Dr Dale A Lunsford

The president of LeTourneau University has confessed to dislodging a rack of tailpipes and gaining a life lesson while operating a forklift. He was addressing students at the school year's opening convocation.

Dr Dale A Lunsford recalled: "The incident happened in 1978 in my first year as a student at the University of Tulsa. I was 18 years old."

He was working part-time for the Specialty Parts Warehouse in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
"They stocked a wide variety of auto parts that were sold through various retailers," he tells Forkliftaction.com News. "I remember everything from floor mats to carburetors to, of course, tailpipes."

He drove the forklift to fill orders that were loaded into trucks for distribution to retailers.

"It was kind of fun driving a forklift until the day the forklift clipped this huge rack of tailpipes, sending them crashing onto the cement floor," reports Reese Gordon in the Longview News-Journal in an article quoting Lunsford's remarks during the 26 August convocation.

"Just like this moment as president, if I mess up, thousands of people are watching. That's how I felt driving the forklift that day."

Lunsford says he can "still remember the sound those tailpipes made when they hit the concrete floor".

Lunsford received a master's degree from the University of Tulsa in 1985 and a doctorate in business administration from Oklahoma State University in 1989. He joined LeTourneau in July 2007 as the university's sixth president.

The nondenominational Christian university offers four- and two-year degree programs in seven core disciplines and master's degree programs in business and education. In addition to its Longview campus, the university has other Texas locations in Dallas, Houston, Tyler and Bedford.