Half a lifetime at Texas A&M started with one hitched ride by a t.u.-bound undergrad.

By Bob Gallaway ’42

My dad didn’t want me to go to college. "There’s plenty to do here," he said, referring to our farm in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. But as the 20-year-old valedictorian of my high school in Mercedes, I received a $25 scholarship to a state-supported college and decided to go in fall 1938. I packed my footlocker (issued when I worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps), hauled it to the road and thumbed a ride with a trucker.

I wanted to attend t.u., but I called from the road and was told they didn’t have room for me. The trucker told me there was another school near his route, and I persuaded him to drop me at Eastgate. I headed toward the Administration Building, but it was too imposing for me to enter. So I walked to the Agriculture Building, where I met Dr. Dan Russell. "I need a cheap place to stay," I told him. He was in charge of "project houses"--$15-a-month on-campus residences for financially strapped students--but those were all taken. He told me to hail a truck instead and go to the Hoyle Hotel, one of three Navasota hotels housing 400 Aggies.

That first year, I rode to campus in an 18-wheeler outfitted with benches. An enterprising Aggie earned college money ferrying students to and from Navasota in his truck.

My roommate, Fish Morgan, quickly flunked out, which indirectly helped me. Morgan, a liberal arts major, gave me his books, so I became a liberal arts major. I couldn’t afford the drawing board, T-square and books for engineering, which I hoped to study eventually.

Every day I went to the student labor office, which had 4,000 applicants and no jobs. In the hall there, I met horticulture instructor F. W. Hensel, who gave me a campus maintenance job. The income allowed me to stay at A&M.

Things looked up after that. I spent summer of 1939 working in my brother’s Jacksonville canning plant. That’s where I met my wife, Susan. That fall, I got into a project house on campus, I switched majors into chemical engineering, and I continued to court Susan.

As newlyweds my junior year, we lived in a little Bryan house that lacked a few amenities. While still an undergraduate, I taught descriptive geometry and engineering drawing. I received my diploma in January 1943, so Susan and I moved to Beaumont for my job with Magnolia Petroleum (later part of Mobil). But after only 18 months, we returned to A&M so I could teach during the wartime professor shortage.

While teaching, I became interested in asphalt technology and was an asphalt specialist working with the Texas Transportation Institute from its beginnings in 1950. I earned my master’s in civil engineering 1956.

For 42 years, I taught Aggies about asphalt technology, hydraulics and strength of materials--about 5,000 students in all.

I’ve been honored that my name is on two scholarships endowed through the Texas A&M Foundation. Vernon Wright, a colleague in the asphalt industry, established the Wright-Gallaway Asphalt Scholarship. A student, W. M. McDonald ’52, set up the Professor Bob Gallaway Scholarship. What a nice way to honor me!

This article is a sneak peak at the "Postscript" column from the summer 2009 issue of Spirit magazine. Read the winter 2009 issue of Spirit magazine, and check back later this week for the full electronic copy of the latest issue.