Duane Acker had the misfortune of serving as president of Kansas State University between the two men who served the longest and accomplished the most. He was also unlucky to take the reins when the number of Kansas high school seniors was about to take a precipitous decline and the school’s athletic department was in disarray.

No wonder, then, that at the time of his retirement from the post in 1986 he tells us he had to agree with a local rancher: “Running a university is kind of like riding a ticklish (horse)! It was a challenge to stay on, and the ride was fun, but it will also feel kind of good to get off.”

In this extremely candid and occasionally humorous collection of anecdotes and experiences, as President Acker describes his memoir, readers learn in detail his personal views about his 11 years heading KSU. Now nearly 80 years old, he clearly wants in this self-published volume to put his own stamp on his legacy.

As president he was a competent and caring individual who accomplished a great deal for the school. Several years he led the “most admired” list in The Mercury’s poll of local residents. But he also had to contend with difficulties that made his role hard. “I remember,” he quotes from his final commencement address, “after several years as president, being bitten by a large Dalmatian, and noting that my skin had toughened so the dog’s teeth did not even penetrate.”

Some of the difficulties were of his own making. For example, he reveals how he managed to get crosswise with Manhattan’s two leading bankers. Others, like his controversial handling of then-Athletic Director Ernie Barrett, he could not avoid. He devotes most of the first third of the book to the problems he was forced to confront in athletics, including major financial shortages, rules violations and even corruption. He writes that he had hoped to delegate athletics oversight to someone on the staff he inherited, but there was no one who was both capable and willing.

As a result he personally removed Barrett from a job the president believed overwhelmed him, and President Acker never quite recovered from the fallout. Had Barrett been willing to accept the position of assistant to the president for universitywide fund raising, which he was offered and to which he initially agreed, the Acker presidency might have been significantly smoother.

But the outcome of his approach to athletics, which included putting “honesty before winning,” was financial integrity, the school’s first bowl game and significant steps toward equality in women’s sports — another highly controversial issue he had to handle. K-State was the first Big 8 school to have a single department for both men’s and women’s sports.

There are numerous observations, made from the distance of 24 years, that will fascinate anyone who lived here during the Acker presidency.

The book contains numerous lists of accomplishments, most where the president saw his role as primarily to “endorse and encourage.” He has much to be proud of — whether the dramatic increase in Merit Scholars, the restructuring of the central administration or the school’s first major fund-raising endeavor — and with this memoir he has left a record.