October 28th was both Dad's birthday and the celebration of his contribution to Texas A & M University and the historic department they created. In the mid 60's these three guys came from Michigan State University with a dream and concept for scientific tourism design. Here's Dad flanked by Les Reed and Carson Watt the founders of this idea and the department that would follow.

They had a vision that there should be a department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Science somewhere and they had landed at Texas A&M here in College Station, Texas.

Earlier this summer the department had asked Dad to draw a new picture of the new building as the ones he had drawn over the years of previous department locations in older campus buildings were now literally history. He said OK and with the help of a photo from brother Richard knocked out the new building's drawing in a couple of weeks. Dad needed a human to scale the drawing and hence the very tiny likeness of him in the building's doorway ... if you look really closely.

This picture of and by the grand master will hang in the new facility along with many of his other works and is a tribute to his almost 50 years of dedicated service to make this one of the country's finest tourism education centers.

And the master himself describing the last 50 years of work and all the folks that had made this moment and facility a reality.