Acting on a timely tip I spent much of last weekend combing through a vast amount of paper at an estate sale in west Houston. The home had belonged to a pair of 1952 Rice graduates, Dean and Ginny (Smith) Hill, and among other things it contained a veritable blizzard, a full fledged riot, of Rice ephemera, much of which I had never seen before.

Here’s Dean, pictured on his NROTC card:

And Ginny on her Student Athletic card:

I had never before contemplated how a Rice student who lived at home would obtain lunch while on campus during the day but I now have the answer: he could buy lunch in the Dining Hall. I admire the spirit that saw the point of saving a large number of these:

There were photos, letters, scrapbooks, programs–here’s the Senior Follies of 1951:

There were all kinds of interesting receipts:

And there’s also a great deal of material here that I don’t quite know how to categorize. It will take some time to work though it all and make as much sense of it as possible. I also have to spend some time digesting the experience of the estate sale itself. Even as I was going about my business in the usual methodical way I felt heavy with sadness. I can’t tell you how much I wished the Hills were there. My delight at seeing these pieces of their lives is profoundly tempered by regret that I did not have the chance to know them.

Bonus: One of the Economic Summit flower pots by RUPD bites the dust during this morning’s storm.