A Little Something Extra

Archives are so very rarely complete. It’s an unusual thing for the archivist to be able to point to a collection and say with full  confidence, “That’s all there is.” More often, we have to admit, “That’s all we have.” And so, researchers make due with what’s on hand, knowing that someday, some newly discovered item may appear and bring their well-argued theses crashing down. Though it deals with the past, history is a living thing, open to reinterpretation as long-hidden documents are discovered and shared. We regularly hear of such discoveries being made in attics or at flea markets and the like, but sometimes they’re made within the archives itself.

Last month, your blogger was working with a small collection of papers from Sidney B. Jeffreys (Ms1986-007), who graduated from Virginia Tech with a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering in 1931. Jeffreys maintained a lifelong attachment to his alma mater, becoming an active member of the Virginia Tech Alumni Association and a generous supporter of the university. In 1981, he was recognized as a College of Engineering Distinguished Alumnus.  (You can read more about Sidney Jeffreys and his papers here.) Given Jeffreys’ attachment to Virginia Tech, it’s not surprising that most of the papers in his collection relate to his time as a student and his activities as an alumnus.

Most of the university-related materials in Jeffreys’ papers consists of VT publications, and most of these are of the type that are seen by our archivists every day. Included among these were several issues of The Virginia Tech (the forerunner of today’s student newspaper, The Collegiate Times), from the years that Jeffreys attended the university. Here in the department, The Virginia Tech is frequently called upon in the course of answering reference questions or providing students with material for research topics. Our holdings of the paper are nearly—but not quite—complete, and we’re well aware that we lack a couple of years’ worth of issues. As it turns out, though, there was at least one missing issue about which we were unaware:  there,  in Sidney Jeffreys’ papers, was a special, extra edition of The Virginia Tech, published on Saturday, November 10, 1928.

The reason for this extra edition is readily apparent, as it bears a headline that any Hokies fan will enjoy.

The four-page special edition provides a lengthy, detailed description of the homecoming game, played earlier that day before a near-capacity crowd of 8,000 spectators, and it gives a great deal of credit for the win to the exploits of backs Frank Peake and Phil Spear. Elsewhere in this extra edition, readers found a full account of the game between VPI’s freshman team, “The Gobblets,” and their UVA counterparts, which ended in a 13-all tie.

The newspaper also contains articles about the homecoming festivities—this being only the second such event held at Virginia Tech—and about the upcoming observance of Armistice Day. Another brief article announces that plans are underway for a new, modern, and much-needed hotel to be built near the university. On a more somber note, readers learned of the accidental death VPI alumnus Charles B. D. Collyer, a well-known aviator who, just two weeks earlier, had set a new record for a trans-continental flight across the U. S.

Is there anything in this newspaper that will rewrite Virginia Tech history? Well, no (though anybody who’s been looking for a detailed account of the 1928 VPI-Virginia football game will find it a treasure trove). Still, this one item adds just a little detail to the historical record, providing some insight into the activities and cares of the Virginia Tech community in late 1928.

We can only wonder how many more special editions may be out there (or in here), waiting to be found.

The November 10, 1928 extra edition of The Virginia Tech will be added to our existing holdings of the newspaper. It has also been added to the queue in a current project that is digitizing the university’s student newspapers and will soon be making them available online.

Retired Football Numbers

Only four Virginia Tech football players have had their numbers retired: Carroll Dale, Frank Loria, Bruce Smith, and Jim Pyne.

Carroll Dale with coach Frank Moseley, 1960 Bugle, p. 336

 

No. 84 Carroll Dale’s jersey was the first to be retired. Born in Wise, Virginia, he entered Virginia Tech in 1956 as an offensive and defensive end. After seeing varsity action as a reserve in the first game of the 1956 season, he started in the remaining 39 games of his college career. He became V.P.I.’s first bona fide All-American. As a junior in 1958, he was named the Southern Conference Player of the Year, and for three consecutive years (1957-59), he was voted the Roanoke Touchdown Club’s Lineman of the Year. He was team captain his senior year and earned first team All-American honors. In all four seasons, he led the Hokies in pass receiving. Dale finished his college career with 67 receptions for 1,195 yards and 15 touchdowns. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1987.

