Atlanta Daily World

PROFESSOR E. Luther Brookes

There is lecturing at Clark about the more th halogens. the bases. the gases and else in the solids just as he was back in 1926. He and Professor Belton, now deceased, saw tears in my eyes that chill December evening back in 1926.

The Clark Panther banquet was just done with. Big, red "C's" along with black sweaters and certificates had just been handed to 18 men ..men who had devoured turkey and cranberry sauce and hot rolls and olives and black coffee in the typical college football player manner.

Our girl friends were along and mine was ashamed of me because I, of all those assembled there, got no sweater, letter or certificate. Sam Taylor called every name, it seemed, save mine.

A FUTURE WRECKED

I came to Clark with a superlative senior high school record. This failure in football caused me to forget about the Ionic Wars and Metternich and the Arithmetic series.. from that December night forth my life was dedicated to FOOTBALL.

Only a few weeks before. Turkey Day, Clark had journeyed to Jacksonville for an Edward Waters date. It was the 1925 finale and the only trip I wanted to make in that season. It was the only one I did not make.

My parents and fellowmen from Gainesville. one hundred or so were motoring up to see me in action ..my mother wired me so, said she was "so proud." Until she reads these lines she will not know that I slipped what I could of a uniform into the team trunk (they took my varsity jersey that evening) and paid my OWN fare to Jacksonville so she and the folks would think Clark brought me along.

Dr. M. S. Davage let me have the $12.25 it took to ride down but until the 1939 Clark banquet when I was the main speaker. he did not know it.

I tried to bribe "Sleepy" Wilson into allowing me to wear his pretty varsity jersey that Jacksonville Turkey Day. No luck. I had to wear a ragged. red. rookie jersey. All the other guys had on those black canvas clock- ed deluxes. I told those little Gainesville youngsters that my varsity jersey was torn off my body in the Knoxville game. What would you have said?

A few weeks later they brought on the banquet I opened this re- count with. It was another defeat for this victim of sportsmania. as I have pointed out.

In 1926 I was left home on the first trip. Tuskegee murdered Sam's best boys at Cheehaw the next week so I was given "Shug" Cornelius' No. 47 jersey and start- ed at halfback against Morris Brown. Sam had nobody else.

Those four thousand fans who saw me jolt, twist, dodge, side- step pirouette and bull my way to nine personal first downs against Billy Nicks. Ox Clemens, et all. that day did not know of the fires that propelled me that day. They said I was wild crazy and un- tamed. They did not know that I was answering the hated indict- ment that all but benumbed my mind to the importance of any other factor save FOOTBALL.

INCURABLE WOUNDS

I don't know how I got back to Atlanta. My parents motored me to Gainesville and paid my fare back to Jacksonville so I could "join the team and return to At- lanta."

I don't know how I got past the doorman or on Track 4 or onto the right Southern train. but I did it that dark Sunday night. God. if I had failed. the folks would have known sixteen years earlier. THAT secret....all these years!

A college sweetie of mine once said: "Ric. I'd like to write your life story .it would be a pip." Maybe so. Anyway, I got back to Atlanta someway, somehow.

Sam let me into' the Edward Waters game in the final two min- utes and I fumbled the ball away. When I returned to Atlanta the words "Yellow!" was written on my room door in Chrisman Hall, carried away by fire these seven years.

WONDERFUL SIAC

Between September 12 and the time I failed to make the team in 1926, about October 5, I decided to be in this football picture in some manner.

I became a sports writer, thanks to Fay Young. From the outset thus SIAC has been a wonderful copy provoker. It was the "Asso- ciation" until around 1925. then the lads started calling it the "Conference."

Today, it is the most colorful body in the nation with the most colorful personalities and teams whatever the sport.

It has the finest football, bas- ketball and track ensembles in the country. It challenged my imagi- nation and brought into being the name I gave LeMoyne. . "Mad Magicians," and Florida "Men of Orange." etc.

I part from it with regret but the way Uncle Sam plans to scatter SIAC stars to the army camps this June is a calamity. John Moody has his already and Bill Bell has been hard hit. Maybe I should leave .before the body is looted of all its stars and heroes.

So long. "Ox." Lockhart, "Ma- jor." Captain Darnaby, Coach Harvey, "Skipper," Coach. Forbes Coach Nicks, "Bill" Bell, "Ted" and all the others. So long "Tub- by"....you invited me to Atlanta. remember?

DOWN MEMORY LANE

Letters I used to receive from 6 and 7 year old kids (one of them. White of Clark, is a junior now). They thought I was a great foot- baller, those kids did....That six- yard off-tackle touchdown through Tuskegee's 215-pound line at Alumni Bowl of all places in 1927 ..The dollar bill that white-haired Atlanta police officer gave me for running a 78-yard touchdown in South Atlanta; it was the only play I made that day and won for Clark, 6-0. Sam told me to go in and wash up. I came back on the field to see the last quarter when the officer called me. Folks thought he was going to lock me up. "Here,' he said, "take this dollar. ..you're a black 'Stumpy' Thomason."

Don't see him around now, the officer. The high school team that came all the way from North Carolina to see me against Bene- dict -.The coach asking for and getting my pants at the end of the game, autographed....That letter from West Virginia addressed. "Football Player No. 47. Clark Uni- versity."

The time I had Morris Brown's 1930 baseball champions, 4-0. going into the ninth inning. ..They scored 7 runs and won, 7-4. I bet $5 bucks I would stop their SIAC streak of 12 in a row with a curve ball and a fast one. Jum Reid ending my 58-yard run on the MBC 8-yard line after I thought I was "gone." The game ended 0-0, I would have been an immortal. He over took me, loafed rubbing it in . Oh why go on, so long, pals.