Bridge Builders
When you give, you build bridges between our students and their futures!
A Bridge Builder is a faculty, staff or retiree who gives back annually to the university. As a valued member of the Lion community, you already make a difference every day. When you donate to the university, you can increase your impact by helping to fund research opportunities, scholarships, extra-curricular activities, the food pantry and more. Your gift also shows others that you believe in the mission of East Texas A&M University.
GIFTS FROM FACULTY AND STAFF
Select the gift type that works best for you:
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
The Bridge Builder
This poem, from which the term “Bridge Builder” is taken, was a favorite of university founder Leonidas Mayo. It beautifully describes what happens when you give:
An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”
Will Allen Dromgoole