I wasn't implying that Dennis couldn't be wrong on the dog thing. I was just referring to him and his likability in my earlier post. I have no idea where he got that it was a dog/parakeet/elephant/monkey/whatever.

Was told by a member of the Class of 1932 the ORIGINAL Reveille mascot (mixed breed dog) was not found on the side of the road by cadets returning from Houston.
That was a cover story prepared for the Bulls (officers).
Class of 32's company was on a punishment march to the Brazos when, on passing a Brazos river bottom Italian sharecropper's family shack, this little dog comes out barking. Followed the company all the way back to campus. They (the company) sorta adopted the dog. Next morning when Reveille was sounded from the bugle stand, dog started barking.
Bulls were alerted but thought the incident was unique. Allowed cadets to keep the dog...they thereafter named Reveille.

Story was told to Bop in 1978 while '32 (at his Roane, Texas farm) was stitting on his tractor. That '32 grad was also the onetime A&M roomate (and best friend) of Congressman Olin Teague '32. Congressman Teague '32 of C/S was also a very highly decorated WWII vet.

Bop,

Someone, I unfortunately do not remember who, spoke at the Canyon Muster about a dozen years ago. His story about the origins of Rev 1 mesh with your story, right down to the ethnicity of Rev's original owners.

Canyon...
Brazos river bottoms were once heavily populated by Italian itinerant farmers and sharecroppers.

Before flood controls, Brazos bottom land could be aquired at a fairly reasonable price.
(Flooding often wiped out Brazos crops. Most farm shacks were up on wooden stilts.)

Many of these Italian families eventually became prominent/prosperious citizens up and down Texas counties along the Brazos.

Scanning phone books will still reveal some of those third-fourth generational Italian family names.

That is actually a very interesting story. My last 3 March to the Brazos, we had a dog do the EXACT same thing. I was in the first group, and someone's dog on the way out there decides to follow us. It ended up staying with us till we got to the meat plant, then followed us back to the quad. Hung around the quad for a few minutes and then made its way back home, ~6 miles away and through all sorts of random trails and turns.

Sounds like the ghost of the original Reveille paid y'all a visit!

Stairs that lead to nowhere.

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From the time it was completed in 1917 until the mid-1980s, the Pavilion was a dirt-floor arena that could seat about 2,500 spectators.

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Im not sure thats correct. In 1918, the Pavillion was used and an airplane hanger to help with the war effort. http://libraryasp.tamu.edu/cushing/collectn/univarch/texag/articles/94/april.html

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Did you know that no opponent scored against the 1919 Aggie football team?

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That also happened in 1917. and until 1923, the sips had never crossed the goal line at kyle field.

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Seven women attended Texas A&M in 1922 as “special unofficial students.”

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Women often attended classes during the early years at A&M. They were usually daughters or wifes of faculty and a few even graduated with certificates of completion instead of degrees.

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What is now the University of Texas at Arlington was once a branch campus of Texas A&M.

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Their yearbook was called the Juniro Aggie and the school was often used as a prep school prior to going to A&M. Kinda like blinn team is today.

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Duncan Dining Hall was built on the site of the old campus cemetery, which was moved off campus near the intersection of Luther Street and Marion Pugh Drive.

Lafayette Lumpkin Foster served as president of Texas A&M from 1898 until his death from pneumonia in 1901. He is buried on the Texas A&M campus.

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there was also a meditation garden where duncan now stands and Lafayette Lumpkin Foster was moved to the cemetary of luther. Not sure if they have moved him to the new Field of Honor

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Brazos river bottoms were once heavily populated by Italian itinerant farmers and sharecroppers.

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Still are, except they're not itinerant farmers and sharecroppers any more.

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Many of these Italian families eventually became prominent/prosperious citizens up and down Texas counties along the Brazos.

Scanning phone books will still reveal some of those third-fourth generational Italian family names.

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Yes, and of course they're all related to each other!

At least with respect to the Italians in Bryan, most of them are actually Sicilian. Many of them still trace their heritage to a specific town in Sicily. Some of them even go back to visit relatives.

In the 50's, dorm area was used for some short-courses during summer. Always had Tessie phone numbers on the bulletin boards when school opened in fall.

Best good bull was for the Firemen's short course at their incoming reception in MSC, someone found a junked car, hauled it in the middle of Simpson,and set in on fire after painting "WELCOME FIREMEN"

The steam tunnels ARE haunted.

I have heard the anin haunted story. been in the basement for labs late at night. a little creepy, but never heard the elevator move.

