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.
quote: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
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.
quote:That also happened in 1917. and until 1923, the sips had never crossed the goal line at kyle field.
Did you know that no opponent scored against the 1919 Aggie football team?
quote: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.
Seven women attended Texas A&M in 1922 as “special unofficial students.”
quote: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.
What is now the University of Texas at Arlington was once a branch campus of Texas A&M.
quote: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
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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Brazos river bottoms were once heavily populated by Italian itinerant farmers and sharecroppers.
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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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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 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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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.