Osler's Razor

One Baylor football memory, of course, trumps all the others: That Saturday in 1928 when Baylor last beat the University of Texas at their stadium in Austin. As some of you may remember, football was different in those days, and innovation was highly prized. Baylor’s coach at the time was Samuel (“Smithers”) Smitherson, a former assistant of the legendary Walter Camp of Yale. Camp, of course, was the inventor of the forward pass, and he was also the Hayden Fry of his day as several of his assistants went on to prominent positions of their own. For example, Tommie (“Scamp”) Randall of Wisconsin developed the backward pass (I believe the Badgers still play in Scamp Randall Stadium); Gabriel (“Lou”) Davis of Cornell was the first to employ male cheerleaders to distract certain of the Ivy League players; Sandy (“Wallace”) Pztzyski of Virginia Tech came up with the “quarterback vortex” offense using five quarterbacks simultaneously, while Camp’s defensive coordinator Francisco (“Bob”) Franco took a different path and led the nation of Spain for several years.

Smitherson, a former offensive coordinator for Camp, struggled to come up with his own defining play. For several years, he worked on the fake-injury play, in which a Baylor player feigned injury to draw attention away from the ball carrier, often by employing blood packets and removable prosthetic devices. It was in 1928, however, that he came up with his defining innovation, and a 68-12 victory over Texas. Law Professor Llewellyn Lloyd Rogers (grandfather of current Baylor Big 12 Faculty Rep Michael (“Hap”) Rogers) had the unusual hobby of closely following any NCAA rule changes. In September, 1928, he noticed a curious mistake: A provision which clearly was meant to have been inserted into the rules governing crew races had been accidentally placed into the provisions governing football. Specifically, in a slot between rules regulating onside kicks, new football rule 72.901 provided that “A coxswain, who may be of either gender and must weigh less than 105 pounds, shall not be counted against the number of team members allowed to compete in a given competition. For example, a heavyweight men’s crew of eight may include eight rowers AND a coxswain.”

Rogers immediately reported this to Smitherson, who began scouring the campus for a potential coxswain. He found his target in Sophomore Phyllis Gandalot, a 103-pound champion gymnast from Abilene. She was issued a suitable uniform clearly marking her as the “Coxswain” and placed in the Eighthback position directly in front of the quarterback, sitting on the haunches of the Center. Gandalot’s job was simple—to wrap herself around the ball before it was thrown, which resulted in her flying through the air with the ball. She could then either redirect the ball to a receiver or land and run with the ball herself.

The UT players were shocked and flumoxed by this development, and their reaction was enhanced by the fact that several of them had been smoking marijuana that morning. The Texas coaches, of course, lodged a hearty and off-color protest ("Dude... that's crunk, man!"), but could not refute that the amended rulebook allowed for the tactic, particularly given their incoherence under the influence of the marijuana. The Texas defense was helpless against the quite agile and fast Eighthback and unable to adjust to the extra player on the Baylor squad, falling behind 45-0 at halftime. In the fourth quarter UT responded by recruiting a third-grade boy from the stands to be their own Eighthback, but after scoring one touchdown he was removed from the game having lost a tooth. It later turned out that he was expecting to lose the tooth that day anyways, had been playing with it incessently instead of paying attention to the game as his father wanted, and was quite delighted with the loss of the tooth.

Labels: Baylor History

The 1920's at Baylor included some of the most memorable football games in the history of the institution. This would, of course, include the Baylor-Temple game of 1927, which, due to a foul up in the athletic department, led to Baylor defeating the eleven unsuspecting congregants at a Bahia Temple in Philadelphia by a score of 112-0. At the time, of course, the Temple University team was known as the Melon Balls, and were still in the company of their famous mascot, Ballsy. Ballsy was relieved of his duties at the Texas A & M-Temple game of 1932, having been sliced in half by a member of the corps of cadets when he began performing his usual madcap antics on the field. As many of you Temple U. fans know, their current mascot is a very sad-looking Owl with one testicle, in memory of their original mascot.

Tailpipe Laker was privileged to play with one of the best quarterbacks Baylor ever had, old Fuzzy (“Richard”) Murphy, who was the quarterback for Baylor the last half of the season of ‘30. He was about 5’1”—relatively close to being one of the “little people” as they call them now. Despite his size, he was supremely talented. That year, the last game of the season was against A & M (which was then still known as Childress Music Academy and Agriculture Station). The game started at 7 in late November in old Garf Stadium on LaSalle Avenue, where the extremely dangerous Swanburg- oriented convenience store is now. It was unclear why they had a 7 pm start—might have been a radio broadcast issue—but it was dark as black beans by the second quarter. Old Richard set out torches around the huddle to diagram plays, and had everyone run to one side of the end zone. He’d make a throwing noise, and secretly had a Western Union boy run the ball into the end zone. This unusual tactic worked six times in a row, and Baylor won 44-12. As payback, Western Union is to this day the official telegraph operator for Baylor University.

Labels: Baylor History

As now, much interest in the State of Texas was given over to the sport of football in the 1920's. Baylor had a quite interesting, if not talented, team, and I attended many of the games.

