Three Mavericks

When I met Sen. John McCain a decade ago, his first words to me were: “You are the very personification of a maverick.” I’m pretty sure he meant that as a compliment. And I certainly took it as such, for the people I most admire are mavericks—the free spirits who defy the corporate order and carve out a new path, not just for their own gain, but for the common good.

Hightower, with his maverick friend Carol Ann Sayle at her historic Boggy Creek Farm in East Austin, leaning on Hightower’s hybrid pickup, a Ford Maverick.

When I met Sen. John McCain a decade ago, his first words to me were: “You are the very personification of a maverick.” I’m pretty sure he meant that as a compliment. And I certainly took it as such, for the people I most admire are mavericks—the free spirits who defy the corporate order and carve out a new path, not just for their own gain, but for the common good.

Carol Ann Sayle is a prime example. When the Texas Department of Agriculture launched the nation’s first state-certified organic farm program in the 1980s, Carol Ann and her late husband Larry Butler were at the front of the line with their 5-acre urban farm, also pioneering in direct marketing and regenerative agriculture. They were wildly creative, joyous innovators, rebelling against chemicalized, conglomeratized, monopolized food. I loved them from the start.

WHAT’S IN A NAME? It’s widely known that “maverick” is another word for nonconformist, but few know that the term comes from a South Texas family by that name. Samuel Maverick immigrated to San Antonio in 1835 to seek fame and fortune, soon becoming a major landowner, cattle rancher, and political official.

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