Craig Campobella, the Sculptor Who Cast the Texas Revolution in Bronze, Dies

Craig Campobella, the Conroe sculptor whose bronzes mark the first moments of the Texas Revolution from Anahuac to Gonzales, died peacefully in his sleep on Thursday, Cristy Campobella announced on Friday. A celebration of his life will be announced later, she wrote.

Campobella was a Houston native who worked in radio before bronze became his trade. His best-known piece stands beside the Montgomery County library on the Interstate 45 frontage road in Conroe: the Texian, a bronze of the common volunteer soldier of the Revolution more than 13 feet tall, unveiled before about 1,500 people on April 21, 2011, the 175th anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto. It is the centerpiece of the Lone Star Monument and Historical Flag Park. The statue carries its history in its details. Under the left foot are 13 stones for the days of the Alamo siege, marked with 354 lines for the men killed at Goliad. Under the right foot are nine stones for the Texans who died at San Jacinto, and the 18 buttons on the coat count the minutes of that battle. The park also holds his bust of Charles B. Stewart, who is credited with designing the Lone Star Flag.

At Fort Anahuac Park in Chambers County, his life-size bronzes of William B. Travis and Patrick Jack stand on the monument called First Stand. In 1832, Col. Juan Davis Bradburn, the Mexican commander at Anahuac, arrested the two lawyers and held them in an empty brick kiln because the jail was not secure, according to the Handbook of Texas. The Chambers County Historical Commission commissioned the pair in 2019.

In Montgomery, a 14-foot bronze he finished in 2019 honors Samuel McCulloch Jr., a free Black Texan whom the Handbook of Texas calls the first Texan casualty of the Revolution, wounded in the right shoulder at Goliad on October 9, 1835. In Conroe, his gold-leafed Texas Lady Liberty stands at the Spirit of Texas Bank headquarters. In 2023, a statue he sculpted of the Battle of Gonzales, the October 2, 1835 fight over a small cannon, was donated to the City of Gonzales by David Thomas Roberts, a member of the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) Advisory Board.

His work reached past history. He made a bust of Dr. James “Red” Duke for the Memorial Hermann trauma institute named for the surgeon, and bronzes of country singers including Marty Stuart and Guy Clark. The Sons of the Republic of Texas gave him its True Texian Award in 2015, and both chambers of the Texas Legislature honored him by resolution in 2021.

Campobella was a longtime TNM supporter. Years ago, TNM commissioned smaller versions of the Texian to raise money for the movement, and one sits on the shelf behind TNM President Daniel Miller during his weekly livestream, Late Night Coffee Talk. Miller described them on the air in June 2024. “Many, many years ago, the TNM commissioned Craig Campobella, the guy who actually designed the Texian statue, to make smaller versions of it and to help us raise funds,” he said. “Interesting thing about these statues is they all have the name of a Texas Revolution hero on them.”

“Craig took the men who started this fight in 1832 and 1835 and put them in bronze where Texans could see them every day, from Anahuac to Gonzales to Conroe,” Miller said Saturday. “I was in Gonzales in 2023 when his statue was unveiled, and one of his Texians has stood on the shelf behind me every Thursday night for years. Most of the folks watching never knew who made it. Perhaps no one in our generation did more to keep the Texas Revolution in front of Texans, and we are poorer for losing him.”