My old roommate swears he and another buddy crawled through the steam tunnel under dorm 2 all the way to west campus.

I wrote my name on the wall of the tunnel under dorm 2, but that is as far as i got.

the 1942 Longhorn I have states Reveille's home town is peach creek. Peach creek was an old farming community south of town off 159 and I believe peach creek actually cuts across hwy six

I don't think the steam tunnels go to the west campus. Assuming the statute of limitations is out, I can assure you that they go from the Corps dorm area all the way to the physical plant near Northgate. There are a few dead ends at new construction, and an intersection near the library that is at least 20 feet tall and wide.

that intersection is huge. It also dead ends into an access door to the parking garage

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At least with respect to the Italians in Bryan, most of them are actually Sicilian. Many of them still trace their heritage to a specific town in Sicily. Some of them even go back to visit relatives.

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The town is Poggioreale, Sicily. http://www.poggioreale.net/

My maternal grandmother, Allene Salvaggio (born 1922 in Navasota), is the daughter of John Salvaggio (born 1899) from Bryan and Florence Spadachene (born 1900) from Navasota. Spadachenes are not a Poggioreale family.

Florence Spadachene's father owned a general store in Navasota in the 1920s.

For all I know, EVA3, my great-grandfather may have been one of your great-grandfather's customers.

When I was a student at A&M and Baylor, I didn't understand my heritage. Specifically, I didn't realize that by coming to A&M, my brother and I were "coming home" as it were, to the part of the country in which our grandmother had grown up.

I really only had a clear picture of the story starting in April.

Some of what the OP asked for, from Austin, Texas:

1.) The airport in Austin is named for an Aggie.

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The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is accompanied December 8th by an attack on the U.S. base at Clark Field, the Philippines. Captain John August Earl Bergstrom, 34, a reservist serving as an administrative officer in the 19th Bombardment Group, is killed in the attack. Captain Bergstrom, born on August 25, 1907, a graduate of Texas A&M, is the first Austinite killed in the war. Urged by Captain Bergstrom's former employer, the Austin National Bank, Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson prevails on the U.S. Army Air Force to rename the air base after Austin's fallen son. On March 3, 1943, it becomes Bergstrom Army Air Field.

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2.) The Texas Department of Transportation is headquartered in a building named for an Aggie, Dewitt C. Greer '22, father of the Texas highway system.

3.) Across the street, the General Land Office is housed in a building named for an Aggie, James Earl Rudder '32. 4 Aggies have served as Land Commissioner (Borden, Rudder, Mauro and Patterson).


From the campus:

1.) The Corps dormitories were built with federal funding. FDR came to the campus in 1937 and reviewed the Corps. While he was on campus, he asked T.O. Walton what was needed to double the production of these young cadets for service as officers. President Walton replied that he needed dormitory space. Shortly thereafter, funding was received to build the dorms.

Having looked tonight at the pictures of FDR's visit, I think that I have spotted a very young LBJ in the background of one of the photos.

My understanding is that ten men who were also, at some point of their life, President of the United States, have visited the campus.
1.) William Howard Taft (see pictorial history of A&M)
2.) FDR (see 1938 yearbook)
3.) Ike (see 1951 yearbook)
4.) LBJ (have seen picture of LBJ at Rudder funeral)
5.) Gerald Ford (see 1974 yearbook)
6.) Jimmy Carter*
7.) Ronald Reagan (see 1979 yearbook)
8.) GHWB*
9.) Bill Clinton*
10.) GWB*
11.) BHO

discussion here: http://texags.com/main/forum.reply.asp?topic_id=1896386&forum_id=16&page=last&opt=post

* I actually saw them on the campus in 1997. And there are pictures in the 1998 yearbook.

[This message has been edited by Vestal_Flame (edited 8/25/2011 11:26p).]

Regarding the steam tunnels and West Campus, I'm not sure if they connect, but there are some "form" of steam "holes" on the west side of the tracks. Whether they have tunnels and connect to the ones on the east side or not...I can't say.

[This message has been edited by Stive (edited 8/25/2011 7:32p).]

I doubt they connect. If I'm not mistaken West Campus has its own physical plant by Reed Arena. And even then, I don't think all of West Campus is connected either.

I didn't do much exploring down there, I saw a motion sensor go off and my buddies and I decided it was time to go. Never ended up going back down there, but I always wanted to. A couple of cadets got caught and in serious trouble a few years ago.

Ok, this had to have been addressed somewhere on this board before. There's an old army story about the Corps commandeering a train, hooking up artilery pieces to it, and heading to Baylor after some incident between some Baylor students and a cadet. The National Guard had to intervene by blocking the train tracks and turning the train around.

