Just under 2,000 students graduated from UT Austin’s College of Liberal Arts in May 1984. Students came from across Texas and around the globe; they studied economics and literature, languages and philosophy; they went to UT football games, Liberty Lunch, Raul’s, and Eeyore’s Birthday Party; they worked odd summer jobs and lived in dorms and co-ops and West Campus houses. Many went on to have incredible careers, and some even stayed in Austin and at UT.
Over the past months we’ve heard from dozens of those alumni about their time on the Forty Acres some forty years ago. Below are a few of their stories.
Linda Neavel Dickens
BA, English, 1984
Linda Neavel Dickens was born in Pennsylvania but grew up in Baytown, just outside of Houston. After her two older siblings began attending UT, she was determined to follow them — it was the only school she applied to. After finishing her BA in English, Dickens traveled across Europe — even working for a few months at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England — before returning to Texas and taking a job as a mental health worker and activity specialist at a residential treatment center. Her experiences at the center led her back to UT Austin for a master’s and then a Ph.D. in adult and organizational learning. “It occurred to me that there had to be a better way to run an organization,” she says. Now, as the university’s associate vice provost for strategic academic initiatives, she’s committed to helping UT Austin work more effectively and with greater support for faculty, staff, and students.
On learning the importance of support:
I started out in Plan II and was summarily dismissed after the first year because of my low GPA. I had been a great student in high school, but I was completely overwhelmed at UT and didn’t know how to navigate it. I was anxious, I got depressed. I was obviously struggling with grades, and no one from the program reached out to me that entire first year. There’s so much more support for students now compared to the early ‘80s.
After I left Plan II, I went into English and loved it. I’ve always been a strong writer, and I was in the English honors program despite my first two years of not-great grades. I had tremendous experiences in the English department, but I share that story about Plan II because it was a formative experience for me. My career since then has focused on improving support for people in organizations, including at UT Austin, and it’s incredibly important to me to do everything I can so that people have the tools to succeed.
On working her way up:
I like to say I started as a water polo referee at UT and worked my way up to associate vice provost. In the early ‘80s, I was a lifeguard and an intramural water polo referee; I’ve been a swimmer my whole life. Then I became an academic coach for women’s athletics for about two years. Now I’ve worked at UT for 38 of the past 44 years in one way or another.
When I began full-time work at UT in 2007, I facilitated program evaluations, coordinated assessments of student learning, and worked with faculty on educational research. Then I started specializing more on assessment. Basically, I was consulting with faculty about what was important to them about their programs. What did they see as the key knowledge of their field? What did they want their students to be able to do by the time they graduated? How did they want to measure learning? I loved it. And then I got like five promotions in five years. I found my spot at the university, and I just went up and up.
Around 2016 I became the accreditation liaison, which means I’m responsible for the accreditation of the entire university with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. There are about 95 standards of quality covering everything you can imagine about our operations — from the way we hire our faculty to the way we offer student services to the way we conduct performance appraisals — and I’m in charge of ensuring we maintain and document our compliance with the university’s policies related to those standards. When I took over as liaison, my biggest goal was to change the culture of accreditation on campus, because people found it frustrating. I saw it as an amazing opportunity to do what I could to make accreditation easier and improve the system, and people were very responsive and helpful. Plus, I work with fantastic teammates. Now I think the university’s accreditation practices are solid, and I try to use my position as leverage to create organizational change. I’m trying to make work better for people. I’m trying to contribute to an organizational dynamic that helps people thrive.
On watching Austin change:
Austin in the ‘80s was pretty awesome. On Lamar between 6th and 10th, on the east side of the street, it was all used car lots. Now that’s dense, prime real estate. To me, that’s a great visual for what things used to look like and the pace of Austin in the ‘80s, when it was cheap and easy to live here.
