Smaller versions of the original flag will return to Texas A&M this week following a ceremony in Austin.
Men and women from more than four million American families served in WWI, and the number of Texas A&M students, staff and faculty who answered the call exceeded that of any other American university, according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. The Great War claimed the lives of 116,516 U.S. soldiers and wounded another 200,000, and the university helped to rehabilitate approximately 1,000 injured veterans between 1919 and 1925 under the supervision of the Federal Board of Vocational Education and with the assistance of the Veterans Bureau.
During the war, the College Station campus became a camp for training more than 4,000 U.S. Army personnel who served as machinists, blacksmiths, farriers, and radio, auto and aircraft mechanics. The Signal Corps School of Meteorology, the only one of its kind among allied nations during the war, also was hosted by Texas A&M. War efforts pertaining to food production, cotton marketing and food preservation were advanced around the state by the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, a part of the Texas A&M University System.
On May 7, 1929, the university presented the Speaker of the House, the Hon. W.S. Barron, with the pair of small service flags on a visit he made to the university. Later that month, a resolution recognizing the university’s many contributions to the war was read on the House floor and one of the flags was hung in the Texas House of Representatives where it remained for at least 45 years before entering the care of the state archives where the other was stored.
In 2013, the U.S. WWI Centennial Commission was formed by an Act of Congress, and Texas followed suit. Governor Greg Abbott charged the Texas Historical Commission with forming a similar committee in Texas, and representatives of the state archives suggested the flags be returned to Texas A&M in a ceremony coinciding with the WWI centennial celebration.
At the ceremony, State Library and Archives Director Mark Smith, State Representative John Raney and Senator Charles Schwertner are to deliver addresses, and accepting the flags on behalf of Texas A&M are Provost Karan Watson, Brigadier General Joe E. Ramirez, Dean of University Libraries David Carlson, and Cushing Memorial Library Director Francesca Marini, among others.
A photo album of the original flag can be found on the Texas A&M Libraries Flickr page.
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Media contact: Elena Watts, Division of Marketing & Communications, at (979) 458-8412 or elenaw@tamu.edu, or Greg Bailey, at (979) 845-1951 or gtbailey@library.tamu.edu
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