Marsha and David Lockett ’76: Creating a Safety Net

“Thank you both for the continued scholarship.” That’s how the letter to Marsha and David Lockett ’76 began. But the letter writer knew that wasn’t good enough for what the Locketts had done for him.

“I’ve written variants of that line half a dozen times,” he continued, “and no matter how I say it, it never seems to carry enough weight. It’s a bemusing predicament for me as I generally do a great deal of writing, yet trying to put my appreciation into words seems to have rendered me embarrassingly short on vocabulary.”

What did the Locketts do that left a student speechless? This letter was from an undergraduate at Baylor University, where the Locketts had set up a scholarship fund to help students who have experienced a catastrophic event, such as the loss of a parent or some other disaster that would have left them unable to finish their studies.

This particular student and his sister had lost their mother and, he wrote, “Mom was really all we had.”

Now the Locketts have made a similar generous gift for students at Mays Business School.

Imagining the Worst

“Our faith in God is our compass,” explained Marsha Mayfield Lockett. “Our hearts were convicted when we realized how often this loss happens for students at Texas A&M. Not only would the student lose a parent and the resources to stay in college, but they would also miss friendships. Their support system disintegrated on all fronts — emotionally, physically, socially, and mentally. That’s a lot to give up at one time.”

The gift to Baylor, where Marsha got her degree before doing graduate work at Texas A&M, was fairly straightforward, since Baylor is a private institution. The Locketts have been working with Mays for a few years to get the scholarship set up at Texas A&M, which as a public university must follow certain state dictates for gifts. “Dean Sharp and his team were so patient with us,” Marsha said, noting the unprecedented nature of the gift. “They’d say, ‘What about doing this? Or have you thought about that?’ We kept saying, ‘No, this is what we’re called to do.’”

David, the CEO and owner of Austex Fence & Deck and Mays Business School accounting graduate, agreed. “The idea is to help students at probably their most important time of need,” he said.

Thanks to a commitment to the well-being of students on both sides — the Locketts and the university — The Marsha Mayfield Lockett and David K. Lockett ’76 Scholarship is now in place at Mays Business School. The Locketts see it not as a one-time gift, but as something they will continue to fund through the years. Their children, Jay Lockett and Lauren Lockett Summers, will eventually oversee the scholarship’s continued funding.

“The Locketts have come up with a generous and creative solution to a very real issue,” said Dean of Mays Business School Nate Sharp. “We hope none of our students face such a catastrophe — losing a parent and funding for their studies — but if anyone does, the Locketts’ gift provides a safety net. We are grateful for their steadfast commitment to seeing this through.”

The scholarship will be administered by Dean Sharp and his leadership team, with the help of professors, who are more in touch with what is happening in the lives of their students. “The staff can keep their eyes and ears open for students that may need it,” said David.

A Legacy of Giving

This is not the first time the Locketts have made a significant gift to Texas A&M. The Locketts both grew up in Cleburne, Texas. David was the son of an employee of the Santa Fe railroad; his mother was a hairdresser. “I was the only one in my family who went to college,” said David, who played baseball for the Aggies for four years on scholarship while he majored in accounting. “Once you get out of school and into the working world, you start thinking about how good you really had it at school, and you got a free education. It kind of tugs at your heart and you say, ‘Hey, other people need this.’”

In 2018, the Locketts endowed a baseball scholarship and had a role model in this type of giving. Marsha comes from an Aggie family — her father, brother, nephews, and uncle have Texas A&M degrees. After serving in World War II, Marsha’s parents, Neta and Robert B. Mayfield ’45, funded a scholarship for the Corp of Cadets.

“That’s how much the Corps meant to him,” Marsha said. After her father died, she and her brother took over the management of the scholarship and appreciated hearing from the recipients. “We get letters from very articulate students,” she said. “Students telling us about themselves and their dreams. It’s very humbling.”

The Locketts expect that what they hear from recipients of the Mays scholarship who have experienced a tragedy will be even more moving. “For us, the baseball scholarship was a payback for what I got,” said David. “I think the [Mays scholarship] will have greater impact upon the student because it could make all the difference for them.”

Following Passion

In typical Aggie fashion, the Locketts are humble about the gifts they’ve made, seeing them as extensions of the Texas A&M value of selfless service. “We feel like we’re simply being stewards of what we’ve been given,” said Marsha. “We are just one little cog in this wheel. We’ve had incredible mentors. We’ve had incredible examples. This is how we want to react to humanity.”

They hope they might encourage others to give back to the university in ways that reflect their own interests. “Everybody has a passion about something, and this just happened to be ours,” said Marsha.

David believes that it’s fine if someone’s idea doesn’t fit the mold. “It’s great to support the students in ways that aren’t just the normal routes,” he said. “Because I think normal doesn’t always get it done.”

Indeed, normal doesn’t always lead to a letter like the Locketts received from that particular student, who reported that after going through law school he planned to pay for his younger sister’s education — a doubling of the impact of their gift. “I’ve come out of the darkest time of my life,” the student wrote, “with so much hope for the future, and a great deal of the reason for that hope has been the continued benevolence of the two of you.”