SJ Stovall (September 26, 1925 – July 14, 2010) was an American politician and civil engineer. Stovall served as the mayor of Arlington, Texas, the seventh largest city in the state, from 1977 until 1983. In total, Stovall held office either on the Arlington City Council or as Mayor for twenty years. Biography Early life SJ Stovall was born on September 26, 1925, in Lufkin, Texas. Stovall's parents could not decide on a given name for their son so they wrote his father's initials, SJ, temporarily on his birth certificate. However, his parents never chose a permanent given name for Stovall, so SJ remained his legal first name. In a late 1970s interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, he recalled, "I guess I was 13 before I realized that SJ – my father's initials – didn't stand for anything." He enlisted in the United States Air Force before attending Texas A&M University. Career Stovall moved with his family to Arlington, Texas, in 1950 to take a position as a civil engineer with the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Stovall worked for Army Corps of Engineers for more than thirty years before his retirement. He would later be elected to the Arlington City Council in 1963, where he served as a councilman and mayor until leaving office in 1983. Mayor of Arlington Stovall became Mayor of Arlington in January 1977, following the abrupt resignation of his predecessor, Tom Vandergriff. Vandergriff announced his resignation, effective immediately, at a regular Arlington city council meeting. Council members, including Stovall, were unaware of Vandergriff's intention to resign. Stovall, mayor pro tem at the time, became the new mayor of Arlington. In a 1983 interview, Stovall recalled his sudden, unexpected rise to the mayorship, "I felt some pressure, yes...As soon as I became mayor, I tried to make the point that Arlington was entering into another period in its life, and, in a way, I would be sort of a transition mayor. I would be a completely different type of mayor." Vandergriff, Stovall's predecessor, has successfully brought the Texas Rangers baseball team and a General Motors assembly plant to Arlington during his tenure in office. However, city-owned, voter-funded Seven Seas Marine Life Park, which opened in 1972, proved to be a failure for Arlington. The park, which featured aquariums, a life-size pirate ship and killer whales, failed to attract enough visitors to keep the facility