Editor’s Note: As we gear up to celebrate 60 years of this tradition with you, let’s take a moment to remember some of the best of our previous alumni award winners with Hall of Fame: Rewind. We hope you’ll enjoy reading about our outstanding alumni honorees from the past who shape the ranks of honorees of the future. This Summer 1998 issue highlights three outstanding Bears who made a difference in Houston: Eleanor Tinsley, 1991 Distinguished Alumna; John Meredith, 2002 Outstanding Young Alumnus; and Steve Fairfield, 1999 Outstanding Young Alumnus. Click here to watch interviews and speeches from previous Hall of Fame events, or click here to learn more about his year’s event and honorees.
Originally published in The Baylor Line’s Summer 1998 issue. Part of the 2025 Hall of Fame: Rewind series.
Some things about Baylor never change. Since the days of the university’s founding in 1945, every generation of the student body has been encouraged to make service in local communities and churches a central part of their lives. Whether the words of challenge were spoken by presidents Brooks, Neff, White, McCall, Reynolds, or Sloan, Baylor alumni have left campus knowing through word and deed the importance of civic service grounded in a life of Christian faith.
Taking these words with them, Baylor graduates have left their marks of service around the world, but the steamy, inland seaport of Houston, Texas, has received a remarkable abundance of Baylor graduates’ philanthropy. Dozens of lawyers, hundreds of school teachers, church leaders by the flock–countless alumni have done their part to make Houston a better place for everyone.
The civic contributions of three particular alumni, brought to our attention by the readers of the Baylor Line, are notable examples of Baylor graduates’ service in the Space City. One has given thirty years of public service, while the other two, young men in their mid-thirties, are just beginning to see the results of their work. Like the architects and engineers who built the skyscrapers of Houston’s distinctive skyline, these three service-oriented persons have changed the face of Houston, providing key leadership to improve the quality of life and to build a better future for their hometown and their fellow residents.
Eleanor Whilden Tinsley ’46, decided to run for a trustee position on the Houston School Board after receiving encouragement from a woman in the adult Sunday school class she was teaching.
“How could you live with yourself if you thought you could do some good and didn’t do it?” the woman asked.
“I think that has been the basis of my philosophy since then,” Tinsley says.
During her years in elected office Tinsley helped engineer many changes that have altered life in Houston. When she was first elected to the Houston City Council in 1979, no woman had previously served on that governing body. Another woman won office in the same election, but Tinsley swears the woman had “councilman” on her business card for her entire first term–while Tinsley was firmly insisting that all of the representatives be called “council members.”
In 1983 and 1989 Council Member Tinsley received the largest number of votes ever cast for a candidate for Houston city office. The 208,803 votes she received in 1989 remains the record in a contested race.
After serving eight terms as an at-large member of the council, she retired in January 1996. Her husband Dr. James Tinsley (BA ’47), a history professor at the University of Houston, retired at the same time.
Her legislative accomplishments during the sixteen years she served on the council were legion, but she finds it easy to cite those which she thinks were most important–
- Getting fluoride added to the city water supply to reduce tooth decay in children. In 1980, when Tinsley led the legislative battle, the encouragement coming from the dental profession was being countered by “kooks who labeled me and others supporting fluoride as Communists.”
“No one else [on the council] would take the heat. Someone has to take the leadership role to get legislation passed, and most people don’t like to do that in controversial matters,” Tinsley observes. - Getting 9-1-1 service established not only in Houston, but throughout all of Harris County.
- Developing the SPARK program, an innovative plan begun in 1983 that has forged cooperation between the city, schools, the county, and the federal government to create 119 neighborhood parks on school grounds to be used afternoons and on weekends by community residents. (The name stands for School Park.)
At the time she introduced the idea, Houston had just been rated 148th in the nation in the provision of parks for its citizens. “SPARK has enriched the city tremendously, especially in low-income areas. It’s just such common sense to do it this way; you don’t have to buy land in order to have the parks,” said Tinsley, who now serves as president of the nonprofit organization. - Winning approval for a bicycle helmet ordinance requiring helmets be worn by riders under age eighteen. “People don’t want to be told what to do, and sometimes the only way to accomplish something is to pass a law. Now all a parent has to say is, ‘The law says you must wear a helmet.’ The bicycle clubs of Houston were a big support on this one,” she said.