Behind every story there is at least a grain of truth, right? What's the grain of truth here, and when/how did it evolve into us almost declaring war on another school?

The cannon on the train is myth. The death of Cadet (Donald?) Sessums in a melee at a Baylor game in Waco in 1924 (or so) is fact. Lots of accusations and counter-accusations from that. The Texas A&M version is that a fight was pretty much expected when the game was played.

A car that had nearly run over Aggies a couple of years before was brought onto the field, Aggies rushed it, thinking the coeds on it were Baylor men (some things never change) and a fight ensued.

Aggies claim Baylor brought clubs to the game, Baylor says broken chairs were used. The Aggie Band played The National Anthem to stop the fight. Aggie claim is that senior cadet Sessums was clubbed after he snapped to attention and saluted.

He died a few days later. All athletic contests between the schools were suspended for four year.

I'm sure I've left out some details and got others wrong, but that should be enough to Google.

Interesting Link

A recent Dallas Morning News story about the incident. I remember reading in the past that the family of Charles Sessums always suspected that the killer of their son was politically connected. The story linked above is the first I've ever seen that even possibly confirms that.

Baylor Version

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This Week in Texas History
by BARTEE HAILE

“All Hades broke loose” during halftime high-jinks at the Baylor-Texas A&M football game in Waco on Oct. 30, 1926, and by the time order was restored an Aggie cadet lay fatally injured on the playing field.

Texans too young to remember the now defunct Southwest Conference may be amazed by the intensity of the red-hot rivalries of that bygone era. Fisticuffs in the stands and out in the parking lot were commonplace, but nothing compared to that afternoon the “Battle of the Brazos” erupted into all-out war.

Although the two sides would see eye-to-eye on little else in the days that followed, they did agree on how the melee started. A makeshift “float” (a flatbed truck or a car pulling a trailer) with six Baylor coeds holding up signs with the scores of memorable Bear victories passed in front of the A&M cheering section.

The Aggies were instantly incensed. Many believed the females were, in fact, male students in drag and, if so, an insult to their manhood. Others felt the float was a repeat of a dangerous stunt two years earlier, when a “bucking” Model T came close to running over members of the A&M football team.

Their blood may have been boiling, but the angry cadets managed to keep their cool. All except three, that is, and that trio tried to stop the offending float knocking one of the Baylor women off the back of the truck or the trailer and to the ground.

“Then almost the entire Baylor student body and most of the Aggie contingent stormed simultaneously onto the field and all Hades broke loose,” freshman Bear A.T. Moses recalled for the alumni publication in a 1985 interview.

“Precisely what happened next, I could not tell, nor could anyone else, for in a moment there was a swarming crowd of hundreds in a melee,” another Baylor undergraduate told a San Antonio newspaper three days after the incident.

The Baylor freshman squad, ineligible for varsity competition back in those days, jumped at the chance to show what they were made of. Seventy-nine years had not dimmed Barney Hale’s memory of the clash with “the A&M students (with) their uniforms on.” Hale and teammates “started picking them up and throwing them over the fence.”

Meanwhile, the public address announcer provided a blow-by-blow description of the riot for older and wiser spectators, who stayed in their seats.

The free-for-fall ended only after the Aggie band began playing “The Stars Spangled Banner.” The cadets snapped to attention, and the fighting subsided.

The gridiron was cleared of the bruised and bloody combatants, and the game resumed on time. Baylor won the contest 20-9 without further incident.

Throughout the late afternoon and into the evening, the injured were treated at doctors’ clinics and hospitals around Waco. One of the few kept overnight for observation was Lt. Charles Milo Sessums, a senior Aggie cadet from Dallas. He had been knocked out by a blow to the base of skull but was conscious and coherent when admitted.

Sessums’ sudden death from a blood clot at nine o’clock the next morning sent a shockwave across Waco, College Station and the entire state of Texas. What had been a case of “boys will be boys” mischief had turned into an unimaginable tragedy.

To their credit, the Aggies stepped forward and took responsibility for their part in the mayhem. During the second half of the game, the head yell leader, as he is known at A&M, personally apologized to the Baylor cheerleaders.

Within the week, a committee of ten Aggie seniors released a public statement that said in part: “We apologize to the ladies of Baylor for this incident, because one of our traditions is that no A. and M. man has ever willingly or knowingly harmed a woman.” The student paper at Baylor rewrote that sentence to read: “…no cadet has ever willingly laid hands on a woman,” proof someone had not lost his sense of humor.

