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Alumni 150
 Evelyn Gass Powers
In the late 1920s, the doctor in the town of Chillicothe was something
of a jack-of-all-trades. In addition to the usual sore throats and cut
knees that needed treatment, the physician had to perform some pretty
unusual feats, like delivering a baby in a covered wagon and doing a
tracheotomy by the light of a kerosene lamp.
What was even more unusual was the doctor herself. Dr. Evelyn Gass
Powers was an anomaly--a female physician in small-town America during
a time when women doctors were looked upon with suspicion. Together
with her husband, Dr. George Powers, "Dr. Evelyn"--as she was
known--practiced medicine in West Texas, tending to more than three
generations and also paving the way for women doctors to come.
A native of Tulia, Powers had a pretty good role model in her mother,
who was the unofficial doctor of the family. Powers always claimed that
she grew up believing women were just naturally doctors, so she saw no
reason why she shouldn't be one, too. She attended Baylor University
from 1915 until 1920, where she studied modern languages and science.
After doing post-graduate work at the University of Chicago, she began
her career in a traditionally female pursuit--teaching chemistry and
physics at Teague High School and at the University of Mary
Hardin-Baylor. But after a short time, she enrolled in Baylor College
of Medicine, where she was the only woman in her graduating class in
1925 and the highest scorer on the state certification exam.
During her sophomore year, Powers married a classmate, George, and
together they did their internships at Baylor Hospital. The original
"power couple" opened a joint practice in Chillicothe, and in 1928 they
moved to Amarillo, where they practiced for nearly forty years.
Evelyn Powers specialized in gynecology and pediatrics, and she was a
founding fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecology. A staff member at two different Amarillo hospitals, Powers
was very active in the community, taking part in the Altrusa Club and
the Texas Advisory Council of the National Democratic Committee. She
died in 1972 at the age of seventy-five.—Lisa Asher
Walter Splawn
Growing up on a farm near Decatur in the late nineteenth-century, Dr.
Walter Splawn learned the realities of an agricultural enterprise. That
it was hard work was a given. But the necessity of a transportation
system to bring products to widespread markets--one of the foundations
of commerce--was something that wouldn't be obvious to a child.
However, as Splawn came of age and eventually strode across the
national political stage, he would become recognized as one of the
country's authorities on the economics of the railroad system and the
federal role in securing efficient, stable interstate commerce.
Born in 1883, Splawn earned a bachelor's degree in 1906 from Baylor
University before going on to Yale University, where he received
another bachelor's degree in 1908 and a master's degree in 1914. He
furthered his education at the University of Chicago, where he took a
PhD in 1921. During those years of graduate study, he began teaching
economics at the University of Texas in 1919. He concurrently served on
the Texas Railroad Commission, from 1923 to 1924, before being named
president of the University of Texas in 1924. During the three years of
his presidency, Splawn strengthened the graduate school by securing
additional funds from the state legislature for professorships.
Splawn then rose to prominence in the nation's capital, first serving
as a referee on the War Claims Commission and, from 1928 to 1930,
settling disputes under the War Claims Act. From 1929 to 1934, he was
dean of the graduate school of American University. As a consultant to
Sam Rayburn, then chair of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign
Commerce of the U.S. House of Representatives, Splawn became prominent
in New Deal policy circles during the early 1930s. His counsel
regarding the communications, railroad, and security industries played
a role in the passage of a variety of regulatory statutes and the
Federal Communications Act of 1934.
Perhaps Splawn's most significant and lasting contribution came during
his nineteen-year tenure (1934 to 1953) as one of eleven members of the
Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)--the federal government's first
independent agency. As a commissioner of the ICC--and its chair for
several years--he added aviation to his areas of expertise and
contributed to that industry's regulation. However, the ICC's policies
concerning the railroad industry remained a priority, especially during
the lean years of the Great Depression. Drawing upon his experience and
research--as exemplified by his 1925 book The Consolidation of Railroads--Splawn
continued to provide valuable counsel regarding everything from freight
rates and passenger fares to the pros and cons of comprehensive
railroad consolidation plans.
Splawn remained in Washington after his retirement and died in 1963.—Todd Copeland
 Foy Valentine
During the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) meeting of 1960--Dr. Foy
Valentine's first meeting as executive director of the SBC's Christian
Life Commission--Valentine told those gathered that his agency
"interprets its grave responsibility to this convention to speak to the
conscience of Southern Baptists on the application of Christian
principles in everyday life."
