Traditions don't have to be documented, they don't have to be old, they don't have to be special.
What I am asking for is documentation and verification of historical
facts. The Patton quote is the main example of this. While it is a cool quote, and it may have been the type of thing Patton said, and it may have even been something he DID say.....it is unverified. And Aggies continually using it as if it were
fact makes us look a little silly.
While the pennies at Sully's feet is a neat little new tradition, it makes us look silly to invent historic "facts" to back it up. My suspicion is that somebody did it for fun, someone copied it, and a tradition was born.
Sometime after that, the
reason for the pennies was questioned, and rather than just saying it was what it was, the
mythology of what Sully used to do was created.
A of E may well be correct, that Sully did tutor cadets, and that they did leave pennies on his desk. But I am very suspicious of this, as it is a brand new story. Ask your dad if he ever heard such a story when he was in school.
A story that none of us old farts have heard before, that "explains" a tradition that is just a couple of decades old....it has the smell of an Aggie Urban Legend: One of those stories that "everyone knows" is true, but is completely made up.
If you don't know what I mean by Urban Legend, go to
http://snopes.com/ and spend some time looking around....after finals, of course.
