The Leaches’ investment will fund an expansion of the Bush School of Government and Public Service’s City and County Governance Program.
“We are profoundly grateful to Amy ’84 and Tim Leach ’82 for their extraordinary generosity to support public service and the future of Texas. Their gift will empower us to better serve communities across the state and help strengthen them for generations to come.”
– Bush School Dean John B. Sherman ’92
BRYAN/COLLEGE STATION, TX – Randy Sims ’61 was an Aggie running back, Bryan barbecue purveyor and longtime public servant, devoting much of his life to the unglamorous but necessary work of a county judge: presiding over county commissioner meetings, resolving land-use disputes and generally seeing to the needs of sometimes-grateful, occasionally cranky Brazos Valley residents. He listened patiently through it all, developing such a civic reputation that he will now serve as a role model for future generations of Texas government officials.
Today, The Bush School of Government and Public Service is announcing the creation of an endowed chair for the director of its City and County Governance Program. The program prepares students seeking a Master of Public Service and Administration degree for careers in municipal and county government; the new endowment, funded by a $1 million investment by Amy ’84 and Tim Leach ’82, will be named the Randy Sims ’61 Endowed Chair for City and County Governance. The director will use the money to expand its offerings and, ultimately, produce more public servants.
“We’re hoping our cities and counties will be healthier and well run” as a result of the gift and program, Tim said. “We hope to produce more public servants and show that public service is a career you can love.”
Randy, who passed in 2015, had a record of community service stretching back to the early 1970s. He considered that service role so important that he closed his popular barbecue restaurant to focus on his various civic roles, eventually being elected county judge.
“Randy would cut someone’s grass if they needed him to,” his wife, Brenda Sims, said. She can sum up his philosophy of service in a single word – respect – but her stories about his public life touch on everything from the Brazos County Expo Complex to the blind date when they shared a quart of beer. As to what made him a good public servant, she said: “He was a good listener. I’m not always sure he heard me!” – she was joking when she said that last bit – “But he listened to everyone. Everyone was important to him.”
The Leaches said that spirit is in keeping with the ethos of the Bush School and the City and County Governance Program that they are bolstering.
“It just seemed perfect,” Amy said. “It’s another way Texas A&M University can serve.”
An expo center, a plate of brisket and a record-setting field goal
The barbecue or the field goal? It’s a toss-up which one someone will start with when recalling Randy.
Let’s start with the field goal. Randy was recruited to Texas A&M as a halfback/wingback by then-coach Bear Bryant, who left for Alabama shortly thereafter. Under Bryant’s successor, Jim Meyers, Randy gained 340 net yards on 80 rushing attempts, 494 yards on 43 receptions and scored four touchdowns in his varsity career, adding three interceptions on defense. He was also a part-time kicker. In 1959, his junior year, he hit three field goals against The University of Texas – including one so long (Brenda recalls it being a 52-yarder) that it stood for years as the Southwest Conference record.
Now, the barbecue. Randy Sims Bar-B-Cue House opened in the early 1960s. Randy once estimated that he smoked nearly 3 million pounds of brisket at his restaurant. It was widely considered among the best, if not the best, in the Brazos Valley. Historian and barbecue connoisseur William Tsutsui, whose family moved to Bryan in 1969 during his childhood, wrote in a blog post about Randy’s restaurant that even Kansas City’s famed offerings could not compare. Randy’s brisket, William wrote, “came to set my standard for smoked meat … I have spent most of my adult life trying to recapture that imagined perfection of Randy Sims’ brisket, piled high on slices of Texas toast griddled with margarine.”
Randy used the recipes of Red Bryan, a Dallas-Fort Worth barbecue magnate. Eventually, that choice made sense to William – after all, Randy had married Red’s daughter. Brenda (born Brenda Bryan) said her husband opened his restaurant partly at her father’s suggestion.
“Daddy called up Randy and said, ‘The barbecue business is good no matter how the economy’s doing. Why don’t you open a place there?’” Brenda said.