- Sponsoring nine different smoking ordinances. Beginning in 1986, Tinsley introduced and lobbied through at least one ordinance a year. “The president of M. D. Anderson [cancer center], Dr. Charles Le Maistre, gave me information from the first study about the dangers of second-hand smoke. He came three times to speak to the council.
“This was really a tough battle. The smokers and tobacco companies get mad and hate you; it’s not a pleasant thing to be out in front. The last year I was on the council we even got smoking banned from malls,” she said. - Initiating legislation in 1991 to ban all billboards by phasing them out over the next twenty-one years. “Houston is not a zoned city–we had around 11,000 billboards when we began to pass ordinances controlling them. There were around 6,000 when I got off the council. For perspective, there are at least four states in the northeast that forbid all billboards.
- Establishing Houston International Initiatives to promote trade between Houston businesses and Mexico, Central and South America. “This really helped our business sector during Houston’s depression from 1982 to 1987,” Tinsley said.
Tinsley’s worst “war stories” come not from her city council days but from her term as a school board president in 1972.
She battled to integrate the school system during the turbulent period when the district was under court order, and she says she was defeated in the 1973 election over the integration issue. “This was the roughest time, a lot rougher than anything I did on the city council. There was a real danger because many people were full of hate and violence.”
During this difficult time Tinsley helped develop a model magnet school program which created the High School for Performing and Visual Arts and the High School for Health Professions. She also chaired a campaign to create the Houston Community College System, which now has 60,000 students enrolled.
In contrast, coming to Baylor at age sixteen was an easy choice for the great-granddaughter of the university’s early president, Rufus C. Burleson (his statue stands near Fifth Street on the Burleson Quadrangle). She had grown up in Dallas but visited Waco and her grandparents there frequently as a child.
She also got an early start in music, beginning piano lessons at five. “I went to Baylor to major in music, but after the first year I switched to English and graduated in three years.
“Those were the World War II years. I went with some friends from Baylor to attend The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg the summer after my freshman year, then alone the next summer. I was fortunate to have a cousin who was a prominent dress designer living in New York City. When I went to visit her and her husband, they would map out places for me to visit. I went all over the city alone, seeing the sights. It was a great confidence builder.
“When I’m asked how I got things done on the Houston City Council, I say I think it is because I learned to believe in myself, to believe that I can do things even when others don’t think they can be done. When I feel strongly about what needs to be done, I go on. The press has often use the term tenacious about me,” she said.
Tinsley has a word for aspiring public servants. “There are two important principles in which I believe deeply. First, one must get along with one’s colleagues in order to get legislation accomplished; and that means you have to forgive and get beyond disagreements. Secondly, a person’s word must be binding; it’s essential that your friends and colleagues be able to count on what you say.”
She says she is being “pretty particular” about what she undertakes now, but that currently includes positions on ten boards, including the Holocaust Museum of Houston, the Houston Parks Board, Planned Parenthood, and Scenic Houston, as well as being president of SPARK.
Hundreds of awards and recognitions have come her way. She picks up and shows visible appreciation for one given to her in April by the American Institute of Architects in Houston. It’s their Thomas Jefferson Award, and it reads, “In commemoration of the inventive spirit of Eleanor Tinsley.” All of Houston has benefited from that spirit.
John Meredith’s response to the needs of at-risk middle school students in Houston has been radically life-changing—both for himself and for the young people he serves.
In 1992, while an attorney working in the litigation section of a Houston law firm, he accepted the challenge of beginning Aspiring Youth, an afterschool youth program to be sponsored by the Houston Young Lawyers Association (HYLA).
His interest and commitment grew until in 1996 he resigned his full-time job at the law firm, he and his wife Shirley rented out their home, and, with their infant son Ben, they drove to Boston so he could spend the year at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. (They now have a second son, Mason.)
He graduated in June 1997 with a Master in Public Administration degree, receiving the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Public Service. He then became the president and general counsel for the new Aspiring Youth Foundation so that he could work professionally with children and youth issues.
The foundation’s mission is to create opportunities for at-risk youth “to aspire to and achieve success.” Success they define as “being the best you can be in a way that makes the world a better place.”
Meredith’s life-changing association with the program began in 1992, when a juvenile court judge, Eric Andell, meeting with the president of the city’s Young Lawyers Association, envisioned–on the back of a napkin at a banquet–an after-school program for middle school youth during the “latchkey” hours. They agreed to ask Meredith to organize an HYLA committee to turn their vision into a workable program.
