Ralph Steen and Charles Haas began their working relationship at Texas A. & M. when the young Haas became the Assistant Business Manager for Auxiliary Enterprises in College Station in 1952. One of Haas’ responsibilities, that of overseeing the Memorial Student Center, brought him into contact with Steen on a regular basis. Haas said: “The Memorial Center had a budget larger than the one at SFA when I came here.” Steen and Haas put in hundreds of hours working on the annual Student Conference on National Affairs; Steen was the history advisor and Haas the financial advisor. Haas also had financial responsibility for student publications, and Steen was the advisor to the student newspaper, The Battalion. “We were thrown together fourteen different ways, and knew one another well.”

Charles Haas grew up in San Antonio and, although he got in one year of college at Texas A. & M. before being drafted, he graduated from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio after the war. First of his family to go to college, the GI Bill® made it possible for him, and his brother, to complete college: “The GI Bill® was a fantastic investment for our country ... and it caused our children, the baby boomers, to want to go to college, too.”

When asked how Steen was chosen President of SFA, Haas said that Steen knew lots of political contacts, the most important being the Ramseys from San Augustine. Ben Ramsey was the Lieutenant Governor at the time and his brother Smith was the Chairman of the Board of Regent’s Local Committee on SFA. There was no application process at the time: “We never filled out an application form in those days, and Ralph Steen didn’t either. You went and talked to the person you were going to work for. And if the two of you thought it was a pretty good idea, then you went ahead and did it.” Steen “had been over here on some summer assignments.” People knew him, as a teacher and as a historian. Haas called him “a Texas historian who had canvassed San Augustine and every other place [in East Texas] for years, and he knew a lot of the people from all over.” The Ramseys ran San Augustine. Smith and Ralph talked a few times, then “Smith told the rest of the Board, and they appointed him.” While this extremely boiled-down version of the appointment process sounds apocryphal, Steen’s biographer confirms it.

Haas’ own selection process was similar. Haas came to Steen’s inauguration, but just as friend and colleague. After the new president identified the things that he wanted to do, one of the positions he thought he needed was a business manager well-trained in accounting. “Joe Lacy was such a fine gentleman, but he was never comfortable in the accounting area and had put George Hardin in charged of audits and accounts.” Steen, on one of his trips through Bryan, asked Haas to think about the job. Haas wanted the same job at A. & M., but he eventually accepted Steen’s offer. When Steen suggested Haas accompany him to meet the chairperson of the SFA Committee on the Board, it was Steen who turned out to be the outsider. Regent Elizabeth Koch of San Antonio recognized Haas at once as one of her Breckenridge High School English students from before the war. Of his application process, Haas observed, “Not as formal as it is now!”

Steen and the State Board of Regents

“Ralph Steen had a marvelous ability to run the place [SFA], beyond a doubt, and cause the Board of Regents to think they ran it. And they never noticed that they weren’t really running it.” Of course, as Haas added, the tremendous growth and record breaking enrollments made it easy; they could not argue with that kind of success. “So they approved everything he ever brought up. We went to every meeting with every item pre-written.” Haas thought Steen was an artist in this practice: “Ralph Steen was the epitome of preciseness, really complete, but as brief as possible.” Sometimes he just put down two words, ‘self explanatory.’ “He had a philosophy that the least said the best.” The more one said the more they lost focus. Haas and Steen were the only officers of the college who ever attended the board meeting in those years. Steen always visited with the chairman of the local SFA committee beforehand. Mrs. Savannah Cross Lockey, an SFA graduate, became the local contact after Mrs. Koch.

Haas’ duties

Haas’ department consisted of only a handful of people when he arrived: George Hardin (Auditor), Travis Whitaker (Cashier), Ruth Williamson (Bookkeeper), and Paul Wilson (Director of Maintenance) who had a whole crew of assistants, but there was no such job as director of housing, personnel, purchasing, and so forth. The whole administration, including the three deans, all fit into the second floor of the Austin Building with room to spare. While Haas proudly talked about his accounting innovations, such as the first departmental budgets, the job which dominated his career on campus, in his opinion, was the coordinator for the building projects. Of this mammoth task, he joked: “I do not know why, looking back, I took it so seriously. I am not sure that I was responsible for all those things, but I lived every project down to the very door knobs in every building.”

Haas was, in the words of Steen’s biographer, “the most influential member of Steen's administration.” While many of Mr. Haas’ reflections are used in other articles this week, especially on the buildings, his reflections on Dr. Steen’s style of leadership seemed the most pertinent here. Haas admired Dr. Steen’s “impeccable personal and professional integrity.” He said it was absolute and uniform. He continued, “Ralph Steen never had one perk. He came here for $10,000 and got raised to $12,000, without any perks except the house and electricity. He did have a car allowance, but he did not have an expense account, or club dues, or anything. He preferred it that way.” When someone tried to give him a car, he refused. The president’s unwritten law was: “Even if lawful, if it looked bad, we didn’t do it.” After being exposed to Steen, “Try as I did to adjust to other people being different, I found that they weren’t the same, and by comparison did not hold a candle to the qualities of Ralph Steen.”

Haas liked Steen’s decisiveness which he coupled with flexibility and common sense. He balanced even the problems of integration and standards. He balanced support for the arts with support for athletics. Haas liked the way Steen led by setting personal examples. He was accessible and friendly without being too personal. “We were never very close personal friends,” Haas said, “but we were the closest of professional friends.” As an accountant by trade, Haas loved Steen’s powers of analysis and his efficiency. “He knew every aspect of the SFA budget,” Haas observed. With a sense of pride, he reflected that in his day they had what they called ‘fund accounting’ and money collected for one purpose could only be used for that purpose. “I am sure that people in the jobs today enjoy having more latitude that we used to have, but at this point, I have seen cities, school districts, and others collect under one reason why they need the money, and then spend it on something else.” The idea of shifting funds into athletics or anything else would just not have been possible under Dr. Steen’s watchful eye. “We had an annual audit by state auditors every year for the twenty-three years I was in office. We were never criticized, not once.” He mused, “They say now is the age of accountability, but then the Legislature provides less and less for auditors.”

When asked to name the most rewarding thing about his tenure as business manager, Haas hesitated, then responded: “I worked in all good times–growth, boom, and public acceptance. We were the public’s favorite child, as compared to the Highway Department, and other things, in state and the nation. ... All of us World War II’ers who sent our baby boom children to college thought this was the finest thing that we could be doing.” Even though the nation was spending more on colleges than ever before, the public accepted the growth and development. “We did not have to have a statistician or publicist to prove how well we were improving. People drove down North Street and said, my goodness, there is a crane in every block. The students came, they attended, and they sent their relatives. This sense of success and achievement did not have to be publicized.”

When asked how much of this was due to Steen, Haas responded: “In all due respect to Dr. Steen, who was one of the nicest and smartest men I’ve ever known, I suspect that there might have been some who would have let it go by, but I also suspect any one with similar capacity as his might have had the same success.” Haas concluded: “I think someone with equal capacity and background could have done the same thing, and did at many institutions. ... I had the good fortune to serve in a job that, if it had gone the other way, would have been my turn for the hoosegow.”