BY KATHY WILLIAMS

HERALD DEMOCRAT

Visionary. No better word describes Dr. John D. Moseley, president emeritus of Austin College, who spent his 93 years pondering life's grand questions and devising the means to answer them. His friends and family remembered his contributions to their lives and community Thursday. Dr. Moseley died Wednesday following a lengthy illness.

How do we prepare a generation of college students to lead the nation into the 21st Century? How do we extend the reach of human minds light years beyond Earth's surface? How do we ensure Sherman avoids the strife other cities suffered in desegregation? How do we determine a community's collective dreams and ways to realize them?

As his influence extended outside the academic community of Austin College, so did the circle of those who mourned his loss. Those raised in his house explained how Dr. Moseley learned the problem solving skills that focused his vision.

"Did you know Dad was a plumber?" his son John D. Moseley Jr. said. "He was, and a lawyer, possibly the first president of Austin College who was not a minister. ... But his father was a plumber and my father worked along side him. And I worked on plumbing projects with him. ... Years later, when I grew up, one of the things I did was remodel old houses. I would open up a wall and see a pipe sticking out at me and call the president of Austin College to ask a plumbing question. Off the top of his head, he could just visualize what I was looking at and tell me step by step how to fix it."

Dr. Moseley merged this practical, hands-on approach to fixing what's wrong with a Socratic way of teaching -- from his own children to students at Austin College to community members he led through two of the city's three Goals for Sherman processes.

"You would come to him with a question, 'What should I do?' and he would say, 'What do you think you should do?' 'Have you considered the options? What about this? What about that?' What an incredible lesson for life: There are no answers and there are lots of options."

Moseley Jr. said Dr. Moseley could envision almost anything and follow that vision to its conclusion -- from pipes to institutional issues. Dr. Moseley's friends and colleagues came to expect they would become part of that process when he addressed them one of two ways: "Walk with me." or "You don't have to say yes right now."

His biographer, Austin College History Professor Light Cummins, said, "I can hear him right now saying to me, "Think about it, you don't have to say yes right now. And you generally ended up saying yes. Not only was it difficult to say no to John D. Moseley, he always constructed the question so that you were glad and happy to say yes."

Cummins said he was impressed with Dr. Moseley's vision from their first interview, "He thought big; he acted big; and he expected everyone around him to have optimistic visions of the future. That was very much his hallmark. He was always thinking at least 10 years into the future and ahead of everyone else around him."

Cummins said in many respects Dr. Moseley probably saved Austin College when he assumed its presidency in 1953.

Cummins said Dr. Moseley "innovated always with his eye on the future. He wasn't always right but he was the kind of person who would try five things to make sure two or three were successful, and that always happened. He built a bold, solid record of success in every aspect of the college life."

W.C. Windsor, as chairman of the Austin College Board of Trustees in 1953, drafted Dr. Moseley as Austin College president. Windsor's grandson, Bill Richardson said Windsor asked Dr. Moseley to come to the school, which was languishing, and determine either how to make it successful or to kill it.

Dr. Moseley's first big visionary process was to figure out "where in the heck Austin College was," Richardson said, and Dr. Moseley hired a management consulting firm to tell them that; where they wanted to be and what they would need to get there.

Using the study, Dr. Moseley began to build a top notch faculty and moved the school away from athletic scholarships, a move that wasn't universally applauded. Sports became an adjunct activity to education.

"He had a remarkable ability to say, 'Where do we want to go? What are the problems going to be? And let's address those today so we don't wait until they hit us blind side. So when people were emptying administration buildings with protests in the '60s, he had already put in systems that defused those situations."

Because of his excellent leadership at Austin College, other colleges, higher education organizations, and Sherman itself called on Dr. Moseley for help in planning for their futures. Before coming to Sherman, Dr. Moseley had worked for the federal government and the Texas Legislature as its chief, non-partisan researcher. When he retired from Austin College, Dr. Moseley and Richardson formed a management consultant firm to colleges and universities and to Space Services Inc., the first private effort to put a rocket into space.

Jerry Chapman, general manager of Greater Texoma Utility Authority, said he had the honor in knowing Dr. Moseley in about four different roles. He was a student at Austin College while Dr. Moseley led the school. Chapman said when he was working for Texoma Council of Governments he ran into Dr. Moseley in Austin, leading the charge for the tuition equalization movement. Chapman said he was aware of the work that Dr. Moseley accomplished for higher education and the influence he exerted on many larger colleges such as Texas Christian University.

Chapman said Dr. Moseley joined the board of directors of Greater Texoma Utility Authority in 1981 and served for eight years. During those years, Dr. Moseley's vision encompassed securing Lake Texoma water. He appreciated that water was likely to become a vital and rare resource in the future. Today, Sherman is the largest water seller in the region, and has enough future rights to water to supply its residents and industries for many years.

"Here, I viewed him as fair-minded," Chapman said. "He was always forward thinking and always concerned about doing the right thing and sometimes it was hard for him to understand once you had a solution identified for something why you didn't work to make it successful, not necessarily the other board members, but the public."

Chapman said whenever he thinks of John D. Moseley he cannot help but think of his wife, Sara Bernice Moseley. "They were a team, if ever there was a husband and wife team, they were it. One is just as capable as the other and they complemented each other every day of their lives."

One of Dr. Moseley's most significant contributions to Sherman was his leadership of the pioneering "Goals for Sherman" campaign in the 1960s and its third incarnation in the 1990s.

Richardson explained that Dr. Moseley had paid strict attention as former Dallas Mayor and Texas Instruments founder J. Erik Jonsson began a program called Goals for Dallas. Then Dr. Moseley initiated Goals for Sherman, a grass-roots planning process that brought together people from all walks of life, every ethnic group as well as the political and faith communities. They developed goals including transportation, public and higher education, criminal justice, civic and cultural resources, libraries and governance. Possibly the only major goal of the 1960s process that has never been realized is a civic center.

The best part of Goals for Sherman was it brought people together who otherwise wouldn't have had a reason to talk to one another, Richardson said.

"I think it looked to John D. that there might be some racial strife coming and he thought if we got together and talked, we might be able to resolve it," Richardson said. "As a result, I think, we escaped much of that.

"And there were some wonderful stories that came out of that. There were two people, I think (Dr.) Harry Shytles and Hugo Adlof, I can't quite remember, had squared off with one another in vituperative letters to the editor of the newspaper. And John D. said one of the greatest moments he had in that first Goals process was when one of them turned to the other and said, 'You know you're not such a bad guy after all.' "

He was a problem solver, Richardson said, and their relationship was filled with successes, and not a few arguments over direction they would lead those who hired them as consultants. The ability to disagree is an essential part of a working relationships.

"I think the community will miss him," Richardson said. "No one really has stepped forward to claim that independent view which allows you to make proposals and decisions that other people can support even though they don't like each other. And that was the beauty of Goals for Sherman. He had the consummate ability to pull disparate people together and to propose something that everyone could support.

"We were very, very lucky to have someone of that stature in Sherman."

Dr. Moseley is survived by his wife of 68 years, Sara Bernice Moseley; their three children: Sara Caroline Moseley of Dallas; John Dean Moseley Jr., and Alice Butler of Irving; Rebecca Moseley Gafford and her husband, Ron, also of Dallas.

The family will be at home from 6 -8 p.m. Friday and will hold a family service in Dallas Sunday. A public memorial service will be held at 4:30 p.m. March 24 in Wynne Chapel at Austin College.