Valentine committed his life to that mission, often sounding like a
voice in the wilderness as he advocated for racial equality in the
South of the 1960s, for the strict separation of church and state, and
for an unwavering commitment to Christian ethics. He also spoke against
the growing Fundamentalist movement. In 1963, Valentine was the only
person to vote against passage of the Baptist Faith and Message,
saying, "It's a step toward creedalism, and you're going to regret it."
But Valentine's voice was the loudest when speaking against racial
inequality. During his time with the SBC, he often faced criticism and
the threat of budget cuts to his agency for his views on race relations
and for conferences he organized on racial issues. One Baptist
historian called Valentine a pioneer in race relations who was "on the
leading edge of national social change."
Valentine earned his Baylor University degree in 1944 and then received
a master of theology and a doctor of theology from Southwestern Baptist
Theological Seminary. After serving as pastor of the First Baptist
Church of Gonzales, he was a member of the executive board of the BGCT
and of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, which tapped him as
its director in 1953. He moved on to the national level, leading the
SBC's Christian Life Commission from 1960 to 1987.
He served on the executive committee of Americans United for the
Separation of Church and State and on the Baptist World Alliance's
Commission on Religious Liberty and Human Rights and was board
president for the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs.
After his retirement from the SBC, Valentine founded and edited the journal Christian Ethics Today. He also authored a number of books on Christian ethics, including The Cross in the Marketplace, and continued to write for Christian Ethics Today during his last years.
Valentine died in 2006, and at his memorial service he was hailed as a
rare man. David Sapp, pastor of Second Ponce de Leon Baptist Church in
Atlanta, who worked for Valentine at the SBC, said, "You can't talk
about Foy Valentine without talking about courage." Referring to
Valentine's leadership in the civil rights movement, Sapp said, "While
some stood in the schoolhouse door and shouted, 'Closed!' Foy stood in
the church house door and shouted, 'Open!'"—Meg Cullar
Lyndon Olson
"I've just tried to leave a good trail behind me," says Lyndon Olson
Jr. when asked to describe his life philosophy. It sounds like a modest
goal, but the trail Olson has blazed is far-reaching, stretching from
his roots in Waco to his tenure in the Texas State House of
Representatives in Austin, and from his position as U.S. Ambassador to
Sweden to his current job as senior advisor to Citigroup in New York
City.
Olson grew up with a sense of responsibility instilled in him by his
father, a Waco attorney. "My father required his children to have high
expectations of themselves," the younger Olson said. "Out of that
demand, our strengths evolved."
Olson would need all of that strength to get him through a childhood
spent in and out of hospitals due to club feet. At the age of eleven,
he had both legs amputated below the knees. "Yes, it was a bump in the
road," he said. "But it was one of those events in life where the
opportunity to grow was exponential."
Olson majored in political science and religion at Baylor University,
where he was named the permanent president of the Class of 1969. While
attending Baylor Law School, he ran for the Texas State Legislature and
was elected at the unprecedented age of twenty-three. He served in the
legislature from 1973 to 1979 and was named Legislator of the Year in
1977.
In 1979, he became the youngest chair in the history of the Texas State
Board of Insurance. During his eight-year tenure, he was appointed to
the negotiating team on international reinsurance issues at the United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development and served as a negotiator
for the United States-Israeli Free Trade Agreement. He remained in the
insurance business when he became president and CEO of Travelers
Insurance Holdings Inc. in New York.
In 1997, President Bill Clinton asked Olson what three countries he
would be interested in serving as an ambassador. Olson's answer was
simple--"Sweden, Sweden, Sweden." The third-generation Swedish American
was appointed the country's U.S. ambassador in 1998. During his four
years abroad, Olson brought a taste of Texas to the Scandinavian
country. He received an honorary doctorate from Sweden's Umea
University in 2001.
Olson holds numerous board positions, including the chairmanship of the
Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas--the very same hospital
that cared for him when he was a child.
Despite repeated suggestions from influential people, Olson has
resisted another run for public office. He's content with his job in
New York and his cattle ranch near Waco. But rest assured, there are
still other trails he plans to blaze.—Lisa Asher
 Carroll Dawson
An undying love of the game fueled Carroll Dawson's lengthy career in
basketball. That passion started when he was a boy growing up in Alba,
a small town in East Texas. When he was eight, his mother gave him a
Christmas gift that he'll never forget: a $14 leather basketball. "I
had the only basketball in town," Dawson said. "We used that thing for
a basketball, for a football, and for every kind of ball."
