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Home My WebLink AboutSteve Trogden, PresidentBy HUGH NATIONS Staff Writer Steve Trogdon is the man to call if something needs tuning, illuminating, booking, directing, rigg- ing, or subduing. He also does windows. Trogdon, • the slight, bearded building maintenance supervisor for the College Station Community Center, has more facets than a jewelry store counter. One of Trogdon's major avocations right now is StageCenter, the amateur theatrical group which has its headquarters in the. clubhouse at Bryan Municipal Golf Course. Trogdon is president of the organization. On oc- casion, he also designs sets and handles the lighting and audio. And he is director of the theater's next production, The Fantasticks. The 31- year -old Trogdon's interest in the theater began back in high school in Stephenville. His father, Dr. William Trogdon, was president of Tarleton State University, part of the Texas A &M University System. Steven was in the choir, and when the group staged musicals, he was tapped to build the sets. That was Trogdon's last involvement with the theater until several years later, when as a college junior he was asked to head the set crew for the Tarleton Players. A bass baritone, Trogdon had started at Tarleton State in 1972 as a music major, with intentions of being a choir director. He dabbled in business and history before settling on theater. He also crammed a four -year course into seven years. Getting an education; he said, kept getting in the way of getting a degree. There was an 18 -month hiatus, for example, to work on the Coalanche Peek quclear power plant now under contraction. Trogdon was the structural Steel expediter: it was his job to keep tabs on all the machinery to be installed in the plant. He also rigg- ed the cranes. As unlikely as it seems, the job actually had some relationship to his theatrical work. "I was already familiar with the tensile strength of cables," he explained, "since the sets. are all suspended by cables. And the steel was moved by cables." Nor was the scheduling involved in moving equipment around the site new territory for Trogdon. For a couple of years beforehand, he had been road manager for a 15- member band called Gollum, named after a character in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. • Originally, the group had been called Three's a Crowd, modeled in the Kingston Trio mode. Then it moved into country, and later, progressive coun- Steve Trogdon, presidQnt of StageCenter. try. Finally, the group combined with a heavy metal ' itItand• t!; , ,a. ,, f ' +7:. The association with the band opened up a new -vista for Trogdon: audio equipment. He has since put the experience to goodtse. Du ing the summer, Trogdon can be found a Central y :'ark in College Station a•couple of times'a month, handli the audio for the summer concerts. - He performs the same chore for Community C enter functions when necessary. t Trogdon came to College Station in 1980 as -a tagehand for the • Rudder Theater at A &M, 'arid oined the Community Center In 1981. He is 3n ,charge of building maintenance n4 cleaning sar- ;,viges there. . it was also in 1981 that Trogdon married the ((Amer Delana Hilley, whom he met while she was a tadent at• Tarleton.' They hav a 7- month - d daughter, Stephanie Erin. �. He has been with StageCenter for two years now, moving up to the presidency from a spot on the Eagle photo by Kathy Young board of producers, which Vas responsibility for ar - tistic siirecti of,tle group. ,, „ r k_ y Trogdpi,has taken the presidency at a` partlicuia ly critical time for StageCenter. Bryan plans to renovate the old golf course clubhouse into a coma munity centtr, and as a result the theatric grojap'will have to vacate it. • A propo } l for assistance in funding from the city of Collegetation fell through, amid claims of financial irresponsibility by. StageCenter. And in- dications are that a plan to use the old .Eagle building ineowntown Bry4 also will be nixed. • It is begigning.to look as f Trogdon may have to use anothetof his skills to force someone torovide a building for the group. For eight years, hevractic- ed karate. 11e even taught it in the Tarleton hysical education jogram while .a.st ident there. It's the one talent he hash't put to us, yet in building nuclear plants, running theaters, or main- taining community centers: