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By 1977, a bit  of the excitement coming from starting a college from scratch had worn off the ACC community’s psyche. This happened despite all the fun and gratification members of the ACC team experienced: weekend picnics in Austin’s parks, bicycling around the city, pickup touch football games at the Austin High school’s intramural/practice field, basketball games in the Ridgeview gym, barbecue and beer Saturday evenings at George and Barbara Wilkerson’s home, and for young ACC couples, buying a first house. The stress of hard work and overcoming obstacles took a toll, however, despite Hatfield’s success in providing effective leadership. Hatfield accepted  the position of Dean of Continuing Education at the University of Texas at Austin.

Tom Hatfield was not only a college college president. He was also a teacher, and a  scholar, specifically, a trained historian. When he announced his decision to resign from the presidency of Austin Community College, he had no intention of giving up on his drive to push higher education out of the domain of elites. He had done that from his position as ACC’s president and as the author of Rudder: From Leader to Legend : James Earl Rudder, the Allied commander of U. S. troops on Omaha Beach on D-day published by Texas A & M University Press in 2011.