Following graduation, Dale played five seasons with the Los Angeles Rams. He scored on a 57-yard touchdown pass in his first NFL game. The highlight of his professional career came with the Green Bay Packers and three straight National Football League championships under coach Vince Lombardi. The 1967 and 1968 games were known retroactively as Super Bowl I and Super Bowl II. After eight seasons in Green Bay, Dale played a season with the Minnesota Vikings when he found himself again in the Super Bowl. He was inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame in 1979. Carroll Dale Stadium, the football stadium of Dale’s high school in Wise, J.J. Kelly High School, was named for him.

 

Frank Loria, football All-American

No. 10 Despite his 5-9, 175-pound frame, Frank Loria was one of the most tenacious football players ever to play for Virginia Tech. A native of Clarksburg, West Virginia, he played basketball, baseball, and football at Notre Dame High School. When he came to Virginia Tech, Loria started every game at safety from 1965-67 and rapidly established himself as one of Tech’s all-time greats. He was famous for his uncanny ability to diagnose opposition plays and was called a coach on the field. Loria was the first Virginia Tech football player to gain first-team All-American honors in back-to-back seasons (1966, 1967), and he became the Hokies’ first consensus All-American pick as a senior in 1967, making seven first-team All-American squads. During his Tech career, he had seven interceptions and a number of punt return records. He returned 61 punts, averaging 13.3 yards on each return. He ran four punts back for touchdowns. One was a school record 95 yards.

Loria was assistant coach at Marshall University on Nov. 14, 1970 when all players and coaches died in a plane crash. The tragic accident took 75 lives. Loria was 23 years-old and was married with two children and a third on the way. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999. In the 1970s Frank Loria Memorial Field opened in Clarksburg City Park. Notre Dame High School plays its home games there.

 

Bruce Smith battles Clemson, VT Sports Information photo

No. 78 Known as “The Sack Man” of Virginia Tech football, Bruce Smith capped his sensational college career in 1984 by winning the Outland Trophy as America’s top lineman. The Norfolk, Virginia native graduated from Booker T. Washington High. Following an all-state high school career, Smith accepted an athletic scholarship to Virginia Tech where he had a career total of 71 tackles behind the line of scrimmage for losses totaling 504 yards. Sports columnist Wilt Browning from The Greensboro Daily News noted that in four years Smith accounted for losses totaling more than five times the length of a football field (504 yards). Smith had 46 career quarterback sacks, including 22 during his junior season in 1983 when he was named first-team All-American. In 1984 he was a consensus All-American. His combination of strength, quickness, intelligence, and relentless effort made him the model for a pass rushing defensive lineman.

In the 1985 National Football League draft, Smith was the first selection of the Buffalo Bills. During his pro career, he established himself as one of the greatest defensive players ever to play the game. He was NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 1990 and 1996, when he was named to the NFL’s All Decade Teams of the 1980s and 1990s. He was selected to 11 Pro Bowls. He was inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility on August 8, 2009. He ended his 19-year pro career in 2003 as the NFL’s all-time sack leader with 200. He anchored a defense that reached four straight Super Bowls. The Bills retired his No. 78 jersey in 2016. It joined Jim Kelly’s No. 12 jersey as the only numbers retired by the Bills. No player had worn number 78 since Smith left the team.

Bruce Smith served on the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors from 2002 to 2003.