Much of my own attention to the sport of football was due to the exploits of my good friend, Thaddeus (“Tailpipe”) Laker, who was a renowned player of the time. My God, how that Tailpipe fellow could run! In 1929, he beat UT-Austin (then known as Texas Normal School for Women) single-handedly. This was before the days of all this sissy “equipment” the players wear now, of course. Tailpipe scored the last 37 points in a 67-32 win with no teeth left in his mouth—after the game we scavenged them up in a Bell jar and old Doc Ritter put them back in with a rivet gun on the train back to Waco. This was back when a football player was still allowed to have a good time, and no one had more fun than Tailpipe Laker—he used to bring his “dames” right into the locker room, feed them moonshine whiskey and once the booze took effect, he would sweet-talk them in a form of Latin which was mostly made up. Despite his frequent episodes of inappropriate behavior, he was perhaps the best yapback in Southwest Conference History.

I don’t think many teams use the yapback any more—you need the exact right player. Much of the job involved what is now called “trash talk”-- once the teams broke from their huddles, the yapback would get up on the shoulders of the halfback and yell stuff at the fellows on the other side, over the head of the linemen. All kinds of insults would be hurled—about the opposing team’s grades and their girlfriends. Some guys made it racial, but that didn’t go too far since it was all-white teams. About the only position like it now is the coxswain in the row-boating races.

Labels: Baylor History

The Freshman curriculum at that time in the 1920's was entirely composed of a set of required classes. First semester, students were to take Old Testament, Birth of the Confederacy, Molar Removal and Replacement, Fabric and Design, and, of course, Rhetoric for the Educated Adolescent. Second semester, the required courses were New Testament, the War of Northern Aggression, Teeth and Ethnicity, Single Needle Stitching, and Rhetoric II: The Indoor Voice. As one might expect, the quality of these classes varied widely, but each imparted at least some wisdom; at this late date of life, graduates from the 1920's are still able to repair socks, recall the artwork on confederate currency of many denominations (eg; the ten-dollar bill bore a crude likeness of George Washington on one side and a sketch of a grits farm on the obverse), quote Levitticus at length, remove molars if necessary, and to respond to teenage grandchildren in their own tongue. Quite an education indeed!

Labels: Baylor History

The negative reviews of Baylor in the 1920's were wide-ranging. Even the normally staid Princeton Review was effusive in its disgust with the Baylor of 1926. “Promoting claptrap and skullduggery does not an education make. If you want to learn something, you would be better off asking the local soda jerk or motorist in distress than the typical Baylor professor, many of whom are near illiterate themselves and received their positions by bribery, fraud or worse.” In the Time Magazine college rankings, Baylor was ranked last among “miscellaneous institutes and trade academies,” mistakenly listed as a branch campus of West Texas A & M, and described as, “suffering from equal infestations of grackles and ignorance, where students are taught by toad-headed men who are stern of opinion and always wrong.”

Needless to say, such poor reviews were not well-received on campus. An uproar developed, further, when it was found that the language quoted above was not created by those publications, but rather was provided to them by Baylor’s own Provost at the time, a man named Tony (“Big Rock”) Lucci, who was formerly a member of the Johnny Torrio organization in Brooklyn. The faculty and alumni were outraged, and their protests were only redoubled when both Consumer Reports and the Princeton Review provided to the Waco Evening Enabler (Waco’s leading afternoon daily) copies of the letters they had received from Lucci on Baylor letterhead, which specifically referred to the faculty as “near illiterate degenerate pig-men,” “pompous gasbags,” and “sub-human primates only interesting in cracking open nuts and other closed objects containing food.”

Lucci quickly reacted to the controversy, making clear that he never would have made such statements on the Baylor campus, and that his statements were being taken out of context. “These are statements I made in private letters to these publications as part of my job. They certainly do not reflect any lack of respect for the Baylor Faculty, who do a wonderful job, and of whom I am quite proud.”

Brooks, of course, supported his Provost and as part of his support added several jewels to the tiara worn by Lucci at a lavish ceremony. For his part, Lucci issued a second, clarifying statement explaining that “these letters were written in my private residence and delivered by the United States mails as part of my important job responsibilities, and in no way should be seen to reflect any disrespect to the Baylor faculty.”

Labels: Baylor History

Imperative Eight of Vision 1930, mandating a "drastic increase in executive salaries", was achieved almost immediately. Brooks, the Provost and several of the Vice Provosts were awarded immediate raises of at least 35%, and their contracts suddenly contained some remarkably generous provisions. For example, the executives were granted the use of a school-owned zeppelin which was to be moored at the football stadium ready for use on school or personal errands. They also were to be provided with daily pedicures, a Studebaker Land Yacht for their personal use, ornamental jewelry including tiaras and scepters, and a personalized firearm bearing the Baylor logo. President Brooks received, as to this last item, a remarkable Winchester shotgun capable of firing two rounds simultaneously in opposite directions to the right and left, making it almost impossible not to hit something.

Sadly, this partial success of Vision 1930 did not raise Baylor’s standing in the wider academic community. An archival review of college guides published in 1926 reflects this failure. For example, the Saturday Evening Post’s annual Education Ratings listed Baylor in the Sixth Tier (of seven), below two educational facilities located in correctional institutions. Similarly, the Consumer Reports College Ratings gave Baylor a black dot, meaning that Baylor was “unreliable” and “not recommended.” It’s succinct reports simply stated that “Baylor’s professors, much less its students, are unfamiliar with the great works of Western Thought and seem obsessed instead with celebrity news, fashions tips, football, dentistry and singing contests. Those who wish to seek a career in the fields of celebrity-stalking, dental assistanting, cheerleading, or clothes hoarding would be well advised to closely consider Baylor. Others should stay away.”

Of course, as we now know, better days were ahead.

