Big Frog II
Active Member
You are correct about Moudy. He really did not care about athletics. It showed. Most of all of the 70's were a disaster.
Dr. Koehler will always be one of my TCU sports heroes
- Thread starter TopFrog
- Start date
TopFrog
Lifelong Frog
It wasn't most of it. It was all of it.
Big Frog II
Active Member
71 was pretty good.
TopFrog
Lifelong Frog
Our head coach died on the sideline!!
Frozen Frog
Active Member
What made Coach P different was how he embraced FTW and TCU. I think a lot of coaches could have had similar success, but by staying Coach Patterson allowed for sustainable success in several sports. That was the difference. TCU, FTW, and Coach P worked together for that common good.
TopFrog
Lifelong Frog
I have told this story before, but the 1971 game at Baylor our family was there. It was rainy. Not sure why but I happened to look across at the TCU sideline and saw Coach Pittman go down. I thought he had tripped over headset cords. But he didn't get up and he was surrounded quickly. Watched as the ambulance rushed him to the hospital.
The team learned at halftime he died. They rallied and beat Baylor and both teams met at midfield to pray and share condolences.
We did finish the second half of the season well. In these days as bad as we were we beat A&M regularly. Baylor and Rice were as bad or worse than we were.
Of course Pittman was controversial with the players who left. After he died we almost lost Tohill to a horrific car wreck. The black cloud had settled over the program.
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Limp Lizard
Full Member
The core of the Chemistry Department in the 60's and 70's were Koehler, Reinecke and Watson. Three excellent chemists and teachers.
Watson (who was my mentor in grad school) died just over a year ago. He spent his last years in Santa Fe running an art gallery. Really, really nice guy and a leader in the field of x-ray diffraction.
When Reinecke walked the hallways in the chem dept, his face was always buried in a chemistry journal. Quite a guy.
Watson (who was my mentor in grad school) died just over a year ago. He spent his last years in Santa Fe running an art gallery. Really, really nice guy and a leader in the field of x-ray diffraction.
When Reinecke walked the hallways in the chem dept, his face was always buried in a chemistry journal. Quite a guy.
Limp Lizard
Full Member
Tubbs was a great guy off the court. And in a game, while at OU, I think he did the greatest thing ever.
Dutch
T C U Froooogs
Watson had a stint at Vanderbilt and I think at Rice too. That’s a lot of losses, but he must have had something that appealed to academic institutions.
BleedNPurple
Active Member
Limp - My pop brought Koehler and Reinecke to TCU. W. B. Smith Chariman of Chemistry who built the PHD program. Pop inherited Watson. All close family friends. I still keep in touch with Reinecke.
William B. Smith
Limp Lizard
Full Member
For years I thought about contacting Watson and just checking in. Checked around the internet last year and found that he had died that Spring. Most of my favorite profs (Bill Watson, Ron Flowers, Dr. Odom, Gus Ferre?) are dead now. Bummer.Limp - My pop brought Koehler and Reinecke to TCU. W. B. Smith Chariman of Chemistry who built the PHD program. Pop inherited Watson. All close family friends. I still keep in touch with Reinecke.
William B. Smith
cen.acs.org
Message to me was check in with them while you still can.
BleedNPurple
Active Member
Absolutely - miss Ron Flowers and Odom- I had them as well. Dr. Jim Kelly passed last year. Reinecke and Huckabee are still with us. Don’t know if you knew David Mentor - he’s still in the chemistry department. I spent many a Thanksgiving and other events with these folks growing up.
Limp Lizard
Full Member
Mentor was not there when I was there. So... post 1974.
Odom was a very entertaining lecturer and really made the subject matter interesting. Best major exams I have ever taken. And I wasn't an English major.
BleedNPurple
Active Member
Mentor was one of my Dads post Docs in 74.
BrewingFrog
Was I supposed to type something here?
That guy has the most fabulous memory I have ever encountered.
Limp Lizard
Full Member
So William Smith was your dad? Main thing I remember was that he worked his grad students really hard. Late nights at the NMR. Or course my evenings and nights were often spent in the x-ray diffraction lab.