When he wasn't helping out on his family's farm, Dawson developed
eye-catching skills on the basketball court. During his senior year,
the six-foot-five Dawson led the Alba High School boy's team to a 44-3
record. His college years saw continued success. After earning
all-America honors at Paris Junior College, he was all-SWC in 1960
during his senior year at Baylor University.
After a stint in the Army, Dawson returned to Baylor in 1963 as an
assistant to head basketball coach Bill Menefee and then served as head
coach of the Bears from 1973 to 1977. Finally, in 1980 he joined the
coaching staff of the Houston Rockets--an organization that he would go
on to serve for the next twenty-seven years, until his retirement at
the end of the 2007 season.
Dawson spent the first sixteen years as an assistant coach--becoming renowned for his work with such centers as Moses
Malone and Hakeem Olajuwon--until moving into the front office as general manager in 1996.
The change in job title was the result of injuries he suffered when he
was struck by lightning on a golf course in 1989, causing the loss of
sight in his left eye. As the years went by, the vision in his right
eye worsened to the point that he knew his coaching days were over.
As general manager, Dawson was central in the acquisition of such stars
as Yao Ming, personally traveling to China to negotiate with the
Chinese government. "Carroll Dawson's fingerprints are on all the
successful moments that the Rockets organization has had," former
Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich said upon Dawson's retirement.
Dawson is the only person involved with the franchise to have served as
an assistant coach during the Rockets' four trips to the NBA Finals,
including the team's championships in 1994 and 1995. He also had a
major role in the WNBA Houston Comets' four consecutive titles from
1997 to 2000, serving as the franchise's executive vice president. Not
that you'll ever hear him brag about it. "I love working for an NBA
team, and I love being involved in basketball. But I've never wanted
the spotlight," he said just prior to retiring.
Dawson was inducted into the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame in 1998 and
the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2007, the Rockets honored
Dawson by hanging a banner with the initials "CD"--his longtime
nickname--from the rafters of the Toyota Center.—Todd Copeland
Mark White
Mark White once described himself as an "average student" while at
Baylor University. "I like to remind people that I was in the top third
of my graduating class in law school," he said, noting that the
first-year class of one hundred students dwindled to only thirty by the
time they graduated. "So that puts me in the top third!"
Regardless of class ranking, White has had anything but an average
career. The governor of Texas from 1983 to 1987, he spent two decades
in Texas public office, including stints as secretary of state and
attorney general.
A business major at Baylor, White graduated in 1962 and immediately
entered Baylor's Law School, where he got his first taste of politics.
He ran for chief judge of the law school's student court, thinking that
he would win in a landslide. "I think I won by one in the runoff," he
said.
After earning a JD in 1965, he practiced law in Houston and served as
assistant attorney general before assuming his government positions. In
1982, he ran for Texas governor against Bill Clements, the Republican
incumbent, whom he defeated, becoming the fourth Texas governor to
graduate from Baylor.
During his term as governor, White focused on utility rate regulation,
economic development, and the appointment of minorities to staff
positions. He presided over the state's sesquicentennial celebration,
in 1986, and began a restoration effort of the capitol.
But it was his focus on education that became White's greatest source
of pride and of controversy. As part of his education reform movement,
White helped spearhead House Bill 72, which called for sweeping changes
in Texas public schools, including the "no-pass/no-play" rule. "Texas
saw the most dramatic improvement in schools of any state in the
nation," White now says about the bill.
However, the educational reforms were not popular with everyone. And
when White ran for reelection in 1986, he was defeated by Clements.
Following his return to the private sector, White resumed his law
practice and also founded Geovox, a high-tech security company that
boasts an impressive roster of national and international clients. He
and his wife, Linda Gale Thompson White '64, continue to live in
Houston.—Lisa Asher
 John Wesley Cook
When Dr. John Wesley Cook came to Baylor University, he planned to be a
minister. But as his intellect was exposed to new possibilities, Cook
decided to follow them. He said Paul Baker's drama classes opened "the
world of the imagination" to him, that Robert Reid in history was a
"remarkable influence," that he found the religion department
satisfyingly broad-based, and that he greatly admired philosophy chair
Leonard Duce, who integrated religion and philosophy "without
sacrificing intellectual rigor."