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The plan to raise a $4,000 endowment (Vision 1930's Imperative Six) by extorting travelers also failed, in large part due to the representation on the Board of Intenders by travelers on these same roads. Those representatives amended the provisions created by President Brooks to reversed to process, requiring the school to pass out money to those coming through town. In its first year, this initiative led to a loss of almost $988 to the University, and to date (despite enthusiastic support by a series of presidents intent on appeasing the Board), the giving away money program has yet to turn a profit.

The statuary program laid out in imperative Seven met with, at best, mixed results. For reasons unknown, President Brooks at first left the creation of campus statuary to the Delta Upsilon fraternity, which responded by producing five striking and somewhat disturbing pieces: A 20-foot replica of the Washington monument, an armless football player with a prominent purple helmet, an Ionic column resting on two rounded stones, a cannon pointing straight up (which emitted periodic blasts of smoke), and an enormous limpid cylinder which slumped into College Creek, painted in A & M colors.

Baffled by these sculptures and their weird aesthetic, Brooks signed a contract with sculptor Bob Tech of Lubbock to create a college-themed sculpture to serve as a campus centerpiece. Tech was famous for depicting scenes of Texas history, and over the course of several months created a startling work made of welded iron and horsehide. The piece depicted a cowboy, an Indian, a police officer, a burly construction worker and a leather-clad motorcyclist all spelling the letter “Y” with their arms and upper torso, apparently while singing. The sculptor would offer no explanation, and Brooks was unable to talk the Board of Intenders into placing the sculpture on campus. Eventually, he was able to sell the work to Brigham Young University in Utah, which at least utilized the “Y” in their logo. Initially, Brooks had approached Yale University about purchasing the sculpture, but his entreaties were met only with knowing laughter and outright rejection.

Brooks then hired Paul Bryant Roberts, a New Yorker whom Brooks had overheard two men in a Manhattan bar discussing. Brooks had thought they had described him as a “Tier One Sculptor,” but in fact their Brooklyn accents had fooled him. In fact, Roberts was a Beer Stein Sculptor, and for his $12,000, Brooks received by motor lorry an enormous ceremonial stein celebrating Pfeiffer beer (a now-defunct brand famous for “a head as flat as Nebraska roadkill,” according to its print ads). This was deemed inappropriate for a Baptist school during prohibition, and the giant stein was sold to Sam Ford College in Alabama.

Having run through almost $50,000 with nothing to show for it, Brooks finally decided to purchase art which was already completed, rather than commissioning work yet to be created. He traveled to a gallery in Lawton, Oklahoma, purchased 12 counterfeit Remington statues he believed to be genuine, and placed them in the public spaces of Pat Neff Hall, little knowing how real their depictions of Indian raids would soon become. Tellingly, one of the statues depicted the Indians circling a lone figure who is seen defending himself with a thesaurus, and is wearing an ascot.

Labels: Baylor History

The fifth imperative of Vision 1930, to seek out success in sports not involving a ball, was somewhat successful. Baylor’s very well-funded equestrian team, for example, came close to winning Baylor’s first national championship, as described at greater length in a later chapter.

The ice hockey team was similarly successful. After a series of 0-0 ties, the squad made it to the national championships in 1924, losing to Harvard in the finals. Because the Baylor student body consisted almost entirely of people from Texas, there were none who knew how to skate or had access to the other accoutrements of ice hockey, such as hockey sticks or (most importantly) ice. Nevertheless, the Ice Bears (as they were called) played their matches in boots while wielding large sweep brooms. They played all of their games at opponents’ venues, and were in the Minnesota-Texas Friendship League, together with St. Olaf, Carleton College, Trinity College (International Falls), Gustavus Adolphus, the University of Minnesota-Duluth, St. Cloud State and the now-defunct Lumberton Tech. The Ice Bears were at first fabulously unsuccessful, losing games by horrendous scores and incurring several injuries of the coccyx and skull due to inadvertent slips on the slick ice surface. In 1922, however, the boys in green and gold employed a tactic devised by legendary coach Grant Teaff, who in his later years coached the Bears’ football team. Teaff bundled the players together with gaffer tape and placed them in front of the net, completely blocking any chance the other team might have of scoring. The tactic was effective, though the games were invariably low-scoring as the tied-together Baylor squad had almost no offensive potential. Teaff was less successful years later, when he tried to apply the same tactic to football, owing to the much larger area in which scores could be made.

Sad, isn't it, that somehow none of this is known to the "scholars" over at Beer Mat? Some "sports blog"....

[Does a photo of Prof. Serr skiing fit here? I'm not sure.]

Labels: Baylor History

Unlike some of the other goals, Imperative C of Baylor's Vision 1930, "seeking a more attractive student body," was quite affirmatively achieved. In respect to the male students, the recruitment efforts for the stillborn Pansy Division greatly upgraded the physical attractiveness of the enrolled students. To this day, Baylor’s male students are particularly attentive to personal grooming and are unusual in their willingness to undergo procedures such as manicures and artificial tanning. Oddly, this seems particularly true of those students hailing from the Dallas area.

