O’Connor House renamed in honor of alumnus Peter Huff and his wife

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Ralph S. O’Connor House, home of Rice’s Office of Alumni Affairs and the Center for Student Professional Development, has been renamed Peter and Nancy Huff House.

The Rice Board of Trustees approved the name change this week in appreciation of a multimillion-dollar gift to the Centennial Campaign from alumnus Peter Huff ’59 and his wife, Nancy Larson Huff.

	PETER AND NANCY HUFF

O’Connor, distinguished trustee emeritus and longtime friend of Rice, had requested that the house carry the name of a prominent Rice alumnus.

“Ralph thought it would be fitting to have the home of Alumni Affairs named after a Rice alum, and we thought this was a wonderful gesture on his part,” Rice President David Leebron said. “We’re grateful for his generosity as well as that of Pete and Nancy Huff. We’re proud that this enhanced home for both alumni affairs and career services will carry the Huff name, and we deeply appreciate their generous and inspirational support of the Centennial Campaign during these challenging economic times.”

A gymnasium in the Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center will be named in O’Connor’s honor.

The Huffs’ gift will fund renovations of the house, including a two-story enlargement on the southeast corner that will create more space for alumni gatherings on campus and recruitment sessions for the Center for Student Professional Development (formerly the Career Services Center).

“Nancy and I wanted to contribute to something that would be used by a large number of students and alumni — something that could accommodate a mix of needs for meeting rooms, recruiting and visitors to campus as well as a lot of alumni activities,” Pete Huff said. “We looked at a number of projects with (Associate Vice President for Development) Kevin Foyle, and the O’Connor House renovations seemed to best meet those needs.”

The Centennial Campaign
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Stay connected with other Rice alumni Earlier this year, the Huffs were inducted into the William Marsh Rice Society based on lifetime gifts to Rice. They will return to campus this fall for Pete’s 50th class reunion.

A member of Will Rice College, Huff earned two degrees from Rice: a B.A. in liberal arts with a concentration in mechanical engineering (1959) and a B.S. in mechanical engineering (1960). Huff said his Rice education paved the way for his success.

“The reputation of Rice was recognized everywhere I went — grad school, job interviews and meetings with business professionals — and it always made you proud,” Huff said. “It’s the best education you can get anywhere in the country.”

And at the time, that education was free. “When I went to Rice, there was no tuition. We paid only for room, board and books. It was less than a thousand dollars a year,” Huff said.

After Huff graduated from Rice, he earned an MBA from Harvard in 1962. In 1967 he combined his engineering and business expertise to form his own company — Dynamco Inc. — which designed and manufactured a family of high-tech pneumatic valves that interface to solid-state electronic systems. He retired as president and CEO of the company in 2001 when he sold it to Roper Industries NYSE. The following year he was elected to the city council of McKinney, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, and continues to serve in that capacity.

Both Huff and his wife have been very active in the McKinney community. Nancy, whom Pete met while he was at Harvard and she was in graduate school at Harvard-Radcliffe, serves on the boards of directors for the Children and Community Health Center of McKinney, Communities in Schools Dallas Region and Medical Center of McKinney and received the Kim Hoffman Volunteer of the Year Award in 2007 from the Volunteer McKinney Center.

Pete, in addition to serving on the McKinney City Council, has served on the McKinney Chamber of Commerce, the North Texas Municipal Water Board, the McKinney Community Development Board and the McKinney Economic Development Board and has chaired the McKinney Airport Board. The latter hints at one of his favorite pastimes — aviation. He is an accomplished pilot who built his own plane, which he has flown to Europe. He also serves as a member of the Texas State Aviation Advisory Committee.

Huff’s civic engagement should come as no surprise to former Rice classmates who remember that he was president of the Student Association during his senior year and received the outstanding student award. They might also recall that Huff helped start what has become a signature event for Rice: Beer Bike.

Huff was one of the first residents of Will Rice College. He, along with a handful of others from Will Rice, took on a dare from Baker College to race bikes around the campus and then chug a “tall boy” beer. “It began as a rivalry between Baker and Will Rice,” he said. “We had no idea that 50 years later it would be a weekend-long event for all the colleges and alumni.”
 
Huff also never expected that 50 years later he would return to campus to see a building named after him.

“It’s nice to have a continuing association with a school that you’ve been proud of all your life,” he said.

The house named in honor of the Huffs served as home to five Rice presidents from 1949 until 2004, when the house was renovated to accommodate the 2006 relocation of the Office of Alumni Affairs and University Events and the Career Services Center.