James D. Briggs, chairman of the division of business administration at Texarkana College, is now in his sixth year as an educator after retiring from the United States Air Force as a colonel.
Briggs came to TC last fall from Portland State College, Oregon, where he was an assistant professor.
Although his major interest is now education, Mr. Briggs was prevailed upon by this reporter to discuss the Air Force, where he spent 21 years.
Born in Montana, Briggs enlisted in the Air Force at the age of 17 as a private, and won his wings and a commission shortly before Pearl Harbor. During World War II he served three years in Europe and North Africa as a combat squadron commander. Briggs smiles when he recalls that during this stage of the war they “were so desperate for leaders that they made me a major at the age of 23.”
He flew the first aircraft of the American Eighth Air Force across the North Atlantic, and in this early stage of the war in his words, “the secret of success and promotion was to keep flying and stay alive.”
After his promotion, most of his duties were of a staff officer. Later he saw service in Korea and participated in the airlift support of the French in Vietnam. Incidentally, Briggs thinks we can and should win in Vietnam.
Briggs met his wife, the former Willa Mizell of Texarkana, when they were both on duty in Air Force Headquarters in the Pentagon. Mrs. Briggs was a personnel officer and is now a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force Reserve. Briggs said that his wife is delighted to be living in her home town, and that he is very pleased with Texarkana.
After retiring from the Air Force, Briggs received his bachelor of science in business administration degree from the University of Denver and his master’s degree in business administration from the University of Southern California. His major was management.
While on the Portland State faculty, he was a member of the Western Association of College and University Business Officers, the Oregon Society of Management Analysts, and served as a member of the Oregon Governor’s Committee for Emergency Planning. He has written articles for the Texas Personnel Management Association, the “College and University Business Magazine,” and a management manual published by the Air Training Command.
The selection of education as a second career came naturally to Briggs. “After all,” he says, “it is another form of public service, and a highly important one. I have spent most of my life training and administering a constant stream of youth in one manner or another. It seems that I have been in one kind of school or another most of my life.”
Concerning education, Briggs does not think too highly of the pattern of attending school constantly for a set number of years, then leaving school forever. He feels that in a rapidly changing world, one cannot keep abreast of developments in that manner. He approves of the idea that one should return to school to study at intervals throughout his life to further their career development.
Regarding today’s youth, he suggests that they orient their planning in terms of a lifetime of learning, and he adds wryly, “Who needs to be victimized by a case of premature hardening of the intellectual arteries?”
It’s an over-worked statement, but it would seem that the Air Force’s loss was certainly Texarkana College’s gain in the case of James D. Briggs.