March 2005
INSIDE SCHREINER
VOLUME VIIII, NUMBER 1
2005 Distinguished Alumnus and Athletic Hall of Honor inductees named
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chreiner University has announced its 2005 Distinguished Alumnus and Athletic Hall of Honor inductees: Dr. Tom Pruett and the late Claude R. “Chena” Gilstrap, respectively. The two will be honored at a banquet on April 9 during Recall.
Dr. Tom Pruett In his nomination of Dr. Tom Pruett (ʼ50) for the 2005 Distinguished Alumnus award, Ross Harris (ʼ66) says, “Here is an atypical distinguished alumnus—not a check writer, but a deed-doer. A contributor, Dr. Tom Pruett in 1950, a senior at some would say, to the much bigger Schreiner Institute cause of his fellow man. I believe that Dr. Pruett shines as a living example of our school motto, ʻLearning by heartʼ.” Pruett says he had no idea what lay in store for him when he and a few colleagues went to Juarez, Mexico, in 1980 to visit with a missionary couple who were caring for a few dozen small children from the poorest families in town. His group from the Brazosport area expected to offer free dental and eye examinations to the group of children, make a few fixes here and there, and then return home happy with having done good work.
Instead they found that not only had the children never seen a doctor of any kind in their life, neither had the members of their large, extended families. Pruett remembers, “We were underprepared and overwhelmed. Here they came— aunts, uncles, grandparents, even neighbors and friends. People were sleeping in front of the doors to the mission in freezing temperatures just to get a spot in line. Many of the older people were blind, but we knew that relatively simple cataract surgery could give them back their sight. By mid-week we called an eye surgeon to pack up his tools and come to Juarez. He did, and by Saturday we were performing eye surgery in a converted garage.” The group returned to Juarez in 1981, and then again in 1982. Each time there were huge numbers of new patients, and the groupʼs need for equipment and supplies began to outrun their resources. They applied for and received a large grant from Rotary International, and began to expand the scope of their free services. His group now distributes thousands of pairs of eyeglasses, acquired through an innovative eyeglass recycling center located in Houston. And besides eye and dental surgery, they offer plastic surgery to correct childrenʼs cleft palates and other congenital deformities that otherwise would condemn these children to a fringe existence even beyond the suffering of poverty. See Hall of Honor/Distinguished Alumnus, Page 2
PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE
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By Dr. Tim Summerlin
t had been 20 years since I had been to New York City—thatʼs what a provincial I am! But the four days that Mary Ellen and I spent there in January with members of our Schreiner University Choir, its director Michael Kahl, and Pat and Tom Browne were golden. Our group of 25 made that journey to participate in a concert performance of John Rutterʼs “Mass for the Children” at Carnegie Hall, along with a dozen other choirs from across the country. The week preceding the trip included nightly practices on campus to ensure that we knew the notes before departing. Three intensive rehearsal sessions under the directorship of Jonathan Willcocks in New York enabled some 250-plus of us to shape that basic knowledge into a true musical experience. The result was a moving performance in the incomparable Carnegie Hall setting, the power of which we all felt. If you have not already encountered it, you may want to check our website, www.schreiner.edu, and read Liz Buttsʼ informative journal of the experience, which you can find by digging back through the news stories on the home page. See Perspective, Page 3
In This Issue Athletic Hall of Honor/ Distinguished Alumnus
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Calendar of Events
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Sports
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Former Students Honor Roll of Donors