Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary Receives Pledge to Establish Faculty Chair in Christian Ethics

Anne Vickery Stevenson honors her father, Edward D. Vickery Sr.

Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary has received a $2.5 million pledge from Anne Vickery Stevenson of Sugar Land, Texas, to establish the Edward D. Vickery Sr. Distinguished Chair of Christian Ethics, in memory of her father, a well-respected maritime attorney and longtime supporter of Austin Seminary. This is the third distinguished faculty chair established as part of the Seminary’s $44 million capital campaign.

“Anne’s commitment to fund this chair memorializes the importance of ethics and public theology as a discipline in the life of this institution in perpetuity,” said Seminary President Theodore J. Wardlaw. “I am so pleased, and deeply grateful, that Austin Seminary now gets to draw the self-evident and appropriate association between the field of ethics and the name of Edward Downtain Vickery Sr., who epitomized by his life and work the very character of an ethical life.”

The Vickery family has long supported Austin Seminary financially, prayerfully, and through their leadership. Stevenson, like her father from 1975-1995, now serves on the Austin Seminary Board of Trustees. Together with her father and brother Edward D. Vickery Jr., Stevenson established the Dorothy B. Vickery Chair of Homiletics and Liturgical Studies, in memory of their mother and wife. The Dorothy Butler Vickery and Edward Downtain Vickery Endowed Scholarship also honors them, along with the Vickery Atrium of the McCord Community Center where the Seminary hosts many social gatherings. Throughout and beyond his lengthy service on the Austin Seminary Board, Ed Vickery completed funding for the C. Ellis and Nancy Gribble Nelson Chair of Christian Education in January 2002.

Anne Stevenson has served as a community advocate in women’s health and faith studies. She served as a member of the board and also president of the Fort Bend County Family Health Center for 10 years and has served as a Bible study leader at The Women’s Home in Houston, Texas, since 1997. She received her bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Houston and briefly taught elementary school. Stevenson has held director positions at both Tradition Bank and Texas Coastal Bank since 1995. She was a member of First Presbyterian Church in Houston for thirty-four years and currently attends Memorial Drive United Methodist Church.

Edward D. Vickery Sr. was committed to providing scholarships and education to others, as he was the recipient of scholarships that enabled the completion of his education. He received two degrees from The University of Texas at Austin: a BA in 1945 and a JD in 1948. He was a partner in the Houston law firm Royston, Rayzor, Vickery & Williams, specializing in litigation in the areas of admiralty and maritime law, insurance coverage, and personal injury cases. He was admitted to practice in all Texas and federal courts, the Supreme Courts of Texas and the United States, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits. Among numerous memberships and honors, he was listed in “The Best Lawyers in America in Maritime Law” for more than a dozen years.  He was a member of the Houston and American Bar Associations, the State Bar of Texas, the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and was a proctor member of the Maritime Law Association of the United States. He was a deacon and elder of First Presbyterian Church, Houston, for forty years.