The North Texan, Volume 28, Number 1, November 1977 Page: 10

                                
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Profile
Remembering Rosebud...
and other good times
University friends, past and present, have celebrated the successes over the years
of architect O'Neil Ford, journalist Bill Moyers and professional golfer Sandra Palmer,
and some 200 of those friends gathered on campus Sept. 16 to applaud them as they were named
North Texas State University's Distinguished Alumni 1977. The recollections of the three that September
evening should not be left to gather dust in the archives of the University Library. So we include them herein
as The North Texan profiles the trio of outstanding alumni, Teach representing a different era in the University's history.
Bill Movers
If it hadn't been for Lyndon Baines
Johnson, so the story goes, Bill Moyers
might have stayed on at North Texas
State College for a couple more years
and finished his degree.
But if it hadn't been for the then
senator from Texas, life might be a lot
different today for the young man from
Marshall, Tex. One thing is for sure. Bill
Moyers would have succeeded no
matter what came his way back in the
1950s.
One early story about the NTSU
Distinguished Alumnus recounts how, as
a young collegian, he told the publisher
of his hometown paper that Sen.
Johnson didn't come through to the
young people of Texas. "Write him and
tell him," reportedly was the publisher's
reply.
Moyers wrote. Johnson responded,
and the young NTSC undergraduate was
invited to serve an internship in the
senator's Washington office the next
summer. That was the beginning of a
friendship that would take Moyers to the
University of Texas the next Jail (Johnson
reportedly convinced him that he
needed a degree from a "university")
and a job with the Johnson-owned
television station in Austin.
After several career detours, Moyers
returned to Washington in 1959 as an
aide to Sen. Johnson and was later
instrumental in development of the
Peace Corps. When Johnson became
president, the NTSU alumnus served him
as special assistant, administrative chief
of the White House staff and as press
secretary.
In 1969 he left the Johnson
administration to become publisher of
the Long Island newspaper Newsday,
and three years later joined public
The North Texan
television as editor of the weekly
documentary series, Bill Moyers Journal.
In 1976 it was on to the CBS television
network as anchorman and chief
reporter for CBS Reports.
What's next for the award-winning
journalist? Perhaps only Bill Moyers
knows, but the week after he was named
a Distinguished Alumnus of NTSU he was
offered Eric Sevareid's commentary slot
on the CBS evening news and had asked
for time to think it over.
The road to international prominence
as a journalist began for Moyers at the
age of 15 when he started working for his
hometown newspaper and then led him
to North Texas State College in 1952.
In his remarks to those gathered for
the annual NTSU Alumni Association
Awards Banquet Sept. 16 on campus (he
talked via taped telephone interview
since a broken foot forced him to cancel
his plans to attend), Moyers fondly
recalled the two years he spent on the
Denton campus, calling them "the most
special of my formative journalism
career."
He paid tribute to the "helpful
guidance, the caring posture of the
adults (at NTSU) who were never too
busy to take a kindly view toward a
hustling, ambitious, naive young man
who knew fairly clearly he wanted to be
a journalist and was nudged,
encouraged, caressed, guided and
inspired by people who genuinely did
care.
"It is hard to explain," he said, "the
sense of intimacy, the sense of
excellence, the sense of worthy
aspiration that were so much a part of a
freshman's life at North Texas 25 years
ago.
"I remember feeling very much like a
stranger when I first set foot on that
campus. I remember how soon
thereafter I felt that it was home. It was
home because it was the best of
education, it was the kind of education
where dedicated teachers—I underscore
with three lines the noun 'teachers'—
thought that it was possible for a kid
from the Piney Woods not only to grasp
concepts but to hone his own latent skills
in the way that would make a practical
career in journalism 
"It was an atmosphere ... a
community of people who tried their
best and encouraged us to try our best,
marvelous years of great excitement, of
gambling on courses that seemed to be
distant and overwhelming, of being
liberated in a sense to begin the long
journey of finding out who I am and
what my place is in this world, and it
started to a very significant degree right
there on that campus.
"One doesn't have to graduate from
an institution to be a part of that
institution; one doesn't have to be a
graduate of an institution for it to be a
part of him. And my whole life has been
shaped by my two years there, even as
what I do today is a reflection, evidence,
a proof, confirmation, reminder that
education once begun in the mind and
heart of a solitary individual... is a
constantly renewing, expanding
experience."
Sandra Palmer
Alumni who were in school at North
Texas State University back in the early
1960s can't help but remember Sandra
Palmer. She was a cheerleader. She was
Homecoming queen. She was active in
Alpha Delta Pi sorority and was a Green
Jacket and treasurer of her senior class.
She was just about everything all the
other 4,300 coeds in school then wanted
to be. What no one knew at that time
was that the friendly, popular, petite
young physical education major would
become one of the leading female
professional golfers of the 1970s.
It was her achievements on the Ladies
Professional Golfers Association tour,
which she joined in 1964 after graduating
from NTSU, that this fall garnered for her
one of the three Distinguished Alumnus
Awards for 1977.
A serious and dedicated athlete,
Sandra once told a reporter that she
discovered golf at the age of 13, while
living in Maine. Later moving to Fort
Worth, she continued to play golf and
was on the girls' basketball team at
Castleberry High School. But when she
arrived at North Texas State College in
1959, she was well in advance of the
upsurge in women's athletic programs,
and she found no opportunities to
compete in intercollegiate sports.
So she did the next best thing. She
majored in physical education, and after
graduation in 1963 she taught a year in
Arlington to save money to join the pro
golf tour.
Like most young golfers first joining
the tour, she had her winless first years,
but by 1975 she was on top. That was the
year she was the leading money winner
on the LPGA tour and was named the
organization's player of the year.
At the time she accepted her
Distinguished Alumnus Award early this
fall, she had won 19 professional golf
tournaments, including the United States
Women's Open and the Dinah Shore
Colgate Winners Circle, both in 1975,
and the Women's International and the
Honda Kathryn Crosby Classic in 1977.
She lost the 1976 U.S. Open in a playoff,
byt won the B'nai B'rith Award as the
year's top female professional.
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