This weekend, some 300,000 fans are expected to descend upon the Town of Speedway to watch the 102nd running of the Indianapolis 500. The Speedway area has been home to the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” since 1911. The race attracted drivers and fans from all over the world. It has only been cancelled on two occasions: during World War I (1917-1918) and World War II (1942-1945). While there was no roar of race cars, the area was by no means quiet. Instead, the Speedway area became a hub for wartime production, with aircraft engines taking center stage.
Entrepreneur and Indianapolis Motor Speedway co-founder James Allison quite literally shifted gears when he devoted his precision machine shop’s resources on Main Street, just south of the track, to the war effort in 1917. Allison originally built the shop to redesign and rebuild foreign and domestic racecars. By mid-1918, the War Department awarded government contracts to Allison Experimental Company to build parts for the Liberty aircraft engine. According to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, the Liberty represented “America’s major technological contribution to World War I.” The United States’ auto industry produced over 20,000 of these engines during the war and Allison’s Speedway company played its part in this endeavor. The Speedway area also saw the development of an aviation repair depot where workers helped repair, modify, and test hundreds of airplanes and aircraft engines.
Allison Engineering Company Main Street Building and Employees, 1921, photo courtesy of Indiana Memory.
Just one month after the war’s end, in December 1918, the owners of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway announced that the Indianapolis 500 would resume in May 1919. The focus in the Speedway area quickly shifted back to automobiles and racing, but interest in aviation there had just begun. During the 1920s, Allison Experimental Company (Allison Engineering Company by 1921) worked on rebuilding and inverting Liberty engines.
Following James Allison’s death in 1928, General Motors Corp. filed an appropriation request to buy the company the following year. According to the request, General Motors planned to continue Allison’s work in the aviation industry. The Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce promoted the acquisition, stating that with General Motors’ purchase of the company:
Development of this city as a center for the nation’s aviation industry seems assured.
General Motors Corporation Appropriation Request to Purchase Allison Engineering Company. Courtesy of Rolls Royce Heritage Trust – Allison Branch Archival Collection.
The Chamber of Commerce was not far off the mark. During the 1930s, Allison Engineering Co. focused its efforts on developing a 1,000 horsepower liquid-cooled aircraft engine in the Speedway area. Known as the V-1710, it would become the primary engine that powered Allied fighter aircraft during World War II. Norman Gilman, chief engineer and general manager for the company, reasoned that a liquid-cooled engine could be placed inside the fuselage, where a radial type engine could not and therefore developed high wind resistance or drag, particularly at higher speeds. Despite initial hesitation from both the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army, the Navy placed an order with Allison Engineering Co. for a liquid-cooled airplane engine of 750 horsepower in June 1930. The company designed, built, and delivered this engine to the Navy in March 1932. After completing a 50-hour development test, the Navy accepted the engine in September of that year. The Army Air Corps followed suit and soon after placed an order for the engine with the company.
Throughout the mid-1930s, Allison Engineering Co. worked to improve the engine, with the goal of making it 1,000 horsepower. After several tests and improvements to the design, the company delivered the engine to the Army Air Corps at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio in March 1937. One month later, the V-1710 passed the 150-hour acceptance test.
AllisoNews, March 31, 1942, vol. 1, no. 18, photo courtesy IUPUI Digital Collections, Allison Transmission.
By 1939, as war clouds gathered over Europe, Allison Engineering (renamed Allison Division of General Motors in January 1941) committed itself to mass production of the V-1710 aircraft engine in Speedway. At the time, Allison employed 600 people, but this number grew exponentially as orders for the V-1710 came pouring in. In April 1939, newspapers reported that the company would soon triple its facilities with construction of a new plant that would span 200,000 sq. ft. By the end of the year, employment figures had almost doubled to 1,200. Allison Division constructed additional plants in Speedway and the Indianapolis area throughout the war years and with these plants came thousands of additional employees.
Demand for the V-1710 engine made Allison Division one of the three principal manufacturers of aircraft engines in the country during the war, alongside Pratt & Whitney and Wright Aeronautical. In January 1941, Life magazine ran a feature on the engine, highlighting it as the “plane motor on which the Army puts its biggest bet.” By July 1941, the War Department awarded Allison a new contract for the engines. With this contract, total orders for Allison engines since the beginning of the defense emergency program totaled approximately $242,000,000.
America has bet heavily on the Allison engine in its aircraft defense plans, just as the war industries board in 1917 bet everything on the Liberty engine . . . the Allison engine has been delivering regularly for the R.A.F. [Royal Air Force]. Allison is now producing 400 aviation engines a month, where a year ago it was delivering only 150, and expects to approach 1,000 engines a month by the end of 1941. – “More Air Power,” Mason City [Iowa] Globe Gazette, August 13, 1941, 4.
Curtiss P-40, photo courtesy AllisoNews, July 18, 1941, 4.,
Orders and output for the V-1710 engine continued to grow, particularly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. By this point, employment at Allison Division surpassed 12,000. It swelled to 23,019 in October 1943. The company’s growth impacted the Town of Speedway as well. As early as 1940, Indianapolis newspapers commented on Speedway’s growing pains, reporting that officials from the town were seeking state aid to address problems that had come about from the influx of workers to the plants. These problems included the need to improve streets, sanitary conditions, and the need for a better water system. The Indianapolis Times noted that with more employees at the Allison plants came “more money, more home buying, more eating, etc.” School enrollment in the area doubled, church attendance rose greatly, and many new homes were built.
Bell Airacobra P-39, photo courtesy AllisoNews, August 1, 1941, 6.
Meanwhile, Allison Division continued to impress. By March 1944, it built and delivered its 50,000th liquid-cooled engine. By the war’s end, the total figure reached 70,000. These engines powered many of the United States’ fighter planes during the war, including the P-38 Lightning, the P-39 Airacobra, and the P-40 Warhawk. The engine was also used in several fighter planes flown by the Royal Air Force of the United Kingdom.
Lockheed P-38, photo courtesy AllisoNews, August 15, 1941, 4.Program for the Presentation of the Army-Navy Production Award to Allison Division, General Motors Corporation, November 5, 1942.
