Texas A&M alumni honored by College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

 

COLLEGE STATION — Three alumni and a more recent graduate of the Texas A&M University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences were honored recently at the Legacy and Leadership Banquet in College Station.

Monroe H. Fuchs of Cameron, Dr. Carl G. Anderson Jr. of Bryan and Frederick D. McClure of College Station were named Outstanding Alumni. Erin Morrow Hawley of Columbia, Mo., was given the Outstanding Early Career Alumni Award.

Fuchs and his family own Ideal Poultry Breeding Farms, the nation’s largest supplier of recreational poultry.

At age 13, Fuchs was the youngest person ever to become Texas-certified as a poultry testing and selection agent. An honor graduate of  Yoe High School in Cameron, he received academic honors at Texas A&M while serving in the Corps of Cadets and the Ross Volunteers. He earned his bachelor’s degree in poultry husbandry in 1956 and his master’s in 1957. He served in the U.S. Air Force, where he qualified in the top 5 percent of all officers.

In 1963, Fuchs began breeding the Ideal 236 chicken, which is more resistant than other breeds to the highly contagious Marek’s disease virus. He purchased Ideal Poultry from his parents in 1973. Three years later he introduced the Ideal Show Strain of broilers, which won top honors at the prestigious Houston Livestock Show for 13 consecutive years. Ideal introduced feather-sexing of newly hatched chicks for more than 90 breeds and also developed many new exotic varieties.

He received the Golden Feather Award from the Texas Poultry Federation in 1994 for his long-term support of the industry. Fuchs also has received the lifetime service award from the Cameron Chamber of Commerce, 50 years of perfect attendance in the Cameron Lions Club, the Lions Club International Melvin Jones Fellowship Award and was inducted into the Yoe High School Hall of Honor. And he has served more than 35 years in Christian ministry to jail and prison inmates and their families.

Additionally, Fuchs’ family is an Eppright Distinguished Donor, a 12th Man Foundation Endowed Donor and a Legacy Society member of the Texas A&M Foundation. They have established three endowed scholarships for students in the department of poultry science.

Anderson has been described by his peers as a consummate professional educator who has left an indelible mark on Texas agriculture. An agricultural economics professor and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service specialist emeritus, Anderson served The Texas A&M University System for 36 years — 30 of those as leader of the Extension education effort to help cotton farmers successfully market their crops and manage risk.

Anderson grew up in Taylor during the Great Depression. He earned his bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics in 1958, following service in the Army. He went on to earn his master’s at Louisiana State University in 1960 and his doctorate at Texas A&M in 1969. In the 1970s, as a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, he developed price risk management programs for cattle feedlot owners.

In the 1980s, Anderson and colleagues developed a series of marketing education programs on cotton, grain and livestock pricing and risk management that provided the background for the award-winning Texas Extension Agricultural Economics Master Marketer program. His workshops allowed Extension agents throughout the South to prepare farmers for changes in the U.S. farm bills.

He has advised the Congressional Budget Office staff about cotton issues since 1989 and presented dozens of papers at cotton conferences that influenced the industry as a whole. A prolific writer, Anderson had more than 450 articles published in the popular press and served as editor of the “Agriculture in Texas” section of the Texas Almanac from 1978 to 2010.

At his retirement in 2004, the department of agricultural economics established a graduate assistantship in his name, and in 2008, he was inducted into the Tyrus R. Timm Honor Registry.

McClure has served nationally in legislative affairs, including serving two U.S. presidents, and as managing partner of the Washington, D.C., office of SNR Denton — one of the world’s 25 largest international law firms. In 2012, he returned to College Station as CEO of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation.

A native of San Augustine, McClure was State FFA President and National FFA Secretary — the first African-American student to hold a national FFA office. At Texas A&M,  he received the Brown-Rudder Outstanding Student Award and earned his bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics in 1976. He was Texas A&M’s first African-American Student Body President in 1976. He earned his law degree in 1981 at Baylor University, where he was later named a Herbert H. Reynolds Outstanding Young Alumnus.

After one year as associate deputy U.S. Attorney General, McClure served a year as President Ronald Reagan’s special assistant for legislative affairs. In 1989, he became President George H. W. Bush’s assistant for legislative affairs, until 1992. He was also legislative director to U.S. Sen. John Tower, R-Texas. He is also a board member of the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association, which he chaired from 1998 to 2002.

McClure served a six-year term on the Board of Regents of the A&M System, including two years as vice chairman. He was vice president of the Texas A&M University Association of Former Students and a director of the 12th Man Foundation.

He became the 115th Distinguished Alumnus of Texas A&M in 1991 and a Tyrus R. Timm Honor Registry inductee for the department of agricultural economics in 1987.

Hawley grew up on a cattle operation near Des Moines, N.M. She was involved in livestock judging in high school and competed for Casper Junior College in Wyoming before transferring to Texas A&M. While at Texas A&M, she completed an Agricultural and Natural Resources Policy congressional internship program, which sparked her interest in public policy and agricultural law.

After earning her bachelor’s degree in animal science at Texas A&M in 2002 with a Senior Merit Award and membership on the 2001 All-American Livestock Judging Team, Hawley earned her Juris Doctor from the Yale Law School in 2005. While at Yale, she was a Coker Fellow teaching assistant in constitutional law and was an editor of The Yale Law Journal.

Hawley then worked as a litigation associate with Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Washington, D.C., and completed law clerkships for the Hon. J. Harvie Wilkinson III, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the Hon. Chief Justice John G. Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court.  She worked as a counsel to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey in 2008 and taught at George Mason University School of Law in 2009 and 2010.

She currently is associate professor of agricultural law and constitutional litigation with the University of Missouri School of Law in Columbia, Mo.

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