding the Houston Tennis Association. In 1952, she persuaded her father, Jack Sampson, to relocate from Chicago to Houston to serve as HTA’s first volunteer executive director, a position he held until 1969.
As a member of River Oaks Country Club beginning in 1938, she and her first husband, Karl Kamrath, were instrumental in strengthening the club’s national invitational tournament by helping to bring some of the nation’s top amateur tennis players to the River Oaks Invitational Tennis Tournament For her accomplishments in playing and serving the game of tennis in Houston and Texas, Jeannie and her father were jointly inducted into the Texas Tennis Hall of Fame in 2012.
Sport: Tennis (1937-39) Bob Kamrath
Inducted: 1999
Hometown: Austin, Texas
In 1937, All-American Bob Kamrath led the team to an SWC championship by winning the SWC singles title. In 1938 and 1939, he was the runner-up in singles. In 1937 and 1938, Bob Kamrath and Edgar Weller won the SWC doubles championship. In 1938, Bob Kamrath was ranked #8 in the nation.
Bob is 4th on the back row.
Jack Kamrath
Jackie Kamrath
Jack Kamrath, Co-Founder and Vice-President
American Heritage Education Foundation, Inc.
