A&M's Association honors Dr. Starr for his teaching

Texas A&M's Dr. Douglas Starr and two other professors were honored recently by the Association of Former Students with 2008 Distinguished Achievement Awards for Teaching, College Level.

Dr. Starr has won numerous awards in his long career, not least of them a Pulitzer in 1954 with the staff of the Vicksburg (Miss.) Sunday Post-Herald for coverage of an F5 tornado that killed 38 people. I was curious and read up a bit on this, my mind on recent Hurricane Ike coverage, and thought I would share this description from the Vicksburg Post Web site:

Under the most difficult conditions, Publisher Cashman's staff, improvising without the gas to fire the Linotypes, worked to publish the newspaper and keep citizens informed as to the fate of their friends and families. They worked tirelessly to quell rampant rumors that spread in a darkened city, most of which was without power and communications.

And as a bit of lagniappe, here's a piece of Dr. Starr's own writing, about being an 18-year-old "tin can sailor" on the destroyer U.S.S. Nicholas.

My thanks to Bill Gibbs, Texas A&M AgriLife communications manager, for his help with this. Congratulations, Dr. Starr!