Rice History Corner

I was interested to see several Media Day shots that included the Rice cheerleaders, both alone and with some of the players. There were only a few cheerleaders back then, and I believe they were elected. Anyway, while gazing intently at one of these photos a colleague in the Woodson said, “Is that Albert Kidd?”

Oh yes, it certainly is. Albert (or “Alberto,” as he is sometimes known) is the guy on the left in between number 24 and number 85:

Albert shows up in some later photos as well. This picture of the Rice Board of Trustees was taken in either December, 1999 or March, 2000 and he’s the one seated at left:

It also just so happens that we have an artifact from Albert’s cheerleading days in the Woodson, where it it stored in the vault. It’s his megaphone, which I liberated from his garage a few years ago. (These things are shockingly heavy, by the way.)

I’m sure there’s a lesson somewhere in this story. Now that I think about it, there are several, but I’ll mention only two. First, how wonderful to have such long, deep ties and to be willing to give your best for your school for a lifetime. Second, you probably shouldn’t let me into your garage.

I’ll check on the other 1962 cheerleaders when I get back in the Woodson in a week or so.

Extra bonus: Grungy somehow cleaned up the picture of Jess Neely and the owl from yesterday. It’s much better. Thanks, Grungy!

We’re still working hard on the Hundred Years of Rice football project, so interesting things related to athletics continue to surface. Most recently a couple of very fun boxes of photos from football media day in 1962 emerged from somewhere in the bowels of Tudor Fieldhouse. (And I owe a hat tip to Chuck Pool, Rice’s Sports Information Director, for locating these pictures and sending them over to the Woodson. Thank you, Chuck!)

For a little context, check out these images from the most recent C-USA Media Day which was held just this last weekend. Coach Baliff and the players are certainly dignified and articulate.

Things were a bit different in 1962. I’m sure Coach Neely was articulate, but the proceedings were both less elaborate and a little bit more . . . . well, let’s say “imaginative.” First, here’s the actual media. They’re taking the photos by the baseball scoreboard:

Anyone who knows me won't be surprised to hear that it took about 30 seconds for me to get fixated on those sheds.

And here’s what was going on: something that sounds like a contradiction in terms,  “posed action shots.” I’ve selected for your enjoyment a few of my favorites from the hundred or so shots in the boxes:

 And finally, the most impressive one of all:

Total. Maniac.

I don’t care who you are, that’s a lot of fun. I say bring it back! I’ll even go out and fling myself into the air to get things started. I’m not even kidding about that.

Bonus: This is a really bad quality picture, but it’s so fun I have to post it anyway. Who doesn’t love pictures of people holding live owls?

Back in ancient times before the invention of photoshop, people who wanted to mess with pictures had to use scissors. I think he might actually be sitting on the pony, though, with just the background replaced. Ernie Lain was a really fine football player, by the way. Here’s a link to the front of the sports page of the Titusville, Pennsylvania Herald from September 22, 1938 that has a piece about him. (It’s all the way over in the left column.) It’s worth opening this link just to see what was going on in professional baseball on that date.

Remember Pound? He’s come up here twice before, both times in connection with aviation. It’s been rattling around in my head for some time that somewhere I had seen a photo of him standing in front of an airplane. Today, for some utterly unknown reason, I decided it was time to find that picture. It took pretty much all afternoon, but find it I did:

That’s Pound on the far right. I have no clue who any of the others are. I don’t know their location. And I’m clueless about the plane. But here’s the thing–while they were up, they took pictures. There are a couple of the Rice campus from 2,000 feet, which are nice but not remarkable:

But the other two pictures just blew my mind. They flew over to the ship channel and the turning basin and got these amazing images of Houston industry in 1928:

That’s what us historians call context, baby.

I’m currently up to my eyeballs in documents about the 1969 Masterson Crisis. This is depressing and is sapping my will to go on, so I’m declaring today a General Holiday and heading off to the swimming pool. I’ll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, just to keep y’all busy, here’s another aerial shot of campus and Main Street. It was taken on the same day as the one in the Bare Ground post below, but from a very different angle.

Originally it was the faculty chamber, of course, and it was quite beautiful. This picture was taken in 1941 at the 25th Reunion of the first graduating class.

I’m not sure when they did away with this configuration, which was designed for a relatively small faculty and isn’t very flexible. Here are a couple of (sadly very dark) pictures of the renovation that was done in 1970. They are much clearer if you click on them to enlarge. The decor was a bit unusual.

At some point it returned to looking like something we’d all recognize as a board room, and it was revamped again in the run up to the Economic Summit in 1991. This summer it’s getting a much needed freshening up. These guys are finishing up the clean out by wrapping the portraits of the early board members for storage.

The floors will get some badly needed attention! I took these pictures earlier int he summer, so it might even be finished by now. I’ll check next week.

Bonus picture: This one is really old.

