Issue date: 8/1/02 Section: Front Page

With a head full of ideas and itching to take over the reigns of Texas A&M Thursday, President Dr. Robert M. Gates could not help but notice that Monday's road trip from Wichita, Kan. to Texas was familiar.

"My wife and I were joking on the ride down here the other day that the trip was very similar to one we took back in October 1966," Gates said. "At the end of that trip to San Antonio for Air Force officer training, I gave her a ring and asked her to marry me. I don't think she was too excited to accept, but she did."

After meeting on a blind date, Gates took only three months to propose to his wife Becky. Gates and the first lady have two grown children and Gates has tried to model his family after his childhood in Kansas.

"We had a middle-class family," Gates said. "My dad had a small business selling wholesale auto parts, and we went to public schools growing up. We were a very close family and our lives revolved around family, school, church and Boy Scouts."

When Gates debated where to go to college, he decided to look east for an education that would allow him to become a college professor.

He chose William and Mary in Virginia and received his bachelor's degree in 1965.

However, his goal of becoming a teacher never panned out after he transferred to Indiana University to work on his master's and doctorate at the height of the Vietnam War.

"My draft board in Kansas said they only granted deferments through two degrees and I had already gotten my bachelor's and master's degrees," Gates said. "I chose then to join the CIA, but I couldn't get a deferment for that either, so I joined the Air Force and spent some time working intelligence for them."

Gates' career in the CIA continued for 27 years and he became the only person in CIA history to work up from an entry-level job to Director.

He served on the National Security Council under four Presidents and served as the Director of the CIA from 1991-1993. He then began speaking across the nation about his experiences, before receiving an offer to serve as interim Dean at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service.

"I had been speaking a lot around the nation and I got a call from the former President (George Bush)," Gates said. "I've always thought that if you are lucky, there will be two or three people in your life besides family that you would do anything they asked you to do. I did not want to take the job at the Bush School because I lived in the Midwest and was very busy speaking and everything else, but the former President was one of those people for me, and the fact he wanted me to do it led me to accept the job."

Gates served as the interim dean from 1999-2001, which helped his name in the consideration for A&M's new president after Dr. Ray M. Bowen announced he would step down.

"I decided to put it in the hands of the regents," Gates said. "I had been offered jobs to be president of other universities, and wasn't interested at all in doing that. In fact, at first I wasn't interested in being a president here. But as I became more accustomed to the tradition and the culture that A&M has to offer, I began to become more interested in the position. There is a great community here of faculty and students that is unique to A&M and is nothing like any other University in the nation."

Gates is pleased with where Bowen brought the University and is ready to focus on maintaining the quality of education A&M provides. He is also ready to prove A&M can become one of the top 10 schools in the nation while still preserving its traditions and culture.

"There are not many problems left to be solved here at A&M as Ray Bowen is leaving," Gates said. "We want to keep all of that going and keep the University running smoothly on a day-to-day basis.

"The real challenge is to increase the academic progress of A&M with the Vision 2020 plan. We want to preserve that which makes A&M unique, it's culture and tradition, while at the same time improving it's academic standing. I think that can be done."

However, Gates also sees A&M as a place of opportunity and will direct his efforts in reaching the goals of Vision 2020 while still providing citizens of Texas an affordable place to attend.

"One of the things that impresses me the most about A&M is the number of old Aggies that came here with little more than the shirt on their back and became extremely successful in one way or another," Gates said. "I think of this as the University that offers an opportunity for young men and women in Texas that don't have much, but have a great deal of potential. We need to remain accessible to people."

Gates is looking to a man many people on A&M's campus are very familiar with for inspiration as he takes on the challenges of one of the nation's largest universities.

"The person I look to more than anyone in this job as a role model is General Rudder," Gates said. "He was a non-academic who came in and basically revolutionized this University. He made it co-ed, made the Corps no longer mandatory, and did all of this while still keeping all of the traditions in place. He showed it could be done, and the challenge is to see if I can do it. The good news is that I've got a lot of help."

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