First TAMIU History Professor Retires

Dr. Stanley C. Green has been a history professor at Texas A&M International University since 1970. In fact, the university was not even called TAMIU at the time he began teaching in Laredo. The name of the school was Laredo State University, which began as an extension of Texas A&M in Kingsville (TAMUK). Green was one of the 14 original professors to work at the university. This past December, after almost 43 years of service, Dr. Stanley C. Green has retired from TAMIU.
Green's passion for history began at a young age. "I used to hear stories from particularly this one uncle," he recalled. Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, Green grew up listening to stories of the past. Typically, the stories took place on the border between Texas and Mexico and included Pancho Villa as one of the characters. "I just had a natural bent towards [history]," he stated.
As a college student, Green was still unsure of what career path he wanted to follow. "I kind of just drifted into history. I took history courses just to fill out my semesters," he said. By the time he was a senior at the University of Texas at Austin, he had taken enough history courses to graduate as a history major. After obtaining his Bachelor's degree, Green got a job at Appalachian State University in 1966, where he taught U.S. history and Latin history for two years. He later received both his Masters and Doctoral Degree in history at Texas Christian University. During the time he was working on his Doctorate, Green conducted research for his dissertation in Mexico City as part of the Juarez-Lincoln Fellow Scholarship that he received.
In December 1969, Green attended the American Historical Association meeting in Washington, where they were conducting interviews for jobs. A man by the name of Billy Chandler, who was a history professor at TAMUK, was doing the interviews for TAMIU (which was called Laredo State University at the time). "I had met him some time before and we had hit it off," Green recalled. Out of 36 candidates, Green got the job as a history professor in Laredo, Texas, where he became one of the founding professors. "In those days, you had 14 professors for everything, so you taught everything," Green stated. As the only history professor at the time, he taught all of the history courses offered at the college. In total, he has taught about 50 different courses throughout his career.
Over the years, Green has dedicated countless hours to history. "That's the story around here...living and teaching here is a consuming profession. It's a race to try to keep up with your work," he stated. He has done numerous publications and research on Mexico and the border of Texas and Mexico such as The Republic of Mexico: The First Decade, History of the Washington Birthday Celebration, and much more.
There are several reasons why Green decided to retire, but one of the main reasons he did so is because he wanted to focus his attention on a book that he is currently writing. "I've been working on this book for probably about 15 years," he remarked. The book, which he is considering naming The Villas Del Norte: History to 1830, is about how the Spaniards settled northeastern Mexico along the U.S. border. "I would go around to these little small towns in northeastern Mexico and amazingly they would still have these archives from the 1700s," Green stated. Although not entirely sure, he proposes that the book will be ready for publication by the end of the year.
Even though Green misses teaching, he has been so focused on his research that he feels "the full effect [of retirement] has not fallen." After writing his book, he plans to stay busy and hopefully write another one. Looking back at his years at TAMIU, Green feels that one of his greatest successes was being able to adapt to the changing identity of the university throughout the years. However, he hopes that he "has given [his students] some sense of the larger world," he stated, "You always hope that you have an impact on students lives."
(Celia Villarreal may be reached at celvreal@gmail.com)