Texas A&M grads

In 1991, the small-town newspaper where I worked hired two recent Texas A&M journalism graduates.

One, John, had intended to be a Marine Corps officer. After his junior year he spent summer at Quantico in the first phase of USMC officer candidate school. Had all gone as planned, he would have completed OCS and been commissioned a second lieutenant. That did not happen.

Back at A&M, John was riding his bicycle from the library to his dorm one night, when two other students on bicycles ran a stop sign and hit John. He suffered a head injury, which led to some physical problems and an inability to pass the USMC physical. So, instead of leading a Marine platoon, John wrote feature stories for a newspaper with circulation under 10,000. He would have made a good Marine officer. He listened, he asked questions, and he had common sense.

The other A&M graduate, Jim, was assigned to cover city and county schools and other reporting as needed. Unlike John, Jim did not live up to the expectations of an A&M graduate.

One day when writing a story, he asked me, “A heifer is a male cow, right?”

I said, “Doesn’t the A in A&M stand for ‘Agricultural?’”

He replied, “Oh, that doesn’t mean anything these days. They don’t teach that any more.”

I said, “If you have to ask me if a heifer is a male cow, I’d say they need to return to teaching that stuff.”

After less than a year at the small newspaper, John got a job with the PR department of a major Texas university. It wasn’t A&M, but it was out of the small newspaper.

Jim on a day before he left the small newspaper told me he had an interview in two weeks with the Tyler newspaper. He said, “Should I tell them (management) I’m going for an interview with another paper?”

I said, “Would they give you advance notice if they were going to fire you?”

“Probably not,” Jim said.

“Well, there’s the answer.”

Jim got the job in Tyler. I did not miss his presence. One day before his Tyler interview, he said, abruptly, “What this country needs is a war to get things going.”

I said, “Then get yourself down to a recruiting station.”

“No, no,” he said. “In didn’t mean I want to go to war.”

“Hunh-unh,” I said. “That’s not the way it works. You want the country to go to war, you get your ass to a recruiting station and enlist.”