Dr. Light T. Cummins received the Homer P. Rainey Award at the College’s annual Honors Convocation in April. The Board of Trustees established the Rainey Award in 1975 to be presented each year to a member of the faculty or staff for outstanding achievement and service to Austin College.
Cummins joined the Austin College history faculty in 1978 and was named to the College’s Guy M. Bryan Jr. Chair of American History in 1986.
In his 40-year teaching career at Austin College he has taught hundreds of students, written or edited a dozen academic books and numerous scholarly articles and reviews, told more stories of Texas and Louisiana history than most can remember, traveled thousands of miles in research and study, and received awards for work in nearly every category mentioned. Likely, no award exists for most miles safely navigated but if such existed, Texas Highways Magazine would surely have contacted Cummins for the honor. Everyone else has.
“Enthusiasm and fervor are for me the keys to teaching,” Cummins has said, and that excitement for his subject has resulted in awards for his classroom teaching. Austin College recognized his efforts with the Excellence in Teaching and Leadership Award and he was named a Minnie Steven Piper Fellow in recognition of teaching excellence in the State of Texas. He is proud that his career also included recognition from within the Humanities Division for outstanding teaching, service to the community, and scholarship.
Beyond campus, Cummins had an active career in professional organizations, many of which have honored his work. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the Philosophical Society of Texas and a former member of the board of directors of Humanities Texas. He is a lifetime fellow of the Texas State Historical Association and has served on the board of directors of that association, as well as a former president of the Louisiana Historical Association and of the Southwestern Historical Association.
Though Cummins’ name has been tied to Austin College for many years, he got his start at Southwest Texas State University, now Texas State University, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees there. He received an Alumni Achievement Award from the Texas State Alumni Association in 2008 and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Liberal Arts in 2011. In May 2018, he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of Texas State University, an honor bestowed upon only 208 of Texas State’s over 184,000 alumni.
Beyond his classroom work, one of the duties for which Cummins seemed most especially suited was his stint as the official State Historian of Texas, appointed by the Governor of Texas to serve from May 2009 to July 2012. Many of his miles driven were in that capacity as he visited libraries and general stores and cattle ranches to seek out the people of the vast state and their accounts of the heritage they had lived and been passed down. The opportunities for story gathering and storytelling were many.
He began collecting his stories long ago. His interest in Texas history began in his childhood and through the years spread beyond the borders of his home state. After earning his bachelor’s degree at now-Texas State University, he served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, returned to Texas State for his master’s degree, then earned a Ph.D. from Tulane University. A Fulbright Scholarship took him to Spain for research into the country’s role in the American Revolution and led to his first award-winning book. And all that happened before he began a legendary teaching career at Austin College.
Forty years later, he takes a new title, professor emeritus. He has more to write; one book is already in production and due out in 2019. Cummins is researching and writing another book with his wife, Victoria, also a history professor and the A.M. Pate Jr. Chair of History at Austin College. And wherever he goes—to professional meetings or alumni gatherings or to his grandchildren’s schools, he likely will be gathering stories, and if the attendees are lucky enough, he might share one or two from his immense knowledge of Texas history and beyond. No one tells a story quite like Light.