At Washington, the Jesuit community of Georgetown University sat down to its dinner. With it sat the Rev. Charles Williams Lyons, S.J., onetime President of Gonzaga College (Washington, D. C), of St. Joseph's College (Philadelphia), of Boston College, and latterly head of the Boston College Philosophy Department. Dinner over, the Rev. John B. Creeden, S.J., Georgetown's President, introduced Father Lyons to the Georgetown faculty with the simple explanation that Father Lyons would succeed him at once as their President. In accordance with the Jesuit custom of simplicity, no further ceremony marked the induction. In the morning, Father Creeden took the first train for Boston. There he assumed the philosophical duties relinquished by Father Lyons.
Father Creeden was "one of the most popular Presidents" in Georgetown's history. Reason for his departure was seen in the fact that he had served six years—the longest time allowed a man to hold one office according to the Jesuit rules; and in the fact that Father Lyons is "renowned as a developer of colleges and was the leading influence in the recent Boston College drive." Funds are already in the gathering for "Greater Georgetown." Father Lyons had been called to supervise.
Born and educated in Boston, successful as a young man in the wool business, Father Lyons was ordained in 1904. His administration of Boston College during the War days "won him the admiration of all New England." He served on the Massachusetts State Military Commission (1915), was last year chosen to deliver the historic Fourth of July address in Faneuil Hall, "Cradle of American Liberty."*
At Austin, Tex., a slender, active man of 41 completed his first month's work as the new President of the University of Texas. Before accepting office, this man had asked his friends to refrain from seeking the appointment for him, had said: "I never aspired to the presidency of the University of Texas because I believed the position to be the most important post . . . probably the most responsible public office in Texas." Notwithstanding, the office commandeered the man.
Dr. W. M. W. Splawn is the name —Splawn of Wise County. He has grown up with Texas; knew the prairies when cowboys trailed flaming kerosene-soaked lariats over it for miles to burn off dead grass and shrubbery that their cattle might eat in the spring. He saw the farms come, land go up, towns spring into being. He attended Decatur College, Decatur, Ill., refused an appointment to West Point and entered Baylor University, at Waco, Tex.
After Baylor came Yale; then a law practice* in Fort Worth. Then the University of Chicago, where he became a Doctor of Philosophy. Then teaching at Baylor and at the University of Texas. Last July, he was nominated by the Democrats to succeed himself as Railroad Commissioner of Texas, to which position he was appointed by Governor Neff in 1923.