“I used to come to SFA every summer for band and twirling camps in the late 50s and early 60s. We stayed in Gibbs Hall and that is when I first fell in love with SFA and the campus. ... Every summer we would came back, and SFA was undergoing quite a building program at that time. The University Center each summer I would come would be a little bit different.”

Mary Ann Miles is now the secretary to the Dean of Liberal Arts. She grew up in Jefferson, Texas, where she studied under band directors who were all from SFA; the local bands boosters help send the students to the camps on the Nacogdoches campus for a week each summer. “We loved it. I never really considered going anywhere else.” She always “looked forward to coming to march in the Homecoming parades and spending another day on campus, too.”

Mary Ann entered SFA in the summer of 1965. She stayed that summer in Dorm Seven and “loved it.” The dorm had a system of suites, and it was air conditioned. In the fall, they forced everyone out of Seven and into the as-yet-unfinished Dorm Fifteen (later called Griffith Hall). They were always screaming “Man on floor!” that whole fall, she laughed. The little tasks that needed finishing seemed endless. In reflection, she admitted that the dorm turned out to be fine once they allowed all of her friends to congregate on the same floor. She did not, however, like the baths on hall instead of the more genteel suite system with its privacy.

“I was very glad I came to SFA during the summer semester of 1965. I knew my way around the campus, I knew familiar faces. When I walked into the university center in the fall, I could not believe it. It was just wall to wall people, nothing like it was that summer.” When her brother came the next year, there was not enough housing for the men. He stayed at the Varsity Apartments off campus. “Every available room in town had students staying in them, even the hotel,” she thought.

“On Sunday afternoons, when the dorm cafeteria was closed, we would walk up the street to Dino’s Pizza or to get barbecue or a hamburger. ... The SFA Theater was it on Sunday afternoons. Or we would go out to the Lumberjack Drive In or to Shepherd’s Restaurant.” One of her close friends, whom she met her first summer, was Sammie Shepherd who later married Randy Price. “Sammie had gone off to Kilgore to try to be a Rangerette, but she was too short.” Sammie's father’s restaurant downtown made the best pies and rolls in town. “We always tried to make Shepherd’s at 10 o’clock when the pies were hot.” Mary Ann’s favorite was coconut.

Going to football games was the social thing to do, she said. There was a club downtown which was also lots of fun called “The Down South Club,” a private club where you had to be twenty-one to drink. It was on Church Street, upstairs, and had live music. The new University Center also had big dances on the weekend for them. There were not many classroom buildings. She had English and history in Birdwell, education in Rusk, and square-dancing in Aikman Gym.

While she did not attend any presidential receptions, “I do remember when Mrs. Steen died. They dismissed classes in order to honor her.” Mary Ann was one of the baby boomers who hit SFA in the fall of its largest enrollment to date, albeit there were larger classes to follow. The classrooms did not seem crowded to her, in reflections, but she did remember very well the long lines at registration and the 7:00 AM classes.

Mary Ann married a Nacogdoches man and later in 1970 came to work in the Registrar’s Office in June of 1970. “I was the last employee hired by Stan McKewn.” She worked off campus from 1978-88 and then rejoined the staff in the Admissions Office under Clyde Iglinsky. Because of the vast recruiting program which Steen had started back in the 1960s, I asked Mary Ann if she remembered being recruited? She did not; the recruiters probably went to Dallas and Houston. Mary Ann said as so many other East Texans have said over the years: “I just always knew I wanted to come to SFA.”