Rudder: From Leader to Legend

Acknowledgments

So many people and institutions helped me produce this book that I can most efficiently express my appreciation by describing their assistance in categories, beginning with those whose assistance was comprehensive and affected the development of the entire manuscript, followed by those whose help was significant in the three sections of the book: The Early Years, The War Years, and Public Servant. Comprehensive. My wife, Carol Sutherland Hatfield, was steadfast and indispensable. Seeing Carol, an accomplished editor and journalist, work and apply her extraordinary organizational skills made me realize how lucky I have been to have her beside me for most of my life. Two other women read the entire manuscript: Nelda Rowell Green and Carolyn Culbert Osborn . Nelda was Earl Rudder’s executive secretary for the last five years of his Texas A&M presidency. She directed me to sources, provided original documents , and responded positively to the many requests that I made. Carolyn Osborn—novelist, short story writer, and friend from undergraduate days— is a stylist whose suggestions elevated the manuscript. My copy editor, Noel Parsons, improved the work in similar ways. Margaret Williamson Rudder gave me exclusive, unlimited access to her personal papers, as well as her husband’s. She died while the book was in progress, and her children—Bud, Anne, Linda, and Bob—continued to give their wholehearted support. Texas Governor Rick Perry encouraged and supported the project from beginning to end. At all times I was aware of the influence of my aunt, Sadie Hatfield (1895– 1990), a career professional in the Cooperative Extension Service of Texas A&M University. She was an inexplicable blessing, always expanding my perceptions, whether of the natural world or the cultured world. Her inspiring legacy is both tangible and intangible. Dave H. Williams, Ralph Ellis, and John Mobley gave crucial material and moral support to the entire project. Dr. David Chapman, director of Texas A&M University’s Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, guided me to documents in the Rudder collection . In the office of the Texas A&M System Board of Regents, Vickie Spillers ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xvi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS and Laura Powers were unfailingly helpful. Regent Phil Adams allowed me free use of an apartment on the campus, and Regent Richard Box made numerous contacts for me. Earl Rudder would see no contradiction in the fact that the University of Texas at Austin, my alma mater and academic home, cooperated with Texas A&M, his university, to publish his biography. His original base of statewide political support was with alumni of the University of Texas whose leaders later helped him as A&M’s president. Rudder was not parochial and worked for the improvement of education at all levels, once commenting, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Except for about three hours each year, his support of the University of Texas is undeniable. He attended Longhorn football banquets and joined in singing the Texas fight song and “The Eyes of Texas.” His wife was a UT graduate, and four of his children attended the university. The magnificent libraries and information technology services of the University of Texas were essential to the production of this book. Colleagues at the university who helped me include Sharry Kahanek, Judy Evans, Ramona Kelly, Echo Uribe, David Grosvenor, David Zepeda, Dr. Holly Taylor , and Dr. Don Carleton, executive director of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. Professors Jean-Pierre Cauvin and Robert D. King translated French and German documents. At Texas A&M University Press, Charles Backus, Mary Lenn Dixon, and Thom Lemmons gave reliable advice and encouragement, which earned them my respect and admiration. The Early Years. Carolyn Moody, the director of the Don Freeman Memorial Museum in Eden, Texas—Rudder’s birthplace—oriented me to the area and sent me numerous documents that she surely spent hours searching to find. Margaret Rose Loveless afforded me family documents with photographs and accounts of the funeral of her uncle, John R. Lapp Jr., which forms the opening scene of the book. Two interviews with Evelyn Whitfield Hendricks, as she approached her one hundredth birthday, were extraordinary for their clarity and detail about the Rudder family, in whose home she worked in the late 1920s. The Concho County clerk, Barbara Hoffman, and Gail Scott helped me reconstruct the difficulties of Rudder’s father in reconciling business transactions. Tarleton State University librarian Glenda Stone was resourceful in finding documents and photos from Rudder’s two periods there, first as a student, 1927–30, and as a teacher-coach, 1938–41. Don D. Carter, Texas A&M’s registrar and admissions officer, retrieved records...