Rudder: From Leader to Legend (review)

World War II not only transformed America's industrial and military capacity, but also its human capital. Few stories illustrate this better than that of James Earl Rudder, who was lifted from obscurity to a crucial role in the greatest invasion in history and became a powerful voice in the shaping of post-war Texas. In this intricately detailed biography, Thomas Hatfield explores the life of the man who transformed the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas from a declining all-male, all-military school into a coeducational, integrated research powerhouse known as Texas A&M University. Rudder, Hatfield argues, represented the "triumph of humane and personal leadership" in seizing opportunities to improve both himself and the Lone Star State.

The war made James Earl Rudder: he rose from lieutenant to colonel in three years. The former high school football coach soon found himself in high level meetings to plan the D-Day invasion. His own task was to lead the assault on the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, a job General Omar Bradley called the toughest of the invasion. He accomplished this task and went on to take increasingly demanding roles in virtually every major battle of the European War. Awarded a regimental command, he was placed in a "quiet" sector of the front and ended up facing the brunt of the German onslaught in the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, Rudder entered public life as the Texas Land Commissioner, appointed by the governor to clean up the agency in the wake of a scandal. Having accomplished that goal, he took on the role for which he seemed to be born: president of his alma mater, Texas A&M.

Texas A&M in 1958 was far from the institution it would later become. Rudder took over a mostly agriculture-oriented college with a declining enrollment that seemed fated to be eclipsed by other state universities like Texas Tech. He embarked on an ambitious program of reform: changing the school's name, abolishing mandatory ROTC, admitting women and enrolling African-Americans. Resistance was fierce, but Rudder eventually won over many of the highly conservative students and alumni to his side. He was a war hero, an Aggie, and like many of the school's students, was from a rural background. Moreover, his targets were not general and radical, but selective: the ones he pinpointed as impediments to the university's rise.

Rudder improved working conditions for professors and aggressively pursued federal research grants. The twelve years of his presidency coincided with dramatic increases in federal research spending due to the Cold War and the space race. Rudder cashed in on political contacts with friends like Lyndon Baines Johnson, who became president midway through his tenure. His greatest triumph in the research arena was securing a grant to build a particle accelerator for advanced physics research. By the time he left it, Texas A&M was expanding dramatically and well on its way to joining its rival in Austin as one of the state's two flagship universities.

Hatfield's biography is largely complimentary and occasionally downplays events for which Rudder might well be subject to criticism. He extensively explores Rudder's long-standing feud with and censorship of the Texas A&M student newspaper. Hatfield's view is that Rudder was a product of his generation and his history: as a former football coach and military officer, he thought everyone should be on the team. While such inflexible leadership may not have won him praise in this case, Hatfield argues that in balance, it was the deciding factor in transforming Texas A&M.