It's hard to fathom that one person could pursue all these paths, but
that is exactly what Cook did. After graduating from Baylor in 1954, he
went to Yale University and earned a master of divinity degree in 1957.
After an associate pastorate in Houston, a graduate fellowship in
Germany, and an interim pastorate in Houston, Cook returned to Yale to
finish his PhD. At one point, he was attending classes, pastoring a
church, and teaching German--all in addition to family life with wife
Phyllis Depp, Class of '54, and two children, born in 1966 and 1967.
Upon completion of his doctorate, Cook joined the faculty of Yale
Divinity School and attained the title of professor of religion and the
arts by 1977. He quickly established an international reputation in the
area of religious architecture, coauthoring the book Conversations with Architects.
At Yale, Cook developed and directed the interdisciplinary program that
grew into the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Worship, and the Arts,
and served as its director from 1984 to 1992. He explored the
relationship between the arts and spirituality through lectures,
scholarly articles, and books.
In 1992, Cook went in yet another direction, leaving Yale to become
president of the Henry Luce Foundation in New York City. Each year, the
internationally renowned philanthropic organization distributes grants
worth millions of dollars to support a broad range of interests,
including scholarship in American art, relationships with Asia, and the
study of theology.
In 2002, Cook retired from the Luce Foundation and is currently
professor emeritus and lecturer in religion and the arts at Yale. In
2004, he coauthored a history of the Riverside Church in New York City,
which received critical acclaim for its detailed research, accuracy,
and openness about the church's periods of conflict.
The recipient of an honorary doctorate from Valparaiso University, Cook
has served on numerous philanthropic boards of directors over the
years, and he is at work on a documentary on the aesthetic creations of
the three Abrahamic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.—Meg Cullar
Maria Cribbs Owens
Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Maria Cribbs Owens knew since childhood that she
wanted to dedicate her life to serving her country. Both of her parents
had served in World War II--her mother as a nurse, and her father as an
Air Force officer in the Pacific region. "My parents were living
examples of how exciting and vital military service can be," she said.
A native of Cleburne, Owens majored in sociology at Baylor
University--where, like many coeds, she joined a sorority. But Owens
also had another side to her life. She was in the Air Force ROTC
program and eventually received her commission as second lieutenant on
the day she graduated from Baylor, in 1975. To her studies at Baylor,
she eventually added a master's degree in public administration from
Webster College and graduated from the Air War College.
Owens's first decade in the Air Force was spent at Randolph Air Force
Base in San Antonio and the U.S. Air Force Headquarters in Washington,
D.C., where she served in the personnel division. Among a long list of
assignments in the following years were two major commander roles. As
commander of the 436th Support Group at Dover Air Force Base in
Delaware from 1996 to 1998, Owens directed the daily operations of a
city-like installation. As commander of the Air Force Inspection Agency
at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico from 1998 to 1999, she led the
efforts of 150 military inspectors to evaluate Air Force operations and
make recommendations for improvements.
In 1999, Owens returned to Washington to become executive secretary in
the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Successively serving William
Cohen and Donald Rumsfeld, she was the Secretary of Defense's principal
liaison with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, the White House, and
Cabinet agencies. From 2001 to 2002, she was chief of staff for the
Department of Defense's initial Homeland Security office, where she
directed the logistic and administrative effort to establish the new
governmental entity.
During the last years of her military career, Owens served as director
of manpower and personnel for the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In this capacity, she was the chair's principal advisor on personnel
issues and developed policy for personnel programs governing the U.S.
military's major regional organizations, requiring extensive travel
overseas. When she retired in 2005, she was one of only a handful of
female brigadier generals in the Air Force.
Since 2005, Owens has been a vice president of the Cohen Group. Led by
former Defense Secretary Cohen, the company helps multinational clients
explore opportunities overseas by providing them with comprehensive
tools for understanding and shaping their business, political, legal,
regulatory, and media environment.—Todd Copeland
 Sam Johnson
Despite the lofty judicial heights to which he climbed, Judge Sam D.
Johnson was always known first and foremost as "the people's judge"
because of his commitment to making sure that every litigant or
defendant--despite their ability to pay--had adequate legal
representation. In fact, Johnson used the occasion of his swearing in
as a Texas Supreme Court justice in 1973 to call attention to the lack
of legal services for the poor.