Allison Division received high praise for the fine precision, workmanship, and durability of the V-1710. It won the Army-Navy “E” Award for excellence in production four times during the war: in October 1942, March 1944, October 1944, and June 1945. By the spring of 1945, Allison Division reduced production schedules of the V-1710 to focus more of its time on building jet engines, which could power planes at much higher speeds. The U.S Army Air Forces had awarded Allison a contract for the production of jet propulsion units in the fall of 1944. The Navy followed the Army’s lead and placed their own order with Allison in the summer of 1945, citing Allison’s “well established reputation for delivering the goods on time.” This reputation would continue through the end of the war in August 1945 and through the post-war years.
As had happened following the conclusion of World War I, racing returned to the Speedway area in 1946 to much fanfare. Left abandoned for nearly five years, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway had fallen into disrepair during World War II. Tony Hulman purchased the track in November 1945 and worked to restore it in preparation for the May 1946 500-mile race. Fans came in droves to witness the 30th running of the Indianapolis 500 that year, as racing returned to center stage in the Speedway area.
AllisoNews, March 1944, 1, accessed IUPUI Digital Collections, Allison Transmission.
Allison’s work in Speedway and its commitment to technological advancements did not end with World War II, but rather continues through today. In addition to continuing its investment and development in the aviation industry following the war, Allison also organized a new department for the design and development of transmissions. The transmissions were manufactured for commercial and military use, with many powering tanks during the Korean War. Their production ushered in a new chapter in the company’s history. Today, James Allison’s experimental company in Speedway , now known around the globe as Allison Transmission, is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of fully automatic transmissions.
Speedway’s aviation repair depot was bordered by Main St. on the west, 14th St. on the north, Polco St. on the east, and roughly contemporary Ford St. and 10th St. on the south. Photo courtesy of William Menkel, “‘New Plans for Old’: The Work of the Aviation Repair Depots,” Aerial Age Weekly, September 1, 1919, 1129, accessed Google Books.
May is finally here and with it racing fans from around the world will soon begin flocking to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to attend practices and qualifying races in preparation for the Indianapolis 500. For the past century, the Speedway ─ both the track and the adjacent areas of the town ─ have become synonymous with motorsports and racing.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, March 23, 1917, sec. 2, p. 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
In addition to racing though, the area holds another important place in Indiana and U.S. history ─ as an innovative aviation hub during both world wars. During World War I, the track was used as a landing and flight test field and hangars built on site helped house aircraft. Just south of the track, the Allison Experimental Company manufactured parts for the Liberty Engine, arguably one of America’s greatest contributions to the war. And at Speedway’s aviation repair depot, workers restored 313 planes, 350 engines, and numerous aircraft parts. Their work helped keep our nation’s pilots in the air and made the Speedway area a center for military aviation during the war.
The United States lagged far behind the British, French, and Germans in military aviation when it entered World War I in April 1917. Those countries had been fighting for three years and in that time had understood and capitalized on the value of military aircraft for combat and reconnaissance. American entry in the war spurred rapid expansion of the industry in the country. Although time constraints forced the U.S. to purchase much of its military aircraft from the British and French during this period, the country made great strides in preparing pilots for air service abroad and in the production and repair of engines and training aircraft.
Indianapolis’ central location made it a prime site for aviation repairs and flight testing. Nearby flying fields included Chanute Field in Rantoul, Illinois and Scott Field in Belleville, Illinois, McCook Field and Wilbur Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, and Selfridge Field in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, among others. Additionally, the proximity of railroad lines in the city and automobile centers in Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois made it easier to access raw materials such as steel, aluminum, and lumber, as well as supplies and spare parts used in repairing wrecked aircraft. Perhaps even more importantly though was the leadership of men like Carl Fisher and James Allison, co-founders of the Speedway, who dedicated their manufacturing resources in the area and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to the war effort.
Airplanes waiting to be placed in “roundhouse” at Speedway. “Aviation Repair Depot at Speedway City May Become Permanent When Aerial Mail Service is Extended to Midwestern Country,” Indianapolis News, August 10, 1918, accessed Newspapers.com.
The U.S. Army established the aviation repair depot in Speedway on February 4, 1918 with the arrival of the 810th Aero Squadron from Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas. According to William Menkel, former captain in the U.S. Air Service and commanding officer of the depot, it was the first of the repair depots to get under way and begin repairs in the U.S. Other repair depots later opened in Dallas, Texas and in Montgomery, Alabama. In addition to the 810th Aero Squadron, the Speedway depot was also home to the 809th, 811th, and 821st squadrons. 150 men served in each squadron.
In October 1918, the Speedway Dope, the newsletter of the aviation repair depot, reported that “the commissioned and enlisted personnel [at the depot] constitutes a cosmopolitan community. Mechanicians, [sic] clerks, cooks, and chauffeurs have come from all parts of the Union, and at the Speedway there is no East or West or North or South.” The majority of the civilian mechanics at the repair depot had little knowledge of aircraft before American entry in the war, but within a short time they became experts in the industry and in repair work. The U.S. Air Service established training schools for these men across the country and provided classes in engine assembly and wing and fuselage construction, while also teaching skills such as making and fastening metal parts to the aircraft, sewing fabric on wings, and applying dope varnish to the aircraft. The first wrecked aircraft arrived in April 1918.
Small Parts and Welding Department at the aviation repair depot. Photo courtesy of William Menkel, “‘New Plans for Old’: The Work of the Aviation Repair Depots,” Aerial Age Weekly, September 1, 1919, 1129, accessed Google Books.
Damaged planes were unloaded and often sent to the Dismantling Department where the engine, landing gear, tail surfaces, and other parts were removed, cleaned, and worked on separately before reassembly began. While some of the planes that arrived only needed minor repairs before being shipped back out, others were total wrecks that needed to be completely rebuilt and tested.
By July, output reached three completed planes a day. Perhaps even more impressive though were the modifications made to the aircraft to help increase pilot safety. Workers at the repair depot analyzed incoming wrecks in order to find patterns in destruction. They then used this information to make improvements in design of the aircraft. For example, in his 1919 report on repair depots, Captain Menkel noted that many damaged planes that arrived in Speedway had smashed instrument boards. The instrument board was located so close to the pilot that in the case of a crash their head was likely to hit it. Workers at the depot moved the instrument boards farther away from the pilot’s seat during their repairs. This extra space reduced the chance that the pilot would hit it in a crash, thereby improving the pilot’s safety and lowering the chance of damage to the instrument board.
Propeller Room. Photo courtesy of William Menkel, “‘New Plans for Old’: The Work of the Aviation Repair Depots,” Aerial Age Weekly, September 1, 1919, 1129, accessed Google Books.
