Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 228 GOVERNANCE Shortly after I resettled in Bryan-College Station, I re-established contact with my good friend the Rev. William Young at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. By 1977, he had been appointed President of the University. Early in 1979 he honored me by asking other members to invite me to serve with them on the University’s Board of Trustees. Feeling grossly unqualified, I nevertheless accepted the appointment with great pleasure. I wound up serving for seven years. Father Young is a man of great long-term vision and an innovator. His love for St. Thomas is unsurpassed. He presided during a difficult transition period when the institution went from a small four-year college to a small liberal arts university. He believes that to complement academic learning, young people of college age need a holistic approach to education, including opportunities for physical, energy-burning activities. I wholeheartedly agree with him. As president, he envisioned a field house where students could burn off extra energy and develop sports skills, thus giving them the opportunity to live a fuller life. He could see a day in the future when a basketball team from St. Thomas could be competing with other universities of national renown, thereby attracting a larger student base. In time this would give the university stronger alumni, with obvious benefits. He sold me on that vision very quickly. The consequent effort gave me the opportunity to make a real contribution. The field house would cost over three million dollars that had to be raised from private donations. I introduced Father Young to my good friend Kay Dobelman, who by this time was president of the Brown Foundation, one of Houston’s most powerful philanthropic institutions. Working with her board, she was able to put together a $1,000,000 challenge gift that lifted us over the minimum requirements. In my perception, this was the most significant addition needed at the time to attract full time students to the university. The dream of a national caliber sports team is still to be realized, but Houston now boasts a complete liberal arts and business private university able to attract students from all over Texas, the U. S., and a large number of foreign countries. As I recollect in Healthy Mind in Healthy Body (Chapter 3), the early eighties were a period of physical renaissance for me and for the whole country. The enthusiasm and energy that pervaded my group of friends was very stimulating. In 1982 I resigned from the local Chamber of Commerce board mostly due to time constraints. I was spending quite a bit of time training for marathons and triathlons but was still inspired by the desire to achieve some of the Chamber of Commerce goals. One of them was to promote tourism in our area. Autobiography.doc 228 of 239
Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 229 I reasoned that if we organized our own events we might be able to attract competitors from outside our community. Many of my athletic friends agreed and we decided to organize first the Texas Straight Shot, a 10 K race running right through our main street. After its successful completion, we organized the Texas Triathlon - a 1 K pool swim followed by a 10 K run, followed by a 30 K bike race. Both became such smashing successes, pulling close to two thousand visitors each weekend, that we incorporated the organization and made the events yearly occurrences. Lane Stephenson, Carl Gabbard and Darlene Tulleen were among the first volunteers. I became the first Chairman of the Bryan College Station Athletic Federation and held the office until 1985. For a few years we had quite a turn over in our management staff until my brother Chris became its part time executive secretary after my departure from office. He brought reliability and permanence to the organization, which lasted until he resigned in the early 90s. When I presented the idea to Chamber of Commerce leaders to incorporate the athletic organization separately, I told them that we wanted to put Bryan-College Station on the athletic map of Texas. For our first Texas Triathlon we were able to attract a few national caliber athletes, which merited write-ups in some Texas’ major newspapers. Even the in-flight magazine for Continental Airlines carried an article on what we were doing. One of the famous athletes who helped us achieve notoriety was John Howard who was fresh from winning the Hawaiian Ironman Triathlon. He later became interested in wind research and became the fastest man on a bicycle. What was remarkable is that we attracted major athletes without offering prize money. The weekends of our events we filled every hotel room in town, to the delight of hotel operators and the cities that collected a hotel-motel tax. I floated the idea to make our operations totally self-supported and resist any influx of tax monies, but we received an offer that my colleagues could not refuse. The thankfulness of both cities and the hotel owners was obvious when they voted to fund our organization to promote more similar events. Despite my misgivings, my colleagues on the board were eager to accept these funds, with its attached strings. As a result we organized an annual mini-Olympics among local business organizations. It helped create more awareness of the benefits of physical fitness and the financial value it brought to our community. It also gave our organization deeper roots among the towns’ leaders. We had a lot of fun competing with each other and we formed some healthy rivalries among entrepreneurial companies, TAMU’s departments, and larger companies, each in its own division. Drawing participants from employees in Chris’ engineering company, R. A. Galindo, Inc., Aerofit and Western National Bank, the Galindo Group was well represented. I must say that we were consistent winners in our division. The Bryan College Station Athletic Federation became a significant driver of hotel motel occupancy in the decade of the 80s and early 90s. It also provided an opportunity to many willing athletes, who by serving on its board, assumed posts of leadership in efforts to improve the economics of our town. Autobiography.doc 229 of 239
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Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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