President ’ s Message : My Favorite Aggies
Charles A . Beckham , Jr ., Haynes and Boone , LLP President , American College of Bankruptcy
Happy Holidays ! I hope the holiday season is happy and bright for you and your family . While I ’ ve gotcha , let me tell you about My Favorite Aggies . It may sound pretty peculiar to many of you who came to Austin this Fall for our meetings to learn that a full orange blooded Texas Longhorn would have not one but two favorite Texas A & M Aggies . While separated by many decades and different paths in life , these individuals have two common bonds : they are both Texas A & M Aggies and they both have an overwhelming willingness to serve their communities . That willingness to serve and serve well is a recognizable quality in many Aggies . During World War II , while describing his admiration for Texas Aggies , General George Patton stated , “ Give me an Army of West Point graduates and I ’ ll win a battle . . . Give me a handful of Texas Aggies and I ’ ll win a war .”
My first favorite Aggie is my Dad . He was born in a farmhouse in Grand Prairie , Texas in 1914 when Grand Prairie truly was a grand prairie , not the Dallas suburb it is today . After graduating from Oak Cliff High School in Dallas , he went to work in a battery factory close to Love Field in Dallas for seventeen ( 17 ) cents an hour . He was
working to save money to become a military cadet at Texas A & M . During his lunch breaks , he would go outside under the baking Texas sun to watch airplanes take off and land at Love Field . He dreamed of flying airplanes in the newly formed United States Army Air Corps after graduating from college . After a few years he finally had enough money to go to college at Texas A & M and become an Aggie . Unfortunately , by the Fall of 1939 and the beginning of his senior year when all Texas Aggies bought their “ Senior Boots ” to proudly march on parade , he had run out of money . His dream of wearing his Senior Boots on parade seemed to have evaporated .
Somehow in the Fall of 1939 , fate and the Army Air Corps found him . The Army Air Corps came on campus in College Station to offer him and other military cadets an immediate opportunity to serve their country and a $ 250 signing bonus . It
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