The Byrd’s, Professor Carlson, Nobel Laurette Thomas , and Tarahuara

The “Father of bone marrow transplantation,” Dr. E. Donnall Thomas is a former SWC Longhorn swimming champion.

Donnall was born in Mart, Texas. He said, “My high school class consisted of about 15 people. I was not an outstanding student, even in this small group. I entered the University of Texas in Austin in 1937. In my first semester, I made only B grades. Still, as time went on and the courses became more difficult and challenging, I began to enjoy the studies, mainly in chemistry and chemical engineering.” Don Thomas graduated from Texas with a B.A. in 1941 and an M.A. in 1943.

Starting in the mid-1950s, Dr. Donnall Thomas developed methods of providing new bone marrow cells for people through transplants. The body’s bone marrow cells were killed using radiation and chemotherapy, and the immune system’s rejection mechanism was subdued. A donor then provided Bone marrow cells through a blood transfusion.

The full store about the extraordinary life of former Longhorn student-athlete Dr. Donnall Thomas is captured in the link below. There is a great video produced about him and his wife and their cancer research in this link.

https://texas-lsn.squarespace.com/dr-don-thomas-swimming

Professor Larry Carlson

Larry Carlson has followed the Longhorns since seeing his first orange tower in 1960.  He hosted the Longhorn Locker Room Show on Austin’s KVET Radio and was later a co-host of Longhorn Pipeline on San Antonio’s ESPN Radio affiliate.  Larry just retired after 35 years of teaching broadcast journalism at Texas State University and lives in San Antonio with his wife. Write to him at lc13@txstate.edu

His writing skills are apparent in the article that is permanently a part of the TLSN archives at link https://texas-lsn.squarespace.com/larry-carlson…

Below are some snippets of Larry’s article sharing his perspective of Sam Ehrlinger’s years as a Horn. I don’t entirely agree with all his comments, but I don’t question his passion for the Longhorns, and I understand the sense of frustration captured in some of the words he writes.

The article is titled :

“NUMBER 11, AND WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.”

Here are 2 snippets of his article : 

1) Football has always been a game of inches. A deep throw that just missed, a fourth-and-one made or lost by a fingernail. An attempted field goal gone awry, nicked by a desperate hand. Each season has make-or-break moments for almost every team. Coaches fired and hired, teams re-wired. Texas Longhorn fans can go back through the musty files and ponder what might have been in 1961, 1964, 1977, 1983, 2008, and 2009 just to put the microscope to several inches that spilled all the marbles.

2) Where Sam Ehlinger comes up as incomparable among Texas’s legendary quarterbacks wasn’t seen on game films. Yep, he was a heckuva passer, runner, scholar, and citizen — and tougher than a cheap, cheap steak — but he dealt with a revolving door of assistant coaches and coordinators, played behind the “protection” of mostly nondescript offensive lines, …. 

3) “To everything, there is a season, and there is a time to every purpose under heaven,” go some of the words from songwriter Pete Seeger. And if you don’t know those from folk or classic rock, maybe you recognize them from the Old Testament. Ecclesiastes never defended the out route or relished a burnt orange UT tower but certainly grasped the necessity of going forward. For Sam Ehlinger, Steve Sarkisian, and Longhorn Nation, the time for big new change is nigh. “

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