"If a doctor in the medical profession with the means and the medicine
to relieve suffering withheld that medicine and that service, we would
think it absolutely unthinkable," Johnson said. "And yet, those of us
in the legal profession have long withheld and continue to withhold
legal service to the poor of Texas."
Johnson, who eventually became the senior justice on the Fifth U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals, backed up his words with action. In 1965, he
left a judicial post in Hillsboro to become the first executive
director of the Houston Legal Foundation, a pilot program providing
legal services to the poor.
Born in 1920 in Hubbard, Johnson interrupted his Baylor University
education to serve in the 95th Infantry Division, Third Army under
General George Patton during World War II. He was awarded the Purple
Heart, the Bronze Star, and Combat Infantryman's Badge. Following the
war, he returned to Baylor and graduated with honors in 1946 and then
graduated from the University of Texas law school. His legal career
began in Hillsboro, where he was elected county attorney and district
attorney for Hill County. He was then elected district judge, a post he
held from 1958 to 1965, when he went to Houston. Two years later, he
was appointed as a justice of the newly created Texas Fourteenth Court
of Appeals in Houston.
By then, his reputation as an honest and intellectually sound jurist
was widely recognized, so much so that when he filed to run statewide
in 1972 for the Texas Supreme Court, no one filed to run against him.
It marked the only time in Texas history that a non-incumbent ran
unopposed for a vacancy on the court.
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter appointed Johnson to the Fifth U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals--the first Baylor graduate to reach this
judicial level. Johnson ultimately served as a judge for a total of
thirty-five years and authored more than nine hundred opinions.
Johnson married his Baylor sweetheart, June Page '45, and the couple
had three children. He died in 2002 and was buried at the Texas State
Cemetery.—Meg Cullar
Glenn McGee
Dr. Glenn McGee was only twenty-six when he began working at the University of Pennsylvania's trailblazing
Center for Bioethics. Since then, the 1990 Baylor University graduate
has gone on to become a highly regarded figure himself, blazing his own
trails through the relatively young but rapidly growing field of
bioethics.
Following his Baylor years, McGee earned master's and doctoral degrees
from Vanderbilt University. Though his work has addressed a wide range
of subjects, McGee is particularly known for his work on the ethical
issues surrounding genetics. As a researcher, McGee has endeavored to
show the connections between morality, medicine, and the biomedical
sciences. One of his overarching goals has been to make the
complexities of science and ethics understandable and accessible to the
regular guy on the streets. "Glenn has the kind of powerful analytic
ability to pull disparate ideas and themes together," said Arthur
Caplan, the Penn bioethics center's founder. "He's truly a pioneer in
moving bioethics into the electronic world."
These days, McGee's business card reads "Editor-in-Chief, The American Journal of Bioethics." As the nation's top bioethics journal, available in print and online at bioethics.net,
AJOB is one part of the Bioethics Education Network--a company McGee
formed in 2000 and now leads as president. He also regularly testifies
at the federal and state level and is a member of more than two dozen
editorial and advisory boards in academia, government, industry, and
foundations.
In 1995 McGee joined Penn's Center for Bioethics, where he served as
associate director for education until 2005. During that time, he wrote
The Perfect Baby: A Pragmatic Approach to Genetics, which was selected as a "must read" by the New York Times Book Review
in 1997 and launched his rise in the mainstream media as a commentator.
"I see talking to the media as an extension of teaching," McGee has
said. "This is a new era for the public to make decisions about what
counts as a family and a person and as right and wrong." Over the
years, he has supplied commentary about bioethical issues for virtually
every major newspaper as well as television programs ranging from The Oprah Winfrey Show to 60 Minutes. In addition, he has given more than one thousand public lectures and delivered dozens of named lectureships.
Hailed as one of the most important bioethicists of his generation,
McGee left Philadelphia for Albany, New York, where he founded the
Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical Center, serving as
its director and holding the first John A. Balint Endowed Chair in
Medical Ethics from 2005 to May 2008. McGee's most recent book, Beyond Genetics: Putting the Power of DNA to Work in Your Life,
explored the potential effects of genomics on people's lives within the
next twenty years. He has also authored many articles in journals of
medicine, science, and bioethics--such as Science, JAMA, and Nature Genetics.—Todd Copeland
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