The information learned from wrecked aircraft that arrived at the depot also resulted in other modifications, including the reinforcement of longerons and other parts of the plane to lower the chances of damage or fatal injury of the pilot and cutting out sections of the cowl frame to provide more distance between it and the pilot.
In a post report to Washington in January 1919, the Speedway Dope reported 313 airplanes repaired at the depot during 1918, representing a total value of $1,195,550.00 and 350 airplane motors valued at $638,699.00. In addition to these figures, the report noted repairs of wings, ailerons, elevators, rudders, and other miscellaneous parts valued at approximately $300,000.00. Added together, repairs at the depot well exceeded $2,000,000.00. Beyond the economic benefits and savings to the government was the fact that those working at the repair depot helped keep pilots in the air, reducing their chance of injury or death and ultimately giving the U.S. a better opportunity to win the war.
Articles in the Speedway Dope reiterated these sentiments, noting that those who trained or repaired airplanes in the Speedway area might be inclined to downplay the role they played in the war because they were not in the trenches abroad or flying in France. The repair and reconstruction of airplanes was a vital part of the war effort though.
Speedway Dope newsletter letterhead.
The third side of aviation has not only been neglected, but the public generally does not know that it even exists. The repair and reconstruction of damaged planes and motors, constitutes a bit part of the game of aviation. It is that part of the game that must be done and done right, or the other parts would fail to accomplish anything. True it does not carry any of the romance or glamour that follows the course of the pilot and his plane, and neither does it require the enormous financial outlay that goes with production . . . Yet this third side of aviation has been well taken care of and thousands of men who enlisted for service in France have remained at home repair depots and made it possible for others to enjoy foreign service and win international fame.
“The Third Side of Aviation-Rebuilding,” Speedway Dope, November 30, 1918, 1, accessed Indiana State Library Collections.
In the days immediately following the armistice on November 11, 1918, the Speedway Dope wrote that even though the war had ended, production at the depot should continue, as there was still plenty of work to do before completion of the final peace terms. Major Guy L. Gearhart, former commanding officer of the depot agreed. Maj. Gearhart recognized the important role the airplane would play in transportation after the war and believed the repair depot would become a permanent fixture in the Speedway.
A group of the Aviation Repair Depot Officers at the Flying Field, Speedway Motor Track. Left to right – Lt. A. D. McIlvaine, Sen. Instructor Frank Mills, Lt. James Wallace, Lt. William Groom, Lt. Col. A. W. Robins, Capt. Edward Laughlin, Lt. A. L. Maurer, Lt. Ralph M. Snyder, Lt. H. A. Knudson, Lt. R. J. Brandi, Lt. R. A. Ballard, Lt. Kincaid. Photo courtesy of the Speedway Dope, November 16, 1918, 1, accessed Indiana State Library.
The depot’s future remained unclear though. With the war over, immediate aviation interests in the area took a backseat to racing and motorsports. The Indianapolis 500, which had been cancelled in 1917 and 1918, recommenced in May 1919. The resumption of the annual race led to questions and concerns about the track and infield being used for aircraft. Despite initial orders calling for the closing of the depot in March 1919 though, the South Bend News-Times reported that recruitment for men for the U.S. Air Service at the Speedway aviation repair depot continued as of July. By the following year, however, the status of the aviation repair depot was again called into question. Some speculated that it would be removed from the Speedway area and relocated to Fairfield, Ohio. The government officially ordered the abandonment of the repair depot in September 1920 and publicized the sale of buildings and utilities in November of that year.
Although work in the Speedway area shifted back to racing and motorsports, aviation interests did not disappear completely. The Allison Experimental Company (Allison Engineering Company by 1921), located just west of the repair depot, continued to work to improve the Liberty aircraft engine into the 1920s. When General Motors purchased the company in 1929, it expressed a commitment to expanding its work in the aviation field. It was this commitment that made the Speedway area an aviation hub once again during World War II.
Be sure to check back in a few weeks when we examine the vital role the Speedway area played in military aviation in World War II!
Sources Used and Research Note:
William Menkel, “‘New Plans for Old’: The Work of the Aviation Repair Depots,” Aerial Age Weekly, September 1, 1919, 1129-1133, 1144, accessed Google Books.
Much of the information about the aviation repair depot came from articles in the Speedway Dope. The publication ran from September 28, 1918 until February 1, 1919. Copies of the paper can be located at the Indiana State Library.
The Indiana Historical Bureau installed a new state historical marker commemorating the aviation repair depot in Speedway on April 24, 2018. Marker sponsors included Rolls-Royce North America, Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust – Allison Branch, and the Town of Speedway. For more information on the aviation repair depot and additional sources, see: https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4406.htm
Larry Rubama, “Missing History Postcard Spurs Search For Forgotten Team,” Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, September 20, 1998, 1, courtesy of Perspectives.
The Fort Wayne Colored Giants was the only black baseball team to represent the city of Fort Wayne for forty-two years, from 1907 to 1949. In that time period, baseball was a segregated team sport, with black athletes playing only on all black teams. The Colored Giants team was one of the premier black teams in northeast Indiana in that period. Other black Fort Wayne teams included the Black Diamonds (1916-1917), Dupee’s All-Nations (1919), Riddle’s All- Stars (1920-1922), the Cadillac Colored Giants (1921-1922), and the Fort Wayne Colored Pirates (1926-30s). Indiana had over thirty-seven traveling black teams, extending from West Baden in the south to South Bend in the north, and Evansville in the west to Fort Wayne in the east.
Young men with outstanding baseball skills comprised the Fort Wayne Colored Giants. These young men developed their baseball prowess playing sandlot, church ball, “pickup” baseball, and community ball. Young men would come play baseball from as far away as Marion and other black communities in northeast Indiana. Fort Wayne newspapers advertised player recruitment and notices for team competitions. It also provided notification of both games and team and league scores.
Cities large and small adopted black baseball teams when they could find players and afford to do so. The teams vitalized and energized their communities, both black and white. The teams were self-sufficient and team members were paid scanty sums. Community teams typically passed a hat around during the game where patrons would contribute whatever they could to help defray costs. Teams struggled to maintain their budgets and keep their key players. Some teams were very wealthy, such as the Pittsburgh Crawfords of the National Negro League. Others just made ends meet and vanished after a season or two. The Fort Wayne Colored Giants did manage to provide a stipend for their players.
