Joe Sage

Joseph F. Sage (August 24, 1920 – January 9, 1977) was one of the first two Republicans since Reconstruction to represent Bexar County, Texas, in the Texas House of Representatives. Sage represented District 57-C, as then numbered, in San Antonio from 1973 to 1975. Sage, a lawyer, and later United States District Judge James Robertson Nowlin were elected in 1972 on the Nixon-Agnew ticket. Nowlin, whose state House service began in 1967 as a Democrat, remained in the legislature until 1981, when he was appointed by U.S. President Ronald W. Reagan to the District Court for the Western District of Texas. In his single term in the House during the administration of Governor Dolph Briscoe, Sage served on these committees: Human Resources under chairman Carlos Truan, Liquor Regulation, and State Affairs. He was voted by Texas Monthly magazine as part of "the furniture", meaning he left no distinguishing mark of performance in the regular 1973 session. Others receiving the "furniture" designation included State Representative John Whitmire, later a long-serving member of the Texas State Senate from Houston. Sage died at the age of fifty-six and is interred at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio.