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Garza / Deciding on Texas A&M University and Career

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This book that I'm talking about by Ray [?] the spirit of Hispanics that lived 500 years, before you leave. I'll show you a copy, yea, I think there is one in the library here. But, anyway, thats some of what I went through while I was in the service, when I went to Panama, one of my big desires was to take some vacation while I was in Panama and then drive from Panama to Mexico City down to Panamerican highway. But, here comes Francis, this is Francis Lisa. So, i'm really talking too long, but anyway after I got my discharge at the Brooklyn naval yards, I came back to Texas and before I had my discharge, I had applied to go to college and if accepted, I would have come out early. So, I applied to UT and was accepted. So, I was supposed to get out in October and they let me out in the Spring just so I can enroll at UT in the Fall. So, let me know what time you want to stop and I will. Interviewer-"Well I'm curious to know, you said you got into, you got accepted into UT, what made you choose Texas A&M instead?" Mr. Garza-Well, when I got out early, I went to visit my friend [?] they immediately offered me a job and I thought, well, since I have a few months before September to go to UT. I will work, we're working there and I met this young man that had stayed out of school at Texas A&M and he started telling me about the differences between College Station and Austin and, of course, the schools [?] In Austin, it was hard to get housing and number 2-just too large. At A&M, you will be able to get more attention and then he invited me to go visit A&M [?] And that sold me cause I been going to a small town in Floresville and College Station by the same time. I just changed my mind then about going. And, I started, then I met my wife, lol and I already enrolled in night school while I was working there during the summer. So, I stayed out a year and then went back [?] got out of the service, and then I came back home, married my wife, and had our first child, then I went back and finished in College Station. [?] I did do the classes, but I did not do the courses. Floresville has good courses in physics and chemistry. [?] I didn't do those courses at A&M [?]. There was some other courses that I wanted to take at A&M and some of the courses I really liked were the ones in medical technology [?] When I graduated, I remembered, well I graduated in January of 1961 [?] In Camden, New Jersey [?] Since, my wife had her family in San Antonio during that time I thought, well, I'll just go to Dallas [?] So, when i got my degree in local engineering, I remembered that I went to this professor and tell him [?] and he just shook his head, he just "I feel for you" he says, there's a man in Dallas, Jeff Ling, who is buying out [?] and if he succeeds, Jeff Ling will either be in prison or he will be a multi-millionaire. By that time, I already accepted it. With the degree that I had and the military background, I was the highest paid engineers coming out of college then.....

Interview Interview with Trini Garza
Subjects Family › Marriage
Family › Children
Education › Higher Education
Military › Military Draft
Tags University of Texas
Texas A&M University
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Interview date 2015-06-11
Interview source CRBB Summer 2015
Interviewees Garza, Trini
Interviewers Bynum, Katherine
Locations Dallas, TX
Austin, TX
Mexico City, Mexico
College Station, TX
Panama
Duration 00:05:55
Citation "Deciding on Texas A&M University and Career," from Trini Garza oral history interview with Katherine Bynum,  June 11, 2015, Dallas, TX, Civil Rights in Black and Brown Interview Database, https://crbb.tcu.edu/clips/1428/deciding-on-texas-a-m-university-and-career, accessed October 11, 2025