African-American Historical Society in Fort Wayne, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Baseball was the cornerstone of many communities, both large and small. This was the heyday for black businesses and the black community. Life revolved about church, neighborhoods, clubs, and organizations like the Phyllis Wheatly House, the former community center, which is now home to the Fort Wayne African African-American Museum.
The Giants’ home field was located in southeast Fort Wayne, where home and exhibition games took place. The team also played at Fort Wayne’s League Park, which was constructed in 1883, and in 1922 renamed Lincoln Life Field. The Fort Wayne Colored Giants played black teams such as the Toledo Mud Hens, the Indianapolis ABCs, the Chicago Giants, Saint Louis Stars, the Evansville White Sox, and Pittsburgh Homestead Grays of the Negro National League. The Giants team played ‘out of local area’ Indiana teams, including those from Lagrange, Decatur, Geneva, Uniondale, Marion, Huntertown, Evansville, La Otto, Ligonier, Hudson and North Manchester. They also played teams from Hicksville, Antwerp, Convoy, and Van Wert, Ohio.
The Colored Giants had standing rivalries with area white teams, such as the Fort Wayne Lincoln Lifers, the Columbia City Grays, the Roanoke Independents, the New Haven Visible Pumps, the Kendallville Reds, the Garrett K of Cs, and the Auburn Athletics.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, May 29, 1923, 9, accessed Newspapers.com.
The Colored Giants team had multiple owners and managers over the years and these include: (1909) Mr. Harry Ellis, both owner and manager; (1916) Mr. L.B. Dupee, owner and Mr. George Wilson, manager; (1919) Mr. Bob Jones bought out Mr. L.B. Dupee and retained Mr. George Wilson as manager; (1920-1921) Mr. Bob Jones, owner and Mr. Johnson, manager; (1921- 1922) Mr. Bob Jones, owner and Mr. T.E. Lewis, manager; (1923-192) Mr. Moses Taylor, owner manager; and (1930-1949) no information on owners or managers was available. The information presented was obtained from Fort Wayne newspaper articles of the period.
Very little is known about the team’s owners and managers, but the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette Newspaper did feature one. That was Moses Taylor, the longest serving owner and manager of the Colored Giants (1923 to 1929). The story of black baseball in Fort Wayne is a story of a family involved in the community and in baseball. It is a story of a man, a visionary and an entrepreneur, who became the catalyst for the creation of a strong baseball team. His dream generated passion within a community and among a group of young black men. He set the stage for solid baseball play with major teams, both semi pro and local.
After a team bus broke down in 1929 in Pittsburgh, Mr. Taylor stayed and found a job. He moved the rest of his family to Pittsburgh around 1930. Mr. Taylor utilized his experience with the Fort Wayne Colored Giants to form the Pittsburgh Mystics, as reported by his daughter Mrs. Lucille Taylor Wooden of Cleveland, Ohio. This team played against the Pittsburgh Homestead Grays of the National Negro League.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, September 3, 1920, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
The Fort Wayne Colored Giants infused and energized the black community of Fort Wayne. The team established its mark in the city and in baseball. The Fort Wayne Tincaps are the legacy of the Fort Wayne Colored Giants and the many white league teams of the era. They all contributed to baseball history in Fort Wayne. The Giants are one of the few Fort Wayne baseball teams, black or white, from that era (1907-1949) to be recognized in the 21st century via news media and with a plaque at Parkview Field. They assume their proper place in the history of Fort Wayne as true contributors to the development of sports history in the Summit City.
The Wiggler. The Pikie. The Darter. The Injured Minnow. These are just a few of the popular lures crafted by the Creek Chub Bait Company during the twentieth century. Established in Garrett, DeKalb County, Indiana in 1916, the Creek Chub Bait Company became one of the country’s leading manufacturers of artificial fishing lures.
Creek Chub Wiggler. Courtesy Fin & Flame Vintage Fishing Tackle.#2009 Creek Chub Darter in Greenback. Courtesy Dr. Harold E. Smith, Collector’s Encyclopedia of Creek Chub Lures & Collectibles, 2002, page 73.
Each lure was a work of art, featuring the finest craftsmanship and attention to detail. From the company’s onset, owners Henry Dills, Carl Heinzerling, and George Schulthess placed an emphasis on quality for their products. Dills wanted the lures to be attractive to fishermen and fish alike, and worked alongside others within the company to ensure that they had a lifelike appearance and motion to help attract fish.
Creek Chub’s famous #700 Pikie, first introduced in 1920. Courtesy Dr. Harold E. Smith, Collector’s Encyclopedia of Creek Chub Lures & Collectibles, 2002, page 65.
As early as December 1915, before the company officially began producing lures, Dills filed an application to patent new improvements in fish baits by adding a metal lip, or mouthpiece, attached to the front of the lure. According to the patent, the addition would help produce ripples, throw spray, wriggle, and dive similar to the way a minnow would, thereby attracting fish. The patent (1,352,054) was approved September 7, 1920.
Dills’ 1915 patent application featuring the addition of a metal lip to fishing lures. Courtesy United States Patent Office via Google Patents.
Creek Chub’s Wiggler, introduced in 1916, was among the first to feature the metal lip. According to Dr. Harold E. Smith in his Collector’s Encyclopedia of Creek Chub Lures & Collectibles, the company’s 1922 catalog advertised the Wiggler as “‘three baits in one.’ With the lip in the standard position, it was a diving, wiggling bait. In the reversed position, it became a water-splashing surface lure. Take the lip off and it was a darting surface lure.” Dixie Carroll also described the added movement to the lure in “Fishing, Tackle and Kits” in 1919, noting: “A small metal plate in the mouth of the chub gives a fine bunch of wiggles and wobbles and by moving the plate and reversing it you have a surface splatter lure . . .”
Dills’ 1918 patent application for the addition of imitation scales to improve the appearance of artificial lures. Courtesy United States Patent Office via Google Patents.
In July 1918, Dills filed another patent application to improve the lures by adding a scale-like appearance on their surface that would imitate a natural minnow. According to the patent (Patent 1,323,458), the lures would feature “a cigar-shaped wooden body, to which various coatings of coloring material are applied.” Employees used a non-lustrous color for the background body of the lure and then proceeded to wrap a cloth netting around it and spray a lustrous coloring material through the netting to form the scale-like pattern.
