Into the sunset with Western songwriter Jack Hannah: SW Parra opinion cartoon for The Bee

The passing of Fresno’s Jack Hannah, award-winning Western singer-songwriter and co-founder of the Sons of the San Joaquin, is the topic for this week’s opinion cartoon by SW Parra.

Hannah co-founded the Sons of the San Joaquin in 1987 with his brother and nephew. They traveled globally and put out more than a dozen albums and were known for their songs about the cowboy way of life. The band, and Hannah himself, won multiple Western music and songwriting awards.

Hannah played football and baseball at Fresno State and went on to pitch seven seasons in professional baseball with the Milwaukee Braves and California Angels organizations. Before that, his Fresno Athletic Hall of Fame biography notes, he “was a pitcher and outfielder and also excelled in football and basketball” at Visalia High.

He was a coach and teacher at Hoover High and then a counselor at Clovis West High School. At Hoover, according to the Fresno Athletic HOF (which inducted him as a coach), he led the Patriots to two Valley championships, was named California High School Coach of the Year in 1980, was selected National Coach of the Year for the Southwest Region and inducted into the National High School Hall of Fame. His overall coaching record at Hoover was 314-148.