Smiley and Bernice Raborn Honored with New Chair in Engineering

Smiley and Bernice Raborn

In the 1930s, they were well-known across campus as two of LSU’s most popular student personalities. Their names will be well-known again on campus, this time in connection with a new endowed chair in the LSU College of Engineering. Smiley and Bernice Raborn, two proud LSU graduates from 1939, have been named in a chair established by their son and daughter-in-law – Francis “Buzz” and Marcia Raborn – to benefit LSU’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. Officially titled the Smiley and Bernice Romero Raborn Chair in Mechanical Engineering, the permanently endowed $1 million chair was created through a $600,000 donation from the Raborn family that was matched with $400,000 from the State of Louisiana under the Board of Regents Support Fund.

“Buzz is not one for fanfare …” said Smiley. “We have a family reunion at Christmas time. Two nights before Christmas Eve (2005) we were at dinner, and they were talking about their family and Christmas presents. And he said, ‘I established this chair in the College of Engineering in you and mom’s name.’ And I’m sitting there … and it dawned on me what he said. And I asked him, ‘what’s all this about?’”

“We’ve been walking on air. We were overwhelmed,” Smiley said.

“I was, too,” said Bernice, “I didn’t believe he could think up something like that.”

“I still have the feeling,” Smiley said. “I was overwhelmed and thrilled. And humbled. And honored.”Through the Raborn’s generosity, this new $1 million endowment will be the first step in an effort to enhance the capability of LSU’s Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) in both research and education by establishing endowments for areas such as professorships, graduate assistantships, undergraduate scholarship, and on-going operational support. The larger ME initiative will also recognize the career of aerospace pioneer Maxime “Max” Faget, a 1943 mechanical engineering LSU graduate who played a pivotal role in the development of the Mercury and Apollo space programs with NASA. Jeff Hale, LSU Foundation senior director of corporate and foundation relations, personally assisted the Raborns over a period of several months in creating a tribute that would fittingly honor Buzz’s parents.

“On behalf of LSU Chancellor Sean O’Keefe and LSU Foundation President Bill Bowdon, I want to thank the Raborn family for their exceptional generosity and graciousness in creating this endowed chair,” said Hale “This gift stands as a testimony to the incredibly close family ties the Raborns share, as well as to Buzz and Marcia Raborns’ impressive grasp of the critical nature of endowed positions to the future academic, research, and reputation-building success of Louisiana State University.”

The endowed chair comes at a critical time for LSU’s development into a national top tier university. The Forever LSU campaign, announced earlier this summer, places great emphasis on creating new professorships and chairs in every college at LSU.

A Chance Meeting…a Lifetime Relationship

Smiley and Bernice Raborn would be quick to tell you that LSU forever changed their lives, as well as those of their family. The couple met in the Huey Long Field House 70 years ago while both were students at LSU, and they have been together ever since. Ask Smiley the story of how they met, and he will gladly recall the day.

“As I remember, in those days we didn’t have a student union building. The Huey P. Long Field House was our union building,” said Smiley. “I had met a friend of Bernice’s named Letha Watkins, and she invited me over to have a Coke, and she (Bernice) was sitting at a table … and gosh, what a stunning young lady.”

Bernice was equally impressed with Smiley. “I thought he was probably the handsomest man I’d ever seen,” Bernice said. “I couldn’t believe that he was interested in me.”

“I tried to keep you from knowing,” he replied.

Talking with the Raborns about their days at LSU is like opening a time capsule for modern-day students and staff.

The Raborns’ LSU

The Raborns attended LSU before there was a French House, before there was a Mike the Tiger, and before LSU fans dreamed about enclosed Tiger Stadium end zones. Smiley said the biggest difference between LSU then and LSU now is the number of vehicles on campus.

“The campus was very different in those days,” he said. “It was pedestrian. You walked. Now I see thousands of cars parked over there. There were five, maybe six, students in the entire four years that we were here that owned cars.”

That led to some close calls in the classroom since students did not have the option of driving or taking the bus.

“I had a military science class in the old Gym Armory,” Smiley said. “It was a long way to the engineering labs, and I’d be late three or four minutes almost every time. And this one professor told me one morning, ‘Raborn, we’re going to get you a calendar to get to class on time instead of a clock, because the clock isn’t working.’ I decided he didn’t like me, but he was one of the ones instrumental in me getting the job I got in which I was the highest paid of any graduate that year, which I thought was fabulous.

“It was $165 a month.”

Bernice and Smiley also recalled that LSU students did a lot more dancing in their spare time on campus back in the 1930s.

“In those days, ballroom dancing was a big thing,” Smiley said. “Every Saturday night, there would be a big band … and the University invited them to come on Saturday nights to dances in the Gym Armory.”

“They charged us up front, 25 cents,” said Bernice. “Girls didn’t go on their own. You wouldn’t go unless you had a date.”

“Sororities and fraternities would have what they called tea dances,” Smiley continued. “They usually would start around 4:30 or 5 o’ clock, and they usually held them in the Field House.”

“They were Friday and Saturday afternoons, so you might go to three dances in a weekend,” said Bernice.

When the LSU students were not dancing or walking from class to class, they were heavily involved in a plot which would change LSU’s history forever – the acquisition of LSU’s first live Bengal tiger mascot, Mike I.

Buying a Tiger

“We helped pay for and buy the first live Tiger mascot,” said Smiley. “In our sophomore year, a great friend of ours, as it turned out in later years, named Eddie Laborde … he and his fraternity brothers knew a zoo in Little Rock that had gone bankrupt in the Depression and they were having to sell off their animals. And one of the animals for sale was a royal Bengal tiger cub for $2,000.

“At any rate, they took up donations, they collected all this money from the students, and they shipped the tiger down here in a box car. I didn’t see this, but the Tiger arrived in this huge cage and he was about two and a half feet high and about eight feet long. They thought they were getting a cub but it was a full grown royal Bengal tiger!”

Indeed, the day Mike arrived was one of playful chaos unrivaled at any time in LSU’s history. Students across campus organized walkouts from classes, some even blocking the entrances to campus so that professors could not report for work. When Mike arrived at LSU – behind schedule – the party lasted well into the night. The question then was, what to do with Mike?

“Later the State Legislature approved a $4,000 grant to build a house that was on the same spot as it is now, only much smaller. It only cost $4,000,” said Smiley. “Now I understand the new one cost $3 million ... so that’s quite a difference.”

After LSU

Without a doubt, the Raborns took part in many historical events at LSU as students. Upon graduation, the two began to write their own history, with Smiley serving as a military instructor in World War II and Bernice building the foundation of a rewarding family life.

After the war, Smiley Raborn took a position with the company that would later become CanDel Oil, overseeing the construction of the TransCanada pipeline.

“I went there (Canada) for 5 years, and I’ve been there 56,” he said.

Smiley retired from the energy industry at age 65 in 1980. He worked as an international petroleum consultant until 1995.

Meanwhile, the couple raised three children – Francine, “Buzz,” and Suzanne – and welcomed eight grandchildren into their lives, with four great-grandchildren arriving in recent years.

While it is hard to say how LSU will change in another 70 years, one thing is for sure, the Smiley and Bernice Romero Raborn Chair will be in place, guiding generations of engineers through their own story with LSU.

Who could have guessed that it was a chance meeting over a Coca-Cola at the Huey Long Field House in 1935 that made it all possible?