 

Jim Pyne in action against Miami Hurricanes, VT Sports Information photo

No. 73 Center Jim Pyne became Virginia Tech’s first unanimous All-American when he made all five major teams that were selected in 1993. In addition to All-America honors, he was named winner of the Dudley Award as Virginia’s Player of the Year. During his four seasons at Virginia Tech, he established himself as one of the Hokies’ top linemen of all time, leading the charge that rewrote the record books for scoring and total offense. He started 35 consecutive games and 41 of the 42 Tech games in which he played. He allowed just one quarterback sack by the man he was assigned to block during more than 2,700 career snaps. He played on 736 of a possible 770 snaps during his sophomore season. That translated to 96 percent of the Hokies’ plays on offense. He played every offensive down in six games that season and graded higher for his performance on the field than any lineman during Coach Frank Beamer’s first five seasons at Virginia Tech. He earned second-team All-BIG EAST Conference honors his junior year and was named to the league’s first All-Academic team. He played on 92 percent of the team’s offensive snaps and set a school weight room record with a 401-pound hang clean.

He helped clear the way for a record-setting offense in 1993 as Tech earned its bid to the Poulan/Weed Eater Independence Bowl, the first bowl bid of the Beamer era. VT won 45-20 over Indiana. He was named to the Big East Conference All-time team at the turn of the century. The offensive line meeting room at VT was named in his honor.

A native of Mitford, Massachusetts, he attended Milford High School, where he played for the Milford Scarlet Hawks and Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut where he played for the Choate Wild Boars. The Pynes were the first family to play three generations of professional football. Pyne’s father, George Pyne III, played for the Boston Patriots of the American Football League in 1965. His grandfather, George Pyne II, played for the Providence Steam Roller of the NFL in 1931.

Pine was selected by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 1994 draft, and he played four of his nine professional seasons with them as a left guard, starting in 38 of his 42 appearances from 1995 to 1997. He played for the Detroit Lions in the 1998 and then became the first overall pick of the Cleveland Browns in the 1999 expansion draft. He was named team MVP by the Akron Browns backers and named top offensive lineman by the touchdown club.

New Policy on Retiring Numbers

In 2002, the Virginia Tech Athletics Department developed a new policy on retiring football jerseys. This special honor is bestowed to acknowledge an individual who has won an established national award in his sport, while allowing the number to continue to be worn by others. Virginia Tech no longer retires numbers.

Visit Special Collections

We have historical sports and other photographs, biographical files, sports programs and media guides in addition to many other treasures in Special Collections. We hope to welcome you.

 

When Orange Became The New Black (and Maroon the New Gray)

1896, a Formative Year for Virginia Tech Football

With a new school year about to start, and Lane Stadium soon to be filled with cheering fans, we can’t resist offering a little lesson from Hokie History 101. Well, this piece may belong in a 200-level course, since we’ve included a few obscure facts that the average fan isn’t likely to know.

In recognition of its broadening curriculum in science and technology, the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1896 became the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute. The new name being more than a mouthful, it was shortened in popular usage to Virginia Polytechnic Institute, or VPI.

The school’s fledgling football program underwent changes of its own that year. Early on, the college had adopted school colors of black and cadet gray, but when worn on a striped football jersey, the colors resembled a prison convict’s uniform—a similarity that undoubtedly became a source of ridicule from opposing teams.

Norbon R. Patrick, a guard on the 1893 team, poses in the jersey
that necessitated a change of school colors.

A committee reviewed the colors used by other colleges and decided that burnt orange and Chicago maroon would provide a unique color combination (as indeed it did and continues to do). The new colors debuted not in the opening game of 1896, but in the second game, at home against Roanoke College, on October 20.

The black jersey sported by the 1895 team, just prior to the school’s name change,
featured the letters AMC encircled by a large C in white.

The first orange-and-maroon jersey featured an oversized V under a smaller P, reflecting
a de-emphasis of the word “Institute” in popular usage of the school’s name.

Changes came to fan support, as well. By the 1890s, the college cheer, or yell, had become a popular means of boosting enthusiasm at campus athletic events. As long as they incorporated the name of the college and / or team, the words in these yells weren’t as important as the rhythm and tone. Cheers relied on creative, invented words–words that were easy and fun to yell–as is evident in the first yell adopted by VAMC:

Rip, Rah, Ree,
Vah, Vah, Vee,
Vir-gin-i-a
A. M. C.
Vir-gin-i-a
Virg-gin-i-a
Ree, Ree,
A. M. C.

