Born in Illinois to J. M. and Lucretia (Craven) Bedichek, Roy Bedichek came to Falls County at age six. He was educated first in his parents' school at Blevins and later at the Bedichek's Eddy Literary and Scientific Institute, then graduated from the University of Texas in 1903. He married Lillian Greer in 1910, and they had three children, Mary, Sarah, and Bachman. After working as a reporter, editor, teacher, and homesteader, he joined the staff of the University of Texas in 1917 and became the second director of the University Interscholastic League in 1922. For twenty-six years he tailored league policies to the American ideal of education for every child, and his use of educational competition as "a spur to industry and a whetstone of talent" shaped the lives of countless students in academic, athletic, and musical contests. A lifelong outdoorsman and animal lover, he wrote "Adventures with a Texas Naturalist," published in 1947, and his letters were later collected into two books. He is also remembered as a conversationalist, folklorist, and storyteller who related all experience to the natural world; his friend J. Frank Dobie said, "He had the most richly stored mind of any man I ever knew."