Richard M. Chitwood

Richard Mortimer Chitwood (February 9, 1878 – November 21, 1926)^[1] was a Democrat from Sweetwater, Texas, who represented District 117 in the Texas House of Representatives from 1923 to 1925. His district encompassed Fisher, Mitchell, and Nolan counties in West Texas. In his first House term from 1921 to 1923, he represented the same counties as District 121.^[2]

Biography

A native of Alabama, Chitwood was a son of William Parker Chitwood and the former Laura Lyon. He was educated at Morgan Park Academy in the Morgan Park section of Chicago, Illinois.^[2]

In 1923, Chitwood, as a second term member of the legislature, was the chairman of the House Education Committee. That year State Senator William H. Bledsoe of Lubbock and Representative Roy Alvin Baldwin of Slaton in south Lubbock County pushed to passage Senate Bill 103, with a $1 million appropriation, to establish a four-year educational institution in West Texas with an emphasis on agricultural research. The school would be separate from Texas A&M University in College Station, which had a similar mission and whose leadership opposed the new institution. Bledsoe confessed to having drawn up the requirements for the host city to fit only Lubbock, which was selected over thirty-six other locations, including Chitwood's Sweetwater in Nolan County, San Angelo (before the existence of Angelo State University), Midland, Plainview, Brownwood, Lampasas, Big Spring, and even Boerne in Kendall County barely northwest of San Antonio. Vernon west of Wichita Falls claimed it should be selected because of its railroad access; at the time Vernon had more than one thousand more people than Lubbock.^[3]

Though the site selection committee traveled to all the communities seeking to become the location of the new college, but the fix was in from the start. To win the competition, Lubbock was allowed to amend its initial application to account for eighty more acres so that it could meet the two thousand acres required in the legislation for the chosen location. In time, Texas Tech, originally Texas Technological College, helped to make Lubbock the largest city of West Texas, excluding El Paso in the far southwestern corner of the state. Chitwood thought Sweetwater far better suited for the new institution as the "central" location of West Texas. When Lubbock was chosen, Chitwood was given a patronage consolation as business manager of the new institution.^[3]

Chitwood died of angina pectoris at the age of forty-eight at the Baker Hotel in Dallas, Texas, after just fifteen months as the Texas Tech business manager. He is interred at Sweetwater Cemetery.^[4] The Daily Toreador, the Texas Tech newspaper, wrote upon Chitwood's passing that there was one "no more truly big hearted" than the former college business manager. The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal referred to Chitwood's death in its edition of November 23, 1926, as "A Loss to Texas and to Tech College."^[2]

References