oncampus
Volunteer Spotlight
Growing up on Campus By LOuISe KOhL Leahy
Cathy Carden Henry has ties to Schreiner that go back nearly to her birth. Adopted by Robert and
Mary Carden, she moved into Hoon Hall when she was 14 days old, the building where she is now a volunteer for Schreiner’s Office of Advancement & Public Affairs. “My parents came to Schreiner in 1940 sight unseen,” Henry said. “All the job correspondence was done by mail. At that time, Kerrville had a reputation for being a good place for people with lung problems—which my dad had.” The Lone Star State was a considerable shock for the couple, as they hailed from Kentucky. “It must have been a dry year,” Henry said. “My mother told me that during the trip she kept asking my dad, ‘How can people make a living in this place?’ and crying. When she saw her first rattlesnake, she was ready to head right back to Kentucky.” However, they stayed on, to Schreiner’s great benefit. Robert Carden, taught zoology and biology here for 32 years, known to students in the early days as “Bicycle Bob.” That was in the war years, when people needed to conserve gasoline. His daughter has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Schreiner history during that time. Henry said that her parents were in their late 30s when they started the adoption process, at a time when 40 was the cutoff age for adopting parents. “My mother told me that Mrs. Scott Schreiner wrote the adoption agency a letter that said, ‘Give this couple a child.’ She always said that without Mrs. Schreiner, they would never have
been able to adopt me.” The boys in Hoon chipped in and bought a $25 U.S. Savings Bond for the infant Carden. “I cashed it in when I bought my first car,” she said. “I thought the boys would approve of that.” Growing up on campus, Henry remembers faculty, staff and students as just neighbors. “Living here was a lot like living on a military base,” she said. “We’d wake up and go to bed to bugles blowing. Sunday afternoons in the spring, we all came out for the parades on the parade grounds. It’s so strange. Now I walk around campus and the buildings are named after our old neighbors.” As a teenager, she was an object of envy to her classmates at Tivy High School. Apparently, there was an unwritten law at that time that the young ladies could date either Tivy boys or Schreiner boys. Henry was an exception since she lived at Schreiner and attended Tivy. “My town friends were jealous that I had 300 boys for neighbors,” she said, laughing. Henry went on to marry a Schreiner boy, Roy Henry ’64. Her first classroom experience at Schreiner was a typing class she took when she was in the 7th grade. She eventually went on to do her freshman year of college and a summer session here—more than 30 college hours altogether. Although she also attended The University of Texas and Texas Tech, “my loyalties are really to Schreiner,” she said. She graduated from Texas Tech with a B.A. in history and government. Henry spent most of her career working for King Ranch, starting as the personal secretary of John
Armstrong, a King Ranch family member and company executive—and the nephew of Mrs. Scott Schreiner. During the 31 years she worked there, she worked in the records department and was in charge of the visitor management department. The visitor wrangling job came, she said, because “I was familiar with the whole kit and caboodle; I knew a little about everything on the ranch.” After retiring, it was barely a month before she returned to Kerrville. Her daughter and her family were here and she had kept up with friends in the area. “A few months later I made my way to Schreiner, stuck my nose into what used to be the president’s house, which is called Alumni House now,” Henry said. “It had a sign on the door that said ‘In Process of Moving.’ So I waited and checked out the Advancement folks in Hoon and decided I would like to work for them.” One visible and welcome result of her volunteer work was the idea for a reception during Recall for people who had grown up on the campus— the children of former Schreiner faculty and staff. That event is two years old now, and draws a large and lively crowd. She also searches records for former students and updates the department’s database. “I feel like I owe Schreiner so much,” Henry said. “My dad was so happy here and my mother could spot a homesick student just like that and ask them in where they could use our phone to call home in privacy. So many of us who grew up on campus say it was an idyllic experience. It was safe, the faculty and families were friends—it was like a 1950s sitcom.”
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