So successful has the Aspiring Youth Program been that it has become a nationwide project of the American Bar Association with more than thirty programs in nine states and more than 500 volunteers. More than 5,000 students have participated in the program during its first six years.
A spin-off program called TASTE, for Take A Student To Your Employment Program, reaches out to students who may not be involved in the established Bring Your Child to Work Day. TASTE programs have brought more than 2,000 students to law offices, businesses, and courthouses in more than twenty cities since its inception in August 1997.
In January Meredith was one of ten people from across the United States honored in a New York City ceremony for his work championing children’s causes. He received the Lewis Hine Award from the National Child Labor Committee for his work with the Aspiring Youth program.
Judge Andell himself is impressed. “It is rare to see someone change his whole life to pursue this kind of thing,” said Andell, who is now an appeals court justice and chairman of the Aspiring Youth Foundation advisory council. “John Meredith was the one who said, ‘This is my life.'”
As he now begins his new professional career with Aspiring Youth, Meredith maintains ties with the legal profession and the court system by accepting court ad litem appointments which ensure that children’s interests are represented properly in suits involving children and their parents. In April hew as named Outstanding Young Lawyer of Houston, and in June he received recognition as the Outstanding Young Lawyer of Texas.
The foundation now has an office in space donated by a law firm, space Meredith shares with an assistant, an accounting intern, and a grant writer. “The first eight months I worked out of my study at home so that more of the money could go to the youth programs,” he says.
His dedication is a natural outgrowth, he says, of “having grown up in a really good family where we learned public service.” one of his two sisters has just returned from a two-year mission teaching post in Kenya; the other is serving in Russia.
“My father is active with environmental issues, having worked for the federal government and the state of Georgia. My mother stayed home with us and was an example of Christian love. We lived in Atlanta in a middle-class neighborhood in a ranch-style home.
“I chose Baylor law school because of its excellent reputation in training trial lawyers. A notable example to me was Leon Jaworski. My sister [Ann Meredith Frey ’87] had gone to Baylor for her undergraduate study as a music major. And my mother’s family was from Texas, so I was returning to my roots.”
Meredith received a BBA from North Georgia College and State University and a Master of Science in Management from Georgia Tech–starting the master’s program at age twenty. He graduated from Baylor Law School in 1988.
He is quick to tell an interviewer that the Aspiring Youth Program is “not a one-person show. People who are fantastic role models are willing to volunteer time with our kids. I get a lot of energy and excitement just seeing them work.”
He is also inspired by witnessing the hope that arises in the middle school youth who take part in the afternoon programs that combine academics, sports, and–of course–a healthy snack.
A good example is a young man, now a junior in high school, who was a student in one of the earliest Aspiring Youth programs in B.C. Elmore Middle School in 1993. “He had transferred to the school through the juvenile court system, but the principal encouraged him to attend our after-school program. He ended up liking the program and doing well. Last year he came back and served as a mentor to some sixth graders for us. He plans to attend college and has twelve colleges interested in offering him a football scholarship.”
Steve Fairfield ’83 has been training for his current job since he was ten years old. He just didn’t know it.
As the director for the last eight years of Houston’s Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation (CRC) in a poverty-ridden inner-city district, he’s been drawing upon skills his father, a builder and real estate developer, began teaching him years ago.
Last fall, the Houston Chronicle called the CRC “a model among Houston nonprofit community developers” in a five-page feature in its Sunday magazine Texas. To date the CRC has built ninety-two homes, a finance center, a clinic, and a police storefront station in the Fifth Ward. Other development has followed, with businesses beginning to reenter an area that was once the hub of African-American life in the city before deteriorating when more prosperous residents began heading for the suburbs around 1970.
The CRC acts as its own contractor, training and hiring minority subcontractors from the community. Home prices are reduced by about $15,000 through grants and “soft second mortgages” designed to provide an incentive for the owner to stay for a minimum of five years.
Fairfield grew up on the other side of town, in the Memorial Villages, an exclusive area of west Houston. Then he attended high school in Wichita Falls, where his mother moved after his parents divorced.
He continued to spend summers with his dad. “From the time I was ten or eleven, he had me doing different jobs around construction sites. One summer I was a carpenter’s helper; the next, an electrician’s helper. In high school I actually supervised one home job, then spent a summer working with sales and another with developing loan packages.”
Fairfield moved into Penland Hall as a Baylor freshman in 1979, but the next year he talked the owner of a rent house into allowing him to fix the place up in return for a year’s rent. He continued to live there the next two years, graduating with a major in history in 1983. As a senior he was a grader for Dr. James Vardaman, who, he says, was “a big inspiration to me.”