As for the females, Brooks embarked on an ambitious program to eliminate overweight females. He began with the sophomore Samantha Bajus, who had so cruelly been specifically named in the Vision 1930 documents. Brooks and his minions caused her to be enrolled (against her will or knowledge) in a physical education class with the seemingly innocent title of “Running for Fitness.” The instructor was Football Coach Frankie (“The Wallet”) Fabezio, formerly a welterweight boxer in Detroit. Miss Bajus was the only student of the class, an ominous sign. She was provided with a track outfit consisting of XXL shorts (which fit), a size medium t-shirt (which did not), and a sandwich board reading “Fatty!” on both sides. Fabezio would follow her in a Packard as she jogged around campus, with a sound system mounted on the roof of his car. As she ran, he would make announcements to the public, such as, “See her wobble! See her jiggle! See the enormous fat fatty girl try to run!”

Whether it was intended or not is still in dispute, but eventually Febrezio “accidentally” ran her over with the Packard, leaving her corpulent body in the middle of University Parks Drive to rot and fester in the sun. Eventually, after the Waco Evening-Absconder newspaper took note of the incident, the University did take action, placing a large sign near the corpse reading “Baylor Vision 1930, Imperative III: Fatties Need Not Apply.” The incident received favorable coverage in the news, editorial, fashion and “Texas Living” sections of the Dallas Morning News, complete with photos of the accident site and the remains of Miss Bajus, who had been reduced by passing cars to a leathery disk some 18 feet in diameter. The lead editorial the following Sunday, in fact, was headlined, “College Finally Takes Action Against Unflattering and Unfit Students. Huzzahs!” For decades thereafter, female students who threatened even minor weight gains were threatened with being “Bajused.” As a result, Baylor women to this day are well-known for their fitness and near-universal tendency towards extreme eating disorders. Baylor is now a school which leads the nation’s religious colleges in percentage of gay men and anorexic women, and all credit properly belongs to President Brooks and his foresighted Vision 1930.

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The President of the University during this period, Samuel Palmer Brooks, ruled Baylor for nearly three decades. Among the advancements made in his administration was the completion of several major buildings, including Morrison Hall, the Fashion Pavillion, and the Tidwell Bible building. In celebration of the school’s many victories over Judge Baylor’s escaped feral bears (and their progeny) and over the opposition of those bears serving on the Board of Intenders, Brooks also expended nearly $42,000 for a gigantic green bear, which was known by its German title of "GummiBayer" until the advent of WWII. It now stands, of course, near the Baylor law school.

Perhaps most notably, Brooks in his second decade initiated an ambitious program of improvement grandly titled “Vision 1930.” Unveiled in 1918 and planned for completion in 1930, Vision 1930 was broken into eight goals, or “imperatives.” As initially unveiled in 1918, these goals were both directive and challenging. These imperatives have previously been described here, but of particular note was "Imperative 1. Baylor’s Administration and Students Must Seek Out and Kill The Leaders of Texas A & M University. Baylor will seek to maintain a culture that emphasizes vengeance against those who sully our honor, especially those who do so from Texas A & M University. Believing fully in the Christian concept of a just war, we are assured God will aid us in this fight."

In the end, the President, Provost, and several deans, professors, lecturers, special education teachers and footmen associated with Texas A & M died in mysterious circumstances and were found dismembered in the desolate plains surrounding College Station.

Naturally, Baylor was unfairly blamed for this, simply because the leadership of the school had declared the causing of such tragedies their number-one priority. Expecting retaliation, Baylor officials concocted several schemes to protect the school. One plan, designed to exploit the Aggies’ extreme fear of homosexuals, was to protect the perimeter of campus with a special “Pansy Division” which would be recruited from the West and East coasts. Though several hundred young men were recruited to the effort (and later enrolled as students, in accordance with a secret program which may still be in place) the governing Board of Intenders nixed this idea before it could be fully implemented. Thus, Baylor was forced to rely upon the Texas Rangers, the campus police force, Sailor Bear, and specially-recruited members of the Johnny Torrio organization in Brooklyn (some of whom were awarded full professorships) to protect the campus. Working together, these groups were able to develop several methods to keep marauding bands from A & M at bay. One technique called for the campus police to stop A & M students traveling in motor lorries, wagon trains and even armored locomotives towards Waco, and babble incoherently about parking stickers. While the Aggies were distracted, Sailor Bear would enter the vehicle through the passenger side and maul the occupants, seeking only the reward of a bottle of Dr. Pepper.

Labels: Baylor History

Almost immediately upon his installation, President Brooks made some interesting choices. He required that faculty live in single-sex dormitories, provided scholarships to those prospective students with the letters “arg” in their last names, and began the tradition of forcibly re-baptising all incoming freshman in the Brazos, along with any student who misbehaved. Brooks took the mission of adult baptism quite literally, and in the course of four years baptized one student, Lesli Bargtarg, no less than fourteen times.

Despite these odd developments, there were many pioneers among the graduates of this era around the turn of the century, making their marks on Texas and beyond. Most significant, perhaps, was Simone DesChartreuse, a native of France who ended up at Baylor through a freak navigational accident which caused a French frigate bound for New York to veer wildly off course, steer up the mouth of the Brazos river, and run aground near Huntsville. There, the ship was commandeered by a group of prison escapees, who further guided the boat to Waco, where it again ran aground. The press surrounding the incident was very bad, and the State of Texas offered free tuition at Baylor to the surviving French passengers. The only one to take the State up on its offer was Simone DesChartreuse. She stayed in Waco, mastered both English and dentistry, and upon graduation pursued a Ph.D. in dentistry with Professor Floyd Wilhelm. Together, they developed modern techniques for bonding, replacing, coloring, cutting, whittling and bronzing teeth, many of which are still in use. DesChartreuse, however, worked alone in developing her most significant advance. Convinced that she could improve dental health by bombarding patient’s mouths with UV rays, DesChartreuse built self-contained units which would flood the body with such light. While the primary purpose of these experiments was a failure, she found that the patients in her experiments were left with even, safe, golden tans, and she quickly began to market her “tanning beds,” starting an industry which still thrives in Waco and it’s environs. By 1910, she was the richest woman in Texas, a status she retained throughout her life, especially after her subsequent invention of a “spray” which held hair in place.