Living with a wide variety of people at the 21st Street College House co-op was one of my favorite college experiences, as was going out to hear live music. There was a place called Club Foot that was downtown in what had been a bus terminal. They brought in a lot of new wave, punk-ish bands, like Echo and the Bunnymen, Psychedelic Furs, that kind of music. I was there a lot and also went to Liberty Lunch a lot, dancing to reggae or Joe Ely. I loved Joe Ely — I saw him over and over and over again, and he always put on a great show.
The city started really growing in the late ‘80s. One big difference is that there used to not be as much wealth in Austin. UT and the state government were the largest employers. Then when the tech started coming in… wow. There’s such wealth in this city now compared to 40 years ago. It is shocking to me how much things have changed, and I think that the wealth is even more shocking than the growth. And now that we’re a large city, we have friction everywhere. I don’t mean that in a bad way, necessarily, I just mean that you have to do a lot more planning. Things just aren’t as easy to access as they once were.
Barbara Ganson
MA, Latin American Studies, 1984
Barbara Ganson grew up in San Jose, California, but joined UT Austin as a graduate student after one of her professors recommended the university’s Latin American studies program — then, as now, considered the best in the country. She specialized in Latin American history and graduated with her master’s in 1984 and with her Ph.D. a decade later. Her first book, The Guaraní under Spanish Rule in the Río de la Plata, was based on her dissertation and published in 2003. She has continued to publish on the history of Paraguay while teaching history at Florida Atlantic University for 30 years. Along the way, she’s added another specialty to her roster — aviation history — while becoming an aviator herself.
On life abroad:
I spent my junior year studying abroad in Argentina. I should have gone to Spain, but my undergraduate Spanish professor was Argentine and so I had the opportunity to go to Buenos Aires. I lived with a family that didn’t speak any English and attended classes at a time when there were no exchange programs for foreign students. It was a chaotic time, too, with transportation strikes, car bombings, and hyperinflation following the death of Juan Domingo Perón, the long-time, controversial president of Argentina.
Then I had a chance to move up-river, to Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, and continue studying. That was during the dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner, and I learned how terrible it was to live under authoritarian rule with so much corruption and concerns about human rights.
During my time abroad I experienced two different countries and cultures, and I took a lot of interest in that. Later, as a doctoral student, I developed an interest in ethnohistory, and I eventually wrote my dissertation on the Guaraní Indigenous people of Paraguay.
On watching — and studying — history unfold:
At UT I took classes with a specialist on Argentina, Dr. Thomas McGann. I was in his “Inter-American Affairs since 1890” class when the Malvinas Falklands War broke out in 1982. McGann had been a military attaché to Argentina at one time, so he had a really informative perspective. He thought the war would be over very quickly because the Argentine military wasn’t well organized strategically. The young, recruited soldiers were also unprepared and many of them died in the war, which was very devastating.
After Dr. McGann passed away, Dr. Nettie Lee Benson took over the direction of my MA thesis. She was a real institution herself — she built the Benson library at UT and was quite a personality. One day she asked me to do for Paraguay what she had done for Mexico. In a way I’ve fulfilled her request by publishing books and articles on the history of Paraguay, but I am certainly not a librarian.
On flying:
When I graduated from UT with my Ph.D., I was fortunate to get a tenure track job at Florida Atlantic University. Then I brought my mother to come live with me, and since I couldn’t travel abroad due to her declining health, I started conducting research on the history of women and early flight rather than return to the archives in Latin America. For several years I would travel to the Library of Congress and the archives of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, do research for a couple days, and then fly back to Florida. Now I’m finishing up a manuscript based on that research called Lady Daredevils: American Women and Early Flight.
While I was researching women in early flight, I decided I better learn how to fly, because I wanted to understand some of the difficulties that early aviators experienced. I started taking flying lessons, both in Florida and then in Maryland, and I finished up in Ohio. I got my license in 2008, and I acquired an airplane too. I didn’t expect to become an aircraft owner, but I bought a small fourseater aircraft, a 1965 Cessna 1-72, which I’ve restored over the years.
