<div></div> Ben Procter, a native Texan, was born in Temple on February 21, 1927. An excellent student, he was graduated from Austin High School in 1945 and enlisted and served in the U.S. Navy for fifteen months. Upon discharge in September 1946 he entered The University of Texas that same fall. Ben played end on the Longhorn football team and earned a place on an All-America football team?and a Phi Beta Kappa key in the same semester. His athletic record included gaining 1,382 yards for an average of 16.8 yards per catch and scoring thirteen touchdowns. In 1949, Ben’s Longhorns defeated the TCU Horned Frogs in no small part because he caught more passes and scored more touchdowns than any player had done in any game in Southwest Conference history to that time. <BR><br> Ben graduated from The University of Texas in 1951 and the following year also received his master’s degree from the same institution. He played professional football with the Los Angeles Rams until injured, then enrolled in the graduate program in history at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Frederick Merk directed Ben’s dissertation, a biography of John H. Reagan, but Ben also studied with such outstanding scholars as Samuel Eliot Morison and Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and received the Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1961. Ben joined the faculty at Texas Christian University in 1957.<BR>