Labels: Baylor History

The new century at Baylor brought many new challenges. One great crisis was averted in 1910 when an extremist religious group attempted to take over the governing body of BU, the Board of Intenders. By Baylor’s original charter, the school was to be governed by a board consisting of 107 members of the First Baptist Church of Baylor County, or such lesser numbers as are members of that congregation at any given time. It was, of course, highly unorthodox for a major University to be governed entirely by the members of a fairly small rural church, and problems abounded. The large size of the group hindered consensus, and several meetings of the Board ended in an exchange of gunfire and the establishment of defensive positions around the church, a deadlock which most often resolved itself at suppertime as the militias got hungry. However, in late 1909, a new and charismatic member came into the Congregation of First Baptist Baylor, a Bostonian named Pemberton Lloyd Stewart IV. He espoused a radical brand of Unitarianism which emphasized getting along and not bothering with insignificant matters, while placing a lesser emphasis on either liturgy or Bible study, which he referred to as “Bibolatory.” Quickly, through a series of potluck suppers at his home, Stewart seduced the Baylorites with his theories, and by the dawning of 1910 the church officially allied with the Unitarian faith, purchased a series of stained-glass windows displaying “Heroes of Good Sportsmanship,” and began to shift the serving of wine from the Eucharist to the social hour and most other church functions including several involving youth.

Needless to say, the changes at the First Baptist Church of Baylor County augured troubling changes at Baylor University. The church congregation, sitting as the Board of Intenders, instituted several startling changes at the school, including the establishment of a new school of “Cognition and Cooperation,” the lifting of the bans on student drinking, dancing, fornication, and the worship of idols, and a new rule linking faculty pay to their “empathy rating” from students. Needless to say, bedlam followed. President Brooks was aware that rapid action was needed to save the institution from liberalization. He quickly swung into action, with the aid of law professor David Guinn.

Brooks’ plan was radical, to say the least. First, he identified seven dissidents from the Board of Intenders and brought them to Waco in the dark of night. Declaring that these seven were a quorum, he then had them approve a motion to reverse the new changes and to shift the way members were selected for the Board of Intenders. This latter change was perhaps a bit rushed, as it provided for a 36-member Board of Intenders which would be selected according to a somewhat bizarre formula: 12 of the members would be selected by the President of the University, 10 of the members would be named by the governors of the first 10 states (in alphabetical order), 5 would be chosen by Baylor’s official live bear mascots, and 5 were to be picked at random from those traveling on the public roads in and around Waco. Once implemented, this plan led to some very unusual results—for example, the live bear mascots often placed themselves on the Board, then demanded food and other gifts. Nevertheless, this plan did divest the wayward church in Baylor County from active control of the University, and opened the door to a more modern era in which Baylor was to be ruled by a bizarre inbred cabal designed to ratify almost anything the President of the University chose to do.

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Because of the sad fate of her beloved father, Liz Baylor deeply resented the choice of the bear as Baylor’s mascot by the Board of Intenders in 1907, and more than once attempted to kill the live bears kept on campus. Her last attempt to do so was in 1911, when she tied up one such bear, loaded it onto a motor lorry which was then put onto a frigate in Lake Waco. Once in the middle of the lake, she pushed the bear off the back end of the boat to ensure its demise. Much to her surprise, the bear proved to be a strong swimmer, and eventually clamored aboard an abandoned rowboat, which it successfully piloted to shore by paddling with its large paws. Eventually, the bear caught up with Liz Baylor herself on the shore, leaving a long gash on her arm, which was very nearly severed, before the bear escaped into the woods. This episode, the only known instance of an American black bear piloting a leisure vessel, was enshrined for years as the genesis of Baylor’s old “Sailor Bear” mascot, which was popular from 1912 until 1943, when it was dropped due to the fact that a German U-Boat which terrorized trans-Atlantic shipping was learned to be called “Baylorsgebang- bruindasboot,” with a picture of the Baylor mascot stenciled on its side next to the Nazi swastika. A German propoganda photo of that juxtaposition appeared in the New York Afternoon Democrat in May, 1943, bringing many questions from the Yankee intelligensia about the connections between the Third Reich and Baylor University (and the entire Southwest Conference).

Once established in Waco, Baylor continued to grow in size and stature among learned academies. In this period, the school focused on a core curriculum of Latin, rhetoric, history, dentistry and fashion merchandising, with no electives outside of these areas being allowed. Significantly, each student had to take an equal number of classes in each discipline, resulting in a remarkably versatile group of graduates capable of giving a historical sermon in Latin while adorned with the finest fashions and whitest teeth in all of Texas. Employers took note, and Baylor graduates were in great demand.

Little did the students at that time, however, know of all that was to come-- the triumphs of the equestrian squad, the hosting of the NBA all-star game, and the marvel of Practice Court among the feats they could not imagine.

