Footprints in Aggieland by Walker Robert L.;

Author:Walker, Robert L.; [Walker, Robert L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Published: 2015-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Leslie L. Appelt, Class of 1941

Les Appelt was a highly successful Houston real estate entrepreneur when he joined the Texas A&M Foundation’s Board of Trustees in 1973. He was a man of vision, with good ideas for where we needed to go with the foundation and how to get there.

He had a son playing high school basketball whose team was scheduled for a game one weekend in A&M’s G. Rollie White Coliseum. Les invited parents of the team to the game and wanted to show them and their sons the A&M campus, but he became upset that there was no provision to show visitors around on weekends, nor any place for them to go for information. He called me the following Monday to express his displeasure.

We met later to talk about the problem. He noted that he’d visited the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and that it had a well-staffed visitor center at its campus entrance. He even recalled attending the Chicago World’s Fair, where there were numerous stations with guides and information. Les felt A&M should have such a facility. That was the beginning of the Appelt Visitor’s Center.

Creating it was an involved and expensive process. First, we sought sponsors who would underwrite computer kiosks for each academic college. Royce Wisenbaker funded a $15,000 one for the College of Engineering. Joe Hiram Moore gave another. Others stepped forward in response to Les’s appeal. With the help of the Admissions Office and Mary Helen Bowers, Class of 1977, of the Office of University Relations, an elaborate visitor’s center was created in Rudder Tower, featuring a wide-screen video detailing A&M’s history and its prominence as a major teaching and research institution. A team of students was on duty each day, including weekends, to conduct campus tours. It quickly became one of the busiest places on campus, particularly on football weekends.

Appelt poured both his time and his money into the center. His estate plan included ongoing support for its operation. Ultimately, the Appelt Visitor’s Center became so essential that it was incorporated into the university’s basic budget, providing for periodic upgrades of the facility’s graphic displays.

Few footprints across A&M are larger than those of Les Appelt, who benefited the university in many ways beyond the visitor’s center that bears his name.

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