In one of the deeply weird developments that I’ve long since come to expect, some of the things that turned up in the box of materials that Grungy dug out of the stadium are papers related to the 50th anniversary reunion of the class of 1927:
The papers are interesting themselves but there’s also something interesting about why they would be discovered in the bowels of the football stadium. It actually makes sense: one of the main organizers of the event was Florence Stancliff ’27, seen here in a publicity shot taken for for the reunion. Florence’s husband Fred ’26 ran the R Association for 63 years, beginning in 1927, and as far as I can tell he never took a step without her. I’ve found papers of his in the stadium before, including a pretty good stash in one of the storage spaces in the R Room. (There is still stuff squirreled away all over this campus.)
We have that banner in the Woodson, by the way, and without looking I think we also have the letter sweater, which may well have been Fred’s. Florence has appeared here before, here and here. She seems to have been an unusual character. I would have liked to talk to her.
If you’re interested in their courtship while they were at Rice you can read their (very mushy) love letters at a blog put together by their granddaughter some years ago.
Next time I’ll have some things from the reunion itself.
Bonus: This is taken from the 10th green at the course I play on up here. The flag is about 12 feet tall because that’s the only way you can see it from the fairway. It’s steep.
I am interested in playing your course sometime! Looks beautiful and not that far from Sandpoint.
The Stancliff papers were in a locked file cabinet in the R-Room’s AV closet.
I’d been looking for R-Association and Owl Club records that might help me find the owners of a stash of letter jackets (and sweaters) and other letter-winner and academic awards that were squirreled away in other places on the south end of the stadium.
No one that I asked had a key to the file cabinet.
None of the keys in my collection opened it either.
I drilled out the lock.
The cabinet was roughly half-full, and most of that was papers from the Stancliff era.
The most recent item was from 1988.
Locked for 35 years…
The contents were boxed up and moved for safe-keeping, and that’s how Melissa got to look through them, before they were moved to the Woodson archives.
Did you know that Rice offered to help pay the city to build an overpass over the future highway 59 at Newcastle?
https://gladuphoto.smugmug.com/Shared/Rice-Shares/n-bdQ6wv/i-vtB92dR/A
The Stancliff story doesn’t stop there. Fred Jacob Stancliff, Jr. was a member of my class, the class of ’55.
Wasn’t it the “Roaring 20’s”?
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