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During the years around the turn of the century, Baylor’s identity was fluctuating in ways large and small. For example, in 1901, the Board of Intenders came close to making the school single-sex. Two competing factions emerged on the Board—one favoring a change to an all-male student body, the other favoring the exclusion of males to create a Women’s College. Due to the fact that no less than three members of the Board suffered from an odd neurological disorder which caused their right hand to shoot upward affirmingly at any suggestion, both motions passed, effectively banning the admission of both males and females. A brief debate ensued on whether it was feasible to continue the College with such an odd rule in place. While a significant minority of the Board wanted to seek out non-gendered students, ultimately both votes were rescinded.

Similar confusion reigned over the selection of a mascot for the college. From 1900 through 1901, the official mascot was “Pretentious Man,” a large-headed individual in a tuxedo, top hat and spats carrying a riding crop and Harvard diploma. He appeared to have an unpleasant sneer, and was roundly disliked. As their Senior gift to the college and community, the class of 1901 drowned him in the Brazos. As he was being put down, the mascot protested in his uniquely effeminate way: “My word! I do believe they intend to kill me! This is scandalous! Stop, unlettered scalliwags!”

The Autumn of 1901 saw the installation of a new mascot, known as the “Unlettered Scalliwag.” Played by an illiterate A & M graduate, the Unlettered Scalliwag was, in contrast to Pretentious Man, extremely popular. Dressed in a Baylor sweater and oversized diaper, he roamed campus handing out beer to faculty, students and small children alike. Always pleasant, he offered up a popular chant at football games, as he attempted to lead the crowd in spelling out “Baylor.” At times, the attempt went into hundreds of letters, often including “X,” “J,” “Z” and other Scrabble favorites. Sadly, he also met his end quickly when, in Spring, 1902, he was struck and killed by the first automobile to visit Waco, an Oldsmobile driven by President Brooks as he arrived in town to take his new post.

In the Fall of 1902, the symbol of the school became the “Baylor Oldsmobile,” which was simply the President’s car painted in the (then) school colors of Black, Gray and Mauve. This mascot disappeared during the infamous 1903 “Disaster Bowl” football game against the booze-soaked New Orleans School of College University [sic], and was replaced by “Mr. Ghost,” which was simply a random Baylor freshman dressed in a sheet with two holes cut out for his eyes. Mr. Ghost lasted for a relatively lengthy two years, before he perished in a dove-hunting accident. He is still remembered annually through Baylor's tradition of "White Out" at a basketball game, at which the spectators remember their mascot by wearing all white.

Subsequently, in 1905, Baylor adopted “Prudence Abstinence,” a Bible-quoting church-lady mascot. Perhaps the least popular of any mascot, ever, anyplace, she carried a King James Bible and a handgun, and often shot at students she felt were violating the moral code of the Baptist faith. Her tenure ended in 1906 when she was convicted of multiple murders and executed on the lawn of a freshman dormitory to the great Huzzahs of the student body. In turn, she was replaced by Darty, a large poisonous snake. Darty quickly matched the death toll achieved by Prudence Abstinence, and in turn was replaced with "Pluggy the Clown," an overweight middle aged man in a clown suit known for his catch-phrase, "Hey, kid, get in the van." Pluggy proved to be a tort liability disaster for the school, and the Board of Intenders finally acted to normalize the situation, passing a motion naming the bear as the Baylor mascot and allocating funds to provide the campus with at least two live bear mascots, to be named in a manner most ingratiating to the President of the University at the time the bear was obtained.

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Once the commitment to move to Waco was made, there was great discontent among the student body, who to a man and woman were happy in the familiar surroundings of Baylor County. A preparatory trip to Waco was not reassuring, as the traveling party (Tiffany Baylor, student body president Wade Lloyd Wade and an Indian guide) found the University-Parks area to be particularly desolate. Not only was the land for the college infested with both fire ants and Africanized killer bees, but it was rife with hostile Indians from the Feifth Tribe. The Feifths were a particularly ferocious group, often armed not only with sword and shield, but with fragile eggshells filled with fire ants or bees and then hurled at an intruder.

As the small party camped on the banks of the Brazos, the Feifths attacked, striking at night from their village near present-day Fifth (nee: Feifth) Street and reaching the tent of Tiffany Baylor first. She fought valiantly but succumbed to the marauders, eventually being dragged back to their village where she lived out her life. Hearing the commotion, Wade Lloyd Wade fled. He ran headlong through the mesquite forest, cut, bruised and battered. He lost track of the weather, fell in a dry ravine, and lay there assuming death was to arrive on quiet feet at any moment. It was not death who found him, though. Rather, it was Waco pioneer Rapheon Sanger Memorial, a woodsman and nephew to Dwight Sanger Waco, the land speculator who had founded the town in much the same manner that Judge Baylor had founded his.

Memorial heard what he thought to be the sounds of a wounded animal in the ravine and responded on horseback. He found the young and wounded Wade instead, gasping on the gravel soil. Wade was delirious in the sun, and was trying to ask for “Baylor Wine.” Memorial took this to be a reference to the “Baylor Line,” a tracker’s trail from Fort Worth to Baylor County. Immediately, Memorial warmed to the stranger, with his reference to his familiar haunts, as Memorial was born near Baylor County himself and had ridden the Baylor Line many times. Memorial hoisted Wade onto his horse, brought him home, and fed and refreshed him. Later, Wade was able to return to Baylor and lie about the circumstances sufficiently enough that the planned move was completed. This account of the tale is drawn from the plaque which formerly stood in Memorial Hall on the Baylor campus.