 An abridged, peppier version of the longer yell seems to have been used more frequently by fans at games:

 Rip, Rah, Ree!
Va, Va, Vee!
Virginia, Virginia!
A-M-C!

By the 1895 season, the students had adopted a new, somewhat more complex college yell, published in the 1896 Bugle:

Hicki! Hicki! Hicki!
Sis! Bom! Bar!
A. and M. College,
Wah! Who! Wah!
Vivla! Vivla! Vivla! Vee!
Virginia! Virginia! A. M. C.!

The “Wah! Who! Wah!” bit may have been a little too reminiscent of the “Wah-hoo-wah!” yell of University of Virginia fans, and the 1896 Bugle records a separate yell that was used to cheer the 1895 football squad :

Do! Do! Ha! Ha! Dom-i-di-i-dee;
Wah! Wah!
A. M. C.
Hip Hip, Hip, Hurrah!
Virgin-u-a!, Virgini-u-ah,
Wee! Wee!
A. M. C.-c-c-c-c-c-boom!!!! Football

The school’s new name rendered these yells obsolete, but rather than simply incorporate the new name into existing yells, the Athletic Association sponsored a contest for a new yell (which, as things turned out, is fortunate, or we might otherwise all be cheering “Let’s go, Hickies!” or be members of “the Do Do Nation” today). The composer of the winning entry would receive a five-dollar prize.

Oscar Meade Stull (1874-1964), a senior majoring in applied chemistry and serving as cadet first lieutenant and adjutant, put his imagination to work in composing a cheer that used fun, invented words and incorporated the school’s new name:

Hoki, Hoki, Hoki, Hy!
Techs, Techs, VPI!
Sola-Rex, Sola-Rah.
Polytechs — Vir-gin-i-a!
Rae, Ri, VPI!

Oscar Meade Stull, ’96, the first person to ever hear
the “What is a Hokie?” question.

Stull’s submission became the winning entry and is said to have made its debut when the cadets traveled to Richmond and participated in the laying of the cornerstone for the city’s Jefferson Davis monument on July 2, 1896. As Stull recalled some 60 years later, “I was surprised when my yell was accepted, but I needed the five spot.” In addition to the fiver, Stull earned a lasting place in Virginia Tech history. The legacy was an unexpected one. In a 1956 letter to Virginia Tech library director Seymour Robb, Stull wrote, “I am more surprised in recent years that [the Hokie yell] has endured for 60 years!”

According to various histories, 1896 also marked the year in which Floyd “Hard Times” Meade (1882-1941) came to be associated with the football team. Just 14 years old at the time, Meade worked part-time in the campus mess hall and was adopted as an unofficial mascot by the team. As mascot, Meade frequently performed at games dressed as a clown in orange and maroon, his antics probably not so dissimilar to mascots of later years. Meade would later figure prominently in the evolution of the team’s mascot and traditions. But his is a story for a future blog post.

Floyd “Hard Times” Meade, from the 1899 Bugle.

The traditions begun in 1896 served the team well. The VPI gridders won that first orange-and-maroon game over Roanoke College 12-0, and the team eventually went 5-2-1, ending the season with a 24-0 rout of then-archrival VMI. The eight-game season was the longest played since the team’s founding, and though it would be nearly a decade before VPI regularly played that many games a year, the success of that season proved the feasibility of scheduling more games.

It would take some time for an “e” to be added to Stull’s “hoki,” and though his cheer incorporated the names “Techs” and “Polytechs,” the school seems to have made little effort in promoting the use of these names. The Cohee, an 1897-1898 publication of the Athletic Association, makes no mention of the names; the press most often referred to the team simply as “V.P.I.” or by generic terms such as “the Blacksburg eleven.” It would be several years before VPI teams came to be known more commonly as Techs, Polytechs, or Techmen; more than a decade to be known as The Gobblers; and still longer to be called The Hokies, but the seeds for all that has followed were sown in 1896.