Ferrell/Freeman Music Endowment

Margaret’s association with the university goes back as far as she can remember, when her father would take her to every sporting event the Lions ever…put a paw into. Never was there any talk about where she would go to college. As far as her family was concerned, the best college in the world was right here in Commerce, Texas.

Margaret remembers a day, probably in the early fifties, when her dad went to the family meat locker and the vegetable garden gathering items. Then, food in hand, he started out the door. “I asked where he was going,” Margaret remembers. “He said some of the boys who played ball at the college were married with families, and didn’t have much money. He said we had plenty of food and could share with them.” That giving attitude was not lost on the young girl.

For W. C, his first experience with ET came in 1951 in connection with a 12-week Air Force program. “We called them Fly-Fly Boys, and I wasn’t allowed to speak to them,” Margaret remembers. But, plenty of others could and did show themselves friendly to the young man, and when W. C. finished his enlistment, he found he wanted nothing more than to return to the little Texas town and campus that had made him feel so welcome. It was during W.C.’s second tour on campus, when he was no longer off limits to her, that Margaret met her future husband.

As they built their life together and raised a family…as they became parents and grandparents and…found new friends and cherished old ones …they have also continued in their love for the university.