Shaped by Auburn

If you ever meet Donald Street '59, you’ll learn that he has a lot of stories to tell.

“Comes with the territory when you live into your nineties,” he said.

He’ll tell you about his time as an Auburn student, working low-wage jobs to put himself through college and then to support his young family while he pursued his graduate studies.

He might tell you about his travels — either the global research trips he made as a member of the Auburn faculty or the 200,000 miles he and his late wife Mary put on their motor home driving around the country.

Many of his stories are shaped by Auburn, and he’s committed to giving back to the university to help provide opportunities for future members of the Auburn Family.

 

A history of hard work

Born in Hokes Bluff, Alabama, during the Great Depression, Street began working when he was 8 years old, chopping cotton for 25 cents per day. When he made his way to Auburn as an undergraduate student, he worked in the Magnolia dining hall, just as his siblings had, for 33 cents an hour.

“My parents pushed us toward Auburn, and all of us who attended — 8 of my parent’s 10 children — had to work our way through,” he said.

After his first two years at Auburn, he took on new roles: iron rigger and husband. He married Mary Gardner, and, as both were committed to finishing their college studies, he needed to take a better paying job to support his new family.

Street admits that he wasn’t a good student at first, but after some adjustment, he was on the Dean’s list and earned a graduate assistant position while getting his master’s degree in Agribusiness and Economics at Auburn and then a doctorate at Penn State.

 “When I got to Penn State, and I was in competition with top students from all over the world, it was tough,” he said. “I had 18-hour days, seven days a week at the same time I was working and studying for tough statistics and economic theory courses, but I got good training up there and it paid off.”

 

Seeing the world

“The day after they put that doctoral hood over my head, I was on Auburn’s payroll again,” Street remembers.

His experience teaching an economics seminar while working on his master’s degree at Auburn impressed his mentors E.D. Chastain and Ed Kern, who offered him a faculty position on the Plains in 1961.

Through the years, he taught undergraduate and graduate-level economics, overhauled Auburn’s master’s program in economics, and led a graduate program for six years. He specialized in resource economics, urban and regional development, and international economic development.

One of the hallmarks of his career was teaching an economic development course entirely in Spanish. “That was a turning point in my life,” he says of mastering foreign languages. His expertise in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole opened doors for him to work on international projects in countries across Central and South America, the Caribbean, and West Africa.

Auburn Fisheries first sent him abroad to El Salvador to conduct a study. From there, he worked on economic development projects in 16 additional countries. His longest foreign assignment was a 20-month project in Haiti.

“It was an opportunity to make a difference, to apply resource economics in ways that had real, tangible benefits,” he said.

In Spain, he delivered lectures and published 12 academic papers, one of which earned him Auburn’s Outstanding Paper Award in economics. His contributions to the field garnered international recognition, with scholars from prestigious institutions citing his work.

“I was shocked that they had read my papers,” he said. “People came up to me wanting to ask me about the research. That’s the closest I’ll ever get to feeling like a rockstar, I think.”

 

Coming full circle

Street’s myriad life experiences formed in him a profound philosophy about philanthropy and caring for others.

“Giving is important to me because if I would have had money, things could have been a lot easier. I don’t believe going hungry builds character,” he said simply. “I went through with modest means, and I think that if I can do anything to make it easier for other people than it was for me, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Street has put that philosophy into practice through a number of impactful gifts to Auburn that support students and faculty, including the Donald R. Street Endowed Scholarship and the Myron Street “Micki” Pharo ’48 Endowed Scholarship — created in memory of his older sister who died in 2019 — which are awarded to students from Etowah County with demonstrated financial need.

In 2024, he established the Donald R. Street Endowed Professorship in the Department of Economics in the College of Liberal Arts to bolster faculty support and help recruit and retain outstanding faculty members to economic studies at Auburn.

“I’m honored to be emeritus faculty, and I want the department to be able to grow and progress for years to come. Creating an endowed professorship was a way to do that,” he said.

Street also recently made a gift to name the teaching kitchen inside the proposed new building for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Auburn University. The gift honors his late wife Mary Gardner Street, who also had a long faculty career at Auburn in business education. The gift supports the growth of OLLI, where Street has participated in classes as both the instructor and the student.

“I took several writing classes at OLLI, and I’ve taught books of Steinbeck and Hemingway,” he said. “I once taught a class on wood turning and I had the lab here at my house, so everyone came over to watch me create a piece.”

The Streets' daughter, Debbie Street, followed closely in their footsteps. She holds degrees from Auburn, Penn State and Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary and is currently an OLLI member. She had a price theory class with her dad while earning an honors degree at Auburn in economics and Spanish.

 

Finding new adventures

Even though he’s been retired now for 31 years, Street says he still has more traveling, writing and living that he’d like to do.

“I’ve got all kinds of writing that I need to do — I’ve got two or three books I need to write about my world travel on the job, and about Mary and me traveling around the country in our motor home. I’ve got a bunch of short stories that need to be weeded out and put into to a coherent form, so I’ve got lots to do,” he said.

Longevity runs in Street’s blood. His two oldest sisters lived to be an average of 100 and three-quarters, so he’s got no doubt he will keep creating and making a difference for years to come.

“I’m 91,” he says, “so if I behave myself, I might get a few more years.”