Oh, the things we did…

Oh, the things we did…

BY DANA BENSON
Rice News Staff

No sod went unplanted
and no walls were left too short in the preparation for
the 1990 Economic Summit held on the Rice campus.

The planning
went beyond meticulous; it was downright astounding, and
it was recounted recently at a lecture delivered by John
Boles, the William Pettus Hobby Professor of History and
a Rice historian.

Boles, who also
is the editor of the Journal of Southern History, entertained
an audience of Rice faculty, staff and friends Sept. 12
at Fondren Library’s Kyle Morrow Room with details
of the summit.

Held annually,
the Economic Summit rotates among each of the G-7 nations,
and in 1990 it was the United States’ turn. It was
an offhand question posed by a reporter to President Bush
following the ’89 summit that set the plan in motion
to bring what Boles described as a “media event” to Houston.

Asked if it
was true that the next summit would be in Texas, Bush replied
in a joking manner that he and several key members of his
administration were from Texas, and the event just might
be held there. Houston leaders scrambled to find out if
the president was serious. When they determined that he
was, they decided that if the summit was to be held in Texas,
it would have to be in Houston.

What followed
was a frenzy of activity, ultimately leading to the announcement
that the summit would be held at Rice. There were many reasons
Rice was selected, including its aesthetic beauty and its
connection to Bush, who was once a visiting professor here,
and to Bush’s secretary of state, James A. Baker III,
whose grandfather was a founding member of Rice’s board.

Rice’s
location also was a major selling point, especially its
proximity to the Texas Medical Center.

“Now this
was really important because there were going to be a lot
of significant people here,” Boles said. “They
had very elaborate medical research on every head of delegation,
so they knew every possible illness any head of delegation
has had or might have.”

“Head of
delegation,” Boles pointed out, was the proper way
to address the world leaders at the summit. Not all the
world leaders could be called “head of state,” he explained. Margaret Thatcher, for example, was not head
of state; that title belongs to Queen Elizabeth.

Once Rice was
named as the location, the fun began for the Rice community,
which worked in conjunction with the summit organizers to
plan the event.

“Everybody
at Rice heaved a sigh of relief, ‘Ah, we got the summit.’
Then the news sunk in. This was going to be a real pain
in the neck,” Boles quipped.

Some of the
amazing details include:

• Staff
members were moved out of Lovett Hall to Brown College,
and equal-sized offices for the heads of delegation were
constructed in Lovett, complete with new carpet, art for
the walls and other decorations.
• The summit’s main meeting center, the Business
Information Center, was located at Herring Hall. However,
the room to be used was determined to be 10 feet too long,
so a temporary wall was built. After the summit, the wall
was dismantled and the room was returned to its original
size.
• It was decided that the bathroom in the office of
George Rupp, then-president of Rice, was not nice enough
for use by President Bush. Updates were made, including
new wallpaper and a new toilet seat.
• The loading dock at Wiess College was removed because
Rice planners didn’t want President Bush to have to
look out of his temporary Herring Hall office, where he
would be only briefly, at such an ugly site.
• The realization hit Rice organizers that “The
world is coming to Rice and all our cypress trees are dying,”
Boles said. A French drain and other irrigation measures
were installed, but some of the trees were beyond saving.
The situation got even worse when it was discovered that
a casino in Louisiana had just bought up the region’s
stock of tall cypress trees. Rice had to settle on smaller
trees.
• A reviewing stand was set up between Willy’s
Statue and Lovett Hall, but planners realized it would be
too hot for the heads of delegation. So a10-ton air-conditioning
system was installed under the sidewalk. Then the only question
was how to keep Thatcher’s skirt from blowing up.
• All mailboxes on Rice campus and on surrounding streets
were removed for security measures; manhole covers were
bolted down.
• Roads on the Rice campus were repaved so they would
look better in photographs. However, concern developed over
whether the new surface would dry in time to handle the
weight of the ultra-heavy limousines used by President Bush.
• At the last minute, some of the grass on the Rice
campus was resodded so it would look better. Some areas
that still didn’t look green enough were spray painted.
• All speed bumps on campus were removed.

After the event
was over, the headline in the Houston Post read, “We
did it,” Boles noted.

“Despite
everything, everyone who was involved in this and who saw
the pictures on television and newspapers from around the
world of the heads of delegation with the ornate arch of
Lovett Hall behind them felt pride that we held the summit,
that we had been the stage against which this event was
broadcast to the world,” he said..