Use these links to browse Features directly, or scroll down to read them all.
President's Associates Ball Salute donors	Brown leaves legacy of generosity	Eve Yoquelet gift supports endowments	Rentfrow fund lends helping hand

The NMSU Foundation honored donors with strong giving traditions at the President's Associates Recognition Ball in November. Fifty-five individuals, organizations and businesses were recognized.

University Ambassadors are donors with cumulative giving totals between $10,000 and $49,999. There are now nearly 500 honorees at this level.

New members for 1996-97 include Joe and Mary Budenholzer, Dillard Department Stores, Eastman Chemical Company, Family Medical Center, William and Mollie Geyer, E. Dale and Barbara Hart, Paul and Virginia Higbie, Georgia and Jack Howard, Hoyt Foundation and Huthsteiner Fine Arts Trust.

Others include Ricardo and Alice Jacquez, Las Cruces Sun-News, Joe and June Lee, Robert and Sue Liefeld, Lions Clubs of Dona Ana County, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel A. Lowance, Matrix Capital bank, Flavia McCormick, Mesilla Valley Mall, Motorola Foundation, Robert Neligan and New Mexico Chile Commission.

Completing this year's University Ambassadors are New Mexico Crop Improvement Association, New Mexico Dry Onion Commission, New Mexico Elks, Warren and Heather Pollard, Bruce Reed, Dr. and Mrs. Juris Reinfelds, Rio Grande Technology Foundation, John Salopek, Emory, Rod and Alma Shannon, Richard and Anne Tardiff, Mr. and Mrs. John Whitmire, Walter Wilbur, William C. Wunsch and Xerox Corporation and Foundation.

Regents Associates are donors with cumulative giving between $50,000 and $99,999. New members are Conoco, Inc., Boeing Co., Johanna Jennings, the Julia Lee Estate, Marion Leland Nason, E.W. Richardson and Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Ralph Skaggs Jr.

Crimson Society honors donors with giving totals of $100,000 to $249,999. Honorees are Larned and Margaret Asprey, the David Barham Trust, Intel Foundation, John and Elizabeth Monagle, NationsBank and Norwest Banks.

Circle of Excellence-Bronze honors donors of $250,000 to $499,999. New members are Exxon Educational Foundation, General Motors Foundation and Harriet C. Peckham.

Circle of Excellence-Silver recognizes donors with giving totals exceeding $500,000. Dr. and Mrs. Paul Klipsch are the latest to be recognized at this level.

CRIMSON SOCIETY NMSU President William Conroy greets new Crimson Society members, from left, Clark Morrow, NationsBank; Jed Fanning, Norwest Banks; Jacob Dominguez, Intel; Marge and Larry Asprey; and Elizabeth and John Monagle.	BRANDING IRON HONOREE Laura Conniff, '75, past member and president of the NMSU Foundation Board of Directors and past member of the President's Associates Board of Directors, accepts accolades from other guests as she receives the foundation's highest honor, the 1997 Branding Iron Award, at the President's Associates Recognition Ball.	THANKS, FRIENDS Members of a family of strong supporters of scholarships and other programs at NMSU are Marge, Bob and Jo Asprey (from left, facing camera). Bob and Jo are Class of '79 alumni.

Brown leaves legacy of generosity

Harold A. Brown, former head of NMSU's electrical engineering department, died Jan. 2 in Las Cruces. Born Nov. 4, 1907, in Alameda, Calif., he received two degrees in electrical engineering from Oklahoma A&M. In 1937, he joined New Mexico A&M College (now NMSU) as a lecturer in electrical engineering. He served as department head from 1955 to 1968 and stayed a strong friend of the College of Engineering and its students after retiring. Engineering's Thomas and Brown building bears his name.

Brown

Faculty members and alumni who studied under Brown agree he was more than an ordinary professor and administrator. He was both easy to work with and demanding of excellence and dedication to the profession, they say. Many credit him with bringing the college to the next level of technology by securing surplus government equipment in the 1950s to give students hands-on experience with transistors.

Brown owned several acres of land along Espina Street. When the university wanted to acquire the land to develop married student housing, Brown traded it for money to create the Robert Livingston Brown Memorial Scholarship endowment. The fund assists junior and senior engineering students.

Recently, Brown established a charitable gift annuity and gifted his entire estate to NMSU to fund the Professor Harold A. Brown Scholarships for Electrical and Computer Engineering. These gifts will bring substantial funds to the Klipsch School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Diane Hendrix

Eve Yoquelet gift supports endowments

Long-time friend of NMSU Eve Yoquelet of Deming, N.M., recently made a gift of $400,000 to support endowment funds she had previously established in the College of Business Administration and Economics and the Department of Theatre Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The Glen Yoquelet Graduate Fellowship in Business, which honors her late husband, is now valued at more than $348,000 and supports MBA students who are New Mexico residents. The Eve Yoquelet Scholarship, valued at more than $400,000, supports full-time theatre arts students.

The Yoquelets moved to Deming in 1961, where they founded the American Plastic Toy Co. Eve Yoquelet continued to play an active role in the company following her husband's death in 1983. She has served on the Board of Directors for the NMSU Foundation and President's Associates. She received an honorary doctorate from the university in spring 1990 and the Branding Iron award in 1991.

Rentfrow fund lends helping hand

A tradition of helping students that began some 60 years ago when Era Rentfrow was NMSU's registrar will be preserved for future generations of Aggies through the Era Rentfrow Emergency Loan fund.

Rentfrow was known for her efforts to ensure that students could attend school in spite of temporary financial hardships, so those who knew her best decided the endowment should support a loan fund.

Initially a Class of '38 reunion project led by Grady Mayfield, the Era Rentfrow memorial fund was later endowed by her niece and her husband, Louise and Henry Linscott.

The University Development Office and Lydia Bruner, director of financial aid, worked out arrangements for the endowment earnings to be an annual income source for the NMSU Emergency Loan Fund, which will be re-named in Rentfrow's honor.

The endowment has a principal balance of $13,000. Anyone interested in honoring the memory of Era Rentfrow can make a gift to the fund in care of the NMSU Foundation.

Ann Palormo