Actually, I think they met yesterday so we’re probably safe.
Here’s a picture of a much earlier board meeting. There’s no identification of anyone and the photo is undated, although it must have been taken in the late 1960s. (We’ve talked about this before–go id your pictures! Your descendants will thank you.) I’m pretty sure who most of them are, but there are a couple I just don’t know. Let’s have a look:
Click on this a couple times and you can get a very close view.
I’m going to start on the back side of the table at left and go around. Again, most of these I’m pretty certain about but if anyone thinks I’m wrong or knows the ones I don’t, please speak up. I get lost at the right end of the table. So I make it as:
Herbert Allen
Oveta Culp Hobby
Malcolm Lovett, Sr.
George R. Brown
Rice President Kenneth Pitzer
Chancellor Carey Croneis
?
?
Is that Holmes Richter, the Dean?
?
Jim Teague?
Hugh Liedtke
A very young, handsome Ralph O’Connor
I think this must be Gardiner Symonds
One last thing: where do you suppose they’re meeting? It’s such a featureless room it’s impossible to say.
Sorry I can’t give much help, but the portrait on the wall isn’t W. M. Rice. If you don’t recognize it as part of “Rice U’s art collection,” maybe the meeting was downtown rather than on campus?
The portrait on the wall looks a lot like the image of W.M. Rice that’s the final image on this webpage: http://www.phosphenepublishing.com/subpage29.html … a reprint of Christopher Dow’s “Centennial Portrait” of Mr. Rice that appeared in the Winter 2000 Sallyport.
“A painting of William in his later years shows a slight man with a white beard, direct gaze, and a stern expression gained through many years of shrewd entrepreneurship. “
Thanks, Mike. I’m going to put a link to that website as an update to the post. That’s definitely WMR in the painting.
Are they in a room in Fondren Library? Are there any wood-panelled walls in the rooms there?
Yes I think the individual at far right corner of table is GH Richter. He’s a bit older than I remember him from every other day in Biochemistry, 1956-7. I’ll bet he was bored to death at that meeting will all those promis. JBK
The far right corner is Holmes Richter (Dean and Organic Chemistry professor/author).
I recognize him as he is my great uncle.