personalized shirts: Donaldson matches shirts, pistol grips

ELIZABETH YORK
Odessa American

ODESSA, Texas - Ector County Sheriff Mark Donaldson has more fur in his office than your average herd of wildebeests.

Sitting in a thick wooden king-chair covered with bronze stars and hairy cowhide, Donaldson reigns at the Ector County Detention Center. He folds his hands, leans forward and peers out over his set mustache.

"I like to think that I'm hard-nosed with criminals," Donaldson said. "The main thing I try to do is serve the public. To try to do things right and try to be as efficient as we can."

Donaldson keeps his pistol right-hand ready. The long-time West Texas lawman isn't afraid to take on bad guys and put them behind bars - and he's not afraid to color coordinate either.

He makes it a daily habit to match his gun grips with his shirt - can you say purple and canary yellow?

"People always say, 'How many guns do you have?' Donaldson said.

But the secret is in the grips.

Each day Donaldson covers one of his two 1970s-model Colt 1911 pistols with one of his 19 sets of gun grips. (At the time of the interview, he was waiting for an additional grip with an American flag and eagle design to arrive.) He screws one of the decorative grips onto a pistol handle before placing it in his black gun holster.

Donaldson chooses from a collection of grips made of wood or synthetic materials in colors like canary yellow, marbled blue, green, black, red, orange and brown.

"I'm not one of the white shirt people," he said. "I like bright colors."

Even John Wayne wore yellow gun grips, Donaldson reasoned. But the Duke fan draws the line on some shades.

"They make pink (gun grips), but I'm not going there," he said. "I have pink personalized shirts, but I just wear black with those."

If a John Wayne doll, commemorative rifle, replica belt, framed drawing and even Wayne toilet paper in Donaldson's office aren't enough, Robert Hollmann, an Odessa author and attorney, can vouch for Donaldson's dedication to the Duke.

"He dresses like John Wayne," Hollmann said. "He even tries to walk like him I think."

Hollmann has known Donaldson for about two decades. The men ride horses together and act in the annual Wild West Show at the Permian Basin Fair & Exposition.

"He always writes it to where he wins," Hollmann noted of the skits.

Donaldson preserves justice in real life, too. Midland County Sheriff Gary Painter has known Donaldson for 20 years. He said Donaldson is respected for upholding morals and representing Odessans well.

"In West Texas especially, it's a positive role," Painter said of the position of sheriff. "We get on a one-to-one basis with our citizens."

David Johnson, pastor of Central Baptist Church, has been a buddy of Donaldson's since the two were in junior high. Donaldson has always been tough, winning school weightlifting competitions and once pulling a lodged fishhook out of his thigh without flinching, Johnson said.

The black ostrich boot-wearing-sheriff also has charisma, he said.

"I'd call him the tough and tender, steel and velvet-type guy," Johnson said. "He's always been pretty stylish."

Donaldson's sense of style goes back to working at Pro-Am golf tournaments at the Odessa Country Club in the mid-'60s. As a boy, he remembers looking up to professional golfer Doug Sanders.

"Everything matched on him. He was real flamboyant," Donaldson said. "I guess being impressionable at that age and seeing how people reacted to him."

Donaldson isn't limiting his matching attire to gun grips. On a recent day, he wore yellow gun grips and a yellow shirt with - what else - a yellow ballpoint pin in the shirt pocket.

"That's kind of a new thing that I started," Donaldson admitted of the colored pen.

Chris Pipes, chief of the Odessa Police Department, has known Donaldson for more than 20 years and worked closely with him during the past four-and-a-half years.

Pipes recalled an incident in which several sheriff and police units were chasing a stolen vehicle on Loop 338. Donaldson sped in front of the pack and pulled beside the auto thief.

"The sheriff himself shot the tires of the car," Pipes said. "He's not afraid. He leads by being right in the middle of the action. The fact that he matches his pen and his gun grips and his shirt - I think that's indicative of a person who gives attention to detail."