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Much has been written by others of the move to Waco from Baylor County in 1890, most compellingly by Wade Lloyd Wade in his 1912 memoir Get the Hell Out! The Wade Lloyd Wade Story. Current Baylor students may wonder what their own experience of college might have been like had it taken place at the old home in Baylor County. That site, of course, is in a part of the state where the sky appears larger, and which well into the 1950’s was largely an unfenced and wild land where buffalo, key deer, largemouth bass and wildebeests migrated freely in enormous herds. To have been a young man or woman in such a place would no doubt be a lesson in perspective and beauty as only the forces of God through nature can teach.

But, the University did move. The motivation for the move is lost in the West Texas sands, it appears. One theory holds that the move was motivated by a land speculator’s fraudulent claims: Specifically, that a man named Eugene Parks set out a dirt path near the Brazos and a large tract of land he had bought for pennies, called it “University-Parks Drive,” and sought to entice either a prison or University to the area. He personally appealed to an elderly Eric Tech, the founder of Texas Tech University, which sat in desolate Lubbock, a town which was attacked (and conquered) with regularity not only by the Comanche, but the French. Tech turned him down, as even then he was plotting to sell the school to the State of Texas at an egregiously inflated price. Huntsville, of course, won the prison. With a chunk of land to deal, Parks made a generous offer to Tiffany Baylor, who agreed to move the University and its 4,000 students to a town which barely existed but for a few Indian encampments and their “Red Man Museum” along the Chisholm Trail.

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Baylor's original Mandatory Chapel building was a tiny wooden clapboard shed suitable to the very small student body, but this was lost in an unfortunate and mysterious fire in 1849, and again in 1850 & 1851. Thereafter, chapel was conducted outside, rain or shine, in a stone ampitheater built by work-study students.

The spiritual life of the school also benefited from the production in 1859 of the school’s first “Mini-Theology,” a pamphlet which briefly described the theological tenets which all students must accept. Initially, these included belief in the doctrine of “Guilty Transubstantiation,” which held that the bread and wine of Communion were literally converted to the body and bread of Christ when consecrated and consumed, and that Christians were simultaneously required to eat and drink said blood and flesh and condemned to Hell for doing so. Another tenet barred the drinking of colored liquids of any kind, which was consistent with regional Baptist practice at the time. This forbade the drinking of beer, whisky, wine and all spirits save for those which were utterly clear in color, such as vodka, gin and a special colorless tequila which was produced in Mexico expressly for Baylor students. While this doctrine was later refined, its early version contributed to the rapid growth of the University and the many offspring produced by these early students during their college years.

After a break during the Civil War, Baylor grew quickly. By the 1880’s the student body was nearly 4,000, with many living in tents fashioned from tree bark and surplus burlap captured from passing army mule trains headed West. It was during this period that the only United States President to attend Baylor, William Howard Taft, was in residence while studying Rhetoric and Dentistry. After two years, of course, he transferred to another upstart school, Yale, from which he graduated, but a stanchion still marks the spot where he camped out his freshman year, close to the former Baylor Bear Barn. Intriguingly, Baylor ever after enjoyed an interlinked destiny with Yale University, which provided the education of many of its future leaders—in fact, one president of Baylor (Prosser) was plucked directly from the undergraduate ranks at New Haven.

During this period, many students complained of the difficult workload, especially the dentistry requirements each semester, taught by the most ornery and offensive dentists in Texas. A note nailed to a "message board" (which was literally a board) by one Sirius R. Downer complained thus:

"If I ever hear someone tell me again how "in life there will be disrespectful people too" again, I am going to vomit. That has been shoved down my throat since day one and had me believing that every dentist in America was a total disrespectful jerk and that I was going to be in a dental office every day getting berated. You are all a bunch of jerky jerks, and everyone else I know feels exactly as I do, you can ask them, too. And I can't leave because I am in debt and the railroad does not come within miles."

Sadly, Sirius died in the Spanish-American war, as he stood alone on a hilltop complaining about the rations that the army was providing him.

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With Judge Baylor gone after the probable bear attack, the talents of the remaining members of his family became more pronounced as Baylor University continued to grow. The longest tenure (literally) of any of them belonged to Liz, who taught rhetoric until 1927. Though her faculties were greatly diminished and her teaching methods were largely reduced to prodding others to speak while striking them with a cane, she was a treasured link to Baylor’s proud beginning and history of tort suits by students.

Tiffany Baylor, now widowed, also proved a guiding force in Baylor’s early days. In addition to her important foundational work in establishing the department of Fashion Merchandising, she was very active in the founding of another Baylor tradition that continues to the current day, Mandatory Chapel. Beginning in 1847, Tiffany Baylor led chapel services on campus every Monday and Wednesday; students who failed to attend were taken to the edge of Baylor County and abandoned, generally dying of exposure in the vast desert region to the West. The chapel services normally featured a performance by a touring troupe that Mrs. Baylor was able to engage at a reasonable price.

Because these acts were retained sight unseen, there were very often terrible misunderstandings, including an unfortunate incident in 1857 when a group of Guatemalan “Evisceristas” escaping overland from Mexico were mistaken for the entertainment that day and thrust onto the stage abruptly. They did perform one song with voice and folk guitar, the title of which (roughly translated) was “Jesus, You Lift Me Up (Higher)!” However, several students were ignoring them or, worse, passing notes, laughing, and reading the school newspaper. The Guatemalans swept down from the stage and rudely grabbed up three young female students, whom they kidnapped to Sante Fe and eventually integrated into their gang. Another chapel disaster of that period was a presentation by one Jedediah Swanburg on the topic "This is How We Do It (Outrageous Party People)!" Deguarretype photos of his performance depict a striking departure from the social mores of the time.

