{"id":219340,"date":"2025-09-11T23:03:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T23:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/219340\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T23:03:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T23:03:17","slug":"san-antonio-novelist-playwright-one-time-current-columnist-jack-sibley-has-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/219340\/","title":{"rendered":"San Antonio novelist, playwright, one-time Current columnist Jack Sibley has died"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WilliamWilliam Jack Sibley penned the Current\u2019s San Antonio Eccentrics column and a whole lot more. Credit: Facebook \/ William Jack Sibley<\/p>\n

Multifaceted writer William Jack Sibley, who penned the Current\u2019s San Antonio Eccentrics column in the late aughts and early 2010s, died unexpectedly at a San Antonio hospital on Aug. 31, according to friends.<\/p>\n

The 72-year-old was an energetic storyteller, equally adept at bringing tales to life on the written page or in conversation. In addition to a trio of novels, he penned plays, screenplays, served as a contributing editor at Andy Warhol\u2019s Interview Magazine, composed dialogue for TV shows including Guiding Light and Murphy Brown and worked on his family\u2019s ranches.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just your common, everyday, New York City, Texas, rancher playwright novelist,\u201d Sibley told the Express-News in 2021 after the publication of his novel Here We Go Loop De Loop, the third installment in a series highlighting unusual characters in rural Texas.<\/p>\n

The fourth novel in that series, The Hang of It, is expected to release soon, his family said in an online obituary. <\/p>\n

Sibley was born in Corpus Christi and moved to upstate New York in 6th grade , according to the obit. Later, while living in Scarsdale, north of New York City, he began taking acting classes. His time attending college in Austin hurled him into radio, TV and film. <\/p>\n

After time in New York, LA and elsewhere, Sibley settled in San Antonio, living in a River Road home designed by renowned architect Don B. McDonald that associates describe as being full of eclectic art.<\/p>\n

Between work on his novels and travels that he wrote up for magazines and newspapers, the fifth-generation rancher would drive to the his family\u2019s cattle operation in Atascosa County to help out his siblings, the obituary notes. <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time we introduced [Sibley] to one of our friends, we would go on and on about how glamorous he was \u2014 how he once kissed Andy Warhol on the street in New York, he was an announcer at Sea World but couldn\u2019t get Shamu to perform, he was a flight attendant for Braniff in the groovy \u201970s!\u201d friend Vicky Dewey, a San Antonio architect, said in a statement she read at the author\u2019s memorial, held Wednesday. <\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t even heard of Braniff before meeting Bill, but we loved being part of his fascinating universe,\u201d she added. \u201cHe was just so worldly and yet completely down to earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former Current Editor-in-Chief Elaine Wolff brought Sibley onboard to write his San Antonio Eccentrics column, which spotlighted colorful local personalities such as Karlos (with a \u201cK\u201d) Anzoategui and Polly Lou Livingston.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we became acquainted in person, I realized that [Sibley] talked in the same colorful way that he wrote \u2014 and that his personality was just as big and fascinating as the wildcards he profiled,\u201d Current Contributing Arts Editor Bryan Rindfuss said of his contribution. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe was perhaps the greatest \u2018eccentric\u2019 in the bunch and had all the stories to back it up \u2014 from meeting Andy Warhol at Studio 54 in 1978 to writing about theater for Warhol\u2019s magazine Interview in the 1980s,\u201d Rindfuss added. \u201cHe was the real deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sibley was inaugurated into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2015, joining it prestigious ranks in a class that included fellow San Antonians Nan Cuba and the late Gregg Barrios.<\/p>\n

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