I donated the Distinguished Guest Register and Parker Duofold fountain pen to my collegiate alma mater, Texas A&M University-Commerce (TAMUC) as a means to ensure, like other notable institutions of higher education, that only the most accomplished guests to the TAMUC campus would record their names in the Distinguished Guest Register. The Register is made of the highest quality materials and is bound in navy blue bonded leather with archival gold end pages, place ribbon and is embossed with Texas A&M University-Commerce in gold leaf on the Register's front cover. The Parker Duofold pen is the pinnacle of writing precision with 10 ct. gold trim and red marble body. The Parker Duofold pen was introduced in the 1922 and was the writing instrument of choice by several U.S. Presidents', world leaders, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the timeless Sherlock Holmes mystery stories and General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur.

Many notable guests have visited the campus over the one hundred and thirty two years since the University's founding in 1889 yet there was no officially established basis to record the presence of notables to the TAMUC campus until donation of this Distinguished Guest Register to the Office of the University President in 2019.

Many institutions have long sought to record visits to their campuses with a formalized register denoting visitation by individuals whose names and accomplishments are widely known. Since its founding in 1889, TAMUC has welcomed a number of distinguished guests to campus whose visits were not recorded for posterity. In 2019, that oversight was addressed with donation of the Distinguished Guest Register that will allow a record to be maintained of important visitors to the TAMUC campus and to ensure that those visits are entered into the University's historical record.

Ted R. Crim
Class of 1970