|
Texas Aggies should honor Edward Benjamin
Cushing as one of their greatest heroes, but instead they have almost completely
forgotten him.
Cushing never scored a winning touchdown
against the arch-rival Texas Longhorns, never displayed conspicuous valor
in combat, never achieved great fame.
But without his efforts Texas A&M
University wouldn't exist today.
He came to Aggieland's aid early in
this century when the Legislature considered moving A&M to Austin and
reducing it to an agricultural branch of the University of Texas.
Texas A&M now is working to ensure
that Cushing receives just recognition. It has launched an effort to refurbish
the old library building on its College Station campus which bears Cushing's
name.
Cushing was born in Houston in 1862
during the Civil War. His father, Edward Hopkins Cushing, a transplanted
New Englander, published a newspaper called the Houston Telegraph.
The younger Cushing entered A&M
in 1877 and three years later became a member of its second graduating
class.Then he embarked on a career as a civil engineer.
In time he became the chief engineer
in charge of construction for the Southern Pacific Lines in Texas and Louisiana,
a leading citizen of Houston and a man of considerable means.
Financial woes beset A&M in 1912
while Cushing was serving as president of its board of directors. Separate
fires that had destroyed its mess hall and Main Building were already causing
problems.
Legislators and others involved in a
move to meld the school with the University of Texas were cause
A&M's funding to almost evaporate. Its debts mounted to about $87,000,
then an enormous amount of money.
Two current A&M faculty members,
David L. Chapman, an archivist and historian, and Donald H. Dyal, director
of the Cushing Library, have researched the history of this episode.
As "the school's administrators faced
the future with taut faces and sweaty palms," they wrote, "Cushing guaranteed
notes of credit for the school out of his own pocket, buying Texas A&M
some time."
Not waiting for others to find a solution,
he "inflamed the telegraph wires with messages to influential legislators
and other Texans and coordinated a counterattack."
His "enthusiasm and compelling reasoning
proved infectious," the scholars wrote. "The college was saved. Everyone
on campus knew that E. B. Cushing had rescued Texas A&M from the brink
of oblivion."
When the United States entered World
War I in 1917, they noted, he offered his services to the Army's Corps
of Engineers, but the Army deemed him too old to serve because he was in
his 50s.
Cushing overcame that opposition by
mobilizing influential friends to press his case. Commissioned as a major,
he won commendations in Europe directing construction of docks and operations
of port and rail facilities. He rose to colonel.
Cushing became "the logistical expert"
for Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force
in Europe, Chapman said.
After the war, he worked for a time
as a bank examiner and continued his support of Texas A&M. He died
in 1924 at age 61.
His will directed that his personal
library, including rare engineering textbooks, go to his alma mater. His
books became part of the collection of the school's new library, which
was named in his honor and opened in 1930.
Texas A&M later got a new, larger
library, but the Cushing Library remained in use until last year when it
was closed for renovation.
Chapman said the university is seeking
to establish an endowment to refurbish the library and fully realize features
in its original plans that had to be omitted because of fiscal restraints
in the 1930s.
Why have later generations of Aggies
forgotten Cushing?
"It's probably because he was modest
to a fault," said Chapman, who earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees
at A&M. "He believed in getting a job done. He got it done, then went
on to something else. Maybe that was in conformity with a 19th century
code that a gentleman just doesn't stand around basking in glory."
-The Houston Chronicle
March 18, 1996
|
