Farewell, Den Mother

Scholarships matriarch Eleanor Moore says goodbye after 25 years.

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In 25 years administering Texas Exes scholarships, Eleanor Moore didn’t just hand students checks — she offered them guidance, compassion, and care.

But when the woman who would become the director of Texas Exes scholarships — and the caring heart of the full Association — was first offered a scholarship coordinator position in 1986, she thought it sounded dull. Also, she told the people hiring, she didn’t want to be a leader. “I want to be an Indian,” she said, “not a chief.”

Yet Eleanor Moore turned out to be a natural manager and mentor. The former teacher soon found that scholarships fit her precisely. She got to guide, nurture, and influence thousands of the most promising students to come through the University she loved. In turn, she became part of what many loved best about UT.

A few years ago, long before her retirement this month, past scholarship recipients showed it by collectively endowing a scholarship in her name.

As the Texas Exes get ready to launch the $150 million Forty Acres Scholars Program, a prestigious full-ride, experiential scholarship package, they know Moore built the launch pad. On top of the study abroad, service learning, and other opportunities the Forty Acres program will offer, it also promises “TLC that only the Texas Exes staff can provide.” For 25 years, it was Moore who made that TLC inimitable.

She took charge of the Texas Exes Awards for Scholarship and Leadership, which became the seeds of the Forty Acres Scholars program, and made them special experiences for the recipients. Group gatherings, interaction with donors Lowell Lebermann and Mike Myers, and an annual trip within Texas were included.

Myers says Moore made the program personal. “These 22-year-old kids — half of them almost start crying talking about Eleanor,” he says. “They value her integrity, her leadership, her compassion.

She was the one students sought out when they had nowhere to go for Thanksgiving, when they had to leave school after a car wreck, or when they faced cancer in the family. She was also the one parents came to when they had lost a child and wanted to donate a scholarship in his name. And so, just as she had as a teacher, she always felt like she was making a difference.

For all that to happen, though, the Texas Exes first had to get her back. Moore had worked for the Association in the late ’70s before moving away with her husband, Michael, whom she’d met at UT, and their daughter, Andrea. Back then she had helped compile The Alcalde and put on events. When Susan Kessler, then the Texas Exes associate executive director, heard that Moore was back in town, she called her right away.

“I thought, ‘Boy, that’s who I want,’” Kessler says. “My heart was broken when she left — she was a rock. I never thought I’d see her again.”

Once re-hired, Moore spent a few months in the membership department before switching to scholarships. Kessler and then-executive director Roy Vaughan told her what they had in mind as the Texas Exes Awards for Scholarship and Leadership were growing from the first two endowed in 1982.

Vaughan and Kessler didn’t want students to get just a check. They wanted them to know there was a couch in Moore’s office where they could come celebrate — or cry — whenever they needed. They knew it was a lot to ask. “You can’t just order that done,” Kessler says. “You can’t just take a person within a job description and say you’re going to care. But that’s what Eleanor has done.”

For decades, students were always welcome to stop by Moore’s office. Whether they were considering a run for student government, like Daron Roberts, BA ’01, Life Member, or changing their major from business to government, like senior Katina Rajunov, they talked it out with Eleanor. “My door has always been open,” Moore says. “I’ve always tried to be a source of support.”

Thousands of students have received scholarships under Moore’s watch — 14,203, to be exact. She couldn’t get to know them all well, but the Texas Exes Scholars have been especially dear to her. The past scholars now number more than 200. They include Rhodes, Marshall, and Truman Scholars; doctors, lawyers, and educators; TV writers; financial analysts; a rocket scientist; a children’s book author; and an NFL coach. Moore knows all those accomplishments because she’s kept personal track. She gets wedding invitations and birth announcements, and the former scholars hold reunions every five years.

Also close to her heart are the Texas Leader Scholarships, which are targeted toward minorities. Private donors stepped up to endow them after the 1996 Hopwood court case ruled illegal a UT Law admissions policy that factored in race. The Texas Leader Scholarships were established two years later in order to further diversity on campus. It was one of the times Moore was proudest to be working for the Texas Exes, she says. Some 1,520 Texas Leader Scholarships have been awarded in the 13 years since.

And over the past year, as the Texas Exes have plotted out the 40 Acres Scholars program, Moore has been an inspiration. She has trained her successor, Derrick Miller, and helped work out the complex logistics of supersizing the scholarships department. Like the students she has mentored, Miller is grateful for her guidance. “I don’t think I’d be as confident as a manager without her,” he says. “With Eleanor, I’ve realized you can be a manager who really cares about your staff and still get things done.”

Everyone is excited to charge forward with this latest, greatest scholarship program. But they know it couldn’t have been built without Moore. “Something doesn’t go from zero to 100 overnight,” Myers says. “Without her leadership, I daresay we wouldn’t have the enthusiasm. She laid the platform for moving forward.”