Kiwanis Club of Houston
April 7th Luncheon
Speaker: James Bevill
James P. Bevill has spent his career in the financial services industry since graduating Magna Cum Laude from the University of Houston-Clear Lake in 1983. He is a Senior Vice President – Wealth Management, in the River Oaks office of UBS Financial Services in Houston.
He also an independent historian and the author of The Paper Republic: The Struggle for Money, Credit and Independence in the Republic of Texas, a non-fiction work on the social, economic and monetary history of Texas from the early Spanish and Mexican colonial period through the annexation by the United States in 1846. This book was the winner of four literary awards, including the Summerfield G. Roberts award by the Sons of the Republic of Texas in 2010, and as the Best Specialized Book on U.S. Paper Money by the Numismatic Literary Guild at the ANA's World's Fair of Money in Boston, August 2010.
Jim served as Guest Curator for several Republic of Texas money exhibits at museums in Houston, Dallas, Austin and Galveston from 2011-2016.He also volunteers as the narrator and choreographer at the annual Battle of San Jacinto re-enactment. His love of history inspired him to read, organize and catalogue the voluminous papers of his father-in-law, Paul Springer, who taught at Yale-in-China in 1941-1942 before joining the US State Department in Chungking, which lead to the publication of his second book, Blackboards and Bomb Shelters, the Perilous Journey of Americans in China during World War II.
This second story will be the subject of his talk at the meeting on April 7th . He lives in Houston with his wife, Jodie Springer Bevill.
