As a part of the university’s Homecoming festivities, SMU honored four alumni Thursday night for their professional achievements and service to their alma mater. President R. Gerald Turner and Perkins School of Theology Dean William B. Lawrence introduced the recipients of the 2002 SMU Distinguished Alumni Award to a crowd of more than 500 at the Fairmount Hotel. The award represents the highest honor the university and its Alumni Association can bestow upon alumni of the institution. Recipients are recommended by a recognition and awards committee and are approved by the SMU Alumni Association Board of Directors.
This year’s recipients include a prominent Dallas lawyer, an ABC News air safety analyst, a U.S. Olympic swim team coach and a former SMU interim president and biology professor emeritus.
Harriet Miers (’67, ’70)
Harriet Miers, assistant to President Bush and staff secretary, earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1967 and her law degree in 1970 from SMU. She received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the SMU law school in 1997.
Miers clerked for the U.S. District Judge Joe E. Estes after graduating from law school. Two years later, she joined the Dallas-based firm of Locke, Purnell, Boren, Laney & Neely and started her successful career as a trial lawyer. In 1999, Miers became co-managing partner of the firm after it merged with another firm to become Locke Liddell & Sapp, L. L. P.
In 1992, Miers was elected the first woman president of the State Bar of Texas. She also served as chairwoman of the Board of Editors for the American Bar Association Journal which led to her being named one of the 100 most powerful lawyers and one of the top 50 women lawyers in the U.S.
Miers says she considers herself “thrice blessed” by SMU. The first blessing came in her initial year as an undergraduate on the Hilltop. Her father had a stroke and she was preparing to leave SMU before her sophomore year. Her mother, desperate to have her daughter stay in college, called SMU. The university devised a work study and loan program to help Meirs get her diploma. Six years later, she had her law degree.
The second blessing was the quality education and desire to serve SMU instilled in her while she was a student. Meirs spent her college summers as a counselor for Upward Bound, a program that brought bright under-privledged children to campus. She says those summers she learned more from the children than they did from her.
But Meirs considers the recognition as a distinguished alumni from the university the greatest blessing she could receive from SMU.
John J. Nance (’68, ’69)
John J. Nance, a decorated Air Force pilot and a veteran of Vietnam and Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, got his military start while a student at SMU. Before he received the title lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Active Reserve, which he holds to this day, he was a member of Reserve Officers’ Training Corps during his undergraduate years.
But Nance’s other passion has always been journalism. Before joining ABC as a broadcast journalist, Nance had delivered more than 3,000 newscasts on radio and television, including three years with ABC affiliate WFAA-TV Channel 8 in Dallas.
Currently, Nance serves as aviation analyst for Good Morning America. He has appeared on more than 1,300 radio and television shows, including The MacNeil-Lehrer Report, CBS Evening News, Nova, Oprah, and Larry King Live. He is a New York Times best-selling author of 12 books and has written editorials for national newspapers including The Los Angeles Times and USA Today.
Nance has extensive flight experience and has logged more than 13,000 hours of flight time in his commercial airline and Air Force careers. He is currently a veteran captain for Alaska Airlines, is a partner in the Austin, Tx. Law firm of Nance & Carmichael, P. C., and is a founding member of the national Patient Safety Foundation. He also serves on the Dedman School of Law executive board.
He holds a bachelor of arts from SMU, and a juris doctorate from SMU Law School. Nance, now living in Washington state, says he will always consider himself a Texan and looks back on his time at SMU with pride. He has carried a laminated miniature copy of both his undergraduate diploma and his law diploma in his wallet since the day he graduated. He said he has kept it through Vietnam, through Operation Desert Storm, and through all the hours he clocked as a pilot.
“It’s not just by happenstance I keep them with me,” he said, “but by pride.”
Richard W. Quick (’65, ’77)
Richard W. Quick has been one of the most respected names in swimming since his graduation from SMU in 1965 with a bachelor’s degree in physical education. Currently in his 15th year as coach of Stanford’s women’s swimming and diving program. Quick can count seven NCAA titles to his name, six in the past 11 seasons. He has won a total of 12 NCAA titles during his collegiate coaching career, the most in the history of Division I coaching.
Quick spent three years as Olympic head coach for the U.S. women’s swimming team, and he is a five-time member of the U.S. coaching staff at the Games. After Quick was named the national coach for U.S. Swimming in 1986, he coached the U.S. team in four consecutive World Championships, the 1990 Goodwill Games, three Pan Pacific Games, the 1985 World University Games and the 1979 Pan American Games.
A 1965 graduate of SMU, Quick took his first coaching position at Houston’s Memorial High School, guiding his team to six state championships before moving back to his alma mater. At SMU, he served as an assistant coach on the men’s side for four years (1971-75). In 1976, Quick started the women’s program at SMU and laid the foundation for what has become one of the top programs in the country.
Quick, nervous behind the podium Thursday night, said SMU is special to him and it always has been and always will be.
“SMU, thank you for your contributions to my life,” he said. “It’s absolutely been a dream come true.”
William B. Stallcup, Jr. (’41)
Throughout his forty years at SMU, William B. Stallcup, Jr. spent nearly half of them in administrative positions. After earning his undergraduate degree in biology from SMU in 1941, Stallcup served in World War II. He returned to SMU in 1945 at the insistence of his former professors to teach the returning soldiers. After a five-year stint teaching, Stallcup left and earned a doctorate in zoology at the University of Kansas before coming back to the Hilltop once again in 1953.
During his tenure at SMU, Stallcup was asked to serve as associate dean of faculty in Dedman College, associate provost (twice), provost ad interim, special assistant to the president and acting provost. In 1986 when the SMU football was faced with a scandal, Stallcup helped the team and the university get through one of the most crucial event SMU had ever dealt with. After serving as president ad interim, Stallcup returned to teaching, retiring in 1989. He served from 1990-92 as resident director of the SMU-in-Taos program at the Fort Burgwin Research Center.
Stallcup credits SMU with giving him some of the greatest joys in his life, one of which is his wife, ‘Pat’ Patterson, whom he met while studying at SMU. They will celebrate 60 years together next month.
Though the aging biology professor gave nearly half a century to SMU, he still sees the debt as unpaid in full.
“Whatever I have done for the university,” he said, “I consider payback for what the university has done for me.”