Randy balanced his barbecue business with a growing civic profile. He eventually served (among many other appointments) as vice president of the Bryan/College Station Chamber of Commerce, chair of the Brazos County Health District board, a deacon at Grace Bible Church and a member of the committee that brought the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum (and Bush School) to Aggieland. He closed the restaurant in 1991 to focus on public service. As an elected official, he served two stints as Brazos County’s Precinct 3 commissioner – one in the late 1970s and another from the late 1980s to the early 2000s – with a term on the Bryan City Council sandwiched in between. Then he was elected county judge.
Current County Judge Duane Peters ’72 served alongside Randy for nearly two decades: first as a constable in the 1990s while Randy was a county commissioner, then in the 2000s as a commissioner while Randy was county judge. Duane recalls that Randy was not the hulking form that one might expect of a former college football player, but someone whose appearance, his roughly average height and build, contributed to the feeling that anyone could come up and talk with him. Randy was so approachable, so frank with his opinions – even in rooms where his were not the prevailing sentiments – that no one was surprised by his decisions. He was steady.
As county judge, the first big project facing Randy was the languishing Brazos County Expo project. Voters had approved $18.5 million, but the county had not reached an agreement with the owner of the site. Randy proposed bringing in an outside mediator, marshaled arguments and won public support for the idea. The expo center opened on budget, Duane said. Thanks in part to that accomplishment, the county was twice able to expand the facility. The expansion also happened partly because Randy helped persuade the tax-averse state Legislature to amend a temporary hotel-occupancy tax, then make that tax permanent. He could credibly make that argument because he bird-dogged all county spending to ensure public dollars were spent wisely and efficiently.
Randy was conservative but was first and foremost a public servant concerned with carrying out the will of the people, Duane said. Analytical is a term often used to describe Randy.
“If you didn’t want to spend money on something,” Duane said, “you had to have a good reason not to spend it, too.”
At a packed Texas Department of Transportation hearing on the Trans-Texas Corridor at the Bryan Civic Auditorium – where most attendees were clearly opposed – Randy stood and voiced his support. The crowd erupted in disapproval. Once the noise settled, Randy calmly took the mic again and said, “That wasn’t near as bad as the night I missed a field goal at Kyle Field.” The room burst into laughter. It was classic Randy, Duane said – breaking the tension with a perfectly timed joke.
“He certainly had his opinions, and pretty strong opinions a lot of times, but I can’t recall any that weren’t based in facts. It was because he really listened to all sides,” Duane said. He continued: “I personally don’t like to make decisions and be surprised by something afterward, and I don’t like to surprise people with things they’re not expecting. I learned that from Randy. He was my mentor. He was a good friend. I really miss him.”
Friendships and legacies
The Leaches, through their philanthropy, have been looking for ways to preserve those sorts of legacies. A generation of Aggie luminaries is passing away. Tim and Amy say they want to ensure that the memory of what those luminaries did – what they meant to the Brazos Valley and broader Aggie community – is not lost.
They had also been thinking about ways to contribute to the Bush School and its public service ethic. When they heard about the City and County Governance Program, they thought it would be the right fit.
The Bush School has been producing local officials since its 1997 founding. But in 2022, then-Bush School Dean (now Texas A&M President) Mark A. Welsh III made the commitment explicit by creating a local-government program and hiring Professor of Practice Paul Hofmann ’81 ’83, who has managed several municipal governments, to run the program. Hofmann developed and conducted (among other things) a workshop to help incoming mayors learn their jobs, and the City and County Governance Symposium, where students hear from public servants about the rewarding, demanding roles, and have an opportunity to network with professionals in the field.
Amy and Tim began to realize that expanding the program would help Texas by producing more skilled, civic-minded public servants working in cities, towns and rural communities.
Meanwhile, the couple was gradually getting to know Brenda. The Leach and Sims families had been acquaintances for years through mutual Aggie connections, but the families eventually got tighter through Randy Jr., who is a pastor at the Leaches’ home church in Midland. As they learned about the elder Randy, who had passed away by then, they were struck by his lifelong commitment to his community.
