Scholarships allow family to memorialize loved ones and their legacies. The Department of Biomedical Engineering is honored to help the families of Jack and Wanda McMahan honor and remember them through the Wanda and Jack E. McMahan ’43 Scholarship.
Jack had only Texas A&M University in mind when choosing where to attend college, but his family did not have the finances to send him immediately after high school. Instead, Jack attended junior college and worked to save enough money to transfer to Texas A&M in 1940.
Jack’s class of 1943 graduated early due to World War II, and Jack promptly joined the U.S. Army. He served in the 89th Infantry Division with General George Patton’s Third Army in Europe, which succeeded in liberating Ohrdruf in April 1945 — the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by U.S. troops. The horrors of war left a lasting impact on Jack, though his family said that he rarely spoke of these experiences. Several soldiers in his unit were fellow Aggies, which impacted Jack both positively with lasting friendships and negatively with the loss of companions in the war.
After the end of WWII in 1945, Jack met his future wife, Wanda, at a New Year’s Eve party at Camp Philip Morris in France. Wanda was serving as a nurse, having joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps after graduating from nursing school in San Antonio. Jack and Wanda fell in love quickly and married six months later in July 1946. Jack told his children that meeting and marrying Wanda were the best things that ever happened to him.
When they arrived back in Texas, Jack continued his military career, and Wanda took on the role of Army wife, relocating with Jack to some assignments (including Japan, Germany, Alaska, Kansas and Virginia) but staying in Texas with their children during Jack’s tour in Vietnam in the late 1950s.
Wanda also grew to love her husband’s alma mater, and throughout their lives, the McMahans kept a close connection with Texas A&M. They celebrated each time another family member joined Texas A&M and were thrilled when their daughter married an Aggie. They had football season tickets for decades until Jack’s death in December 1998, and he would insist on arriving early to every home game to watch and honor the Corps as they marched into the stadium. After Jack died and until her own passing in January 2019, Wanda seldom missed a televised Aggie football game, often telling her children and friends during game week, “We’ve got a big game coming up.”
In 2019, the McMahan family funded the Wanda and Jack E. McMahan ’43 Scholarship in the biomedical engineering department to honor Jack and Wanda’s memory and provide financial support to biomedical engineering students, with a particular focus on those in the Corps of Cadets.
Ethan Hasty is a senior at Texas A&M and will be contracting with the Navy after graduation. He said receiving the scholarship alleviated financial pressure and enabled him to focus on developing his leadership skills and achieving his academic goals.
“I am incredibly thankful for the generosity of the McGee and McMahan families for their financial support, and I hope that the impact I will make in the military and in the medical field will honor the memories of Jack and Wanda,” Hasty said.