Good article and thanks to all the Aggies that were involved. And Brent, you did good.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/college/article/Texas-A-M-with-stadium-made-safer-has-unsung-17393462.php
COLLEGE STATION Dime Box High School participated in a track and field meet at Texas A&M's Kyle Field in 1951, and I know this because my father, Bill Zwerneman, competed in the meet more than 70 years ago. He'd proudly remind his family as much each time we drove by towering Kyle when I was a kid.
After high school in the early 1950s, he entered the Air Force and put the region in his rearview for a few years, never roaming back inside Kyle Field. In the late 1990s, I was covering the Aggies and invited my dad, a Houston-area homebuilder with a sharp mind for structural integrity, to attend an A&M football game with my mother and family friends.
I figured it would bring back good memories of that track meet as well. Afterward, he said while he appreciated the invite, it would also be his last game at Kyle. The concrete stands moved way too much for his liking during the "Aggie War Hymn," when fans would link arms and sway.
He explained that in the military, when marching soldiers crossed a bridge, they would fall out of step so as not to pound the structure in unison a common-sense approach to not creating a collapse. And while the hundreds of rows of A&M fans didn't all move in the same direction during the war hymn, it still caused the massive three-deck concrete structure on all four sides (that were not tied together) to shift incredibly uncomfortably.
To the point A&M warned unsuspecting visitors to the press box, via a printout, not be alarmed by the structure moving during the war hymn. A reporter from the Killeen Daily Herald in 2011 described the press box's creaking and moving nine stories in the sky as "one of the most unnerving things I've experienced on the job."
Richard Box noticed the hushed unease of it all, too, and unlike my disturbed dad and any unnerved reporters, Box was in a solid position to do something about it as then-A&M regents chairman. He did, and the Distinguished Alumnus from the Class of 1961 is worthy of a campus statue because of his unrelenting concern for the safety of A&M students and fans.
"Every time the Aggies sang the war hymn, that thing would sway uncomfortably," Box recalled of the old, mostly freestanding Kyle Field structure through 2014. "I got really concerned, because we'd had such a bad experience with the bonfire collapse (in 1999) that killed 12 students. I just said, 'We cannot have the possibility of this stadium falling down and hurting or killing anybody.' "
Box, a retired dentist in Austin, a Vietnam veteran and a retired general in the Texas State Guard, was named an A&M regent in 2008 and was appointed chairman of the university's building and physical plant. He said prior correspondence from the state fire marshal's office about Kyle Field immediately caught his eye when he was handed a portfolio linked to his new duties.
"There was a 1,000-gallon fuel tank under the east side where the students sat and a building close by the (tank)," Box said. "And a chain-link fence between (old) G. Rollie White Coliseum and the stadium had a seven-foot choke point for about 30,000 students to try and get out of the stadium and out of harm's way if something happened. Those were just a few of the things."
Most startling, Box added, was the way the old massive concrete structure swayed during the war hymn. A&M through the decades had added mostly freestanding decks one above the another, and the four sides were not tied together to stem the swaying. Box and then-fellow regent Jim Schwertner about 12 years ago began pushing for a renovation before a potential tragedy took place, calling first for an updated structural engineering report.
"The report came back, and I didn't feel comfortable with it," Box said. "We had some large discrepancies, fractures (in the structure), and large chunks of concrete that had fallen out on both sides of the stadium. That formulated my early impression that we needed to have a new stadium."
Around that same time, A&M mulled a move from the Big 12 to the more lucrative and powerful Southeastern Conference. The bright lights and remarkable road trips and increased competition of the SEC grabbed the headlines then and now but Box also had another reason for pushing for the SEC.
"It made sense financially to go the SEC because that would increase our ability to be able to accomplish the goal of a new stadium," Box said. "That played heavily on my mind when I became chairman of the board in 2011."
Schwertner said of Box: "The right chairman at the right time."
Schwertner, an A&M regent from 2009-2015, said when he sat by his daughter, an A&M student in the mid-2000s, on Kyle's east side, "Every time we sang the war hymn, the stands swayed, and that bugged the hell out of me.
"And then when I became a regent and would be up in the press box area on the west side and the same thing was happening, I'd tell Richard Box, 'There's something wrong with this place,' " Schwertner remembered. "I didn't like it, and I thought, man, bonfire was bad, and this is really going to be bad if something happened. … It was scary."
The timing worked out big-time on an aging Kyle Field. The Aggies moved to the SEC 10 years ago this summer and enjoyed immediate success behind 2012 Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel, prompting an influx of funds from donors for the Kyle rebuild.
Under chancellor John Sharp's direction, A&M renovated the east side prior to the 2014 season and imploded the west side after the season, then rebuilt the iconic structure symmetrically with all four sides tied together in time for the 2015 season a much safer and sounder presentation moving forward for still-swaying fans.
"I don't think people realize that was a prime ingredient on my mind in making that move to the SEC," said Box, A&M regent chairman from 2011-13, of more funds being made available for a Kyle Field rebuild via the new league. "Those stands had (previously) just been stacked one layer on top of another like a wedding cake. I'm so thankful nothing bad happened."
The Aggies open their season Sept. 3 against Sam Houston in one of the largest, soundest stadiums in the nation. A pleased Schwertner, a prominent cattleman and banker north of Austin, added of the largely unknown story involving another key element to the Aggies' seismic move to the SEC: "We tried to figure out a way to add some revenue, and we had talked about redoing Kyle Field. Everything just worked out perfect."