The scale finish evolved over time and helped revolutionize the industry by resembling natural food for fish. Advertisements in popular publications like Outing praised the lures, noting: “Accurately represents a minnow down to the silvery scales. Wonderful lifelike movements. Convertible.” Fishermen from around the country agreed, often writing to the company to boast of the record-size fish they caught using these lures.
Image: Dr. Harold E. Smith’s Collector’s Encyclopedia of Creek Chub Lures & Collectibles, 2002, page 279. In 1932, George Perry caught the world record largemouth bass in Lake Montgomery, Georgia using Creek Chub’s Perch Scale Wigglefish. The record stood for over seventy-five years. On July 2, 2009, Manabu Kurita caught a largemouth bass in Lake Biwa (Japan) tying Perry’s record of 22 lbs. 4 oz. According to articles in the Indianapolis Star in 2014, the International Game Fish Association took six months to verify the record. It became official on January 8, 2010.Hunter Trader Trapper, June 1922, page 123. Courtesy Google Books.Zoomed in letter from George McWilliams submitted to Hunter Trader Trapper, June 1922, page 123.
By the time a Creek Chub lure was completed and ready to ship to a customer, it often featured as many as fourteen or fifteen coats of primer, paint, and lacquer. Even the wood used early on for the bodies – white cedar – was of the highest quality. Over time, the designs and range of colors expanded greatly. The company also made specialty colors and custom orders upon request. In 1936, the Garrett Clipper noted that the patents for the natural scale finish and the mouthpiece were among the most important patents ever issued in the tackle industry.
Employees apply a scale finish to the lure bodies by spray painting through netting. Courtesy Dr. Harold E. Smith, Collector’s Encyclopedia of Creek Chub Lures & Collectibles, 2002, page 27.
From its earliest years, Creek Chub featured a largely female workforce. Some attributed this to the delicate nature of the lures and the work they entailed, which they believed women were better suited to perform. Dr. Harold E. Smith writes that “women were selected preferentially over men because management felt they were . . . ‘endowed with a better appreciation of color and detail.’”
Wanted ads in the Garrett Clipper frequently promoted jobs for girls and young ladies at the company, and articles often referenced the “girls” employed in the finishing departments, and sanding and dipping rooms.
Painting eyes on Creek Chub lures. Courtesy Dr. Harold E. Smith, Collector’s Encyclopedia of Creek Chub Lures & Collectibles, 2002, page 28.
By the 1920s, Creek Chub was shipping its lures all over the United States and Europe. Between January and July 1925, the Garrett Clipper published several pieces on international sales. For example, on March 19, 1925, it reported that Creek Chub had recently received orders for 180 dozen bait from Stockholm, Sweden, 178 dozen from Finland, and 31 dozen from Toronto, Canada. In April, the paper recorded orders from Waines, Hawaii (Hawaii did not become a U.S. state until 1959) and Bombay, India, and in July, it reported that the company had shipped 24 dozen lures to Reddich, England.
On January 20, 1936, the Garrett Clipper provided a summary of the company and described its continued growth since its founding in 1916:
Since then sales have increased from year to year and are made not only in this country and Canada, but lures are sent to 48 foreign countries, France and Sweden receiving the largest shipments. The sales demand in Canada is so large that a Canadian branch has been established, the work being conducted by Allcock, Laight & Westwood company, Toronto, Ont. Although in its infancy, the plant has been doing a large business and the prospects for its growth are fine.
In 1939, as war clouds gathered over Europe, business at Creek Chub Bait Co. reached a new peak. Production and sales were up and employment remained steady. Despite its success though, the company was already beginning to feel the effects of the conflict abroad. Finland and England had been Creek Chub’s top buyers prior to the war, but both markets quickly closed as each country became engaged in the conflict. The company also purchased many of its treble hooks, which it used on its lures, from Norway and England.
By August 1941, Creek Chub experienced great difficulty acquiring the necessary hooks and other supplies for its famous lures, as materials were reserved for defense industries. Supply markets from Norway were shut off and an embargo on trade between the United States and Japan stopped the shipments of hooks from that country as well. On August 21, 1941, the Clipper warned about the future of Creek Chub, writing:
. . . unless there is some early change in the world situation the business of the company will be greatly restricted, if not entirely stopped.
The outlook for the company became bleaker throughout 1942 following orders from the War Production Board curtailing the manufacture of fishing lures. On May 8, 1942, the Angola Herald reported that Creek Chub would cease production on May 31, in accordance with government orders. In response, Creek Chub petitioned the War Production
Board to allow it to use the metal it had on hand, which it estimated at approximately six months’ supply. By early June, the War Production Board gave the company permission to continue manufacturing lures during the month, and throughout the summer it granted temporary extensions that allowed Creek Chub to continue production, albeit at a much reduced rate. On January 28, 1943, the Garrett Clipper noted that Creek Chub employed thirty people, two to three times less than it had before the war. Employment decreased again slightly the following year, but the company remained open, using the limited materials it had on hand to produce lures.
Popular Mechanics, May 1962, p. 204. Courtesy Google Books.
By January 1945, employment began to increase as more materials became available and in September 1945, Creek Chub received its first shipment of steel hooks from Norway since the beginning of the war. Business was slowly getting back on track. Wanted ads for female employees began populating the local newspaper’s pages once again as the company sought additional employees to meet production goals and fill the backlog of orders that had accumulated during the war. By late December 1946, Creek Chub announced that it had leased a hotel building in nearby Ashley, north of Garrett, and it soon established a branch factory there to expand operations. The added facilities allowed business to double from 1947 to 1948, and within the next two years the company caught up on its backlog of orders.
Courtesy Russell Lewis, Classic Fishing Lures: Identification and Price Guide, 2005, page 38, via Google Books.
Creek Chub continued to look for ways to improve and diversify its product line in the 1950s and 1960s. This included entering the plastic bait field, developing new saltwater lures, and offering new color combinations. The company’s future looked bright, but by the late 1970s declining sales and questions regarding future leadership of the company began to weigh on Creek Chub.
[Muncie] Star Press, April 6, 1979. Courtesy Newspaper.com.On December 24, 1978, the Des Moines [Iowa] Register reported that Lazy Ike Corp. of Des Moines had purchased the Creek Chub Bait Company. Reporter Bob Barnet confirmed the sale in the [Muncie] Star Press in April 1979, writing “. . . Hoosier-owned Creek Chub Bait Co., one of the nation’s oldest and most respected manufacturers of artificial lures, has been sold.” Lazy Ike, which was also in the lure industry, would continue to manufacture and market Creek Chub lures.