As Amy and Tim spent more time with Brenda, several threads came together: They could support the Bush School, help Texas, and preserve a legacy by creating the Randy Sims ’61 Endowed Chair for City and County Governance.
Whoever holds the chair will succeed Hofmann, who is retiring this summer, as head of the program. Hofmann’s successor can use the Sims endowment to further expand the program. Tim said the ultimate goal is to have Aggies in leadership positions in every community in Texas.
“These are tough jobs,” said Bush School Dean John B. Sherman ’92. “We need people of character to step into these positions, and we are profoundly grateful to Tim and Amy for their generous support. Their commitment to the Bush School helps us prepare the next generation of principled leaders.”
Or, as Brenda summed up her husband’s civic career: “It’s not a bad job if you’ve got the heart for it.”
Property taxes, respect and that quart of beer
The new endowed chair was almost not named for Randy. At least, not solely for him.
Tim and Amy suggested naming the chair for Randy and Brenda. She is, after all, at least as important to Brazos Valley lore as her husband. Though hailing from Dallas, she descended from the Bryans who founded the town. She helped her husband run the restaurant and is a prodigious charity volunteer, still judging baking contests and 4-H competitions well into her 80s. She was also a longtime KBTX-TV daytime television personality, having worked her way from newsroom receptionist to the host’s chair. She interviewed many of the community’s most prominent businessmen, athletes and politicians. To many in the Brazos Valley, hers remains the face of daytime television, her “Hello, Brazos Valley!” greeting the voice of lunchtime. Even in retirement, she has made occasional live appearances, including one during which the KBTX noon team presented her with a surprise cake for her 80th birthday.
Brenda appreciated the Leaches’ offer to include her name on the endowed chair. But she said no. She wanted the focus on the man who spent so much time focusing on others.
She tells three stories that, together, give a sense of his approach to public service.
The first story must begin with a short civics lesson: The county judge does not collect taxes. Another county official, the tax assessor-collector, handles that duty. But one day Randy noticed a woman who looked distressed. He asked what was wrong. She said she was having trouble paying her property taxes. He went with her to the county courthouse, probably telling her that he would help her find the right person. Instead, he paid her taxes.
“That’s just how he was,” Brenda said. “She needed help, and he could help her. So, he did. When he saw a need, he met it.”
The second story is about respect. In his final years, Randy lived in a memory care facility. Not long after arriving, he took the initiative to organize a meeting between the residents and the facility’s management. His message was simple: mutual respect. He urged the staff to treat the residents with the highest dignity – and he encouraged the residents to show the same respect to the staff who cared for them. Respect for others was a guiding principle he lived by, Brenda said, and one that he hoped would shape the community around him.
Brenda’s third story is personal. The one about how she met Randy. She was a 20-year-old Dallas-based flight attendant for Braniff Airlines. She was also dating one of the world’s most eligible bachelors, an heir to the Jarman merchandising empire, whom she had met on a flight. But he forgot her birthday. Because of this, she agreed to let a friend set her up on a blind date with an Aggie football player.
She met Randy after a game. He was a broke college student and maybe that was just as well, as few people could have competed with the Jarman fortune. They hopped in his ’56 Ford four-door sedan, which had no air conditioning or even a radio, and he took her to a 7-Eleven convenience store. They shared a bag of chips and a quart of beer. It was simple but unforgettable to Brenda – a memory that Randy would honor for years by occasionally surprising her with the same chips and beer.
During that first date, Randy struck her as genuine enough for a second date – so genuine that, five dates later, upon spying a ring box in the glove compartment, she immediately knew her answer. His proposal was awkward, but she didn’t care. He was always better at listening anyhow.
Brenda and Randy became community pillars: she a local television personality, he a prominent restaurateur and trusted public official. Over 54 years of marriage, he never forgot her birthday.
“The thing is,” she said, “Randy was like that with everybody. People were just so important to him.”
