Update: You have to read the comments to this one. I got every possible date wrong and even which anniversary it was. It’s absolutely epic. The pictures are still awesome, though.
You may remember that after his death I posted some undated pictures of President Bush at a Rice football game:
After seeing them loyal reader John Wolda ’57 sent me some of his own shots of Bush at that game. Here’s one with former Rice Board chairman Charles Duncan ’47 and Elizabeth Gillis:
John also explained that the game, which was played on October 18, 2003, was a special one, honoring the great 1957 team on the 50th anniversary of that season. (Yes, I know it wasn’t really 50 years. But it was close enough and we were playing Navy. Who beat us again.) I wrote about this season game by game back in 2012 (here’s a link to the post about the A&M game) but I never got to the last one. This was the Cotton Bowl, played against Navy on New Year’s Day, 1958. The Midshipmen gave us a pretty good beating, winning 20-7, which makes writing about it not so much fun.
What brings this to mind right now is that among the images that David Davidson ’58 sent us are several he took up in Dallas at this game. There are some real beauties:
This last one is quite interesting. Rice’s Homecoming Queen that year was Penny Blackledge who also became the Cotton Bowl Queen. When the all-male Naval Academy found out that she had a twin sister, Patti, and that their father was a 1920 alumnus of the Academy, they asked Patti to be their Queen for the game. So I don’t know which one this is:
