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Alumnus Louis Margot coaxes campus keeper into the spotlight

It might not be stuffed with bags of money, yet it is a campus treasure whose time apparently has come again.
For more than 30 years this safe stenciled “East-Texas Normal College” has rested in a dimly lit storage closet beneath a set of stairs in the Field House.
Until the moment this photo was taken recently, it had gone unopened for 27 of those years, according to Dr. Dorothy Ingram, the last known person to unlock it.
Dorothy (BS ’55, MS ’58), a professor in health and physical education who worked here from 1959 to 1998, was the one who accessed it most often, keeping in it game tickets, change for the concession stand, stop watches and, for a while, the most precious thing of all, according to her — the collected data for her doctoral dissertation.
With the increasing availability of after-hour deposits, the safe by 1980 had fallen out of use. Because Dorothy no longer utilized it, the combination became just another long-lost memory.
By the time Alumnus Louis Margot (BS ’67, MS ’71), who currently is the University’s facilities utilization coordinator, learned of its existence, it was mostly used as a dropping-off spot for new mop heads, toilet tissue and light bulbs.
But as an Alumnus and longtime employee, Louis knew that anything labeled “East Texas Normal College,” the name given the school by founder William Mayo, probably pre-dated 1917. The name was changed to East Texas State Normal College in March of ’17. Louis adopted the cause of seeing that the safe got the attention it deserved.
Since Louis considered the safe a valuable asset, he contacted the vice president for marketing and resource development, Jack Gray. Gray says he knew immediately that Louis had done his Alma Mater a big favor, and had done so at an amazingly opportune time.
“Here we are, starting a comprehensive fund-raising campaign with so much far-reaching potential that it can be compared to the efforts of Professor Mayo himself in making East Texas Normal College a state institution,” Gray says.
“The campaign is called Securing the Promise, and Louis tells us about this safe from Professor Mayo’s days, a safe so secure it hasn’t been moved or opened in decades. It seemed uncannily fitting that it would come to our attention now. We’ve decided that perhaps the old safe was destined to play a role in the University’s next historic passage.”
It’s too soon to say what that role might be, Gray says, but the Promise Campaign team is committed to adopting the ET Normal College safe, retrieving it out from under the mop heads and putting it to meaningful use.
“How could we not?” he says. “It’s too important a find at too critical a time.”

Louis Margot inspects the documents found inside the safe once it was opened.

Big money
Dr. James “Bo” Grimshaw, at right, chairman of the faculty and staff committee for the Securing the Promise campaign, presents President McFarland with a $129,344.50 check representing donations from faculty, staff and other early supporters. The presentation, made at the annual fall faculty and staff meeting, helped to launch the $50 million, four-year campaign, a campuswide initiative for endowments, facilities, scholarships and new programs. Grimshaw said, “… I feel we are at a crossroad, and the status quo is an unacceptable choice. … For me, the idea of leaving behind something that will not just endure but prevail, excites and gratifies.”

A safe from Mayo’s day proves as resolute as the Professor himself

The expert safecrackers called in to open the old East Texas Normal College safe had a number of onlookers who came and went throughout the 4,000-pound strongbox.
Two were professors emeriti from health and P.E. and among the last to ever use the safe: former athletic director and department head Dr. Jesse Hawthorne and Dr. Dorothy Ingram. It would turn out that one of them had left a personal belonging inside.
For the safecrackers, it was a long afternoon. What they had expected would be an hour-long job took four, and in the end they and their crowbars would strain against the safe’s honorably stubborn steel doors for almost half an hour before the safe succumbed.
Shortly after one safecracker groaned, “Come on, big boy!” the doors gave, and the few items secured inside for so long would again see the light.
Experts estimate the double-doored J. Baum safe could be almost a hundred years old. It sits on four saucer-sized steel wheels that apparently haven’t moved since the safe was tucked behind a wall in the Field House closet in the early ‘70s.
When the tumblers failed to give over their secret to the safecracker’s straining ears and even his most expensive carbide-tipped drill bits failed, locksmith Robert Renshaw admitted, “It’s a lot harder than I thought it was,“ and broke out the crowbars.
Once the dust settled and the sweat-soaked safecrackers stepped aside, it was Alumnus Louis Margot, the man who brought the safe’s existence to everyone’s attention, who was given the honor of actually swinging open the doors. Inside he found a stack of ETSU press box passes, a number of travel records and receipts from the mid-‘70s and a stash of press box tickets to a football game against Prairie View on Saturday, Sept. 13, 1975, in the Cotton Bowl.
Jess Hawthorne would get one item returned to him: an air navigation “computer” from his WWII days, a wheel-and-grid device used for charting a course.
V.P. Jack Gray says it could be another telling find. He has said the safe was a timely discovery as the University begins its comprehensive fund-raising campaign called “Securing the Promise.”
“We’ve been talking so much lately about securing the promise of education for people, so when I heard about the old safe dating back to Mayo’s time, it seemed to me to be an especially meaningful find,” Gray said. “Then when I heard about Jesse’s charting device inside, I couldn’t help but remember how much we’ve also been talking about charting a new course for the future of A&M-Commerce — and I had to smile just a little.”