My big claim to fame — I only have like two minutes of it — is that in 2012 I flew across the English Channel to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the first female flight across the Channel by Harriet Quimby, America’s first licensed woman pilot. I was asked by an organization to portray Quimby on this flight, so I worked with a seamstress to recreate her flying costume — a plumcolored satin flight suit — using historic photographs and Quimby’s writings, and I got to portray her. I went over to England and a small group of women pilots joined me from France, Ireland, Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. to celebrate this historic event organized by Women of Aviation Worldwide Week. We flew across the channel together and placed a plaque in the airport at Le Touquet in France celebrating Quimby’s achievement. The BBC covered it, and there are two videos still online. It was a fun, exciting day.
When I started working on the history of aviation, there were several members in my department who frowned upon the idea. Later, however, I had the opportunity to do an exhibit for the Texas Centennial Flight at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in 2010, which was well-received. I worked on that project for about two years, flying back and forth between Florida, Texas, and Washington, D.C. I even flew over to Paris to do some archival work. Then I turned the exhibit’s content into my second book, Texas Takes Wing: A Century of Flight in the Lone Star State, which was published by UT Press in 2014.
Duff Stewart
BA, Economics, 1984
In 1971, five UT graduates — Roy Spence, Judy Trabulsi, Steve Gurasich, Bill Gurasich, and Tim McClure — founded innovative advertising agency GSD&M. The agency is behind many of Texas’s best-known lines, including the iconic “Don’t Mess with Texas,” and after more than 50 years it’s still longhorn-led, with Duff Stewart as CEO. Stewart’s path to being an advertising exec, however, wasn’t linear. It featured stop-offs at the Texas Capitol building, commercial real estate leasing, and, of course, a lot of fun as a UT undergraduate. A few themes run all the way through his story, though — take care of your relationships, and leave the place better than you found it.
On (not) choosing a major:
I got involved again with UT’s Department of Economics when Jason Abrevaya, who then was head of the department, reached out. The department was launching a magazine and they wanted to interview me and I said “great.” So Jason came over to our offices and we were chatting. I said, “Why did you choose me? I’m a history graduate.” And he said, “No, you’re not. You’re one of us.” What had occurred was — and I do not remember this —I had enough hours for both history and economics, but at that time UT wasn’t offering double majors. So, I had to choose one and I guess I chose economics, but for years I told people I got a degree in history because I love it and I didn’t go to school to get a job, I went to school to learn, you know, something like that. But Jason set me straight. Then a few months later he called and asked, “Would you give the commencement speech to the school?” So I went and gave the talk at Gregory Gym to the economics graduates and all of their families, and I learned that economics had grown to become the largest degree-granting program in the university.
But I really loved history — I just loved learning about people — and economics was interesting because it is kind of like business. And I loved learning about both subjects because of the professors I had, like Tom Philpott and Robert Abzug in the history department and Cliff Grubbs and Harry Cleaver, Jr. in economics. They were just really interesting people who had done really interesting things.
I took a class in labor economics with Ray Marshall, who was at the LBJ school and also taught in the economics program, in the spring of 1984. That’s when he was the economic advisor to Walter Mondale in his campaign for president, and Roy and Judy from the agency were doing the Mondale campaign media, including the TV spots and communications. So these two worlds really overlapped — one where I was involved in an internship at the time at Cornerstone, which was related to the agency, and the founders are doing this national campaign, and then another where I’m going to class with the guy who’s Mondale’s economic advisor and talking about the campaign and the economics inside the campaign. On top of that my wife, Liz, who I met at the agency later, was working with Roy and Judy and the team in Washington, D.C. on the campaign during that time. So all these different things and people from my life came together in this one moment. Liz and I didn’t start dating until four years later, but lots of things were all wound up in this campaign and in this course.
