One of the things I get a kick out of is when someone I’ve seen before pops up unexpectedly somewhere else, sometimes decades later. This happened the other day with this guy, R.T. Wilbanks, ’27 who I wrote about eleven years ago, way back in 2012 (when I was still skiing!). He’s shown here in 1938 with his little daughter, Vera, who is charmingly ahold of Dr. Lovett’s finger:
Wilbanks wrote about Lovett’s visit to New Orleans and his meeting with the Rice alumni there in the very first issue of the Rice Historical Society newsletter, The Cornerstone. (Both the Society and the newsletter are now sadly defunct).
If this is too small you can get the whole issue here.
So I was delighted when I came across this announcement of the Wilbanks’ 50th anniversary tucked in among the other papers that came from the organizers of the 1977 reunion:
What survives is just so odd and so unpredictable. Grungy dug this out from deep in the bowels of the stadium and by all rights it should have been thrown out years ago. Why it instead now emerges intact is a question that has no answer. I can tell you, though, that Mr. Wilbanks was also one of the reunion hosts that year. (There are some other interesting names here, including William McVey, the hero of the 1924 Slime-Soph War.)
Bonus: If you thought the only thing George and Esther Cohen gave us was Cohen House, you were mistaken. This is the elevator to the press box in the stadium.
Extra Bonus: We were hiking in New Mexico today and a thunderstorm rolled in. It was awesome.
The first photo is probably from 1938, not 1935, right? If Mr. Wilbanks had met President Lovett three years earlier he probably would have mentioned it? Love the white linen suits on Mr. Wilbanks and President Lovett. That’s what you wore in the South in summer.
Yup. I’ll fix it!
And one of the hosts was William McVey, football player under Coach Heisman who became a renowned artist who created the freezes on the San Jacinto Monument.
Sorry, spell check changed frieze to freeze.
Sorry, spell check changed frieze to freeze.
Sorry, spell check changed frieze.
We get it, Nancy.
That we can’t go back and edit our comments in Wrodpress is rather furstarting.
There’s unfortunately no date on the elevator plaque.
I’m curious if the elevator’s design and construction was contemporary with the rest of the stadium or added later.
It’s quite a hike up there without the elevator.
You can only narrow it down by the fact that it says “Institute.”
That’s still a window of almost a decade.
Do we have blueprints for the stadium?