ROTARY CLUB OF SAN MARCOS
Dr. Grady Early, Texas State University professor emeritus, likes to conduct research for fun. He started by researching his family history, and his curiosity grew then shifted to the city’s beloved university — the one he spent so many years teaching at. After looking into the first 17 faculty members at then San Marcos Normal, now TXST, he wrote a series about them for the Daily Record, which caught the attention of the Rotary Club in San Marcos who invited him to speak at one of their meetings. Instead of the first faculty, Early decided to look at the school’s history on a grand scale, from the first people teaching in the area to the legislation that paved the way for what is now Texas State.
“I got thinking about educating kids in particular, wondering how long we’ve been doing that in Texas, and I decided that the answer is 20,000 years. Because paleontologists seem to think that the first human being showed up in what is down Texas about that long ago. If you have people, you have kids and kids have to be taught things so that they will live long and prosper. Do not play with the brown snake,” Early said, which received a resounding laugh from the club members. “There will be someone in the village who is an expert at something [like] making bread; Maybe that person will gather some kids together and teach them how to do it. That is a school. All you need for a school are two things — a teacher and some teachees.”