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Through the 1850’s, enrollment at Baylor rose dramatically, due in equal part to the expansion of the population within Texas and Judge Baylor’s creative efforts to enroll students from diverse jurisdictions. Most notable of his innovations was his creation of an advertisement for the school (grossly overstating its credentials) on a removable cardboard flap glued onto the front of every Sears, Roebuck & Co. mail-order catalogue in 1853. It was also possible that Judge Baylor and his children forcibly enrolled students after seizing them from passing wagon trains traveling to points West, as the main trail leading to Roswell, New Mexico and onward to Newport Beach, California passed close to the school and both of those destinations were then, as now, popular with families containing children and young adults.

Judge Baylor passed away in 1860, when the school that bore his name had grown to over 200 enrolled students and seven professors, the latter group including all five of his children, himself and his wife. The circumstances of his death are not well documented. News accounts reported that the night watchman at the school was overwhelmed by intruders bearing bludgeons and whisky and who seemed to be uncharacteristically clothed for a warm climate-- in fur coats. Much of Judge Baylor’s body was lost, and only a severely scratched right arm was found. Later analysts have theorized that the loss of his body was due to a wild animal attack, possibly by the very bears he had freed when he founded Baylor University.

Interestingly, this is consistent with the tragic deaths of other college founders at the hands of men and beasts later made the mascot of that university. Taylor Cincinnattus, founder of the University of Cincinnati, was mauled to death by a mixed group of bears and wild cats which had escaped from a private zoo; Ernest Vanderbilt was killed in a duel by Commodore Edmund Peary; Franklin LaCrosse, founder of the University of Wisconsin, suffered a fatal stroke when he was attacked by badgers; Thomas Jefferson died due to mistakes by his physician, Robert ("The Wahoo") Cavalier; and, perhaps most famously, University of Oklahoma founder Norman Oklahoma died while swimming in the Caribbean, when he was struck by an errant Dutch schooner. Even old Eric Tech, founder of Texas Tech University, suffered a similar fate. His home was invaded by hordes of fire ants seeking out his large collection of cheese. Tech was nearly fully consumed by the greedy red raiders, who also stripped the house of the cheese.

After his demise, the remaining arm of Judge Baylor was located and cast into a statue of Judge Baylor which still stands on the Baylor University campus. That statue depicts Baylor standing on the front porch of the school’s main building, gesturing into the distance where a Texas autumn sun fell gently into a bright and promising horizon.

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Formally, the school began in January of 1845, housed in the former Bear barn, with the only student being Gideon, for whom Tiffany had designed a special pant to obscure the loss of his left foot to the marauding bears. At that time, of course, rather than wearing conjoined “pants” as men do now, people made or purchased a “pant,” which covered just one leg. Normally, as one might imagine, they were worn two at a time for near-complete coverage. Tiffany Baylor was a master of the home manufacture of the pant, and she later offered her creations via mail order, an enterprise which provided a significant income and also led to Baylor’s groundbreaking development of an academic program in fashion merchandising, which continues to flourish in the present day.

At the time of the arrival of the first group of twelve “outside” students on August the 29th of 1845, the new University had three faculty members: Judge Baylor teaching Rhetoric, Latin and History, Gideon teaching Dentistry, and Tiffany offering instruction in Fashion Merchandising. The re-outfitting of the former barn was quite impressive. One of the incoming students, Langston O’Dell of Erie, Pennsylvania, wrote a letter home insisting that “the facilities here are quite remarkable given the location of the school. The main building is built of wood and fabric, with a coal furnace at each end, and spittoons generously placed, natch. You would quite admire the construction.” The bears, displaced from the barn, had been returned to the wild but for reasons unknown did not wander far from the campus. In fact, in 1847, several of these same bears joined cause with a band of Comanche Indians in raiding their former home, leaving with two students and the school’s full store of berries, nuts and cheese.

Despite reports to the contrary in the habitually incorrect Bear Meat blog, current Baylor President John Mark Lilly was not a member of this initial group of students, but rather matriculated the school as a freshman in 1983, a mere two decades ago.

The first group of students was a varied lot joined in but one respect: It appears that each had compelled in their parents a desire for great separation between progenitor and offspring, and an acceptance by the parents that it would be fine with them if their child was subjected to a harsh environment which could include whippings, random grade adjustments and the constant threat of attack by feral bears. Some, like O’Dell, seemed merely feckless, while others, such as Tina Trowbridge of Baltimore, quickly demonstrated tendencies which were challenging and at times straightforwardly felonious. Trowbridge, in fact, was a known firestarter. Though she was never caught, it is suspected that she played an active role in the fires which destroyed the campus in 1846, 1847, 1850, 1852, 1866, and 1898 (after the school’s move to its current location). She was significant for another enduring tradition, however: Trowbridge, an attractive, thin, petite blonde, possessed both a severe eating disorder and a high, clear alto singing voice. She was able to combine both when she organized Baylor’s first “Sing” event in 1848 with fellow students Patsy Noggle and Faia Oulufu. That first “Sing” offered just two performances: Trowbridge, Noggle and Oulufu in a scripted piece entitled, “Run! Bears!” and a short, apparently unscripted number by Galwain and Liz Baylor with friend Rehoboth Ur Davidson on the theme of “Molar Removal.”

Labels: Baylor History