I’m out in the country for a few days trying to get some reading and writing done before fall semester starts. (It’s sweltering out here on the front porch, but it’s very quiet.) But fear not. I’ve got lots of material stashed away in my laptop so there’s no reason to stop posting.

Here’s a weird one:

 I had to look closely to figure this out. It’s my beloved drainage wasteland between the track stadium and the power plant, back when it was much more heavily treed than it is today. (If you zoom in you can see the back of the stands in the trees to the left.) They’ve clearly just made another attempt to deal with the water issues that arise from the now partially buried Harris Gully. (But note the standing water in front of the shed to the right.)

Naturally, the photo is undated. So what are the clues? Well, the stadium stands are very tall–as tall as they ever got. There’s a storage shed. And the hedgerow that once went all the way to the stadium from the colleges has been removed from the reworked area. My gut reaction to the picture is that it was taken during or immediately after the construction of the new stadium in 1950.

And just by chance I happen to have here an aerial photo of the campus in 1950:

This is almost too easy. Click to enlarge, then zoom in. The new stadium looks finished, but the old one is still totally intact. Even the fieldhouse is still standing. Grass is just beginning to regrow to the east of it, where the ground was scraped bare for the drainage project, and you can clearly see the hedgerow stop abruptly at the edge. I can’t make out the shed, but I feel confident that’s it’s down in those trees somewhere.

Only slightly off-topic: This aerial shot shows my favorite Rice geographical feature EVER–the gaping maw in the stadium parking lot where the buried part of the gully ends. That is so cool.

I promise I’ll stop picking on Neal Lane just as soon as I run out of good material.

This was taken at Norman Hackerman’s inauguration in 1971. Not everyone managed to get a balloon.

Sometimes things just line right up with no special effort. By my reckoning, I’ve been due for one of these episodes for several weeks and I got it yesterday. It started with another trophy.  On Tuesday afternoon I went back to the storage room where the 1935 SWC basketball championship trophy (from last Friday’s post) had been kept. This time I came away with a football trophy from the same era, but an odd one:

This was given in celebration of the Owl’s 1934 SWC football championship, but it isn’t the SWC trophy. (I’m not really sure where that is–maybe the R Room in the stadium?) We kind of stood and laughed a little bit because even though this will make a great display piece, it’s actually just a rather elaborate gift to the team from the Elizabeth Baldwin Literary Society, a Rice sorority. It also appears to have been presented ten years late. My photo isn’t great, but if you enlarge it and zoom in you can kind of see that the plaque on the bottom was engraved to the 1924 team (the “Heismen”–remember John Heisman was the coach then) by the members of EBLS from 1924-25. Strange, but back in the day people used to make a lot of elaborate presentations on the flimsiest of excuses. (Unlike today, of course.) In any event I was very busy and ready to let it go at that.

On Wednesday morning, for totally unrelated reasons I was frantically searching for a picture of an alumna who graduated in 1935. As I went through several scrapbooks, I suddenly started when I saw a photo of the trophy in an old newspaper story:

This presentation is taking place in the front of the physics auditorium.

So the story is kind of sweet. After the Owls got off to a good start in the 1924 season, the girls pooled their money and bought the sterling silver trophy as a gift to the team they were sure would be Rice’s first SWC football champions. They were probably lucky it only took a decade to pan out. I can’t help but wonder where they kept the trophy while they waited.

After I wore myself out thinking about where the picture of the high jumper was taken (to no resolution), I began to wonder whether I could figure out who he was. I began with the assumption that it was a Rice guy (otherwise why take it?) and started off with some disappointment. I went right to the early student scrapbooks for two reasons. First, the quality of the photos is usually much higher than of those in the Campanile. Second, it’s just fun. I really enjoy these early classes. And sure enough, I found a snapshot of the 1916 track team in Fred Manaker’s book:

They certainly look happy, but I sure don’t see the guy in the high jump photo. So off to the yearbook, where I do find him.  He’s Lawrence Kingsland, a very talented freshman who was also the star center on the basketball team:

I don’t know much about Kingsland yet, only that he was a good enough basketball player to be All-Southwest Conference for three years in a row and that he was made a member of the Rice Athletics Hall of Fame for his performance in track and field. Here’s the scorecard for the jumping events at the 1916 TIAA meet that was held at the Rice track. He won the high jump.

Two more quick things. First, I’d bet fifty dollars the reason Kingsland isn’t in the picture of the track team above is that he’s the one who took it.

Second,  sharp eyes will have noticed that Rice’s other high jumper that year was named “Waters.” That is none other than Jimmy Waters, the famous “Chief.” Waters graduated in 1917, served two years in the Army then returned to Rice as an instructor in Mechanical Engineering under J.H. Pound. He soon moved over to Electrical Engineering, where he served as chairman and also as  the Rice faculty representative to the Southwest Conference for many years. Waters taught at Rice for 45 years, leaving only to serve the United States again during World War II as a Colonel in the Air Force. He died three days after Christmas, 1964.