From comments on the board, many here do not know how hard the science profs worked year-round at TCU.
tcudoc
Full Member
Dr. Smith-When I transferred in from TCJC, organic chem was one of my classes in my first semester. I got Dr. Smith and I had heard it was a huge weed out class, so I was pretty determined to give it my all. The class was about 75 people to start. After the first exam where the average score was in the 30s or 40s, the class size dwindled. He gave a little bit of a curve which put me at 97% for the exam. I had literally done almost nothing else but study for that exam and I was the outsider (transferred in, lived off campus 30 minutes from campus, was married, was working as a cook 35-40 hours/week) in a cohort of premeds who had been together for the previous 1-2 years. So, I was feeling the pressure to do well.
The "talk" he gave the premed group when the scores were passed out was a harsh wake up call for many. He basically said, if you cannot do this level of work, you need to reconsider being premed because you will never make it. The class size was not very big the next time we met.
Dr. Minter was awesome, but a very tough professor. As brewingfrog mentioned, he would get up and do an entire OChem lecture with no notes. For an hour, drawing complex formulas and organic chemistry reactions on the board with no mistakes. It was impressive. I go by to see him every 7-8 years to say hello. He looks exactly the same and has seemingly not aged at all.
Dr. Reinecke was awesome as well. He made a phone call on my behalf to get me an interview at the school that was my first choice and where I really wanted to go (I had heard from most of the other schools but had been ignored by this one). And I got my only C in his class, so I was hesitant to ask him for help but very appreciative that he was still willing to give it.
That was an impressive group of professors. At the time, if you finished the pre med program, you had a 93% chance of acceptance into medical school. However, the number who finished was not that high of a percentage. That premed advisory council definitely had the ear of the admissions committees for the state's medical schools.
The "talk" he gave the premed group when the scores were passed out was a harsh wake up call for many. He basically said, if you cannot do this level of work, you need to reconsider being premed because you will never make it. The class size was not very big the next time we met.
Dr. Minter was awesome, but a very tough professor. As brewingfrog mentioned, he would get up and do an entire OChem lecture with no notes. For an hour, drawing complex formulas and organic chemistry reactions on the board with no mistakes. It was impressive. I go by to see him every 7-8 years to say hello. He looks exactly the same and has seemingly not aged at all.
Dr. Reinecke was awesome as well. He made a phone call on my behalf to get me an interview at the school that was my first choice and where I really wanted to go (I had heard from most of the other schools but had been ignored by this one). And I got my only C in his class, so I was hesitant to ask him for help but very appreciative that he was still willing to give it.
That was an impressive group of professors. At the time, if you finished the pre med program, you had a 93% chance of acceptance into medical school. However, the number who finished was not that high of a percentage. That premed advisory council definitely had the ear of the admissions committees for the state's medical schools.
BleedNPurple
Active Member
Super great guy - one of my faves. He was like a big brother and came to our house for many Thanksgivings and parties with visiting profs.
Frozen Frog
Active Member
This thread is why I hope TCU never joins the Big Ten. These relationships are challenging when a school becomes a research university. Instead of investing in students many of these professors would be focusing on research.
BleedNPurple
Active Member
Yes, William B. Smith is my father (passed in 2012.) Congratulations on acing his class - that's no easy feat. Reinecke was in charge of Med School placement. Pop was the head of the department and built the PHD program. We grew up with the Reinecke family and Kelly's and Watsons - all are still good friends. Dad brought Bill Koehler to TCU from UT. We're hard core sailboat racers and Koehler had a sailboat in Austin so on his visit he brought a lady he had been dating to visit TCU and we raced on that Sunday on our boat. I'm sure Bill would never forget what happened out there. We had a huge storm wtih 60 mph winds come up. Bill slipped off the boat and dad had a floating cushion ready to hand him - well Bill literally walked up the side of the boat and got back on. Fear is a powerful thing!
Dr. Koehler told me after he had moved into the TCU Administration that Dad expected everyone to work weekends (I know pop was in the lab on Saturdays at least until noon and we frequently stopped by the office on Sundays to see what new anwers came out of his 4 top of the line copresser Mac's doing formula number crunching for several days had spit out.)
The students that did well in my fathers classes went on to success. I had a lot of friends who didn't fare well in his classes - he was tough as nails and a perfectionist. The students who went on to graduate school and received their doctarates under my father would come back to TCU and tell me my father was the most brilliant chemist they knew so somebody made the grade out there. I have several friends who have told me they got their inspiration to get their PHD's in chemistry or majors in chemistry from my Dad.
Dad brought everyone but Bill Watson to TCU. Most of the profs stayed at our house on their interview visits. The chemistry department was our family and many still are.
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