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The Eunice and James L. West Library is named to honor the late Eunice and James L. West of Fort Worth. It is only the second building constructed by Texas Wesleyan specifically for library services.
On October 29, 1980, Mr. and Mrs.West gave away $15.4 million in Tandy Corporation stock to eleven schools and organizations, $12 million of which went to Texas Wesleyan College to construct a new library. This was the largest single gift ever donated to Texas Wesleyan.
James L. West was an executive with the Tandy Corporation. He started working for Hinckley-Tandy Leather Corporation (a forerunner of Tandy Corporation) in 1930. He continued to rise through the organization's ranks, eventually being chosen as president of Tandy Corporation in 1964 and then vice chairman of the Board of Directors in 1974. Mr. West served on the Board of Trustees of Texas Wesleyan College from 1975 until his death on November 11, 1983.
Mr. West met the former Eunice East in St. Louis, Missouri. They had been married for 46 years at the time of his death. Mr. and Mrs. West shared a heartfelt belief in the value of education and an interest in young people.
Mr. & Mrs. Charles N. Prothro had a son, Mark Prothro, who attended Texas Wesleyan College. He graduated in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts in History. He later served on the Board of Trustees, starting circa 1979 and continuing for quite a few years afterward.
When Mr. and Mrs. Prothro sent Mark to college, they had reservations about his potential success. However, the faculty here at Texas Wesleyan really challenged and inspired him. The Prothros were so grateful to the college and what they did for their son, and chose to express their appreciation by giving the library a book fund.
In addition to Mark, the Prothros had another son, Joe N. Prothro, who served on Texas Wesleyan’s Board of Trustees from 1972-1976.
Carol Corley served as the Periodicals Librarian at Texas Wesleyan from 1970 until her retirement in 1989. Mrs. Corley graduated from Texas Wesleyan College in 1963 with a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education. She then went on to earn her MLS at Texas Woman’s University in 1970. Mrs. Corley was an old-school librarian. She loved working with students and was always open to helping them find the information and resources they needed. She did some of the bibliographic instruction sessions, teaching library skills to freshmen.
J. Robert Corley donated the Carol W. Corley Endowed Library Employees Fund in memory of his wife, Carol Corley, and to support the library's place in the educational experience at Texas Wesleyan. This fund is used to further the professional development of library staff to further their career in library service.
Dr. H. Howard Hughes, Professor of English, 1935-1968, set the Guinness record for "The Most Ardent Theatergoer" by attending 6,136 shows from 1957 to 1987. His collection, the H. Howard Hughes Performing Arts Collection was donated upon his death.
The collection includes programs, brochures, newspaper clippings, fliers, and other promotional materials for theater productions and other artistic performances between 1925 and 1989. Most of the material relates to Dallas-Fort Worth and the surrounding area, but there is also material from Canadian, European, and Broadway productions.
Dr. Hughes also provided an endowment to aid in maintaining and continuing his collection.
Sidney L. Samuels was a prominent Fort Worth attorney and orator who was "considered one of the great legal minds" of the first half of the twentieth century. Samuels attended Fort Worth University and then attended the University of Texas law school. He served as Fort Worth City Attorney from 1907 to 1909. He specialized in libel law and counted the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and numerous national magazines among his clients. He worked with J.R. Muse, the attorney for the Dallas Morning News, to write the Texas privilege statute, which enabled newspapers to publish sworn courtroom testimony. He also represented the Tarrant County Water Control Board and served as the personal attorney for Amon Carter Sr. and Captain S. Burk Burnett.
Samuels loved and collected rare books, amassing a library of 7,000 volumes. Upon his death, he left them to the library at Texas Wesleyan College in his will.
Dr. Cary D. Adkinson, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, and Dr. Eddy J. Lynton, Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice, donated the Adkinson-Lynton Comic Collection. It is comprised of a variety of comic titles from publishers such as DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics, IDW Publishing, Dynamite Entertainment, and many more. The collection also includes a selection of pop culture DVD/Blu-ray videos, as well as action figures, props, and other comic and pop culture realia for display.
The collection is located in room 217 on the second floor and is not available for checkout or digitally, so please visit the West Library to access it.
Dr. Clair Ossian is a geologist and paleontologist by training and, for the last 30 years, an Egyptologist by avocation. During his twenty years as a research geologist and another twenty years as a college professor, he began studying the so-called Egyptian Lotus and some of the major temples' histories. After giving papers at Egyptological meetings, he began to be invited to work on excavations. Fortunately, that became an association with Doctor Donald Redford, a senior and one of the most highly respected living Egyptologists. Redford found ways for him to use Ossian's skills in his excavations.
This relationship turned into several summers in Egypt with Redford. Excavations produced papers on the types of stones and minerals found at Mendes, an ancient city in the Egyptian Delta. Other research defined and studied Mendes' harbor, off the side of the ancient Nile River channel.
Ossian has maintained his Egyptological Contacts and given presentations at Egyptological conferences, numerous public lectures, and published a series of papers in Egyptology. The reports included the study already mentioned about the Egyptian Lotus, the publications on stones and minerals, the Nile Delta study and its harbor, contributions to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Egyptology on stone materials, and a series of papers on the early history of three of Egypt's major temples.
Ossian assembled the Egyptology Library to facilitate these studies. The library consists of 1,293 items, many of which are very rare and seldom seen in nature; it includes books, journals, primary papers, investigations, dictionaries, king lists, Pharaonic biographies, and archaeological and cultural references covering broad topics in Egyptology.
Dr. Ossian's Egyptology Library is currently being processed in the Special Collections & University Archives.
Bob Wayne was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and learned to read from 1950s comic books. A comics and science fiction convention dealer in the 1970s, he opened a retail store in the 1980s. He worked at DC Comics from 1987 to 2015, rising to the position of Senior Vice President – Sales. His published work includes stories in Scary Tales (Charlton Comics) and Secret Origins (DC) and contributions to The Comics Journal, Lone Star Book Review, and MAD Magazine. He’s the co-author (with Lewis Shiner) of DC’s Time Masters, one of the precursors to the Legends of Tomorrow television series. He’s currently a business consultant in the publishing industry and serves on the Advisory Board of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
When asked, "What comic should everyone read?" Mr. Wayne responded, "I don't think there's any one comic that everyone should read, but if pressed, I would suggest THE SANDMAN #8, The Sound of Her Wings."
Mr. Wayne donated 476 comics and graphic novels to the West Library's General Collection, which are available for check out.
Dr. James T. F. Tanner received a B.A. in English from Texas Wesleyan in 1961, M.A. and Ph.D from Texas Tech in 1965. He taught at The University of North Texas for 47 years, specializing in the works of Walt Whitman. His personal collection of 254 Whitman-related volumes was donated to Texas Wesleyan in 2023 in memory of pleasant days as an undergraduate.
This collection is currently being processed in the Special Collections & University Archives.