Recollections
(Photo Cutline: Student pilot Edwin Aldrin in the cockpit of a Lockheed T-33A Shooting Star at Bryan Air Force Base. Some 17 years later, astronaut Buzz Aldrin would become the second human to walk on the moon. Aldrin returned to Bryan in 2018, making a homecoming of sorts to the old Bryan Air Force Base site, now known as the RELLIS Campus. Watch the interview with him recorded then here.)
Named for the core values of Texas A&M University–Respect, Excellence, Loyalty, Leadership, Integrity, and Selfless Service–the RELLIS Campus is home to not only a promising future, but also a proud past.
Here, you'll find "recollections" of that past, first-person oral-history accounts that offer a look back at the site and its surroundings, as well as an assessment of the present environment and a look ahead at the location's promising future.
Ann Burns has spent most of her more than 85 years in the Bryan-College Station area. In that time, she’s been a daughter, a mother, an Air Force wife and a community volunteer. And for Ann, just like so many others whose recollections you’ll find in this section of the website, the place now known as RELLIS has been an ever-present thread woven through the fabric of her life’s story.
To navigate this section, click on any of the links under "The Legacy Chapters" column. There you'll find an ever-growing list of topical features. Click on those and you'll be presented a video vignette with a historical or subject-matter expert, or someone speaking from first-hand experience.
Content here will grow organically as new information is collected. Be sure to check back here often to learn and understand the historic past from which the RELLIS Campus is emerging.
RELLIS Recollections in The Eagle
Travis B. Bryan: The Father of Bryan Army Air Field
Col. Joseph Duckworth: Hurricane Hunter
WASP: Women Airforce Service Pilots
A&M Annexes Bryan Air Force Base
The Nautical Archaeology "Ship Lab"
