Novelist William Harrison — of Rollerball and Mountains on the Moon fame — sits in a green chair in a warehouse on Fort Worth’s south side. Colored lights cast accents across the 67-year-old author’s Hemingwayesque face as I silently wonder if the chair we’ve chosen — a sage corduroy wingback — will be green enough for this story about, yes, the Green Honors Chair program.

In 1966, Honors students and professors dreamed of an endowed chair that would be shared by almost every school and department. Three years later, benefactors Cecil H. and Ida Green endowed such an academic seat, named for them, with a $600,000 gift to TCU.

What a gift it has been.

Several years ago, I sat stunned as oceanographer Robert Ballard, who discovered the sunken Titanic, showed a packed Ed Landreth Hall the picture he took of a toddler’s shoe, resting all these years next to the ship’s hull.

I also remember when CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather, a cup of coffee in hand, stood toe to toe with students, describing the day he tied himself to a light pole on Galveston Beach to report the arrival of Hurricane Carla.

This year, a new edition of Green Honors scholars spent days or weeks on campus. We focus on four — an expert on olives, a Hollywood producer, the “sexiest” astrophysicist in America and Harrison himself. Is the chair green enough?

Alas, I conclude, its color pales anyway next to the tint of those who sit in it.