This club’s long history shows that Fort Worth loves Texas A&M. No, really!

Fort Worth loves its Horned Frogs, and there are also plenty of Bevo supporters in Cowtown, but Texas A&M alumni had to settle for honorable mention until 2013 when Texas A&M Law School opened in downtown Fort Worth. Surprise, there was a proud outpost of Aggies in Fort Worth as early as 1914.

That was the year 30 A&M grads began an alumni organization here with a banquet in the Westbrook Hotel, at the time Fort Worth’s nicest hostelry (on the west side of what’s now Sundance Plaza). It was Oct. 13, and the gentlemen gathered in the English Room (no ladies in the group!) included, in addition to the Fort Worth Aggies, C.O. Moser, president of the Dallas Aggie alumni club, and alums from Mount Taylor, Farmersville, Rockdale and Waco.

They enthused about the upcoming A&M vs. Haskell Indian School football game to be played Oct. 23 in Fort Worth, and since this was Cowtown, they offered a toast to the school’s prize-winning student “stock-judging team” at the State Fair.

The ramrod behind the Fort Worth A&M Club was W.R. Edrington, scion of one of the city’s most respected families and a cashier at Trader’s National Bank. Edrington had graduated from the historic land-grant college in 1890 then returned to Fort Worth to work in his father’s bank.

In his keynote address at the banquet, Edrington admitted that, “Fort Worth didn’t know much about A&M” before 1911-12, observing that, “The cadet corps had never marched down Main Street,” and there was no alumni club as in Dallas. Then twin disasters struck: The fires of November 1911 and May 1912 that destroyed the school’s administration building and mess hall with losses of $35,000 and $75,000, respectively. This was a financial disaster as well as a physical blow to the struggling school. This was long before A&M and UT began splitting the fabulous wealth from state-owned oil lands, so there was no money to rebuild. In fact, the school’s future was in jeopardy.

Alumni rallied all over the state to raise money for rebuilding. Eventually more than $1 million was pledged in the form of loans to be repaid by the legislature in time. Among the state’s alumni organizations, individual Fort Worth grads pledged most of that money. Reportedly, three locals alone put up $300,000, which was more than either the Dallas or Houston alumni clubs raised. It was Louis J. Wortham, president and editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the state representative from Fort Worth who got the legislature to repay the loans. Although not an A&M grad himself, Wortham was definitely Aggie material, so he was invited to the launch party of the Fort Worth alumni club and said a few words. He called A&M the most important educational institution in the state “because it teaches the things most essential to the state’s prosperity.” The audience responded with cheers at this implied insult to the proud university in Austin.

Edrington also called for the next governor to “make provision for the adequate maintenance of A&M,” starting with the streets and sidewalks on campus, which needed paving. The students, he said, “are given no more comfort than hogs.” Put him on the board of trustees, he promised, and there would be plenty of changes “down there!”

Before adjourning, the members of the new Fort Worth A&M Club agreed to hold their next meeting at the Continental National Bank building. Fort Worth has had an A&M alumni club ever since.

Author-historian Richard Selcer is a Fort Worth native and proud graduate of Paschal High and TCU.