Dean’s Insider: Honoring longtime supporter Teresa Lozano Long
Austin and the University of Texas lost a giant this week. Dr. Teresa Lozano Long, a longtime Longhorn, the first Latina Ph.D. graduate of the UT College of Education, a tremendous supporter of our college and of the arts and arts education in Texas, passed away at the age of 92. Our sympathy and admiration and affection go out to her husband, Joe, and their family.
You can read more about Terry’s extraordinary life and accomplishments here.
Terry, as she’s known to friends, came from humble roots in South Texas. Along with her husband of 63 years, Joe R. Long, she has been one of the most honored and persistent philanthropists in Austin and Texas. It’s not the slightest exaggeration to say that the cultural life of Austin—from the Long Center, to the Austin Symphony, to UT’s Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies, to our Piano and String faculty, to the Austin Soundwaves youth orchestra program—would simply not be culturally what it is had it not been for Terry and Joe’s devotions to Austin.
Famously gracious and modest, Terry also personified that Texas “can do” spirit—more nearly a steely “must do” spirit—that I’ve come to admire among the many Texas women who have led arts patronage in Texas and the U.S. for generations. Her goal in life was to help future generations of Texans by promoting education, medicine and the arts, which she and Joe managed to do generously by donating over $150 million over the years.
In 2004, the College of Fine Arts recognized Terry and Joe with the E. William Doty Award, our college’s highest honor, for their generosity and commitment to UT and our college. Their first major gift to the college was the lead funding to create the College of Fine Arts String Quartet Endowment, which brought the Miró Quartet to UT. This was followed by the creation of two endowed faculty chairs, one for piano and one for cello, held by distinguished faculty members Anton Nel and Bion Tsang, musicians they loved and who performed in their home many times. They also created a generous student scholarship in piano.
For many of the last 20 years, I’ve enjoyed the gilded elegance of attending house concerts at the Longs’ magnificent Austin mansion, “Longwood,” where Terry was the perfect hostess. She greeted every guest at the door with hugs and kisses, before ushering us into the concert salon that featured a one-of-a-kind Steinway grand piano surrounded by an extraordinary museum-quality art and jade collection. What a privilege to have been part of that period of house concerts introduced to the Longs and Austin by our former dean Dr. Robert Freeman.
Terry and Joe have prospered on a grand scale. They have fulfilled and lived the American dream. But they never forgot their modest beginnings, in countless ways. Just one example was her desire to build a community music program for underserved Hispanic children in East Austin. With support from the College of Fine Arts, Austin Soundwaves began more than 10 years ago with a handful of children in one charter school in East Austin. Today it’s providing free music instruction in more than a dozen schools to hundreds of children, many of whom are forging an educational path to UT Austin and the College of Fine Arts. Terry believed that music education would open educational and career opportunities to students. Austin Soundwaves is proving her right.
Terry and Joe have lived their lives as energetic, successful, principled members of our Austin and university community. Even more importantly, they lived their lives in a manner that stands as an example and a calling to the rest of us.
