Mrs. Lois Patterson came to SFA in 1931. Her family lived in Smith County; her father was a clerk in a grocery store in Troup, near Tyler. “That was in the Depression. I was fortunate. I lived with my uncle, A. W. Birdwell, the first president of the college. There were four of us children at the time and money was scare. We did not have the choices like people today. ... He was very good to his family. He took several of us to live with him so we could go to school. There were two Tyler cousins that stayed with him while they went to college, too.”

In response to a question about entertainment, she said her social life was a bit restricted living in the presidential home. She laughed as she said, “As Aunt Maude would say, we have to be careful about your uncle’s job. And if we went out, she sat up and waited for us to get home.” After another good laugh, she continued, “There were two girls from Troup who stayed at the Piney Lodge. In those days we did not have dormitories. I would get to spend the night with them occasionally and got a taste of dormitory life.” The Piney Lodge was just up the way on North Street, across from the college. They would go to the theater or to campus hangouts, sometimes, but “I missed out on a lot of campus activities.” Although she admitted she was not a sportswoman, she said she volunteered to play on the basketball team once when the girls were short-handed. “When Miss Hickman saw my name the next day as having played basketball, she just laughed and laughed. She knew I was not a good player.”

While Mrs. Patterson said she was not involved in campus life, in later conversation she said she belonged to the Pine Burrs, the Birdwell Scholarship Society, and the Karle Wilson Baker Dramatic Club. “I was not very good at dramatics, but I liked to help with the costumes, errands, and other things, just to be a part of the group.” Some students had cars, but she referred back to her earlier statement, “It was the Depression. Uncle Alton had a car, and he allowed me to drive it. ... We went to church a lot, and they had active student groups there. We did have a religious education building there on the campus, I forget the name.” [She is referring to the Wesley Center.]

“Uncle Alton had a good sense of humor and was very diplomatic. ... The old gym had these big wooden columns, and if your were at a ball game, when you had to sit behind one of these columns, it was very annoying not to see everything.” While Mr. Aikman had given the gym, she continued, “Uncle invited him to go to a ball game with us one night and made sure he had to sit behind a wooden column. It was not long before we had those iron or steel posts inserted ... that was his diplomatic way of getting something done. It was a good way to get rid of the problems.” We had a good laugh following this story. She remembered that Mr. Aikman “had a limousine and a chauffeur and often he would call up and ask if we would like to go for a drive.”

It was a fairly innocent time, she remembered. The campus had a feeling of security about it. They rarely thought of locking their doors; she said they had their windows and doors open most of the time just to get a breeze. There were incidents, however. One friend, a young married woman estranged from her husband, was playing cards with them one afternoon and that night was murdered by the crazed husband who then committed suicide. Also, they did make lasting friendships, which helped them throughout East Texas. She made friends with three different Bates brothers, Kyle, Garth, and Harold; “Kyle looked after me when I took the job up in Kilgore, and we remained friends for a lifetime.”

“I graduated in the middle of the Depression. Our annual had paper backs because we could not afford the hard bound books. Now my sister’s annuals were all hard backs. That one of mine was pitiful.” At midterm in her senior year, the Kilgore College needed a replacement teacher. Since she had all but a few hours completed and since jobs were so scarce, she took the job and returned to SFA in the summer to finish her degree and graduate in 1935. After leaving SFA, she only returned to Nacogdoches on rare occasions to visit her aunt and uncle or to see a granddaughter graduate.

To my question, was the college ever in danger of closing during the Depression, she immediately responded: “Oh yes, there was in fact, great danger. My uncle and several of the men, Mr. Baker, Mrs. Karle Wilson Baker’s husband was one of them, went to Austin a number of times trying to keep the college open. [Governor] Ma Ferguson helped them keep the college open; that is to her credit, because she saw to it that it wasn’t closed.”

Of the faculty, her favorites were Harmon Lowman in Education and W. F. Garner in History who lived just down the street from them on Starr. The faculty would have them over to their homes. She talked with her uncle about the problem of being the president’s niece in school. “My uncle had one daughter [Anna]. She was two years younger than I. Rather than put the faculty through that with a daughter, it was bad enough with a niece, he let her go away to college, but he was criticized a lot for that, too.” Anna went up Missouri to college where Birdwell had spent some time as an exchange professor.

“My Aunt Maude was a short woman, about 4’ 11, and Uncle Alton was so tall, we use to laugh and say they made a perfect ‘Mutt and Jeff.’ Anna was taller than I. ... so when we would go places, Aunt Maude and I would drop behind, because she said, let Anne walk with her tall Daddy.”

Today, Mrs. Lois Birdwell Patterson lives in Tyler. I interviewed her on September 16, 1998, for the SFA Heritage Series.