Twenty-five years ago this summer the leaders of the G7 met at Rice, an event we refer to on campus simply as “the economic summit.” Putting together an anniversary exhibit, we had boxes of photographs out this afternoon. By far the most interesting were the images of the grounds crews making preparations. Given my well known stance in favor of planters on campus I was especially taken with the flower pots that were brought in to beautify the rather stark academic quad. There were a lot of them:
Is that Mr. Franco supervising?
And they did in fact dramatically improve the view:
Interestingly, in the photos of the G7 group in front of Lovett Hall they’ve moved over to the cloisters, also quite an attractive look:
Off the top of my head I can think of a half dozen pots that might be survivors of this event. There are four in front of the library:
(Sorry for the broken water main photo–it was the first one I found with the pots and I don’t have all night to find a better one.)
There are another two over by the Mech Lab:
I like the pots. I think we could use more.
By the way, after staring at the chicken scratches on the back of the economic summit pictures for many minutes I decided that they all say “T Lavergne” so both credit and gratitude goes to Tommy.
I still have a bottle of commemorative Economic Summit Champagne in my wine cellar…
I still use “Chicken Scratch”
The pots in front of the library are definitely survivors of the summit. They’ve been there since 1990.
Yes, that is Eusebio Franco supervising the unloading of the pots.
My favorite memory was watching the helicopter carrying President Bush and its escort rise from the stadium lot against the blazing sun set on the day that it was all over. Didn’t have convenient cameras back then, so no photos.
I am pretty sure that I am to blame for one of those pots not being there any more. The pot was an item in a scavenger hunt during O Week in fall 1990. They were very heavy and while we were trying to make off with one we dropped and cracked it. Didn’t get in trouble as far as I remember.
Two of the pots are at the front door of RUPD.
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It’s too bad no one thought to have them stamped “Economic Summit 1990” or something like that when they were ordered. But I suspect that one really gave any thought at the time to whether these pots would still be on campus more than a quarter-century later.
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