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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAggie Annex-1 Texas A&M Corps of,Cadet,members Christopher Slmmet'rlblvlll Klentzy and Nick Gonzales stand ready as Dick B1rdweU, from Eagle photo/Gabriel Chmielewski the~){$M llltiis of '53, . thrrC-n1l'flloliOr of the four classes of AggIes thatUved off-campus from 1950-53. Aggies recaBdays?at'mihex Plaque dedicated to students crowd~d out ofeampus dorms By KRISTY GILLENTINE Eagle Staff Writer Skip Joimson Jr. was 18 years old when he arrived in 1949' at the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College. Not long out of high school, he said, he never expected the conditions that awaited him. The temperatures dipped just below zero that day, but to make it worse, he learned that he'd be moving not onto. the main campus but into a barracks without heat miles away where about 700 other men lived. World War IT recently had ended, so by 1946 enrollment at Texas A&M was soaring. Returning veterans. aided by the G.t Bill, came to the college to con- tinue or start their education, but there was no room. To manage the oyer- crowding, the college made use of an inactive U.s, Air Forceba$ein Bryan that's now known as Riverside Cam- pus. Over the next four years; about 5.500 men lived, studied, ate, showered and attended classes at the Annex, where the walls were made out of black tar- paper. Ea, photo/Gabriel Chmiel""",kl Ed RlChardl!On,' Ran NeWl!l~n a!,d ollnn White look .at a dlagJ'am o!the An!,ex Complex on Saturday afte'l',oon at the Texas A&M Rlversln (:ampu$. Johnson's old home away from home was honored Saturday with the dedica- tion of a plaque as a permanent record of those experiences. one by one, for- mer students who graduated more than five decades ago lined up to reminisce about their lives in the Annex: Even though it wasn't the first-year ~llege experience they dreamed about, .it ended up creating memories and bonds cherished to this day. "Icaljl~in January, stl I lmly lived(in tl1e Armexl for one semester," said Johnson,: who eventually jotued the ~ational Sec~ity Agency and later l'!rtired in College Station. "But I lived "vvitl1 all. tl1e freshmen wl10 had been there a'Yhole ,se'l'ester before me. They took .~.~. of .me and showed me the ro~.) 'Yl\S l).lcky." The Annex was built in 1942 and . designed to stand four years. When stu- dents began living there in 1946, the building already was in poor shape, according to Lufkin resident Jack Irish, who graduated in 1950. "We .were isolated by ourselves out here on the Brll-Zos River bottom. crammed into rooms with 15 to 20 other . guys," Irish said. "It was defmitely not what we expected." Bob Conn said he arrived at the Annex one year after Irish and saw the same conditions: a single mess hall, remote shared bathroom facilities and no heating or air conditioning. "I was a typical 17-year-old coming out of San Antonio. .1 had never been to the campus of A&M before, so I didn't See ANNEX, Page AU Annex Annex impress me much in the w8,yof college life," Conn said. . Very few sindents then had vehicles, so hitchhiking became the preferred way to travel outside of the Annex, Conn said, adding that he remembered being instructed on how to conduct himself while thumbing a ride on Texas 21. Conn also recalled pranks the men played on. each other at the Annex. "Guys collected syrup from the mess hall and they mixed it with whatever they could fmd - water or mayonnaise - and used it fora drown- out," he said. "They also did water drown-outs. I woke up a time or two with a bucket of water in mY face. It wasn't uncommon to see a line of mattr~s!le!l4ry!ng' on the roof." .,: .. .... , the A,ggiesha9,to~he(iwe their fun aroll1l!l strict sindy regimeI)s, th~Y;ill' recalled. Each sindentwas required to sindy from 7 to lO.p.m., and they attendeqdas~es lll).qlaps ~.Mondaythrough.sajUrday. . "Studying was difficult because there was. no room and we were all' crl\mmed . in there, but I did wen with my grades. I guess th~re really wasn't anything. to 9,0 besides sindy," Johrison sai!l. The sindying paid off for many of the men, The Annex ended up producing. more than 4,000 military offic~rs' 18 distinguished alumni, 28 generals, seven presidents of The Association of Former Students and. two A&M Sys- tem regents, officia,Is said. "There was always a strong bond between those of us who lived out here, and there .' always will be," said Lee Howard, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and 1952 graduate of TlJxas A&M. "We didn't know what we were doing, but we were deter- mined to become Aggies no matter what it took." . Kristy Gilientine'se-mail address is kristy.gilientine@ theea,gle.com.