Memories of Football at WSC

by Orville Lee '53

My dad always claimed that he moved to Pullman so that he could see that his two kids got a college education. Kids in Pullman were blessed by living in a college town, especially during the great deprssion when you could go to college at a very minimum expense. As I recall my tuition the first semester at WSC in 1943 before I went in the service was $39.00 and if you didn't break anything in the chemistry lab you got $15.00 back at the end of the semester. Dad had grown up in Ewan where few kids, if any, went from there to college. He had attended the Spokane Business College, a two yeaar course, and none of his nine brothers and sisters had had the chance to attend college. Of my grandfather's 37 grandchildren only four of us, my cousins Donald Lee, George Wagner and my sister, Laura, and I had that privilege. All four of us, of course, graduated from WSC.

Washington State football stood high in my life from the time I was a kid growing up in Pullman. It all started when Dad took me to the USC game which, by winning, took WSC to the Rose Bowl. I was seven. Washington State's touchdown in the closing seconds of the game put them in the Rose Bowl for just the second time in their football history. We were sitting behind the goal post at the end where the touchdown was scored and the crowd went wild. I remember so vividly the man sitting next to us. He had his baby daughter with him and tossed her high in the air.

Homecoming was an exciting time for me. The homecoming game in those days was always with the Huskies. All the frats and dorms would erect very elaborate signs during the week prior to the game. The winner of the sign contest was usually one highly animated with many motor driven moving parts showing how the Cougar was going to whip or eat up the Huskie. Every year I visited every one and did my own judging. I could always pick the winner. I always figured that my good friend and classmate, Donnie Hollingbery, was the luckiest guy in the world to have a dad who was the football coach. To me Babe Hollingbery was the greatest. I recall one time when he went down to Reaney Park Saturday morning before the game and threw handsful of pennies at the kids.

The Babe was well known for his fast and devil-may-care driving habits. He did a lot of driving between Pullman and San Francisco because he was the one that created the East-West Shriners game and also coached the West team each year. (Donnie, many, many years later took up with the Shriners where Babe left off. The last time I saw Donnie he was leaving for Florida to attend a Shriners meeting). Well, while I was in high school I had an interesting experience with Babe on a trip to Lewiston and back. Janet Roberts and I, and Donnie and Jean Thornton, had the pleasure of joining the Hollingberys on a drive down the Lewiston Grade to Lewiston for dinner one Saturday evening. Back then the Lewiston Hill Grade was rather narrow and very winding with a succession of hair pin curves. (It still is, but with the new highway straight up the hill the old highway is only used as a scenic drive). Anyway, on the way back that night we went around one of those curves and sideswiped another car. Babe stopped the car and got out to confront the other driver. He was gone for some time and while he was discussing the problem, Donnie asked his mother, "Mom, whose fault was it?" and she answered, "Your Dad's, of course". I still thought he was the greatest.

There was an alley and a six-car garage behind our house on Campus Avenue. Dad kept his portable seed wheat cleaning equipment and Model A Ford back there and Grampa kept his Model T there. Early one evening Grampa heard voices down by the garage and snuck down to see what was going on. He caught two young men in the act in the act of removing the battery from his car. He hollered for Dad to come on the run. The boys picked up the battery and ran, but Dad arrived just in time to see them and recognized one as a college football player. He called the police who hunted them up and took them to the police station down town. Dad was summoned to identify the thieves and swore out a warrant for their arrest. The police called their coach to come down and bail them out. Those two boys, as it turned out were the stars of the WSC football team, known as the Gold Dust twins and were sorely needed for Saturday's game. As everyone knows, Coach Babe Hollingbery was a gifted talker and he sat down with Dad to discuss the problem. Well, Dad was a great Cougar fan and they compromised. He agreed to drop the charges, keep the episode private and got two tickets to Saturday's game.

In those days the mascot for WSC was a cougar named "Butch" after a famous early day football star by the name of Butch Meeker. It was always a thrill to visit Butch's cage and tease him into coming over to the bars of the cage. He was a docile old guy and didn't care much whether he was bothered or not. Students from Idaho one time before the big Saturday afternoon rivalry managed to sneak over tO Pullman on a Friday night before the game and steal Butch. Somehow he managed to be back at halftime in his cage for the sprint around the track. Og course the cameramen loved to shoot pictures of Butch and the best shot was with his mouth wide open and showing his fangs. That was a hard shot to get from his "Don't-bother-me" attitude, but there was one man who could get Butch to oblige. That was the college drayman, Bill Thornton. For some reason at the sight of Bill he would snarl and bare those big white teeth. Who knows, maybe it was Bill's big front gold tooth that did it?

