On the Texas A&M University-Central Texas campus, in the Beck Family Heritage Hall, there is a visual tribute to the history of Killeen University that extends along the entire west wall of the first-floor lobby.
Its purpose is to honor the institutional genealogy and efforts of the community leaders whose vision, perseverance and patience gave rise to A&M-Central Texas.
Called The Eula “Sis” Beck University Legacy Wall, it was generously funded by Colleen Beck, daughter of Bernice “Bernie” Beck and Eula “Sis” Beck, and was dedicated to highlighting the long campaign to bring university educational opportunities to the county and region .
In 2015, the details of that arduous journey were carefully researched and written about by the late Gerald D. Skidmore Sr., who aptly titled his book, “A Climb to the Top of the Hill.” In it, he described the myriad and complex legislative, state administrative, and agency challenges faced by the University of Central Texas Task Force.
Retired Lt. Gen. Pete Taylor, who chaired the task force from 1995 until the culmination of its mission in 1999, recalls suggesting that task force members reconsider their vocabulary when discussing the variety of political obstacles they had to strategically address, especially when it seemed as if more than two decades of his best efforts at the time could have easily been in jeopardy.
“He would always remind us that it wasn’t about ‘if’ we created this new university,” he recalled stoically. “It was a question of ‘when.’ “We could never give up.”
Think about it for a moment: that task force had been in a completely different kind of battle for 22 years that was equally strategic and required brilliant, tough, abject bravery. They had already won important battles to get to where they were, but even that did not guarantee their success. Until he did.
In 1995, Governor George W. Bush, in consultation with the task force, requested a formal review of the state of higher education opportunities in the region, and those results confirmed what task force leaders already knew: a public and state-funded program. College was crucial.
In 1999, the University of Central Texas, predecessor to A&M-Central Texas, voluntarily dissolved, transferred its $7 million in assets to the state, and became Tarleton State University-Central Texas.
Around the same time, perhaps a little ironically, on August 13, 1999, the University of Central Texas (which, by then, had enrolled 1,150 local students) held its final graduation ceremony celebrating graduates who, if Had it not been for its improbable existence, it may never have been there to cross the starting stage.
The university’s then-president, the late Pauline Mosely, who at the time had been at the University of Central Texas for many years as a faculty member, professor, president, dean and senior administrator at a time when such things were Unheard of, 125 university and graduate degrees were awarded that night.
When asked by the Killeen Daily Herald to offer his perspective on the transition that was the end of one university and the beginning of another, he said uniting as Tarleton State University-Central Texas would bring new programs and stability.
And, as profoundly as ever, he added prophetically: “It’s going to be an interesting adventure.”
Tarleton State University-Central Texas eventually became A&M-Central Texas.
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