LuAnn Ervin

It’s been 25 years since Dr. LuAnn Ervin graduated from Texas A&M’s College of Veterinary Medicine, but she still vividly recalls the message delivered at the commencement ceremony by former A&M All-American shot putter Randy Matson.

          Matson, then the executive director of the Association of Former Students, didn’t mince words. He told the 1984 graduates that it was their duty as former students to always remember their alma mater in their charitable giving plans.

          “There wasn’t a lot of pomp and circumstance when Randy came up at the end of our graduation,” Ervin recalled from her Waco clinic. “He told us that A&M had given us an education, and the university expected to get something back. He said that this university could only be as great as the people it produced, and it was our responsibility to help support the university as our own careers flourished.

“That was the first time it really hit me that I owed the university for the education I had received.”

Ervin obviously took that message from Matson to heart. She immediately gave back to the Association of Former Students and then joined the 12th Man Foundation in 1985.

She has continued her philanthropic giving to A&M ever since. The engaging Ervin is a longtime season ticket holder for football and basketball, and she has been a generous supporter of the Championship Vision capital campaigns.

Ervin has made previous capital gifts directed toward the football, soccer and men’s and women’s basketball programs. She recently made a significant pledge toward $16 million fundraising project designed to renovate and rejuvenate Olsen Field.

The first phase of the construction project calls for the following additions/renovations:

•Club house: New locker rooms, meeting rooms, training rooms, hydrotherapy and rehabilitation facilities, weight training facilities and a laundry room.

•Renovation of the lower bowl: New lower-level seating and new dugouts.

•Baseball operations: New coaches’ offices, reception area, coaches’ locker rooms, conference rooms, storage for camps and general use.

•Fan amenities: Removal of old concession stands and restrooms; construction of new concession stands and ADA-approved restrooms, construction of a family restroom, a novelty shop and a security office.

•Stadium operations: Construction of new ticket offices, addition of a kitchen for concessions, storage facilities and a new umpires’ locker room.

•Media facilities: Renovate and improve existing press facilities and add new facilities on the concourse level.

•Concourse and site work: Demolish old concourse, construct new concourse, add new grand entrance stairway with covered roof, construct new entrance plaza, landscape entire facility.

As a Waco native, Ervin says she is quite familiar with the pristine baseball facility at Baylor. She says she is also aware that in the last 10 years, schools like Texas, LSU, TCU, Rice, Nebraska, Arkansas, Oklahoma State and many others in the region have either built new baseball stadiums or have significantly upgraded existing facilities.

“I grew up in Waco, I went to La Vega High School and I have been back in Waco ever since 1985, so I’ve seen firsthand what that new ballpark has done for Baylor baseball,” Ervin said. “I like to keep up with new facilities. When I hear about some of these facilities being extraordinary, I look them up and research them. At A&M, our goal should be to have the best athletic facilities in the country.

“If we are going to compete with those other schools and beat them, I look at it as our duty, as former students, to help our coaches and athletes have the best facilities possible. I’m proud to be an Aggie and proud to do my part in giving back.”

          No one who has ever visited her clinic or seen her driving could possibly question Ervin’s loyalty to Texas A&M.

          Following her graduation, Ervin returned to Waco in 1985 and began working for a veterinarian, Texas A&M graduate Ray Emerson, for two years. She then began running an emergency clinic and bought it from 15 other investors in 1989.

“Then I bought another shopping center clinic—a daytime clinic in ’92,” Ervin recalled. “I quickly figured out that we were out-growing ourselves, so we purchased land and built the clinic we have now, which is a 24-hour clinic. We just merged the two and opened it at the beginning of 1997.”

Ervin began thinking of a new name for the clinic, and she challenged her employees to come up with one that properly portrayed her own passions for Texas A&M. Ervin decided in the second grade that she was going to be a veterinarian, and in third grade she chose Texas A&M.

She never wavered in those choices, and everyone around her always knew that she bled maroon.

So, Ervin was ecstatic when one of her employees came up with the perfect name for the clinic: Texas Animal Medical Center. The initials, of course are T.A.M.C.

“(The employee) who came up with that name got free services for her animals because it was such a perfect one,” Ervin said. “And everything in here is maroon and white. The teasips give me a hard time when they come in with their pets, a harder time than the Baylor people do. Baylor is pretty cool with the competitiveness that we have, but we have some banter going back and forth. But everybody knows where my passions are as soon as they come in the door.”

Or when they see her driving anywhere.  Ervin owns a maroon Cadillac Escalade and a white Corvette. But her proudest possession may be the custom-painted 2005 Dodge Viper.

“I wanted a maroon Viper, but I was told that it was not an option,” said Ervin, whose son, Kyle, graduated in 2009. “So I took it to get custom painted, and the guy who was doing it worked closely with A&M’s licensing office to use the logo and the color match. We got a pretty deep maroon paint on it, and he ghosted in a bunch of little ‘ATMs’ on the racing stripes. I love it, but the only time I get to take it out is when I head to A&M. That is the only place I don’t have to worry about it getting scratched up or keyed.”

She takes it out fairly regularly. When she isn’t working, Ervin makes numerous trips to College Station to watch the Aggies play on various fields and courts. In fact, she says her passion for A&M sports probably played a large role in her divorce.

“I was married for 10 years, but he was not a big sports fan and that was a big part of the divorce,” she said. “I always wanted to be going to the games, and he was not on board with that. So, we parted ways, which was probably for the best, because I’d be miserable if I wasn’t able to be involved with A&M and to get back to the games as much as possible.”