• from the June 26, 1969 issue of The Sul Ross Skyline •
With the stroke of his pen, Governor of Texas Preston Smith elevated Sul Ross State College to university status. The law changing the name of four state senior colleges to universities went into effect May 15 on the heels of the spring commencement exercises.
“The change of the name of our institution to Sul Ross State University is the mark of our evolvement into a position of greater prestige in the academic world,” said Dr. Norman L. McNeil, university President. “It will keep us on an equal basis with other institutions of higher learning in Texas who are changing their names to Universities.”
While President McNeil conferred “college” degrees on a group of seniors with mixed emotions (seniors will have an opportunity to obtain university degrees), several persons on campus began to think about the problems involved in the changeover.
Print shop foreman Rudy Martinez, a senior from Odessa, prepared for an onslaught of stationary orders. Thousands of memos, letterheads, envelopes, and official forms carry the name Sul Ross State College—this has to be changed. New pamphlets bearing the University title were rolling off the presses at the rate of 4,000 an hour within a short time after the switch. Martinez estimates that the complete eradication of “college” from all school forms and printed matter will take some time. The print shop is looking forward to a busy summer.
The sign at the edge of the campus was one of the first to be redone in a university fashion. Students leaving at the end of a long term said goodbye to Sul Ross State College while those returning for the summer session were greeted by Sul Ross State University. Next in line for the name change is the fleet of school-owned vehicles.
The college bookstore now becomes a university bookstore. Pennants, gym clothes, sweatshirts, ash trays, mugs, pens, notebooks, and decals all find themselves obsolete. Many items sold by the store were fortunate—they displayed only the name Sul Ross State with neither a college nor a university rank.
The main problem will be remembering to “say” university. After several years of conditioning one’s reflexes to following Sul Ross State with the word college, a few persons on campus might find their speech slightly garbled as they try to correct themselves in mid-college. Be careful. You might hurt yourself saying “Col-iversity.”
• by Lucy E. Hudson • from the October 8, 1941 Sul Ross Skyline •
Sul Ross has stuck to its traditions and held out against drought, prosperity, depressions, sandstorms, snowstorms, hail, grasshoppers, and Republicans. But we are wondering if we can meet a new enemy, F L E A S!
Where they came from, why they picked on Sully, and what is back of this invasion we do not know. All that we know is: they came, they saw, they stayed.
The fleas seem to have settled down to light housekeeping in the library building. Rumor hath it that the heads of the departments who were transferred there this year are engaged in an acrimonious dispute as to who brought the fleas.
No decision has yet been reached.
Aspersions are being cast on the Biology department as using the fleas to conduct mass experiments to see if flease can really be educated by contact with college students and professors. Dr. Sperry flatly denies this.
The first faculty member reporting the invaders was Miss Annie Kay Ferguson. This encounter was in the basement costume room and said Battle of the Ages provoked quite unseen results. Quote Miss Ferguson: “I don’t mind getting fleas and dealing with them on scholastic grounds, but I DO mind taking them home to my dog.”
Sully’s Students have a new excuse for those “classroom jitters.” If Dr. Coleman or Dr. Winn see fit to reprimand our serious sophmores for paying more attention to the calves of their legs than Shakespeare, or suggest they quit exploring their ankles in favor of exploring Chaucer, the only comeback is, “I’m sorry, but I think I’ve got fleas.”
No collective action has yet been taken against the fleas, but it is reported that the student body is to elect a committee to go to Austin and take the matter up with the State Legislature and Board of Control. If plans work out satisfactorily, we may expect the grant of a can of flea powder in three or four months at the least.
In time to come, the students of Sul Ross will have many things to remember, but we think that this dastardly attempt to take over our college by these x—!—x!! INSECTS!! will stad high in our memories of happy college days.
And in conclusion . . . well, I’ll be!! Just caught three of the little devils signaling their friends to come and get it! Darn, I itch!!
Katherine Word Robbins and Carroll Word Whittenburg, great-great-great granddaughter and and great-great-great grandson of Sul Ross were among the distinguished visitors who attended the opening of the new Museum of the Big Bend.
Whittenburg, who attended Sul Ross in 1963 and went on to graduate from Baylor University in 1966 with his BBA degree, now resides in Waco, Texas. His relationship to Sul Ross stems from his great-great grandfather, Sam Word, who shot his borther-in-law in Arkansas during a family dispute and fled to Texas to escape prison. Upon arriving in Texas, to make his freedom secure, he fell in love with and married the daughter of the Governor, who at that time was Lawrence Sullivan Ross. After the marriage, the supposedly dead brother-in-law met Word again and the two became fast friends.
Mrs. Robbins and Whittenburg agreed the new Museum was “fantastic.” Whittenburg was also accompanied by his wife, Tommy Lou, and his sister, Melanie, of Fort Stockton.
• by Barry Scobee, Ft. Davis Correspondent • from the June 8, 1938 Sul Ross Skyline •
And then there’s the Army mess sergeant who shot the ranchman’s bull, out west of Valentine, back in 1921, so his buddies could have some fresh beef.
This same soldier was with the cavalry troops who were on maneuvers at Balmorhea recently, and how his presence happened to become known to a newspaper scribe is a story calculated to make Believe It Or Not Ripley’s eyes sparkle.
The bull was shot on the ranch of C. O. Finley, who is now a ranchman in the Pecos country. Mr. Finely is an old-time resident around the Davis Mountains. He owned, back in 1921, what is called the Holland Ranch, 12 miles west of Valentine around the Rimrock. Espy Miller of Fort Davis owns the ranch now, along with the Army post the War Department built there in 1919-21. It was while this post was under construction that B Troop of the Fifth Cavalry was stationed there.
In company with Elmer Devenport, superintendent of the CCC sub-camp in the Davis Mountains, Mr. Miller went to Balmorhea maneuver grounds. Mr. Devenport ran across a sergeant whom he knew. The sergeant asked them to have dinner with his troop. While they were manipulating a mess kit of slumguillion and beans, Mr. Miller chanced to mention about the mess sergeant of 17 years ago who shot the bull.
“Say,” said the sergeant host, pointing to a tent nearby, “see that man sitting there in his shirt sleeves? He’s the man who shot the bull.”
Perhaps Mr. Miller in his surprise looked skeptical, for the host said, “Sure, and I’ll call him over and prove it.”
He did call the other soldier, and the new-comer readily said he was the man.
“I shot the Finley bull all right,” he recounted. “It was hard to get fresh beef away out there, and we needed it. I loaded one hind quarter on my pack mule and took it into camp. Soldiers have to eat, don’t they? Later Texas Rangers got to looking around to find out who had shot the bull. they found the empty Springfield rifle cartridge I had used, and the next thing I knew they had me pinched. I was slung in jail at Marfa. It looked like the first step to the pen, and I didn’t feel any too good. But Mr. Finely who owned the bull had a heart. All he wanted was pay for the bull. My troop buddies dug up the needed $75 and paid for the animal. The owner was satisfied and I was released. There’s just one other man who was in B Troop at that time who is here on these maneuvers. He donated $5 towards buying me out of the can, and I do appreciate him yet!”
Somebody asked the bull killer if the bull steak was tough–“Could the soldiers chew it?” “Say,” said the bull butcherer, “those horsemaids was hungry enough to eat the jamb off the door–that bull beef was veal to us right then.”
“And to think,” said Espy Miller, “that out of several thousand soldiers around me, the man I was talking about, who had shot the bull on the ranch I now own, was right there on the spot, and the story I had heard from various sources, I heard right there from his own lips. Naturally you’d never expect in a lifetime to run across a soldier again who had been at a certain spot seventeen years ago.”
