IT@UT

(story contributed by Curtis):

Lawrence told us this story shortly before he retired. Back in the day, registration worked like this: punch cards were created for each student, and punch cards with a different format were created for each class opening. Students would go to Gregory gym where they’d be issued the punch card with their information, and then they’d go around to tables for each department and get the cards for the courses they wanted to enroll in. When they finished they’d turn their cards in, and they’d be placed in a rack with the student’s card first followed by the cards for their classes. All the information about who was signed up for which class was contained in the order of the cards.

One evening Lawrence was helping load the registration cards into the card reader. After one rack had been processed, he placed it near the racks containing unprocessed cards. Then a bit later he picked up that rack, walked towards the reader as if it was the next rack to be processed, and “accidentally” tripped and dumped all the cards all over the floor. The person he was helping almost had a heart attack before Lawrence told him those cards had already been read in.

(story contributed by Bill Wagner, a.k.a. DPBMW, nee BW36):

Every now and then, it’s possible to identify a specific moment in time when one seemingly insignificant event changes the course of your life forever. Everyone that Lawrence Hall hired as a Programmer Trainee has one.

Back in 1979, DP was in the process of selecting a new DBMS to replace TOTAL. Robbie had driven Ken Gregory and me out to the System 2000 facilities to check out their SYS2K software (which ultimately didn’t work for the Library application). When we returned and Robbie had parked in the O lot west of the Tower, he stopped Ken and me and pointed toward the West Mall. Lawrence was escorting an applicant from the Tower to the Flawn Center for an interview.

Robbie: “Watch this. When they get close to the door, Lawrence will hang back a little to see if the applicant opens the door for him. If he does, he has a chance. If he doesn’t, he won’t be hired no matter how good his other qualifications are.”

And sure enough, Lawrence hung back. And the applicant opened the door.

I have no recollection if that guy was hired or not. For that matter, I have no recollection of opening the door for Lawrence when I was interviewed in 1977. But I must have. As did we all.

So, for all of our different academic backgrounds, different interests, different career paths, different personalities, and different everything else, we all have one thing in common. We all opened the door for Lawrence.

And we all know how many doors Lawrence opened for us.