Mike Shaw and Nancy Shaw
“This is kind of what Aggies do.” Mike Shaw reminisces about classmates and teachers from his years in college at Texas A&M, including a clever way he helped a friend pass his classes one semester. He is interviewed by his wife and fellow Aggie, Nancy Shaw.
- [Mike] You know I had one professor my last two years at A&M, I was pretty focused 'cause, when I was graduating which was '68 was the height of the Vietnam War and it was officer basic. Vietnam, the life expectancy of a Second Lieutenant was about 120 days. So I, there was a professor, it just now came to me, by the name of Dr. House, and he had worked in the corporate world for Xerox and decided to start teaching and I ended up taking three of his classes my last two years and really got to know him, spent a lot of time visiting with him and talking to him and all that kind of stuff. Course I had a dual motivation. One, I wanted to get to know him and two, I hoped like hell he'd give me an A, 'cause a lot of the class was participation. It's back when a lot of business classes went to teamwork, casework, and that kind of stuff and he was really - you know, coming from the corporate world he appealed to me. So his name was Dr. House and I still remember him. Actually, I got all A's in his classes and all my fellow students asked me how come I got A's in all his classes so maybe it's 'cause he got to know me and vice versa. And I'm trying to remember the upperclassmen. I remember the upperclassman that used to always give me a ride home, he was from Weslaco where I was, and I remember he had a Plymouth, really fast Plymouth car. The reason I remember him so well like that is he - we were driving home we fell asleep. He fell asleep and we woke up, by the grace of God, we were in a cotton field not in a orange...
- [Nancy] That'd be a little hard to forget!
- [Mike] Yeah. And thank God I woke up and woke him up 'cause, you know, we were going pretty fast, he drove really fast, but I woke up and hit him and we slowed down got back on the road, so that's one that you don't remember for some reason, but... God, I wish I could think of his name, he was from Weslaco. In my room, the guy, one of my roommates that was in my outfit, a guy by the name of King Moss, he was from Harlingen, Texas and I was from Weslaco, which we called the Rio Grande Valley. And I also got a ride home with him a lot, and his dad was a big time Marine, started the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen. And King and I just, you know, kind of grew up in our, in our outfit and at the Corps together and shared a lot of ex- you know, a lot of experiences, and trying to hide from upperclassmen and that kind of stuff. But King and I developed a great relationship. That's probably who I remember the most as a student because we had a, one of our guys in our outfit was from New York City, believe his name was Tom Kitchens, and, this is kinda what Aggies do, he was flunkin' out of school 'cause he was having to work full time at a place called the Pizza Inn. And so King and I told him we would go to work for him for a week or ten days so he could focus on, on his set of the finals, I can't remember which one it was, so he wouldn't flunk out of school. So sure enough we did that, and we had such a good time, we gave him all the money that the people fired him and hired King and I to run it, and the woman's husband who hired us got brain cancer and so she came to us and asked us to run that restaurant, which I did for two years with King, and we had a lot of fun, and Nancy'll probably remember, she used to call me up and visit with me my senior year. She ordered some pizzas always, so one time I put some in a FEDEX envelope and mailed 'em to her.
- [Nancy] Mmmm, FEDEX, Mike?
- [Mike]No, not FEDEX.
- [Nancy] No, good old Postal Service.
- [Mike]OK, anyway, I mailed her some, cheese, small cheese pizza, was cheese pizza?
- [Nancy] Oh, it was several different kinds.