On how not to treat a cowboy hat:
There used to be a place up Guadalupe off Maiden Lane called Uncle Nasty’s. My friends and I used to play Galaga there. We would study and then we’d meet for beers at around 10:30 at night. You could either have a pitcher of beer or a pitcher of margaritas, and I think it was $5. So, if you went with your friends, it was relatively inexpensive. And there was a place called the Silver Dollar where you could go country and Western dancing, which I cannot do, but they had nickel beer night on Wednesdays so I ended up there a lot. I got into trouble one time — I went around the tables and started stacking cowboy hats, which was not a good thing to do to people who own cowboy hats. That was a very early lesson that I learned in college: Leave a gentleman’s hat alone.
On giving back:
The founders of GSD&M formed an agency because they wanted to stay in Austin, stay together, and make a difference. They always were involved in political stuff as well as giving back to the university. It was GSD&M who actually came up with the “We are Texas” tagline for UT.
One of our founders, Roy Spence, was originally invited to participate in a group to identify the core values of the university, back when Dr. Robert Berdahl was president of UT. That led to Larry Lay, who was head of development back then, and Randa Safady, who’s now at the system, coming to us and asking for help with a slogan and a campaign idea for the first billion-dollar fundraising effort for UT. We presented the line, “We are Texas,” to them with the background of the Tower. Larry was not a UT person, but Randa was. Larry asked, “Where’s the rest of it? What else is there?” but Randa completely got it. If you went to UT, you got the braggadocious attitude. And Roy presented that to the development board with a video and it was overwhelmingly and resoundingly appreciated. There was a funny article in the Daily Texan about UT paying all this money to have this two-word tagline, but the truth is UT didn’t pay any money. It was all former UT graduates that did this for their school pro bono.
As each UT president has come along, the campaign has evolved, but we’ve been a part of it all and we’re all proud of it. It’s a big part of giving back to the university. Because I’ve worked for — and eventually became the CEO of — an organization that is so grounded in the university, and because a big part of what our founders are about is paying it forward and paying it back, making the place better than you found it, that’s just a lesson that I learned.
Karen Kaplan
Ph.D., Linguistics, 1984
Karen Kaplan grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and now lives in Kearny, New Jersey. After graduating with her BA from Oberlin College, Kaplan came to Austin to study linguistics at UT. Her studies led her to life abroad and then back, but it’s arguably after graduation that she made her biggest leap — attending seminary and being ordained in 1992 as one of the nation’s early female rabbis. For 15 years she served as a hospice chaplain, sitting with countless patients as they faced the end of their lives, and in 2014 she published a book based on her experiences, Encountering the Edge: What People Told Me Before They Died. While the subject matter can be heavy, Kaplan says she tries to keep a “kind of whimsical, humorous tone” when speaking or writing about her work in hospice. She continues to write about her work as a chaplain and her experiences with language on her blog, offbeatcompassion.wordpress.com
On getting involved:
In my undergraduate years at Oberlin, I did my own self-designed major and studied linguistics. I picked courses like “History of the English Language” and sociolinguistics from the anthropology department, and I went to some summer institutes at the University of Chicago. I saw that UT had one of the top linguistics departments in the world, so I thought I’d apply to do my Ph.D. in Austin. I also liked the idea of all the social events and cultural events outside. I got accepted and went and I was active in all kinds of things while I was in Austin, including Jewish life at the Hillel. I even ended up leading a service or two when the rabbi was off, so that was a precursor to things to come. And I had good friends at UT, too. I’d never had such good friends, and I still know them now.
On working in security:
During my Ph.D. I took one year off to teach English in Japan because the program wanted students to learn a non-European language. Linguistics doctoral students needed three languages, so I had Spanish, Japanese, and English. I lived in Kurashiki, which is a small town with no English, and I was really intrigued by the culture and the grammar. Japanese has different levels of formality and informality that are much more extensive than in French or Spanish. It depends on your gender, your age, your work history, all these different levels of formality. It’s very interesting.
