codyg1985’s Think Tank

Visitation will be from 5 to 7 p.m. today at Laughlin-Service Funeral Home. The funeral will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday at First United Methodist Church, followed by a graveside service at Maple Hill Cemetery.

While still in law school at the University of Alabama in 1946, Richardson began lobbying officials in Tuscaloosa to open a satellite campus in Huntsville.

Back then, Huntsville was about the size of present-day Athens. The textile mills that had been the city’s economic heart were dying; soldiers returning from World War II struggled to find jobs.

For months, Richardson and fellow law student Macon Weaver begged university leaders to open a Huntsville branch. They found a sympathetic ear in Dr. John R. Morton, director of adult education.

Morton “finally became convinced that the only way he was going to get rid of me was to tell me that if I could prove (a need for the college), he would do it,” Richardson said in a 2001 interview. “So, I came home to prove it.”

The Times got behind the effort, asking readers to mail a clip-out coupon if they intended to take classes at the proposed University of Alabama Huntsville Center; almost 500 responded.