Saturday, July 20, 2013

A real TEXas treat

Interviewing the oldest veteran alive, Richard Overton, was a real hoot.  He's quite the character and a very kind soul, and I'm surprised that he's doing as well as he is at 107 (I hope I'm doing that well at 80!).  His interview has been sent to the Library, and now we're off to the next one.  I hope this one gets digitized, but we will see.  Mike says there's a good chance and it would be neat to have one of my interviews digitized eventually.

I'm learning that I have a lot more interest in pursuing interviews when I cherry-pick who I'm interviewing next based on my own personal interests.  It's been just over ten years since I met my husband at college orientation at the University of Texas at Austin.  In my alma mater's magazine, the Alcalde, I was reminded of the early phone registration system, TEX, we had to use that first semester before online registration was available.  (My father had to stand in line with cards at Gregory Gym, so I think we've improved a bit since then.)  The calm, reassuring voice of TEX was none other than William Livingston, who happens to be a World War II vet that lives a few miles away.  Needless to say, that's pretty darn exciting.

We're set up for next weekend and I'm really looking forward to it.  Plus, it's always great when I can find out most of the biographical information online when people have their own Wikipedia articles.  How famous do you have to get to have your own article, anyway?  At any rate, Dr. Livingston will be a very interesting interview.

One more blog post for those of you Texas Exes out there: The process of registering with TEX.

3 comments:

  1. Hi, Katherine--did you complete the interview with Dr. Livingston? He passed away today. I was interested to know if you captured any audio of Dr. Livingston saying "Good bye and Good luck"?

    Thanks,
    Drew Carls
    University Communications
    UT Austin

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    1. I did interview him, but I did not get him saying that phrase. I have emailed you with more information.

      I'm so sorry to hear he passed away, but he seemed to be a most positive and lovely person to know.

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