Kenneth Wayne Catmull died on December 7, 2019, in Tomball, TX. Brilliant, fierce, stubborn, relentless, and monumentally kind, he leaves behind six children grateful for his legacy of extraordinary character and love.

As an oil executive in the 1970s, he testified before Congress and worked with Senators Ted Kennedy and Scoop Jackson to keep space in the marketplace for independent oil companies. Later, as a divorce attorney, he saved numerous women from bad husbands and bad settlements; many of his clients became his friends for life. He also worked with the FBI to end corruption among family law judges in Houston.

He was born in 1932 in Salt Lake City, UT, son of a theater professor and a pianist, and spent his childhood in Rupert and Rexburg ID as well as Salt Lake. From age three until he joined the Army, he lived every summer in Yellowstone National Park, where his father was a seasonal ranger, an experience that shaped him profoundly. He worked one season as a ranger himself, watching for fires, catching a bear named Jesse James, and patrolling the deep woods alone on horseback for thirty days.

The Army was the second great influence on his life: He was rated the highest in leadership in his Officer Candidate School class, and his service as a lieutenant on an artillery base in Skokie, IL was among the most treasured periods of his life.

Afterwards, he returned to the University of Utah and earned a BS in Psychology, an MBA, and a law degree.

As a teenage busboy in Yellowstone, Ken first dated the third great influence on his life, Anne Mary Murphy, whom he wed in 1957 while still in school. It was a fifty-two-year love affair of a marriage. When Anne developed Alzheimer's in 2000, Ken spent the next ten years caring for her alone in their Tomball log cabin—a lodge he and his father built themselves in the 1990s—until her death in 2010.

He is survived by his six children, Katherine Catmull (Kenneth Webster) of Austin, TX; Joseph Catmull of Canoga Park, CA; Kenneth Catmull, Jr. (Kathleen Stradinger Catmull) of Spring, TX; Annie Catmull (Todd Campbell) of Houston, TX; Nancy (Gene) Matocha of Flower Mound, TX; and Thomas Catmull (Laurel Miller) of Missoula, MT; by his sisters Sylvia Nichols of Providence Village, TX; Jeanne Anne Kempe of Layton, UT; and Ellen Connole of Denver, CO; and by grandchildren John Stradinger, Emma and Brendan Matocha, and Jack and Mason Catmull. He was predeceased by his wife Anne Murphy Catmull and his sister Jolene Catmull.

He will be cremated by Klein Funeral Home and buried alongside his wife at Houston National Cemetery, 10410 Veterans Memorial Drive in Houston, where a brief service will be held for family and close friends at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 18. (To join family at the ceremony, email nancymatocha@gmail.com for details.) A memorial gathering will be held the same day from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at The Estates at Pecan Park, 22633 Park Rd., Tomball to celebrate the life of this remarkable man

Flowers may be sent to the Klein Funeral Home in Tomball, TX. Alternatively, donations may be sent to the Wounded Warrior Project or the Alzheimer's Association in honor of Kenneth W. Catmull.