Margie and David Norman will both retire from Austin College at the end of the year. A retirement party for Margie & David will take place at Claude Webb Jr.’s Gar Hole on Saturday, May 10th at 3pm. I plan on working at my job at UT System on Friday, driving past the campus of UT Austin on Saturday morning, and arriving at the Gar Hole Saturday afternoon. See the comments for more information.
David was recently honored by Austin College with the “Homer P. Rainey Award.” The award is one of the college’s highest, given to a “faculty or staff member in recognition of outstanding achievement or exemplary service to Austin College.” David Norman’s nearly 40 years of exemplary service certainly meet those qualifications.
But I know the question you are really asking. Just who in the heck is Homer P. Rainey?
After his AC graduation in 1919, Homer Rainey rocketed to national fame in academia. He became the youngest University President in the country in the early 1930s in Indiana. Rainey was then called back to Texas in 1939, when he was asked to serve as the President of the University of Texas in Austin.
The Rainey years were tumultuous ones for academic freedom in Texas.
The UT System Board of Regents in the 1940s was not pleased with the wide diversity of academic thought at UT Austin. The Board demanded Rainey fire professors focused on disciplines of which they disapproved. Rainey’s response was strong and principled: “not on my watch.”
And so, in 1944 President Rainey was fired by the UT System Board of Regents.
The response from the UT Austin community was immediate and overwhelming. 10,000 Longhorns gathered at the South Mall in front of the UT Tower and marched to the Capitol to demand two things: (1) the reinstatement of President Rainey and (2) a renewed commitment to academic freedom. They got the second one, as the Board retracted their demands after watching the huge support for Rainey.
But the first demand never came to pass. Rainey moved on from UT, running for Governor of Texas on a platform that included racial integration a full decade before Rosa Parks in Montgomery. Rainey’s academic career continued in other states more conducive to academic pursuits and free from the heavy hand of the state. He passed in 1985.
In 1995, the University of Texas at Austin campaigned to honor President Rainey. My bosses at the UT System Board of Regents had changed by then and agreed. A building on campus was renamed for Rainey; it sits on the South Mall, to the LEFT of where students began their 1944 protest and where my Roo cap is placed in my 2025 photo.
All of you know David Norman as a former Roo athlete, football coach, and Athletic Director. But for me, Coach Norman is the baseball coach of my fraternity buds in the early 1990s. AC baseball is yet another tie between Norman & Rainey. Before his rise to national prominence in the world of academia, Rainey was a pitcher for Roo baseball.
In 1916, the Roos traveled to Austin to take on the Longhorns. Rainey was tapped to pitch and threw an impressive 5-hitter over nine innings in a 5-0 loss. The game took place at historic Clark Field, which sits to the RIGHT of where students began their 1944 protest and where my Roo cap is placed in my 2025 photo.
After his 1919 graduation, Rainey stayed in Sherman to coach AC baseball. In 1921, he took his Kangaroo squad back to Austin to face the mighty Longhorns. Years before he was the embattled President of the University of Texas, Rainey was a Roo baseball skipper like David Norman taking his boys on a road trip to represent dear ol’ AC.
Marc loves the ties of course, and this story has them. The heroes in this story are two Roos: Homer Rainey & David Norman. The villains in this story are the 1944 members of the UT System Board of Regents, who in 2025 regularly meet at the UT System office building where Marc (a 25-year UT System veteran) wrote this story today on a lunch break.
Academic freedom is often under threat from politicians. But that freedom can still be maintained if solid folks are willing to fight for it like Roo Homer Rainey. I’m looking forward to Saturday, when I drive by my office building at UT System, pass the Homer Rainey building at UT Austin, and arrive at the Gar Hole to celebrate the career of David Norman: a deserving recipient of Austin College’s Homer Rainey Award.
