Remembering the Country Campus

Purchased for a dollar from the federal government, a German prisoner-of-war camp, was transformed into housing for faculty and returning GIs eager to attend Sam Houston State Teacher’s College.

 “They offered me a job to teach and have some small responsibility at the museum…I started in ’46, the marvelous year of the GIs coming to college—there’s never been another period like it.  It changed the university; it changed the town a little bit…

 Later, I was to visit on some campuses where they would welcome the students, but they didn’t have any room; they couldn’t house them.  Doctor Lowman [President of the College] was an entrepreneur in many ways about those things…And, that was where the Country Campus came in.  It was reported [that Sam Houston State Teachers College was] one of two colleges in the country that a student could walk up on the day of registration and say ‘I believe I want to go to college. I’m gonna gave the GI bill, and all I need is some classes and a place to live.’  And they had a place to live!  No student, to my knowledge, was ever turned away from Country Campus.”