But the A&M upperclassmen refused to take the whole rap for the riot. They claimed the Baylor students were loaded for bear with a stockpile of clubs, iron rods and sawed-off two-by-fours at the ready. The Bears denied the charge saying the Aggies mistook two trunkloads of football equipment for the alleged arsenal.

In the same statement, the seniors went to great lengths to refute a rumor making the rounds. According to this presumably tall tale, a group of cadets commandeered a howitzer, loaded the cannon on a railcar and headed back to Waco by train to reduce Baylor University to rubble. Only swift action by the Texas Rangers saved the Baptist campus from destruction, or so the story still goes all these years later.

The presidents of the respective schools emerged from a ten-hour meeting on Nov. 4 with a joint statement intended to calm everybody down. It had the opposite effect at Baylor, where the student paper denounced any attempt to hold the Bears even partially to blame and began a petition drive to sever all ties between the two colleges.

The presidents did just that a month later. Baylor and Texas A&M did not compete in any sport for the next four years and did not play each other in football until 1931.

Buy “Secession & Civil War” column collection for $14.20 and get “Outlaws & Lawmen” or “Revolution & Republic” at half price. Mail $21.30 to Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549 or order on-line at twith.com.

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It would be pretty cool if the part about the Texas Rangers intervening was true, even if there was no cannon on the train.

In 1938 FDR went on a tarpon fishing expedition out into the Gulf of Mexico from Port Aransas.
Later FDR's visit to the A&M campus via train was punctuated by the fact someone on FDR's staff mentioned FDR's favorite desert was Key Lime Pie.
Just so happened there was a cook at Sbisa who's specialty was...Key Lime Pie.
Later back in D.C. upon signing the appropriations bill to fund A&M dorms, in the Quad (yea same dorms still existing), story goes, Roosevelt remarked about the greatest Key Lime Pie he'd ever tasted at Texas A&M.

(There's a write up on this story somewhere in one of the many books about Texas A&M.)

[This message has been edited by BeBopAg (edited 8/28/2011 8:09a).]

Is anyone familiar with the origin of "WHOOP"?

Nevermind, I found this: http://www.agtimes.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=71426&sid=433f117cdf5c758ba0de3f551f658199

Anyone have anything else to add though?

[This message has been edited by bigtruckguy3500 (edited 8/29/2011 9:10p).]

A couple of book recommendations:

1.) "Aggies! Y'all Caught that Dam' Ol' Rat Yet?" by Joseph G. Rollins, 'Jr. - Naylor Publishing (San Antonio) - 1970

This one is a memoir by LCDR Joseph G. Rollins, Jr. '38, whose father, six uncles and 11 first cousins all attended A&M. The coverage of the 20s and 30s is excellent.

2.) Fragments of Early History of Texas A. AND M. College by David Brooks Cofer - 1953 - Texas A. and M. Press (College Station)

Mr. Cofer was the college archivist. Most of this book is primary source material recounting the experience of former students in the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th. Some of the stories go back as far as the first class.

Cofer is also the author of "First Five Administrators of Texas A. and M. College" "Early History of Texas A. and M. College through Letters and Papers," neither of which I recall having read.

Read that Tom DeLay had gotten expelled from Baylor for, besides drinking, going onto the A&M campus and painting buildings green and gold. While it was in the 1960s, any idea as to what buildings got hit? Are they still around today?

I worked at Sbisa in '01 right after it reopened. I was told there is a tunnel that goes from the basement of Sbisa to Hotard. Never actually looked for it to see if that was true.

The opening to the steam tunnel was in the second room from the west end on the south side of the building, IIRC.

I never tried to go down there and verify the connection to Sbisa.

In the Corps dorms, the steam tunnel entrance was underneath one of the stairwells. Could be mistaken for a closet under the stair to the second floor.

Hotard was interesting in that it actually had a basement. There was a locked back room in the basement. However, that was just a single mechanical room with no exit out, IIRC.

Steam tunnel map: http://tamutunnels.netii.net/

Vestal, improve that map some. Your idea has merit, but it needs refining. Thank you.

Just a thought....

Has anyone thought about filing an open records request for a map (and/or other information) of the steam tunnels? I've always wondered the truth vs. myth behind what goes where and such. I don't know if they would consider this information vital to protecting the infrastructure or is truly releasable. I've only been trained in FOIA from the viewpoint of a police officer...

"Its not fair that the old farts got to see them and we don't".

I can't imagine they would be required to release it in any case. But after September 11, security concerns alone would preclude it.