Danny Mason
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Danny Raymond Mason (January 6, 1938 – January 16, 2007) was a golf coach and physical education professor who was affiliated with Texas Tech University in Lubbock for more than three decades.
Under Mason's leadership, the Tech team qualified for four NCAA tournaments. In 2002, Mason was inducted into the Texas Tech Athletic Hall of Honor and was awarded the title Associate Professor Emeritus. Mason, a kidney transplant recipient, won five Texas Transplant Games golf tournaments and participated in the National Kidney Foundation golf tournament on three occasions.
Mason was born in Monahans, Texas, the seat of Ward County, in west Texas as one of five children to Charlie Everett Mason and Trudie Mae Mason. Upon graduation from Monahans High School in 1957, he attended Odessa College on a golf scholarship. He married the former Betty Ann Pickett (born 1939) in June 1958 and then transferred on a golf scholarship to Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. He was a member of the 1960 NAIA championship team. He earned his bachelor of science degree in physical education, with a minor in biology, from Lamar University in 1961.
Manon next took summer graduate courses at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, and accepted thereafter a teaching fellowship from Texas A&M University in College Station. He completed his master's degree in education and obtained a Texas guidance counselor's certificate in 1962. He coached and taught at Texas A&M for two years before moving on to Texas Tech. However, his Tech service was interrupted by a stint at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where he obtained his doctorate in education and again coached golf.
In 1969, he returned to Texas Tech, where he remained for thirty-one years in coaching and/or academic positions. He coached the golf team until 1980 and was an associate professor of physical education until his retirement in 2000.
Mason's associations included Phi Delta Kappa educational fraternity, faculty sponsor for Phi Epsilon Kappa, and service on the National Golf Foundation Board of Educators and the National Kidney Foundation Board for Region II. He was the founder and director of the Junior Golf Academy for fifteen years and the Coaches Golf Academy through the Texas Tech Continuing Education Division at Junction.
Mason was voted "Father of the Year" in 1968 at Springdale Baptist Church in Springdale, Arkansas, and again in 1978 at the Melonie Park Baptist Church, an independent, fundamentalist congregation in Lubbock. He served as a deacon in various Baptist churches for more than four decades. He was on the Mission Board at the Melonie Park Church.
Services were held at his church. He is interred in Resthaven Memorial Park in Lubbock.
