Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This February 1981 Classic profiles the new president of the Baylor Alumni Association, Austin lawyer William R. Crocker.
It was mid-December and an eerie football silence had settled over Longhorn country. But the new president of the Baylor Alumni Association, an Austin lawyer, was basking in the glory of the Baylor Bears’ Southwest Conference Championship.
In his tenth floor office overlooking the Austin cityscape and the velvet hills beyond, William R. Crocker talked about football and Baylor.
“It’s just been incredible,” he said. “Suddenly you can’t find anybody in Austin who’ll talk about football. It’s basketball season!
“I have had to make one or two comments downtown about, ‘Well, it’s true what you guys were saying, that Baylor did play all the strong teams early in the season before they got their act together’ (referring to Baylor’s late- season win over the University of Texas).
“In all seriousness,” Crocker continued, “living in Austin, we really do appreciate Baylor.”
In his one-year term as president of the Baylor Alumni Association, Crocker sees two major goals before him: overseeing the proper structure and functioning of the alumni association and the creation of a permanent endowment, which, in addition to the life membership endowment, will put the association on a firm financial basis.
Crocker, who represents trade associations in his law practice, drew up the corporate documents for structuring the independent alumni association, a process that began several years ago. He also drew up the directors’ districts and established representation on the board.
“We were strongly encouraged by the Baylor administration to develop a self- sustaining, independent entity, and I think the wisdom of the administration’s suggestion is already manifest. We’ll simply be able to provide a lot more assistance and benefits to the university as an independent entity than we would as just another arm, another voice of the parent entity,” Crocker said.
Assuming the association president’s role is a natural progression in Bill Crocker’s long years of service to Baylor. His first involvement with the association came when he was a senior at Baylor and the student body president. He worked then on the association’s Operation Second Century; several years later he served again on the second version of that project.
In the meantime, his wife Donna, also a Baylor graduate, served on the association’s board of directors and as its first female vice president.
Such involvement with their alma mater is second nature for the association’s board of directors and as its first female vice president. Such involvement with their alma mater is second nature for the Crockers, who consider Baylor home. Bill and Donna met as students. He was born in Waco and finished high school in San Antonio; she was from Shreveport, Louisiana.
Crocker received his B.B.A. in 1958 and went on to Baylor Law School, receiving his law degree in 1960.
“When I finished law school,” he said, “the first thing in the budget was season tickets to the football games, and that was true regardless of where we were, including Amarillo for three years. You gotta be a little crazy to do that!
“It’s just been whatever we could do, whenever we could do it, however we could do it— that’s been a great pleasure for both of us.” Their daughter, Cindy, a junior biology major at Baylor, carries on the Baylor tradition. Their son, Will, is a fifth grader.
After graduation from law school, Crocker spent two years in Eastland, learning that he did not want to be a small-town lawyer. He was subsequently in private practice two years in Tyler and in corporate practice three years in Amarillo.
He has been in private practice in Austin since 1967 except for three years as the first director of the Texas Motor Vehicle Commission, created in 1971. The experience with the commission taught him something about state government and about himself.
“We had a budget that first year of $95,000, but we got everything we needed to do accomplished by spending only $85,000. People thought I was crazy that I didn’t spend the whole budget. I said, ‘No, look, we saved money!’ Then, the next time the appropriations bill came around, they wanted to reduce our budget to $85,000. I said, ‘No, we might have a problem this year!’
“So, I found out in a big hurry two things: why state agencies function as they do, and that I really functioned better with the incentive that, if I make money, I get to keep it.
“I’m not suggesting that I should get to keep anything, working for the state, but it would be very easy for me to fall into the trap of just doing whatever it took to get by, rather than maybe doing something extra.
“I like the profit incentive; I like the idea that you could starve to death if you don’t hustle.”
Back in private practice, Crocker specializes in franchise relationships among automobile, truck and motorcycle manufacturers, distributors, and dealers. He also designs consumer credit forms.
“I particularly enjoy the motor vehicle area,” Crocker said. “When you take on General Motors, you know you’ve met a significant opponent.
“It’s a fascinating world. Nobody else’s franchise relationships have been going fifty years, and nobody else’s franchise relationships involve facilities that cost $1 million to $3 million, that are good for nothing else. As a result, the questions that arise in any franchise relationship become even more significant in the motor vehicle business.
Related to his practice are his occasional contributions to trade association publications. The articles continue a journalistic tradition begun at Baylor when he printed an underground newspaper to refute the Lariat’s stand against initiative and referendum for the student constitution. Crocker and the Lariat editor at the time, Sherry Boyd Castello, now editor of the Baylor Line, still laugh about their opposing publications, but neither is sure of the outcome of their initiative-and- referendum debate.
In spite of his “hustle” philosophy, Crocker finds time to relax. He and his family take skiing vacations to Colorado. And, to really get away from it all, he and Will enjoy bird hunting and shooting sports, including trap shooting and hand reloading of ammunition.
“My son is a budding hunter,” he said. “If he and I can take a .22 rifle and go shoot at cans on a creek, that’s our pleasure. No big game.”
He and Donna are also active in Grace Covenant Church, an independent, nondenominational church they helped establish.
And, of course, they stay busy with Baylor activities. Testimony to Crocker’s love of the school are the Baylor coat of arms on his office wall and two framed citations: a charter life member of the Baylor Law Alumni, in 1970 he was named a counsellor of the Baylor University School of Law; and in 1971 he was named an outstanding alumnus by Phi Alpha Delta law fraternity “for excellent achievements in the legal profession.”
As alumni association president, Crocker has a message for new graduates.
“Their question would probably be, ‘Why should I join the association?’ And, really, there are two basic reasons, in my judgment: (1) to maintain communications with the school, and (2) to have an access, a means by which their feelings can be communicated back to the school.
“We older graduates are measured by the image of the school today rather than by what it was in the Fifties when we were there. Thank goodness for Grant Teaff and Abner McCall, because suddenly, academically and athletically and in every other way, Baylor is really a place of excellence. Not that it wasn’t then, but I’m not sure it had the image then as strongly as it has it now.
“So,” Crocker said, “if the recent graduates want to have an opportunity to put their two bits’ worth in about how that image ought to be maintained or improved, I don’t think there’s a better means than the alumni association. All they need to do is get involved in their local Baylor Clubs and just speak their minds. They’ll find out that they’ll be heard.”
Crocker also has a message for older graduates. He has offered to visit all forty Baylor Clubs in Texas to say thank you. “When you go up there and look at Baylor, if you look at it today versus what it was twenty years ago, it’s not even the same place — in physical facilities and numbers and all that sort of thing! That did not occur without the significant assistance of a lot of Baylor alumni.
“It would tickle me to have an opportunity to go out and say thank you.”
In the meantime Crocker plans to enjoy green and gold supremacy in the land of orange.
