Quickly, though, a couple of things:

1) I daily watched the building go up from my former office on the Fourth Floor of the Fondren Library.  Daily.  It is quite a remarkable thing to watch a massive structure slowly emerge, more or less, out of the ground.  I often wondered how I would behave if I were one of the people who had built it (built anything like it, actually).  I thought then that I would be insufferable to the young folks in my family if I had built marvelous things.  In my retirement, I would certainly drag my children’s children across the city to and fro pointing out the things—real things, massive things, forever things—that I had helped to make possible in this city.

2) The first generation to occupy the building got to design our own offices.  The contractors built out full scale mock ups out on the concourses of the Rice Stadium, and we went out there to put together our own particualr offices as if we were making plans for a custom home.

3) Karen Stokes helped to choreograph a series of dances that opened the building.  I’m still affected by what I saw and experienced then. 

4) There is a tree on the loop-road side of the Humanities Building dedicated to E. A. S. Atieno Odhiambo, and another in the courtyard dedicated to Linda Quaidy (check spelling). When I was a student here, I knew Ms. Quaidy best from her ability to skillfully interpret the handwriting  of one of my professors for whmo she served as an administrator.  When I returned to Rice and saw that tree, I thought how can she be dead?  I don’t have space or time to capture the meaning that Dr. Odhiambo’s tree holds for me (other than to say it dominates the space in my mind).

5) We Byrds have more than a few family pictures from the HUMA Building courtyard."