Since our house was just down the street from the Colege President's mansion I had a friendly relationship with President Holland. Well, at least we said "hello" to each other on several occasions. Our house was across Campus Avenue from the Phi Delt house and catty corner from the Sigma Nu house. Billy Sewell was a Sigma Nu and a great quarterback for Washington State. I had the great honor of playing catch with him, so that watching my odol play for WSC on a Saturday afternoon was a special treat. There was a grove of pine trees up behind the old stadium. I had my favorite tree from which I got a bird's eye view of every play. I had to get to the tree early in the morning in order to beat out the other guys. Because of the numerous trees many of us Edison School kids could root from up there. I really did become a great fan of Washington State football at an early age. Then in the seventh and eighth grades I sold mums with the big crimson "W" in them for Raymond Florists and got into the games by halftime. And after that in high school I belonged to Hi Y, the group that ushered at all the games. Then, of course, there was college where you would never miss a home game. Following WWII and college I was a homebuilder and belonged to the Jaycees that had the concessions for the games, so there were few home games that I missed while growing up in Pullman. I'll always remember one cold winter when the team hosted San Jose' State. The temperature was below zero and there was but one paid fan. Seems impossible, but that was the claim. (Bob Smawley might testify to that). Norm Hatley said he poured a cup of coffee and it froze in the cup.

In 1937 Dad received his Soldiers Bonus of $600 for service in WWI and he put a down payment on a neat little two bedroom home across town on Pioneer Hill at 403 Side Street. (I note that all the house numbers have been changed since then). The purchase price was $3000. There was a vacant lot on the corner next to the house. An interesting piece of Washington State College sports history ocurred on that vacant lot. One day big boxes started arriving. Soon the lot was covered with these huge boxes. Then a crew came along and started emptying the boxes. Thosands and thousands of hats of all sizes, colors, kinds and descriptions were emptied onto the ground. There were top hats, baseball caps, straw hats, fur hats, sombreros, bowlers and you name it. Then the photographers arrived to shoot the scene. My curiosity was really aroused until I opened the Spokane Chronicle that evening. It had the whole story of how Buck Bailey had just married and he and his new bride had moved in just up the block. Pictures of the field of hats were in all the papers. As everyone knew, Buck Bailey wore a size eight, and it was difficult for him to find such a large hat, so he never wore one. At last he could now find one among that mountain of hats.

Speaking of Buck Bailey, Dad had a great baseball story he loved to tell. It seems that some time in the mid twenties he was the manager of the Ewan baseball team. During those times every little town in the country had a town baseball team. Well, Ewan had a very successful year and was in contention for the Whitman County baseball championship with just one more game with Colfax for the title. In order to defeat the formidable team from Colfax, Ewan would need an exceptional pitcher. Dad had heard of a couple of new players that had just moved to Pullman so he looked them up and since they had nothing else to do on that Sunday afternoon they agreed to join the Ewan squad for just that one game. It turned out to be a close and hard fought battle, but Ewan defeated Colfax by the score of 6 to 5. Members of the Colfax team learned years later that they had been bamboozled by Manager Orville G Lee, Sr. That Sunday afternoon the pitcher on the Ewan team was a guy by the name of Jack Friel and the catcher was Buck Bailey.

Fraternity life seemed the way to go if you wanted to go to college first class. All eleven of us boys from the Pullman High Class of '42 joined fraternities that fall. Of course it was inexpensive for all of us that lived in Pullman. I chose Lambda Chi where I enjoyed fraternity life for one semester as a pledge. Since most everyone in the pledge class was heading for war the fraternity initiated everyone into membership. I didn't live at the house because I had a very cheap place to stay called "home". However, I ate my noon meals there and often dinner in the evening where everyone sat at the big dining room table. Dinner was always very formal. You dressed suitably and learned proper table manners.

But it was not time for studying. The war in February 1943 was already in full swing and we were all chomping at the bit to join up. Football would have to wait.