Fairfield then went to work with his father but grew restless, concerned with trying to discern the Lord’s call for his life. “At work I began to question what I was doing. It seemed that if we didn’t put in a shopping center on a certain corner, someone else would come along to do it. Now that I am working here in the Fifth Ward, I know that if we weren’t providing affordable housing, no one else would be doing it because this is the lowest-income neighborhood in the city.”
He got his first glimpse of another way to do real estate when a pastor friend from Colorado sent him a copy of Love Between the Mortar Joints, written by Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity, an ecumenical Christian organization that constructs and secures affordable housing for the poor.
“Until I read that book, the only way I thought I could make a contribution was by making a lot of money and giving it to the church. The book opened my mind to other possibilities,” Fairfield said.
“Then in 1987 I read a note in the Houston Chronicle about an organizational meeting for Habitat in Houston, and I made a point of dropping in. I was the only real-estate person there,” he recalls.
“Someone had donated a piece of land in the Fifth Ward. I divided the land into lots for them, but a newly constructed boulevard fronting the property made it necessary to construct a street and bring in utilities in the back. That was an awful lot for Habitat to tackle, so we asked the city to help, and they agreed. The city official we worked with then offered me a job, and I was a community development manager for a couple of years. It was a valuable time of learning how the public sector works.
“By 1990 Habitat had completed its projects in the Fifth Ward, and the residents–excited over the first new wood in the neighborhood in fifty years–dialogued with the Habitat director and the Rev. Harvey Clemons Jr., pastor of Fifth Ward’s historic Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, about finding a way to continue building homes and to work with issues of job development, public safety, and beautification as well.”
Eventually, after a series of meetings in the neighborhood, they forged the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation with a fifteen-member board of neighborhood residents. CRC immediately offered the director’s post to Fairfield. “I’d love to do something like this, but am I really the right one for the job?” he asked, thinking the position should go to a minority individual. The CRC persisted and hired him in 1990.
The Chronicle article quoted many neighborhood residents who praise not only what Fairfield has accomplished in the last eight years, but who he is.
“He’s been such an addition to the community,” said one. “He didn’t come in here and try and tell us what to do. He came in and tried to get a feel for wha the people needed. He didn’t go to City Hall and say one thing and then come back to the community and say another. Whatever he said, you could depend on it.”
“We have continued to work with Habitat, too,” Fairfield said. In June, headlined by the leadership of former president Jimmy Carter, Habitat built one hundred new houses in Houston in one week, sixty of them in the Fifth Ward.
Fairfield says his “guiding light” has been John Perkins, founder of the Christian Community Development Movement. “He teaches the three Rs: Reconciliation–the love and forgiveness of the Gospel reconciling us to God and to each other across all racial, cultural, and economic barriers; Relocation–moving into a needy community so that its needs become our own; and Redistribution–not just sharing our own goods, but also our skills, technology, and educational resources in a way that empowers people to break out of the cycle of poverty.
“I got married a year and a half ago. Alison had been a missionary in Ireland and Northern Ireland for seven years. We’re building a house in the Fifth Ward, and we’ll be moving in by the end of the summer. I designed our house from a postcard she sent me of a house in Charleston, South Carolina, that she really liked. The plans were my wedding gift to her,” Fairfield said.
Not only is Fairfield building a home in the Fifth Ward but he has also been attending and teaching at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church there.
He says that in the more affluent church he previously attended “we would hear sermons about the need for dependence upon God, but we also way knew that payday was next Friday. There wasn’t the immediacy of requirement to truly throw yourself on the mercy of God.
“Worshipping at Pleasant Hill, I have learned greatly from individuals who have to experience that mercy regularly. They cling steadfastly to Jesus. That preaches to me.”
At age thirty-seven Fairfield is already planning his own “retirement” as director of CRC. Similarly to the way he learned the construction business, he has been working to pass along all that he knows about every aspect of his job–from building, bookkeeping, and real estate to city hall contracts–to his assistant Kathy, a Fifth-Ward native whom he hopes to have replace him by 2003.
“At that time I want to step out of the way and let her carry on the work. We might continue to live here and I would work for Kathy, or I could begin similar efforts in other neighborhoods. It’s far more important to build the skills within the neighborhood that it is just to do the job. We are not just building homes but creating hope for individuals and families. As we pass along what we know, the skills can become resident in the community again.”
