Ben and Wendy Erdman are well-known in the Bryan/College Station area. Not many couples have been featured on the front page of the local newspaper, but they have. They are active in their church and in the community. Ben once worked at Texas A&M, and Wendy has worked for 18 years at a popular Chic-Fil-A in Bryan. They are active in Down Syndrome fund raisers and assistin special needs events, such as Special Olympics.
This unique and loving couple has attended nearly every jam session in my music room since the first one in 2002, more than 20 years of periodic live music. Ben and Wendy are the first ones on the dance floor.
We have fewer jam sessions now compared with earlier years, but when we do, they are on Sundays from 1:00pm to 5:00pm. I pick up Ben and Wendy at their duplex in time to go to Rudy’s barbeque to have lunch with Judy, Ashley, and Malyun (who helps us with Ashley), Tom and Barbara Saving, and some of the out-of-towners arriving to play music. Often Elouise or John Junkins will take them home after the jam session.
Ben has a connection with one of the most famous Aggies of all time, Earl Rudder, James Earl Rudder – Wikipedia, who led the U.S. Army Rangers attack scaling the Pointe du Hoc vertical cliffs on D-Day in World War II. General Earl Rudder was the President of Texas A&M University when I first arrived at A&M in September, 1963. Under his leadership the Corps of Cadets became non-compulsory (in my junior year), in 1963 the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas became Texas A&M University (Texas – A stands for nothing- M stands for nothing-University, SIR!), and he later signed my bachelor’s degree diploma (1967). Ironically, after all these years have passed, I now work on the 8th floor of Rudder Tower on the A&M campus.
Ann Rudder is General Rudder’s daughter. She married Dr. Carl Erdman, a Texas A&M professor of engineering and a widower who was also friends with John Junkins. Ben is his son so, for a while, Ann was Ben’s stepmother. Not long after Ann and Carl Erdman were married, however, Carl suddenly died. This was a trying time for Ben, and the Junkins family helped fill the hole left in his life. Ben was friends with Kathryn Junkins, who was in high school with Ben, and Ben often visited the Junkins family. Kathryn, John, and Elouise did what they could to help Ben feel loved and secure.
John and Elouise are our next-door neighbors. John is a world-class areospace engineer and the Founding Director of the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study where I work. John Junkins – Wikipedia It is through my friendship with the Junkins family that I met Ben.
Eventually, Cupid’s arrows hit Ben and Wendy, and at a pre-wedding dinner for them I sang to Ben my married-man anthem, “Thoughtful Helpful Husband”, a song I wrote with Doug Sharp. Thoughtful Helpful Husband by Dr. Fry’s Texas Medicine Band – YouTube A ritual began, and at every jam session Ben and Wendy attend, we sing “Thoughtful Help Husband” together, which is what we are doing in the intital picture showing us at the microphones. Needless to say, Ben and Wendy ROCK.
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