Andrew Pickens Mobley, '06, died in a tragic house fire in August 2003, but a few months earlier, in his second semester at Austin College, he was in a class I taught.  I am the only member of the current Department of History to have had Andrew in class, and I would like to make a few related comments.  

Andrew was in my section of the freshman HWC course, "Love, Power, and Justice."  I remember him distinctly as one of the "hard chargers" in class.  He was not afraid to argue the contrary of what seemed to be the "consensus" view of the material that the faculty presented.  As with many first-year college students, Andrew's arguments did not always hold up on close analysis, but often they did, and they were always perceptive.  He was interested in how historians go about answering questions raised by the study of history, and he was very sensitive to the dynamics of the history and culture we were studying.    

I think that the Andrew Pickens Mobley Scholar fund is an outstanding way to commemorate this intense young man whose life was cut off so early.  It presents a way in which we can keep his memory alive even as we explore advanced versions of the issues in which this young man was so interested. 

                                                             T. Hunt Tooley,  Professor of History