What’s your other school?

If you have seen my posts and my byline, The Ohio State University, where my parents, who were ACU faculty, and myself received our PH.D.s is my primary other school. I also have an attachment to UT Austin, family members who graduated from there, and my MD. And sorry Outsider, I am a fan of the University of Arizona, especially basketball, because I was on the medical school faculty there during the 90’s, the championship “Lute” years. Arizona was the most beautiful place I have lived in. I was introduced to it by Dr. Kenneth Williams on one of his famous Botany trips.

I visited Tucson several times during high school for state wide FFA competitions or high school wrestling tournaments. We usually stayed in a dorm that was literally under the stands of the football stadium. I always thought that was cool. I was 15 or 16 at the time though and easily impressed.

Okay here's one for you. Graduated ACC 1973. Of course this is my number one school that I root for. I got my DDS from Baylor College of Dentistry. I really like Baylor quite a bit but never did really cheer them on. Now I have a real dilemma. The name changed from Baylor to Texas A&M School of Dentistry. I'm sorry, that's definitely not one that I can cheer for. (Sorry aggie fans). That leaves me pretty much with good ole ACU! Three cheers for the purple and white! Go Cats!

Although I'm all about Coastal Carolina now, it will always be #3 on my list. My #2 is the University of Texas. Started going to UT football games in 1959. 1st star I remember was "Jackrabbit" Jimmy Saxton. I was privileged to see Roger Staubach (Navy), Donnie Anderson (TT), Walt Garrison (Ok State) and others play at Longhorn Stadium as well as numerous UT greats. #1 Go Cats.

I am a dedicated Wildcat, I even bleed purple. I played in a Wildcat Jersey and was co-captain of my first year basketball team before injury ended that fun. Back then we had even and odd numbered jerseys so I was 30 at home and 33 on the road. My mother and father both came to Abilene for ACU and married here.

Grad school was at UT, or Texas as we called it back then. I got to be one of the first ever to use the Cray designed Super Computer and ran it almost every day. A roommate in our rented house was the back up punter to Super Bill Bradley so on Saturdays I would go down and field punts and throw them back. I often ran around with Pete Lammons and Corby Robertson. The girl's tennis team asked me to be a workout horse to help them adapt to harder hit serves and ground strokes, and Harvey Penick asked me to play with his golf team recruits (yes, Crenshaw and Kite among others) so my second favorite is understandably UT -- I still have a pretty strong connection there. UT asks me to speak there more than ACU does here.

After the PhD, I spent a year as a visiting professor for UT then joined ACU to build a key department here that does quite well today. I did some post doc work at Purdue learning to program orbiting satellite images of earth, but felt no connection to the Boilermakers -- it was all sort of semi-secret stuff and the campus was next to a corn field. Texas Tech also asked if I would be an Adjunct Professor for the Red Raiders, which I did, but I had no real loyalty to Tech.

So for me it is Wildcats and to a lesser extent Longhorns. Funny, I don't ever root for the Aggies (which actually recruited me) or OU unless Texas is already ousted, then I cheer for A&M or the Okies. Also for my Arizona friend... Astronomy is a really big deal for the university there and my cousin's Ph.D. from there led to him being the head planetary researcher for NASA. He was the scientist in charge of the moon rocks.

Just realized this was too long and too personal but loyalties are an interesting thing. That first school you connect with really does have a lasting effect. I likely would never have joined the faculty at ACU given the offers I had (32 of them actually, including Harvard) but loyalty and appreciation for what the school stands for trumped all other factors. ACU really is special.

Oh my... I've been discovered.  I enjoyed all the Astronomy Students and the wonders of the Universe.  You must have been a smart one since I recall those that worked in the Observatory as quite capable.  And yep, we built an Observatory, two actually since the first one had to be moved to the roof of the science building with the expansion of workout fields.  Amazingly, the design for the roof one was asked for and copied and built at a university in Trondheim, Norway.  I still love Astronomy and spend time at McDonald Observatory out near Fort Davis where the Dark Energy/Matter experiment is being done on the HETDEX telescope.  Thanks for the memories of Galileo -- that was a long time ago.  And for those that know about the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) set to be launched now on October 31, a major designer of the adaptive optics is an ex-ACU student from the department.  This will replace the Hubble Telescope.  ACU students do significant things!!!