Alumni J-TAC, June 1980 Page: 2 of 8
8 p. : ill. ; 41 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Page 2
"If these walls had ears...The person who coined the
phrase "if these walls had ears...."
could easily have been talking
about the native stone building
standing in the center of the
Tarleton State University campus
which has served as a recreation
hall and drama studio for more
than 50 years.
The building will no longer be
student-oriented at the end of the
current school year when the
drama department moves to
Tarleton's new fine arts center.
Current plans call for it to be
used as a storage facility for
administrative records and
receiving.
According to Sy Norris,
university engineer, the red brick
addition to the front of the
building will be renovated and will
house offices of university
personnel, purchasing, and
auxiliary services.
The building was constructed
in 1928 as a recreation hall and
was the focal point of student
activities until the Tarleton Center
opened in 1966. It has since been
the home of the Tarleton Players.
If the walls of the tin-roofed
building could talk, they could
tell some tall tales about student
activities when cars were at a
premium and students spent
virtually every evening and
weekend on the campus.
All social activities were
scheduled in the rec hall. These
included dancing in the morning
before classes, at noon, and for a
short time after the evening meal,
plus the social club extravaganzas
on Saturday nights.
The clubs transformed the
barn-like building into a replica of
the Trianon Ballroom, the
Venetian Room, or the Palladium
with yards and yards of crepe
paper creating a suspended ceiling
and giant murals covering the
stucco walls.
"Program" dances were the in
thing, and those who didn't save a
few choice spots on their program
for their favorite partners weren't
favorite partners very long.
Live music was provided by the
college orchestra under the
director of Morton P. (Bozo)
Brooks who gained national
recognition as the only dean of
men in the country to lead a
college jazz band.
The orchestra drummer was
Marvin Zindler, now public
defender for a Houston TV
station, who later laid claim to
fame by drumming the fairladies
of the Chicken Ranch at La
Grange out of the corps.
Conspicuous by their absence
from the building were ash trays.
Smoking wasn't permitted in the
rec hall...or on the campus for
that matter.At a time when cold soda pop
could be purchased for a nickel
and hamburgers were going for
six-for-a-quarter, the "candy
stand" in the rec hall provided
employment for a number of
Tarleton athletes. Among these
was Earl Rudder who went on to
become a general in World War II
and led his Rangers up the 90-foot
cliffs of Point de Hoe in the
Normandy invasion. Rudder later
became Texas land commissioner
and then president of the Texas
A&M University System.
The old hall could also call out
names like Oran Spears, Elmer
Finley, Jude Smith, Joe
Headstream, Willie Tate,
and Thurman Hull who paced the
Plowboys of coach W. J. Wisdom
to a world record 86 consecutive
wins in basketball. And the name
of halfback Lewis "Bullett" Gray
who flew for 30 seconds with
General Jimmy Doolittle over
Tokyo.
In the years of the Big War the
rec hall was also home for
members of the Army Specialized
Training Program at Tarleton and
many coeds can recall
"jitterbugging" with big George
Kennedy who years later won an
Oscar for his performance in
"Cool Hand Luke."
The rec hall was the nesting
place for the controversy that
raged between John Tarleton
Agricultural College and North
Texas Agricultural College at
Arlington when the two schools
were locked in bitter rivalry.
Cadets who guarded the campus
against invasion by the Junior
Aggies prior to the game for the
coveted Silver Bugle found
warmth in the rec hall on cold,
bitter nights and comfort in a cup
of hot coffee brewed by dean of
men Cecil Ballow.
And the walls might even
chuckle a little at the night the
late Carl Birdwell, manager of the
College Store, walked into the rec
hall and proudly proclaimed "I'll
go ten bucks on a cattle truck"
and started action that resulted in
renting a cattle truck to take
approximately 100 students to
Arlington on a successful trip to
burn the NTAC bonfire. An
incident that prompted the
infamous air attack on the
Tarleton campus when a plane,
carrying two NTAC students
intent on fire-bombing the
Tarleton bonfire, was knocked
out of the sky by a two-by-four
thrown by L. V. Risinger.
The upstairs over the candy
stand was home for the TTP and
TTS spirit organizations. And
carved into the wood rafters or
scrawled in paint across the walls
could be found the names of R.D.
Lancaster, Chee Wee Lockhart,Alumni J-TAC
The Alumni J-TAC is published quarterly by the Tarleton Alumni
Association, Tarleton State University. Editors of the Alumni J-TAC
are J. Louis Evans and Reed Richmond. News for the Alumni J-TAC
and address corrections should be sent to the Tarleton Alumni
Association, Box T188, Tarleton State University, Stephenville, TX
76402.Alumni J-TAC
I,
/ / * :+':',.. .W y 'ma ' >
gyp, youBECOMES LANDMARK - The "rec hall", gathering place for TSU students for 50 years, will
no longer be used as a student facility after this summer. The building became The Studio,
for the drama department, in the mid-1960's. The department is moving to the new Fine Arts
Center and the building will become a part of receiving and storage.Dorothy Dee Goodwin, Gene
Arbuckle, Kitty Corder, Bill Nix,
Jo Ann Teague, Dan Bishop, Oren
Ellis, Jack McCullough and many
others.
The 1950's saw a change in the
rec hall activities with the
installation of a pool table and theconstant click of dominoes on the
hardwood tables.
Despite the changes of time,
however, the continuous sweeping
and cleaning and the textbook
tidbits of baseball trivia
from Hilary Moore remained the
same. Hilary, keeper of the keys
for the rec hall, grew up on theTarleton campus and became as
much a part of the building as the
walls.
Yes, the walls, of the old rec
hall could tell many interesting
storiestaboutnthe early days of
Tarleton. And some of those
students may be grateful to this
day...that walls can't talk.FOR FOUNDATION - Allen H. Carruth (C), president of the Houston Livestock Show and
Rodeo, and manager Dick Weekley (L) present a $50,000 check to TSU vice president Dr.
Joe W. Autry for the Tarleton Development Foundation. The money will go into the
Houston organization's endowment fund which annually provides 10 scholarships for TSU
students majoring in agriculture.
Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo
gives $50,000 for scholarshipsThe Houston Livestock
Show and Rodeo has made a gift
of $50,000 to the Tarleton
Development Foundation for an
endowed scholarship fund for
TSU agriculture majors. The gift
was made in Houston May 22 by
Allen H. Carruth, president of the
Houston Livestock Show and
Rodeo, and Dick Weekley, general
manager, to TSU vice president
Dr. Joe W. Autry.
The Houston organization hasgiven the Tarleton Development
Foundation a total of $100,000
which provides approximately 10
scholarships annually to Tarleton
students. The livestock show and
rodeo has also provided teaching
assistantships in the TSU
agriculture department.
J. Louis Evans, executive
director of the Tarleton
Foundation, said the recent gift
from the Houston show haspushed the assets of the
foundation to approximately
$225,000. In addition to
providing scholarships, the
foundation has been involved in
student recruiting at Tarleton
through financial assistance to the
recruiting committee.
C.H. Maguire, Jr., is president
of the Tarleton Development
Foundation, and W. Henry Todd,
Wichita Falls, is vice president.I ;sy
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Tarleton State University. Alumni J-TAC, June 1980, periodical, June 1980; Stephenville, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1040262/m1/2/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Tarleton State University.