When I was back in Austin I had a summer job as a security guard for a women’s dorm. I was the first woman to be hired as their security guard, and it was a lot of fun. I just walked down the halls and made sure everything was okay. Boys had to give me slips to come in, say why they were coming into the dorm, and I got to walk around the garage and have a little unit one, unit two radio with the boss saying things like “come in, please.” Thank God nothing ever happened. Once I asked my boss, “Why did you hire me?” He said, “Well, you’re well-traveled, you went to Japan.” So that’s how one quirky thing led to another.
On working as a hospice chaplain:
After I graduated with my Ph.D. I joined the Spanish department at Denison University in Ohio. Then I realized that I really enjoyed Hillel and expanding Jewish life, and I decided to be a rabbi. I didn’t get tenure and there wasn’t much chance to really do what I wanted at Denison— they only had me teaching very elementary Spanish to kids that were not interested in it — and I thought, “I need to do something more meaningful, use my skills.” So, I decided to go a different route and become a rabbi, which was pretty unusual for women in those days. I’m about the 200th female rabbi, definitely among the first 200.
At first I did some pulpit work and then eventually I saw that pastoral care was my strength, so the bulk of my career has been that. When I worked as a hospice chaplain what I tried to do was make it not so frightening for people. And I’d hear these amazing, intimate stories or memories, sometimes very nice memories, and all kinds of things that people would reveal because they knew I was there to really listen without any baggage. With a relative they might have to act cheerful, whereas with a spiritual supporter they could just say what they really were thinking. I would create a lot of quiet time, not talk much, and ask very general questions — which is really the whole point of being a chaplain. It’s not to impose anything or direct the dialogue or, God forbid, proselytize. Chaplains don’t do that, they’re not supposed to. They’re supposed to create a sacred space for the families and the patients to open up and talk about whatever it is, whether it’s a football game, or the meaning of life, or what happens when they die, or how are they going to cope with death. And once in a while there’s a real genuine interaction where something special is being shared, and it’s hard to describe, but it’s so poignant.
Terasa Cooley
BA, English, 1984
Terasa Cooley came to UT Austin from the small town of Alvin, Texas, about halfway between Houston and Galveston, where she was raised in a home that was both politically and religiously progressive. She arrived at college and deepened her involvement on both fronts, becoming an active member, and then leader, of the University Young Democrats, and later joining a nearby congregation of Unitarian Universalists. After UT, she worked briefly in party politics, including for then-state Senator, now U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett, then went off to Harvard Divinity School to get ordained as a Unitarian minister. She’s served as a minister ever since, these days mostly moving from place to place as an interim minister for congregations that need repair and healing after some kind of difficulty or scandal.
On Jim Hightower, Ann Richards, and the transition in Texas politics:
What Jim Hightower and Ann Richards were able to capitalize on was a populist message. Hightower was super engaging with people, and he put together an unusual coalition of farm workers and agricultural guys and consumer unions. It was a really great lesson in coalition building. He also was just a popular speaker and funny and engaging. Ann [Richards], who was State Treasurer at the time, was very much the same way. She had that sense of humor. She had that ability to really engage with people on a personal level. I think that’s what helped get them into office even though both of them were more progressive than the median voter.
Hightower saw the brewing revolution in Texas politics, that the Democratic Party was in trouble, and he kept sounding the alarm. People wouldn’t pay attention. He was always very intuitive about politics. He saw the increasing conservatism, and he could feel how much more vulnerable he was in his own office. But because he had been re-elected so many times, people didn’t really think he was in danger until he lost in 1990 to Rick Perry, who had switched from being a Democrat just the year before.
On growing up Unitarian:
My parents discovered the Unitarian church when they were living in Chicago, before they moved to Texas. We were active in the church in Houston, and that really saved me because it meant that I had a progressive group of people who I could connect with. In Texas the first question is always: what church do you go to? So to be able to have an identity that made sense to me—I’m sure that catapulted me into what I’ve been doing for the last 35 years.