[Des Moines] Register, September 16, 1979. Courtesy Newspapers.com.Unfortunately, within just a few months of the purchase, Lazy Ike filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Dura-Pak Corp. of South Sioux City, Nebraska acquired Lazy Ike Corp. and another fishing tackle manufacturer out of Vancouver, Washington in the early 1980s. Today, PRADCO owns the Creek Chub name.
Although the company closed in the late 1970s, Creek Chub lures continue to remain popular among collectors, a testament to their enduring quality.
Courtesy Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History (Summer 2002), page 20.
In 1954, tiny Milan High School beat the odds, and became Indiana’s high school basketball champion. Writers have told, re-told and immortalized the tale in the 1986 film Hoosiers. Drowned out among the Milan hullabaloo are histories of other and earlier small schools that slew goliaths to win basketball crowns. In 1914, Milan played in its first state basketball tournament and lost in the first round. Their opponent that year was not a big-city juggernaut. Rather, it was the original Indiana basketball version of David: Wingate High School. If Milan is the “greatest basketball story ever told,” then Wingate is the “greatest basketball story seldom/never told.” To help bring their overlooked story to light, here is a survey of Wingate’s championship seasons in 1913 and 1914.
Wingate’s 1913 team. Front row: Leland Olin, Jesse Graves, Homer Stonebraker, Lee Sinclair, and Lawrence Sheaffer (mgr.). Back row: Coach Jesse Wood, John Blacker, Forest Crane, and McKinley Murdock.
Tucked away in the northwest corner of Montgomery County, Wingate’s 1910 population was 446. The recently consolidated Montgomery County schools discarded the inefficient one-room school models, and Wingate High School now boasted a student body of 67, of whom 22 were boys. From this small pool, Coach Jesse Wood selected a basketball team comprised of forwards Leland Olin, and Forest Crane, guards John Blacker and Jesse Graves, and Homer Stonebraker at center, with substitutes Lee Sinclair and McKinley Murdock.
Wingate had a notable disadvantage in fielding a basketball team. They had no gymnasium. Coach Wood conducted practices in “a small room in the southwest corner of the basement,” or “outdoors when the weather permitted.” Twice a week the coach and his squad would travel six miles to New Richmond, which was the nearest gym in the county. (Ironically, seventy years later would act as the backdrop for the town of Hickory in Hoosiers). Wingate would also play its “home” games at New Richmond, although they played most of their scheduled games on the road. They logged 576 miles during the 1912-13 season and 1,675 miles of travel during the 1913-14 season. They did most of their travel via trains and interurbans.
While Wingate had the disadvantage of being “gym-less,” they had a couple advantages. Wood was a very good coach. A former basketball player at Indiana State Normal (now Indiana State), he took a program that was only playing against other small, nearby schools, and started scheduling truly competitive games against recent state champions Crawfordsville and Lebanon. Wood also unlocked the potential in a lanky, sophomore without previously playing experience. He molded the boys’ innate ability and skill into a dominant and transcendent athletic talent with a name to match: Homer Stonebraker. Newspaper accounts frequently reported, “Stonebraker was practically the whole team at Wingate.”
IU’s Indiana Student newspaper selected an Indiana All-State (actually All-Tournament) Team for 1914. Homer Stonebraker is in the middle of the photo. Other players shown from left to right: Ralph Worley of Lebanon, Herman Sayger of Culver, Jesse Graves of Wingate, and Oris “Abe” DeVol of Lebanon.
Wingate finished the 1912-13 season with an impressive 16-4 record. Among their many victories were games against Romney, Hillsboro, Odell, Linden, Breaks, Waveland, Crawfordsville’s B team, Covington, Roachdale, Greencastle, Colfax, and Cayuga. In the Hillsboro game, Stonebraker contributed 74 points in a one hundred-point blowout. Wingate’s four losses on the season came in the form of two losses to Crawfordsville, a loss to defending state champion Lebanon, and a one-point loss to Thorntown.
In previous years, the team, high school, and community would have taken pride in their record, but moved on to thinking about baseball and crop planting. However, Indiana high school basketball in 1913 was different. For the first time, the state tournament was open to all challengers. Wingate was among thirty-seven teams that entered the two-day tournament held at Indiana University’s campus on March 14 and 15.
Wingate arrived in Bloomington “unnoticed and practically unheard of.” A reporter from the Indianapolis Evening Sun optimistically assessed, “Over two- thirds of the people attending the tourney did not know where [Wingate] is situated.” The reporter then proceeded to misplace it forty miles away near Frankfort. Indiana University’s Daily Student was even worse at geography and placed Wingate in Grant County.
Between 1,500 and 2,000 fans attended the opening rounds of the 1913 tournament, but fewer than fifty showed up to watch Wingate’s opening contest against Whiting, which many pundits believed would be a “walk-away” for Whiting. However, “in a slow game void of spectacular features” Wingate defeated Whiting 24 to 12. That evening, Wingate defeated Rochester, a perennial tournament favorite, in a sudden death overtime in which Stonebraker caged the winning goal.
Wingate’s 1912-13 basketball team. Bottom row: Leland Olin, Forest Crane, Homer Stonebraker, John Blacker, Jesse Graves. Top row: Lee Sinclair, Superintendent Shanklin, Lawrence Sheaffer (student manager), Coach Jesse Wood, and McKinley Murdock. Photo from IHSAA Annual Handbook and Report of the Board of Control, 1913.
On Saturday morning, March 14, the Wingate team arose to meet Indianapolis’ Manual Training High School. It appeared in the first half that the city boys would end the country boys’ run, as Wingate fell woefully behind 11-2 at intermission. Nevertheless, “the plucky bunch from Montgomery County” rebounded in the second half, and outscored Manual 14-0 for a 16-11 upset.
By defeating Manual, Wingate advanced to the semi-finals along with Crawfordsville, Lafayette Jefferson, and South Bend. Wingate again played underdog to the heavily favored Jeff squad, but Wingate never trailed in the contest and defeated the Tippecanoe team, 23-14. On the opposite side of the bracket, South Bend easily dispatched Crawfordsville, 19-11, which set up the first David v. Goliath contest in Indiana high school basketball tournament history.
