Meet Uncle Billy TAMIU's (Texas A&M Laredo's) Founder
He changed Texas University Education
I once wrote an account about meeting the temporary namesake of Fort Cavazos in Killeen, which Pete Hegseth changed back to Fort Hood, and noted that "one of the benefits of being a journalist is that you meet important people at important times in their lives."
So it was with Dr. Billy Frank Cowart, who founded Texas A&M International University in Laredo -but it’s a bit more complicated than that. First of all, I knew Doctor Cowart as “my uncle,” although family trees would likely consider him a “Great-uncle,” but no matter.
The man I knew as “Uncle Billy” spearheaded “Upward Bound“ at Texas A&M University-Kingsville (then known as Texas A&I).
His home was full of low-income Hispanic students playing “spoons” with his family and singing songs, with him either playing the guitar or his piano, in the 1960s -- during a time of racial strife in South Texas and around the nation. My hometown was not immune. He ignored the haters and continued to invite minority kids into his home.
Worth noting: He spoke fluent Spanish from growing up in the Rio Grande Valley and German (from his family’s South Texas roots).
After graduating from high school and completing university ROTC, he was assigned to Germany as a US Army translator in Nuremberg during the time of the Nazi trials at the end of World War II.
He seldom spoke of his service there, except that the salt and pepper shakers passed to him at lunch in a captured dining hall still bore the Swastika.
His wife Janet was his first love, but Laredo was close behind.
After firmly establishing “Upward Bound” as an academic institution at Texas A&I in Kingsville, he agreed to accept a transfer to an extremely remote assignment along the Texas border with Mexico.
Improbably, from a study carrel in the Laredo Junior College library, he established the first "upper level" (Junior through Senior) university in Texas at that campus in 1970 as Texas A&I Laredo, which became Laredo State University in 1977, and Texas A&M - International at Laredo in 1993.
The school graduated its first class of students - 21 in all - in 1971
Enrollment grew from 286 students in its first year to almost 9,000 today.
His model of an upper-level-only university was followed by the University of Texas System, which founded two-year campuses in Arlington and Richardson, which today are the University of Texas at Arlington & University of Texas at Dallas, which today are home to more than 72,000 students.
While TAMUI was being established, Dr. Cowart lived in a very modest three-bedroom suburban home (1,800 square feet), where I visited his family for many years.
I vividly remember accompanying him, his wife, and my cousin to some “over the top” social appearances he was required to attend in Laredo, only to return to his modest home in the Laredo Del Mar subdivision, where he reminded his family that we were back in the “real world.”
I am sure that he would be gobsmacked that a building on its campus now bears his name.
Sadly, due to university system politics, which I have never been able to decipher, Dr. Cowart (”Uncle Billy”) was forced to leave the campus he founded and loved after 15 years of service in 1984.
He went on to serve as Provost of Western Oregon State College and as its Interim President for a time before retiring in 1995.
Dr. Cowart retired to the Hill Country in his beloved state of Texas that year and lived there until his death there on Christmas Day in 2021.
I will never be the man that he was, but I shall always endeavor to try.
I wish you could have met him.
Do you want more South Texas stories like this?
Share your opinions in the comments to this article.