On going from politics to religion:
A big part of what I did, during and right after college, was work to get Democrats elected, and that’s what drove me out of politics. I was tired of helping to get people elected just for the sake of getting them elected. I felt like they sort of lost sight of a lot of the issues that were important. It was when I started to get really disenchanted with politics that I started going back to church. I decided almost completely on a whim that the ministry sounded good. For a little while after college I did database management for campaigns, and I was good at it. That was when I learned a really essential lesson of life, which is just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you like to do it or should do it.
On the split between theists and humanists in the Unitarian Universalist Church:
I’m a theist, which has sometimes put me at odds with many of the congregations that I’ve served. They’re very humanistic, and a lot of them are what we call “comeouters.” They came out of more conservative Christian churches that they really disliked or felt abused by, and they’re still reacting to what they grew up with. I didn’t have that growing up. I had a very positive relationship to church and faith. I’ve always gravitated toward religious exploration.
John Adamo
BA, Government, 1984
When John Adamo first left his hometown of San Antonio to become a freshman at UT Austin, he thought he would enjoy studying government. He was right. “I think I was the only person I knew who never changed his major,” says Adamo, who recently retired, after a long career in law and state service, as associate general counsel for the Texas Department of Family & Protective Services. Adamo loved his government courses. He also ended up dedicating a great deal of his time at UT to more direct involvement with politics by way of the University Young Democrats. He became an officer in the group, served on the state organization of young Democrats, interned in Washington, D.C. for a local Democratic congressman, and spent a lot of time drinking beer with his fellow young Democrats in the beer garden at Scholz’s.
On being into politics:
I wanted to become a lawyer from the time I was 10 years old and was just very interested in government and politics. I think I was the only person I knew who never changed his major. One class that I loved — I forget what it was called — was like a simulation of the Texas Legislature. We were all assigned roles to play, and toward the end of the semester we got to walk over to the Capitol and play it out on the Senate floor over the course of several days, introducing bills and such. I was a committee chair. It was fantastic.
I was very active in what was then called University Young Democrats, now University Democrats. I was vice president as well as representative to the state organization. In 1978, a couple years before I started at UT, Bill Clements shocked the world by getting elected governor. He was the first Republican since Reconstruction to be elected. In 1982, he was defeated for re-election by Mark White. I considered myself a Mark White Democrat. He won the nomination against someone to his left and to his right. The people I hung out with were more on the progressive side of the party. I was a little more conservative than they were, more of a classic liberal — into free speech, government regulation of big business, equal opportunity, those sorts of ideas.
The group that I was with was quite diverse, students of all races and religions and sexual preferences. I spent my lunch hour on the West Mall. We’d set up the table and talk to whoever came by. There was a real diversity of views on campus, and a lot of encouragement for people to speak their mind in class and outside of class.
On Father Time:
There was this older guy on campus, probably in his 60s, who had a long gray or white beard, and everyone called him Father Time. He was a student on campus, and the rumor was that he was the beneficiary of the will of a rich relative and one of the conditions of this will was that he would only be able to accept money from the trust fund when he was a student. So he never left, just kept taking courses. He was my ideal. I loved learning so much and I still to this day enjoy the variety of learning experiences.
On technology now and then:
It’s hard to imagine what it was like before cell phones, before word processing. I had an electric typewriter which I typed my papers on. If you wanted to do a big edit you had to start all over again. My roommate finally got this word processor thing our senior year, and it was so much of an improvement.
We did not have a TV in our room, though some people did. For the two years I was in the dorms, there was a TV downstairs in the rec room, and people would sometimes gather for popular shows or historical events. I remember watching Reagan taking the oath of office. I remember when Pope John Paul II was shot and when Reagan was shot.
We definitely had a stereo system. There were occasional stereo wars, when everyone would put their speakers up to the window to see who could play records the loudest.
