ustxtxb_obs_1965_10_01_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

being offered. Secondly, it was reasoned, ten years ago in Texas Section 11 would have been cause for very grave concern, but the climate has greatly changed in recent years; the Texas Establishment realizes now that violations of academic freedom badly hurt a state’s higher education and that an anemic system of colleges and universities condemns a state to the backwaters of national business and industry. The third reason cited to the Observer was that board members realize that if they did undertake to censor courses or pressure professors, they would have to cope with the scrutiny and criticismas it was put to us”not only of the Texas Observer, but also the New York Times.” GRAY received BA and MA degrees from the University of Texas, where he graduated with honors, and also attended U.T. law school two years. He taught high school in Beaumont, then government, math, and economics at Lamar Tech College. He was elected president of that college in 1941 and continued in that job ten In 1949 Lamar became the first new four-year college approved in Texas in many years, largely, according to a story about Gray in the Bankers Record, because Gray worked so hard to promote this development. 2 He continued as president there through 1950. Shifting then to banking, he was elected executive vice president and director of the First National Bank of Beaumont in 1952; he graduated in commercial banking from Rutgers in 1954, when he was in his middle forties; in 1958 he became the bank’s president. \(Since then it has become the has been active in the Texas and American bankers’ associations and is a director of the Houston branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Beaumont Enterprise and Journal. Gray has been active in the Beaumont chamber of commerce and is a member of the membership committee of the U.S. chamber of commerce. In 1961 Gov. Price Daniel appointed him to the Texas Cmsn. on Higher Education, of which he was vicechairman when the T.C.H.E. was superceded by the board this Sept. 1. 3 In manner Gray is a quiet man. One knowledgeable official of a college faculty organization, referring to Gray’s unwillingness, as a member of the Texas Commission on Higher Education, to have higher education made mediocre by regional interests, including his own region’s, said of his appointment, “Nobody could be better. He couldn’t be more objective.” NEWTON GRESHAM, the vicechairman of the board, is a senior partner in the influential law firm of Fulbright, Croker, Freeman, Bates and Jaworski. Gresham is a trial lawyer representing insurance companies. He does not appear to have been active in party politics. Daniel appointed Gresham to the board of regents for the six state teachers’ colleges, and Gresham was a member of that 6 The Texas Observer board in May, 1962, when, by a divided vote, for political reasons, it fired Dr. Rupert Koeninger, chairman of the sociology department at Sam Houston State College in Huntsville. For this dismissal Sam Houston State still stands censured by the American Assn. of University Professors. In its “Koeninger Case Study,” the Observer reported that Gresham definitely voted against dismissing Koeninger. 4 Gresham is now chairman of this board. Gresham holds a BA from Sam Houston State and a law degree from U.T. He is former president of the State Bar and a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers. On an 18-person board, much will depend on who among its members become the leaders. At Monday’s organizational meeting, Gray, having been appointed chairman by Connally, then appointed four chairmen of “special study committees.” He took some pains to emphasize that these were “not standing committees” and that Bill Malone Connally Greets Tom Sealy their memberships would be “rotated.” These committees are to study their areas of responsibility and bring back recommendations to ‘the whole board. The chairmen and their committees are Tom Sealy of Midland, the committee on “senior colleges, universities, and undergraduate programs”; Eugene McDermott of Dallas, “graduate and professional programs and research”; H. B. Zachry of San Antonio, “finance, facilities, and administrative services”; and M. Harvey Weil of Corpus Christi, “junior colleges and vocational-technical programs.” SEALY is a Midland attorney and the former chairman of the University of Texas regents. He was on the Midland city council. He has banking, insurance, oil and gas, and other business interests. In 1961, then Observer editor Willie Morris reported that Sealy was receiving $25,000 for his services during that year’s legislative session in Austin as state chairman of the Citizens for a Sales Tax organization. Sealy declined to confirm or deny this report, but said his law firm in Midland represented Mobil Oil, Atlantic Refining, and Honolulu Oil companies for 25 years. “We also represent other oil com panies, as well as farmers, ranchers, schools, churches, and merchants,” he said. Asked if he would release a list of the contributors to the sales tax organization, he said, “No, sir, I would not.” Morris reported that ten of the 31 members of the organization had been registered lobbyists in Austin in 1959 or 1961. Sealy described the retail sales tax as “the fairest, most equitable means of meeting our needs.” The legislature, which had resisted pressures to pass such a tax for more than two decades, passed it in 1961. This year Sealy is chairman of the Texas Research League, the business-financed organization for research in Texas state government. Sealy’s political background is Republican and Shivercratic. The facts for 1948-’60 emerge from perusal of the Midland Reporter-Telegram for those years. In 1948 Sealy endorsed Republican Jack Porter for the U.S. Senate against Lyndon Johnson in an ad that called Johnson a “New Deal senator” and said Porter would oppose “the so-called civil rights program,” would oppose “controls and regimentation, socialized medicine, and any other form of socialization of our country,” would save Texas “the humiliation of having a lot of ‘dirty linen’ dragged out for public review by a senatorial investigation committee,” would “have no stigma or suspicion of fraud attached to his name” as senator, and would “aid our next President, Thomas E. Dewey,” in throwing communists off the federal payroll. In 1952 Sealy issued a call for a rally to form the “Democrats-for-Eisenhower” organizatiOn in Texas and said its aim was “to rid the U.S of the doctrine of Trumanism.” That was the year the State Democratic Executive Committeeunder Gov. Shivers, with whom Sealy was allied called on Texas Democrats to back Eisenhower. Two years later Sealy led the Shivercrats in a Democratic convention in Midland. “By ‘our side,’ ” Sealy said in this convention, “I mean the Shivercrats, if you please. And I don’t mean the Yarborough-ites, who do not have control of the party and God forbid that they ever get it.” Sealy’s was the first signature on an ad entitled, “Shame on you, Ralph Yarborough!” In 1956 Midland continued proShivers, with Sealy identified as one of the “key men” for planning pro-Shivers strategy there. In the fall of 1960 Sealy and another man paid for an ad inviting Midland people to the organization of “Midland County Democrats in Behalf of Nixon-Lodge.” Thus in this 12-year period Sealy was opposed to a “New Deal senator” and was for Dewey, Eisenhower, and Nixon for President. 3 Sealy’s leadership in the campaign for the sales tax had placed him in public opposition to Gov. Price Daniel, who sought to prevent its passage \(but finally signed proposals before legislative committees. In 1962 Sealy joined the cause of John Connally for governor. On Nov. 10, 1963, the Houston Chronicle published this item: “Tom Sealy of Midland, fund raiser