As the two finalists ran out onto the floor for the game before 3,000 spectators, the crowd welcomed the South Bend boys “with tremendous applause” while the reception Wingate received was “cool and indifferent.” The game started slowly as both teams stressed defense more than offense. Late in the game, Wingate held a 13-12 lead before South Bend tied the game with a free throw to send it into overtime. Just like the Rochester game, the first team to score two points in overtime would be the winner. South Bend scored first with a free throw. Then for eight minutes, neither team succeeded in scoring until “the unexpected happened.” Wingate forward Forest Crane eluded his defender and caged the winning field goal. With the shot, the originally tepid crowd erupted “in the wildest enthusiasm” for Wingate. The Indiana University Booster Club awarded the tournament trophy to Wingate, and praised their endurance, “superb physical condition,” and “sheer pluck and aggressiveness.”
Wingate High School vs Kokomo High School, 1915. Source Kokomo High School yearbook, the Sargasso, 1915. This may be the earliest photo of an Indiana high school basketball game. Click the photo to learn more.
Wingate’s victory gave the team a statewide celebrity that carried on into the next season. Even though the team lost Forest Crane to graduation and Coach Wood left for a job at Rockville High School, they returned four of their starters including Stonebraker. New coach Leonard Lehman immediately began fielding requests for games from all over the state. Challengers were eager to test their mettle against the defending state champions.
Wingate opened the 1913-14 season without facing any quality competition. Over the first third of the season, against Williamsport, Cutler, Advance, Rockville, and Waveland, they averaged 40 points, and held their opponents to 16.5. At mid-season, Wingate stumbled in a schedule designed to test them against strong teams. They lost four straight against Lebanon, Thorntown, Bloomington, and Anderson, which dropped their overall record to 7-4.
It may have been hard to see the silver lining in the midst of a four game losing streak, but the Indianapolis News offered an encouraging and reasoned assessment of Wingate’s recent record: “It should be remembered . . . that the champs have played all these games on strange floors and have lost none of them by more than four points.” The News still counted Wingate among six front-runners for the championship.
After the mid-season slump, Wingate closed the regular season strong, and went 6-1 over their final games. Wingate compiled a 13-5 record on the season, in which they averaged 38.3 points per game while outscoring their opponents by an average of twenty-one points a game. According to extant newspaper box scores and game accounts, Stonebraker averaged a very impressive 25 points a game. While their record was not as stellar as the 1912-13 season, they played a much more difficult schedule. That fact and playing over 80% of their games on the road made them one of the better-prepared teams entering the state tournament.
Tournament participation in 1914 ballooned to seventy-five entries in 1914, up from thirty-eight schools in 1913. Wingate’s team was the first to arrive at Indiana University for the March 13-14 tournament, and expected to be the last one to leave. Wingate’s title defense started at 10 a.m. on Friday against Milan High School. However, there was no Milan Miracle in ’14, and Wingate easily dispatched their fellow small-town foe, 42-14. Wingate played their second round game at 8 that evening against another small-town team from Westport, which they also easily rolled past, 42-13.
Wingate’s team likely expected their next opponent to be more challenging than their first two, when they squared off against Montgomery County rival Crawfordsville at 8 o’clock the next morning. Crawfordsville, however, failed to exhibit any winning qualities as Wingate defensively smothered them in a sometimes-testy 24-1 rout.
Up next for Wingate was another familiar foe in Clinton. In the regular season, they defeated Clinton, 23-12, but the rematch would prove a much greater challenge. The standing room only crowd witnessed a “neck and neck tussle,” and one of the most competitive games of the tournament. Clinton, as the underdog, played with the crowd behind them. Clinton managed to control the lead from the opening tip. They led 8-6 at half time, and 13-12 with two minutes left in the contest. The crowd was ready to “bust with delight” over the upset. In a bit of controversy, and with 120 seconds left on the clock, “A Wingate guard either was hurt or pretended to be.” Officials granted Wingate an extended time out as the player tried to recuperate. Some Clinton fans said it was a charade, and charged that some of the uninjured Wingate players received rubdowns from a special trainer during the five-minute time out. When the game resumed, Wingate’s defense clamped down and Stonebraker scored five unanswered points to secure a 17-13 victory. In the victory, Stonebraker accounted for all of Wingate’s points.
Wingate’s 1914 championship basketball team. Bottom row: Leland Olin, Jesse Graves, Homer Stonebraker, John Blacker, and Lee Sinclair. Top Row: Superintendent M. Z. Coons, Paul Swank, Cuyler Brown (student manager), Lee “Pete” Thorn, Coach Leonard Lehman. Photo from Indiana High School Athletic Association Annual Handbook and Report of the Board of Control, 1914.
At this point in the tournament, only three teams remained (the product of having an irregular number of teams in the tournament): Anderson, Lebanon, and Wingate. “Battered and bruised and well nigh exhausted,” Lebanon took the floor to face the defending champions. By all accounts, Lebanon’s quintet gave all they could in the game. They fell behind Wingate 8-4 at half time. Wingate extended their lead after intermission to secure a 14-8 win.
Anderson versus Wingate in the championship game was a study in contrasts. Anderson had the seventh largest population in the state with 22,476, or, in other words, 22,000 more people than lived in Wingate. Despite this demographic discrepancy, Wingate’s players were taller and heavier than their opponents were. The sum of all these elements, in addition to the closely played, regular-season game between these teams, promised a compelling championship contest. Yet the end result failed to meet expectations.
4,000 fans packed the Men’s Gymnasium an hour before the game’s 8 p.m. tipoff. With only two hours rest, Wingate “started as fresh as if it were their first game and never slowed down.” Wingate forward Lee Sinclair scored the first field goal within the first thirty seconds. Wingate surged out to an early 12-1 lead. The “stellar work” of Wingate’s guards monopolized the game’s possessions, and “handled the ball with ease over the heads of the smaller Andersonians.” Wingate went into half time with a twenty-point lead, 23-3. Anderson came out of the break and scored two quick goals. After that spurt, Wingate closed the game on a 13-1 run to win the lop-sided championship 36-8. Stonebraker, who accounted for half of his team’s points, collapsed from exhaustion near the end of the game. He recovered enough to finish the contest, but remembered later, “I couldn’t dress after the game. I had two broken fingers and three broken ribs. It was rough under the basket.”
