Karen Rogers tells us in a comment to yesterday’s post about Dr. Lovett and the New Orleans alumni that R.T. Wilbanks described this visit in an article he wrote for the Rice Historical Society’s magazine, the Cornerstone. Sure enough, I just found it. It’s in the very first issue, Volume 1, Number 1, from the summer of 1995. Here’s the link. This issue apparently came out before the discovery of page numbers, but if you browse through it you’ll find the article near the end.
Like the photographs themselves, this story is charming. Wilbanks was struck by exactly the same thing that I was struck by–that Lovett, who could seem so distant and formal at times, was warm, friendly and engaging when in a social setting. He even took the time to send a present later to Wilbanks’s little daughter, who turns out to be named Vera.