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HomeMy WebLinkAboutEarly Days At College StationDRAFT 11-15-12 EARLY DAYS AT COLLEGE STATION Henry Gilchrist November , 2012 My days at College Station began in the summer of 1937 when I was 12 years old. My family moved from Austin to College Station when my father, Gibb Gilchrist, was named Dean of Engineering. He was later President and first Chancellor of the A&M System. My parents had just built a new house in Austin, one block from the intersection of 29`h Street and Enfield Road. Dan Moody, former Governor, lived on the corner and between the Governor and us lived D.X. Bible, University of Texas football coach. Across the street was a Texas Supreme Court Judge. The neighborhood boys played football on the vacant lot between the Bible house and our house and we fully expected he would see our talent and recruit us for the Texas football team. Did not happen. We left all of this for Aggieland. Early memories of College Station, of course, include A&M College, City of Bryan, housing and, of all things, malaria. 99900.10941 EMF -US 42652298v I DRAFT 11-15-12 At the time, College Station was an unincorporated community surrounding A&M. The City of Bryan was expanding south and there was some fear that Bryan would incorporate the A&M community and College Station would cease to exist. A group of concerned citizens got together and quickly incorporated the town of College Station, protecting the area from the invaders from Bryan. In the early days, many, if not most, of the professors at A&M lived in housing on the campus. As the school grew, this became impractical and the faculty was forced to relocate. Many of the houses in which they lived were moved off campus and they continued to live in them. A number of these houses still exist and can generally be identified by their style. It is hard to believe that in the mid- 193 0s, malaria was a common disease in the A&M community. As a civil engineer, my father was familiar with the building of the Panama Canal, which was delayed for years by yellow fever. It and malaria are transmitted by mosquitoes, and in the case of malaria, the anopheles mosquito. Even today, I can identify it by the way it lands with its head close to the ground and the rest of its body pointing upward. The key to eliminating malaria was to eliminate standing water in which the mosquitoes bred. My father started a program to do this, spreading oil on small pools of standing water. A major source was a lake to the south of the campus. A 99900.10941 EMF -US 42652298v 1 DRAFT 11-15-12 local developer had established the lots and housing. There was a fairly large lake or pond in the middle of the development bounded by Ayrshire and Dexter streets. To control malaria, this pond had to be drained. He objected and when the workers came to breach the dam and drain the lake, he sat at the dam and had to be physically removed. In those days, April 1'` was a day of hijinks and celebration. I remember one year the student body commandeered the train traveling from Houston to Dallas at about noon and rode it into Bryan. The A&M Consolidated School District included College Station and areas to the south, such as Welborn and the rural community. In 1937, the schools were meeting in a building on the A&M campus. That year, the school district constructed the buildings on Jersey Street (now George Bush Drive), which included a high school, which is the two buildings connected by a circular covered walkway, and elementary classrooms in a number of individual buildings termed the "chicken coops." There are some people who wanted to join the much larger Bryan School District but residents held out and preserved the A&M Consolidated District. 99900.10941 EMF -US 42652298v 1 DRAFT 11-15-12 There were 31 people in my senior class of 1942. About half from the college community and the other half from the surrounding rural area. Many of the teachers were spouses of A&M faculty people and the quality was quite high. I never played high school football, but I was on the basketball team and lettered one or two years. We played a number of tournaments in the surrounding area, including North Zulch and Iola. In Austin, I had just started to learn to play the clarinet and "joined" the Consolidated Orchestra. This group was directed by Col. Dunn, who was also the director of the A&M Marching Band. I was very inadequately trained in reading music and I would immediately fall behind when the orchestra began playing. Fortunately for me, and probably for the orchestra, I dropped my clarinet and broke the mouthpiece, making it unusable. The director transferred me to the triangles. I had less trouble with this. As Dean of Engineering at a large military school, my father was engaged in a number of activities supporting the military effort during World War II. This enabled him to have contact amongst the military. He noted that in the area between Dallas and Houston and Shreveport and Austin there was no airport that could accommodate military aircraft in any type of training need or emergency. 99900.10941 EMF -US 42652298v 1 DRAFT 11-15-12 He got government help and started Easterwood Airport, which is now a fairly substantial aviation hub. The airport is named for Jess Easterwood who was from Wills Point (my father's home town). Easterwood was a pilot during World War I and was killed in some activity. His sister, Eva, never married and lived in Dallas at the Melrose Hotel. Ever on the lookout for an opportunity, my mother convinced her to provide funding for the round stained glass window still in existence at the A&M Methodist Church facing University Street. North Gate was the center of business and commerce activity. It is located on University Drive, between Wellborn Road and South College Street. The Post Office is located there. In those days, there was no mail delivery and everyone had a post office box. There was a Spanc's drug store, a men's store, a cleaners Holick's, and a store that made the senior boots for the Aggies. In the spring, A&M students had major dances at Sibesa Mess Hall. They attracted significant nationally known orchestras such as Stan Kenton, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and most of the big name bands. Many of the Bryan/College Station high school girls were dating Aggies and were at these dances. Several senior boys would congregate at the exit and try and 99900.10941 EMF -US 42652298v 1 DRAFT 11-15-12 persuade Aggies who were leaving to give us their pass so that we could get into the building and enjoy the dancing. Like many others, I am sure I learned to drive on the road to Welborn. This was atwo-lane highway with very little traffic. Being able to drive was an exciting experience and offered great freedom. On the day of Pearl Harbor, I was attending a movie at the Campus theater near North Gate, A Yank in the RAF, starring Betty Grable. They stopped to announce the attack on Pearl Harbor. The audience, mostly Aggies, stood and we all sang the Aggie War Hymn, thinking that would fix them. During the war years, people scattered and the community and the world changed, but it can never erase the wonderful memories of early days in College Station. 99900.10941 EMF US 42652298v 1