For more information contact Cheryl Cain
at 361-593-2138 or c-cain@tamuk.edu

Three Former Students Named
Distinguished Alumni at Texas A&M University-Kingsville

KINGSVILLE (September 11, 2003) --- A military general in Iraq, a newspaper columnist in San Antonio and a retired oil and gas company president in Houston may seem to have little in common, but their successes in life prove that education and hard work can lead to something really big. That’s why the Javelina Alumni Association has selected these three people as Texas A&M University-Kingsville’s Distinguished Alumni for 2003: Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez (1973), Carlos Guerra (1969) and Merle C. Muckleroy (1958).

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez

Sanchez is a native of Rio Grande City who is worlds away from home as commander of the U. S. Army’s V Corps and coalition forces in Iraq.

He was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1973 and began his military career with the 82nd Airborne Division. He later served in Washington D.C. as an investigator for the U. S. Army Inspector General Agency. Sanchez also served as commander of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized), later the 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division at Fort Riley, Kansas. He was deputy chief of staff of the U. S. Southern Command in Miami, Florida before being named director of operations for the U. S. Southern Command.

Overseas, he served as deputy chief of staff of operations at the headquarters of U. S. Army Europe in Heidelberg, Germany.

He attended the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he earned a master’s degree in operations research and systems analysis engineering. Sanchez also has
attended the Command and General Staff College and the U. S. Army War College.
His awards include the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star (with V device and oak leaf cluster), the Meritorious Service Medal (with four oak leaf clusters), the Joint Service Commendation Medal, the Southwest Asia Campaign Medal and the Liberation of Kuwait Medals (Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) and the Master Parachutist Badge.

Carlos Guerra

Guerra is a metro columnist for the San Antonio Express News and his work is syndicated in other newspapers. He also contributes articles to several national publications. He was a front-page columnist for the San Antonio Light for a number of years.

He said the capable, caring faculty at A&I were helpful to him, and the small classes where professors knew who he was also helped. He said he is the product of a “strong collective of caring faculty members” who worked with him.

“… I got great training from a speech department that helped me develop more than my public speaking. It was in forensics and debate that I learned critical thinking, logic, development of arguments and most important, how to find the flaws in my own arguments. That has been priceless in my work and it has saved me from a lot of embarrassment, too.”

He also has worked for several philanthropic foundations on the East Coast and has traveled extensively throughout the United States and Latin America. Guerra was one of the first Americans invited to travel to China after World War II.

A native of Robstown, Guerra was active in civil rights efforts from the 1960s through the 1980s. He helped found the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) and Raza Unida Party. Neither organization is active today.

Guerra returned to A&M-Kingsville in the summer of 2000 to serve as the university’s
commencement speaker. Although his student days were filled with upheaval that helped change the face of education, Guerra said he doesn’t concentrate on ensuring that future students understand the impact of the changes that developed in the late Sixties.

Whether current students understand it or not is not important. The fact is they have and will continue to benefit from the many positive changes that those struggles caused, and accordingly, many more will succeed and attain higher achievements because their access has been improved,” he said.

Merle Muckleroy

Muckleroy began his college career as a walk-on for the Javelina football team. He was the first Javelina to be named an All-American player under legendary football coach Gil Steinke. He also was a member of the “T” Association.

After completing a bachelor’s degree in engineering in 1958, he worked in the oil fields throughout South Texas and Venezuela. In 1963, Muckleroy joined CAMCO Products and Services in the sales division. He retired as the company’s president in 1999.

He said one interesting highlight of his career was setting up a joint venture with the Ministry of Gas in the former Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation. The venture made CAMCO the first American company to achieve all aspects of production in Russia, including getting the product to market, collecting revenue, exchanging the money into dollars and transferring the funds out of Russia.

Other highlights include expanding business in Alaska’s North Slope in the early to mid-Seventies and in Aberdeen, Scotland in the 1980s and 1990s. Muckleroy also helped push a project to service wells located on the ocean floor.

During his career, Muckleroy also helped develop a manufacturing facility in Northern Ireland that supplied much of the equipment CAMCO sold in the North Sea, Russia and the Middle East. During his business trips to Northern Ireland, he developed a lifelong interest in golf and has become a devoted member of a golf course in Belfast.

In 1976, he participated in the executive development program at Texas A&M University. He later participated in the senior executive program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Muckleroy was inducted into the Javelina Athletic Hall of Fame in 2003. He is an active member of the Javelina Alumni Association and has served on the Board of Directors of the Texas A&M-Kingsville Foundation since 1998.

Muckleroy said his dedication to serving his alma mater stems from a deep sense of appreciation for the institution, its faculty and what they have meant to him.
“ I owe the school an awful lot. Education is even more important today than it was back then, and it certainly opened a lot of doors for me.” Muckleroy said. “The professors there, such as Dr. Dotterweich and Dr. Jernigan, were the most fantastic, fabulous professors I have ever had. They really put A&I on the map as far as engineering is concerned.”
He said his two years with the football program also served him well in his career. “Just about everybody on that team graduated,” Muckleroy said. “It was important to maintain standards, and even though we played football, they didn’t lower the standards for us. Many of those who graduated are involved in education today, and that says a lot.”
Sanchez, Guerra and Muckleroy will be honored during the Distinguished Alumni Luncheon at A&M-Kingsville at noon Saturday, Nov. 1, in the Student Union Building ballroom. For more information on the luncheon, call 361-593-4176.

-TAMUK-