Allan Saxe didn’t want a funeral. The prominent Arlington philanthropist is remembered as being skeptical of their purpose.
“Only a few would come to my funeral,” Saxe wrote in reflections about aging from the 1980s and 1990s, read by Saxe’s friend Tony Arangio. “Instead of beautiful flower arrangements, there would be poison ivy. The funeral service would be the only one in history where bad things would be said, and I can’t risk it.”
But if he could have foreseen his July 11 memorial service, Saxe would have known those fears were for naught.
For two hours, Arlington leaders and friends of Saxe lined up for a chance to share their memories of him as a mentor and friend.
Since Saxe’s death at 85 in June, organizations across Dallas-Fort Worth have made public statements about his remembered generosity, statewide media has covered his legacy, and countless comments on social media from former students and connections have echoed the reach of his impact.
He spent his life obsessively pursuing philanthropy, investing an estimated $1.5 million to $2.5 million into the Arlington community over the nearly six decades he lived there. From 1965 to 2019, he taught political science at UT-Arlington, which hosted Thursday’s memorial in its Rosebud Theatre.
It opened with a high-effort 1980s parody music video of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” featuring Saxe turning into a human-sized chicken.
“I don’t know how to follow that,” Tamara Brown, UT-Arlington’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, quipped.
Brown’s sentiment set the tone for the rest of the memorial: How can anyone follow a legacy as influential as Saxe’s?
“Look at the people around you,” said Arlington Mayor Jim Ross, who’d known Saxe since the 1980s, as he gestured across the theater. “Allan touched everybody’s lives.”
The statement especially resonated with the memorial’s prominent attendees, who included community leaders like Texas Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, philanthropist Dan Dipert, Arlington City Manager Trey Yelverton, UT-Arlington President Jennifer Cowley, former City Council member Victoria Farrar-Myers and Saxe’s wife, Ruthie Brock.
One UT-Arlington alumnus, Lawson Hill, took Saxe’s political science classes in 2018, the professor’s last full year of teaching.
Hill said his biggest takeaway from the courses wasn’t Saxe’s political knowledge, though he had plenty. It was the professor’s selflessness.
Saxe intertwined his instruction with his community experiences. Given how Saxe experienced community, this inevitably shined light on his community service, whether that be his volunteering at animal shelters, creating homeless shelters or mentoring city leadership.
Saxe’s teaching style made the three-hour lectures fly by, Hill said. At 79 years old, Saxe spoke softly, but students clung to his every word, making the biggest lecture halls feel intimate.
“When he starts talking, there’s dead silence in the room,” Hill recalled. “Everyone wants to hear Dr. Saxe talk.”
Saxe’s hope for immortality was to get his name on as many things as possible, friends remembered him claiming.
If that was his mission, he succeeded. As Cowley said, it’s hard to drive through Arlington without seeing Saxe’s namesake.
His memory is reflected in UT-Arlington’s Allan Saxe Softball Field, Levitt Pavilion’s Brock-Saxe Great Lawn and Mission Arlington’s Allan Saxe Dental Clinic. Meeting spaces, roads, parks and pencil sharpeners across the city are all beneficiaries of Saxe’s lifelong philanthropy.
But as speakers throughout the night pointed out, these landmarks are a small measure of Saxe’s immortality. His real impact can be found in the tens of thousands of students he inspired, the generations of Arlington leaders he mentored and the countless conversations where his humor led to laughter.
Throughout the memorial, a picture of Saxe mid-laugh was projected onto the wall-sized screen, overlooking the crowd. His smile matched the mood of the ceremony, which brought on more laughs than tears.
That’s a rare sight for memorials, but so are “Thriller” music video parodies.
It suited the life being celebrated, too. As each memorial attendee could testify, people like Allan Saxe are one of a kind.
Drew Shaw is a reporting fellow for the Arlington Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org or @shawlings601. At the Arlington Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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Allan Saxe memorial celebrates lifelong generosity, lasting legacy in Arlington - Fort Worth Report
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