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/college/article/Texas-A-M-with-stadium-made-safer-has-unsung-17393462.php
COLLEGE STATION Dime Box High School participated in a track and field meet at Texas A&M's Kyle Field in 1951, and I know this because my father, Bill Zwerneman, competed in the meet more than 70 years ago. He'd proudly remind his family as much each time we drove by towering Kyle when I was a kid.
After high school in the early 1950s, he entered the Air Force and put the region in his rearview for a few years, never roaming back inside Kyle Field. In the late 1990s, I was covering the Aggies and invited my dad, a Houston-area homebuilder with a sharp mind for structural integrity, to attend an A&M football game with my mother and family friends.
I figured it would bring back good memories of that track meet as well. Afterward, he said while he appreciated the invite, it would also be his last game at Kyle. The concrete stands moved way too much for his liking during the "Aggie War Hymn," when fans would link arms and sway.
He explained that in the military, when marching soldiers crossed a bridge, they would fall out of step so as not to pound the structure in unison a common-sense approach to not creating a collapse. And while the hundreds of rows of A&M fans didn't all move in the same direction during the war hymn, it still caused the massive three-deck concrete structure on all four sides (that were not tied together) to shift incredibly uncomfortably.
To the point A&M warned unsuspecting visitors to the press box, via a printout, not be alarmed by the structure moving during the war hymn. A reporter from the Killeen Daily Herald in 2011 described the press box's creaking and moving nine stories in the sky as "one of the most unnerving things I've experienced on the job."
Richard Box noticed the hushed unease of it all, too, and unlike my disturbed dad and any unnerved reporters, Box was in a solid position to do something about it as then-A&M regents chairman. He did, and the Distinguished Alumnus from the Class of 1961 is worthy of a campus statue because of his unrelenting concern for the safety of A&M students and fans.
"Every time the Aggies sang the war hymn, that thing would sway uncomfortably," Box recalled of the old, mostly freestanding Kyle Field structure through 2014. "I got really concerned, because we'd had such a bad experience with the bonfire collapse (in 1999) that killed 12 students. I just said, 'We cannot have the possibility of this stadium falling down and hurting or killing anybody.' "
Box, a retired dentist in Austin, a Vietnam veteran and a retired general in the Texas State Guard, was named an A&M regent in 2008 and was appointed chairman of the university's building and physical plant. He said prior correspondence from the state fire marshal's office about Kyle Field immediately caught his eye when he was handed a portfolio linked to his new duties.
"There was a 1,000-gallon fuel tank under the east side where the students sat and a building close by the (tank)," Box said. "And a chain-link fence between (old) G. Rollie White Coliseum and the stadium had a seven-foot choke point for about 30,000 students to try and get out of the stadium and out of harm's way if something happened. Those were just a few of the things."
Most startling, Box added, was the way the old massive concrete structure swayed during the war hymn. A&M through the decades had added mostly freestanding decks one above the another, and the four sides were not tied together to stem the swaying. Box and then-fellow regent Jim Schwertner about 12 years ago began pushing for a renovation before a potential tragedy took place, calling first for an updated structural engineering report.
"The report came back, and I didn't feel comfortable with it," Box said. "We had some large discrepancies, fractures (in the structure), and large chunks of concrete that had fallen out on both sides of the stadium. That formulated my early impression that we needed to have a new stadium."
Around that same time, A&M mulled a move from the Big 12 to the more lucrative and powerful Southeastern Conference. The bright lights and remarkable road trips and increased competition of the SEC grabbed the headlines then and now but Box also had another reason for pushing for the SEC.
"It made sense financially to go the SEC because that would increase our ability to be able to accomplish the goal of a new stadium," Box said. "That played heavily on my mind when I became chairman of the board in 2011."
Schwertner said of Box: "The right chairman at the right time."
Schwertner, an A&M regent from 2009-2015, said when he sat by his daughter, an A&M student in the mid-2000s, on Kyle's east side, "Every time we sang the war hymn, the stands swayed, and that bugged the hell out of me.
"And then when I became a regent and would be up in the press box area on the west side and the same thing was happening, I'd tell Richard Box, 'There's something wrong with this place,' " Schwertner remembered. "I didn't like it, and I thought, man, bonfire was bad, and this is really going to be bad if something happened. … It was scary."
The timing worked out big-time on an aging Kyle Field. The Aggies moved to the SEC 10 years ago this summer and enjoyed immediate success behind 2012 Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel, prompting an influx of funds from donors for the Kyle rebuild.
Under chancellor John Sharp's direction, A&M renovated the east side prior to the 2014 season and imploded the west side after the season, then rebuilt the iconic structure symmetrically with all four sides tied together in time for the 2015 season a much safer and sounder presentation moving forward for still-swaying fans.
"I don't think people realize that was a prime ingredient on my mind in making that move to the SEC," said Box, A&M regent chairman from 2011-13, of more funds being made available for a Kyle Field rebuild via the new league. "Those stands had (previously) just been stacked one layer on top of another like a wedding cake. I'm so thankful nothing bad happened."
The Aggies open their season Sept. 3 against Sam Houston in one of the largest, soundest stadiums in the nation. A pleased Schwertner, a prominent cattleman and banker north of Austin, added of the largely unknown story involving another key element to the Aggies' seismic move to the SEC: "We tried to figure out a way to add some revenue, and we had talked about redoing Kyle Field. Everything just worked out perfect."
