Who was Alma Thomas?
A rare woman at the center of power at Southwestern in the mid-20th Century.
You know her name from the building that features her name, but do you know who Alma Thomas was?
Alma Thomas was the second woman to serve on the Board of Trustees and is easily remembered as one of the most dedicated and generous donors to Southwestern.
She spent most of her adult life living on a ranch with her husband and two sons. When her husband passed away after falling off a windmill in 1923, she and her sons barely kept the ranch going. That is until the discovery of oil on their land completely flipped their financial situation. With their new-found fortune, Alma and her sons attended and graduated from the University of Texas.
Alma Thomas was introduced to Southwestern’s President William Finch in 1949 through her pastor. Thomas and Finch immediately hit it off and Alma Thomas was his first nomination for the Board of Trustees. She was elected to be on the board in 1950 and she served until 1977.
As soon as she joined the Board she immediately started financially supporting the school and its students. Within her first year, she gave out 5 scholarships for graduates of the Methodist home in Waco, where she was also a generous donor.
Alma was also a fanatical traveler and made it around the world twice, visiting 127 countries by 1971, famously even visiting the North Pole. She used her experiences from around the world to her advantage and to help students. She would give talks on campus, one of them when she returned from visiting the Soviet Union in 1958. On her return and speaking with students, Alma declared “all peoples but not all governments want to be friends”
Alma Thomas was a lover of the arts, and a patron of the Austin Symphony. With this love of music, Mrs. Thomas endowed the School of Fine Arts at Southwestern with a goal to better promote the music program here at Southwestern.
She sent a letter to President Finch fully committing herself to the project and providing $25,000 to the Fine Arts Building Fund. Interestingly, she did not choose the amount to give. She told President Finch to build the building “within reason,” and that she would provide for what the school needed. Mrs. Thomas paid through the deeds of mineral, oil, and gas royalties. This gift from Alma Thomas was nothing short of sacrificial, as her overall income was cut by ⅓ to finish the building.
Mrs. Alma Thomas is a keystone in our school's history, and everyone knew that from the very start. When the building was dedicated, she was presented with a full-body portrait to hang in the foyer of the Fine Arts Building.
During the unveiling, the portrait “crashed to the ground,” and in response, Alma Thomas simply said: “I now belonged to the big class of fallen women.”
Despite being in the class of “fallen women,” Alma Thomas was elected as a permanent honorary trustee, and she was able to resign from the Board knowing that her legacy would live on through the theatre and Fine Arts Center named for her.
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