On social life on campus:
The drinking age was 18. They finally raised it to 19 when I was a senior. You could actually get pitchers of beer at the student union. We’d hang out at the union and drink beer. We saw a lot of live music. The Cactus Café was a great place to go. I saw Robert Earl Keen, Lyle Lovett, and Lucinda Williams there. I remember emmajoe’s, a bar down on the Drag that allowed musicians to play. Antone’s was on the Drag. I saw the Talking Heads on their Stop Making Sense tour. It cost $10.
I spent a lot of time drinking beer at Scholz’s. A lot of politicos would hang out there. We would go to Barton Springs a lot. Go to Lake Travis.
Basically it was hanging out with friends, seeing music, and trying to be outdoors as much as possible. I had a wonderful time. I look back on those days as among the more enjoyable days of my life.
On meeting his wife Colleen:
We were at a small party my senior year that was hosted by a girl I’d dated in high school in San Antonio. Colleen was a friend of hers. Everyone was drinking too much. We were drinking, but not as much. We got in this long conversation and were the last people standing. I wanted to keep the conversation going, so I picked up the Daily Texan to see what the midnight movie was at the student union, and it was Dr. Strangelove. I said, “Hey, you wanna go see a movie?” She said, “Sure.” That was it. It’s been a strange love ever since.
William “Bill” Shute
BA, English, 1984
Bill Shute’s involvement with UT didn’t end with his graduation in 1984. After finishing his law degree at the University of Houston, he went on to spend his professional career working in federal policy, including stints as the executive director for federal relations at SBC Telecommunications and at the government relations firm R. Duffy Wall & Associates. But in 2001 he returned to UT — this time at the UT System level — as the system’s vice chancellor for federal relations, a position he held until 2019. Shute’s now at UT Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, where he’s the LBJ Washington Center’s executive director and teaches graduate courses on public policy and policymaking.
On the importance of Shakespeare:
For the past 23 years I have had the pleasure of engaging with and mentoring Longhorn alumni and students. I tell each one that every good thing that has happened to me as an adult started with my decision to attend UT.
One of my favorite experiences was meeting my future wife in Parlin Hall while taking Jim Ayres’s Shakespeare class. In lieu of a written final, Jim offered us the chance to join a group of other classmates and perform a scene from one of the classic plays. Of course, I volunteered in a heartbeat.
A girl named Zelda — the only one who had read our assigned play — handed out the roles in Act 3, scene 2 of King Lear. None the wiser, I agreed to play “mad” Prince Edgar (only learning later that he runs around naked in the rain pretending to be a poor beggar) while our fearless leader gave herself the role of Lear’s servant, Kent (with no more than six words, by the way). After our performance one of the other actors hosted a cast party, which turned out to be nothing more than a blind date for Zelda and me; a blind date that has led to 38 years of marriage.
Fast forward to the early 2000s when Larry Faulkner was president of UT and I had recently become vice chancellor for federal relations with the UT System. Larry approached me during a Board of Regents meeting and asked why he had been told he needed to host Zelda and me at Winedale that coming summer. I replied that I wasn’t sure, but someone in his office must have heard me tell our Shakespeare origin story. He graciously offered to find a date when the three of us could make the trip.
On the day of the performance, Larry picked us up at our hotel and drove us to the theater in Fayette County. Lo and behold, the students were performing King Lear that weekend. It was a thrill to catch up with Jim Ayres, but the highlight occurred during intermission. The program had pop-up tents outside, selling lemonade, memorabilia, and Shakespeare-related goods to raise funds. As Zelda and I perused one of the tents, the volunteer asked if we were familiar with Winedale. “Indeed we are” was our reply, and we mentioned that we had met in Jim’s class while performing a scene from King Lear.
“You’re the couple!!” she exclaimed much too loudly. Apparently Larry had been spreading our story around the area. Still my favorite UT President of all time…