The Bloomington Evening World praised Wingate’s victory as “a tribute to the country and the small town. A corn-fed youngster who goes to bed with the chickens and gets up before day has an advantage over the ‘city-feller’ and his cigarette.” After the win, Governor Samuel M. Ralston invited the team to Indianapolis. They “got a bird’s-eye view of the city from the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ monument, they explored the federal building, they saw the sights of the state museum, they flocked through the big department stores, they wandered through the lobbies of the fashionable hotels and they ate lunch at the Columbia Club as honored guests.” They also met the governor and the first lady in the executive office at the capitol. The governor praised the team members, saying, “You boys have become champions and are able to display great endurance because you laid the foundation by leading the right sort of life.” He also extolled the rural life that the team members knew, “The farm forms the basis for a healthful and moral life, and the occupation of the farmer is indeed an ideal one.”
While Milan and Hoosiers have become the prevailing archetype for Hoosier Hysteria, it is important to remember that they were part of a long tradition dating back to the earliest years of the state tournament. If part of the transcendent appeal of Indiana high school basketball is the potential of the upset, then the origin of that story really begins forty-one years before Milan when a tiny school from a tiny town “Put the Win in Wingate.”
On May 14, 1914, Hoosier speedster Erwin G. Baker arrived in New York City after driving over 3,000 miles across the country on his Indian motorcycle. Baker’s run from San Diego to New York City in eleven and a half days not only broke the previous transcontinental record set by Volney E. Davis in 1911, it shattered it by almost nine days (Davis’s record was 20 days, 9 hours, and 1 minute). Baker’s feat, coupled with several other speed and distance records he set during this period, quickly earned him the nickname “Cannon Ball;” a moniker he would proudly carry with him for the rest of his life.
Indianapolis Star, January 28, 1909, 8, accessed Newspapers.com
Erwin G. Baker was born in southeastern Indiana in 1882 and moved to Indianapolis with his family sometime between 1893 and 1894. In the early 1900s, he worked as a machinist in the city and performed a bag punching routine on vaudeville stages throughout the country. The act required Baker to try and keep a certain number of punching bags going at the same time. In January 1909, the Indianapolis Star lauded him as a “champion bag puncher” and noted that he was “regarded as one of the best in the country.” According to the article, Baker was preparing to compete against Harry Seeback for the national title, contending that he could keep twelve bags going at once, as opposed to Seeback’s eight.
Indianapolis News, July 13, 1909, 10, accessed Newspapers.com
While Baker may have gained some recognition for his bag punching routine, it was his interest and skill riding motorcycles that earned him early fame and jump started his career. In the summer of 1909, Baker was one of many drivers to compete at the newly opened Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The first motorcycle races – which predated automobile races at the famous track – were held in mid-August under the sanction of the Federation of American Motorcyclists (F.A.M.). Baker competed in the ten-mile amateur championship. According to the Indianapolis Star, the event lacked a large number of entries due to racer Jake DeRosier’s recent accident on the unpaved gravel track and fear on the part of some of the drivers about being badly injured themselves. Baker, already regarded as a daredevil racer and “rider of great skill and nerve,” took home first place in the event in a time of 11:31 1-5. Just two months later, he claimed two more first place wins, one second place win, and two third place wins at a series of races in Dayton, Ohio.
Over the next few years, Baker traveled all over the country, competing in a wide variety of motorcycle races and setting many new track records.
President Taft congratulates Baker at the Indiana Sate Fair Grounds after he defeated Johnnie Sink in a five-mile race in a time of 6 minutes and 2-5 seconds. Courtesy of the Indianapolis Star, July 5, 1911, 6, accessed Newspapers.com
In early 1913, the Indianapolis Star reported that he had departed on a motorcycle tour of the southern United States, as well as Cuba, Jamaica, Panama, and Mexico. The trip was said to cover some 12,000 miles. Baker was constantly testing out the limits of his Indian motorcycle and other vehicles he drove, challenging how far he could make it on a tank of gas or how long he could go without experiencing mechanical problems. Companies frequently hired him or sought his help to test and promote their brands. For instance, during Baker’s motorcycle tour of the South, he served as an experimenter for the U.S. Tire Company and tested the durability of the company’s tires over the course of his journey. Later in life, many motorsport companies would seek his endorsements as the public came to associate him with professional integrity and a sense of nostalgia for early racing.
In 1914, Baker set out to test himself once again. This time, his goal was to break the transcontinental record set by Volney Davis a few years earlier. Rather than departing from San Francisco as Davis had, Baker made San Diego his starting point. In a post card from Baker to William Waking of Waking and Company mailed May 1, 1914, he wrote:
Dear Friend Waking:
Am leaving San Diego, Cal., May 3. Will wire you just before my arrival at Richmond and ask you to assist in guiding me through your city. I’m making an effort to break transcontinental record which stands 20 days, 9 hours, one minute. Such assistance would keep me from losing time.
Yours truly,
E.G. Baker
The trek required the Hoosier speedster to travel through twelve states and across all manner of roads. In the early twentieth century, few roads were paved and the standard highway numbering system we are so accustomed to today was not yet established. While Baker often intentionally sought out demanding, primitive mountain roads or desert paths in order to prove the efficiency of the vehicle he was promoting, even the roads of his mostly flat home state of Indiana would have presented a challenge in these years. Baker also had to battle the weather in his transcontinental run, as his route took him from the scorching desert heat to colder mountain temperatures. The Indianapolis News said it best in a May 5, 1914 article, noting “the ride will not be a picnic.”
Baker was undeterred and well prepared. Newspaper accounts report that he laid out his route ahead of time, planning what roads and towns to travel through and even planting tanks of gas ahead of him in remote areas so as to avoid fuel trouble. Working with a weather expert, he also considered weather conditions for the past decade to determine what month would be best for his trip. He traveled light. According to the Indianapolis News, Baker carried two extra inner tubes, a short and long chain, a small Graflex camera, a half-gallon canteen, and a .48 caliber revolver for protection. His Indian motorcycle was a “two-speed model, equipped with electric lights and speedometer.”
Indianapolis News, May 13, 1914, 12, accessed Newspapers.com
The F.A.M. sanctioned the ride and, as a result, Baker wrote nightly reports updating the organization on his progress and offering details about his journey. Newspapers across the country also covered the story and helped track his route. The first leg of his trip, one which Baker would describe as one of the worst due to the sandy desert and high temperatures, took him from San Diego, California to Phoenix, Arizona. On May 7, the Albuquerque Journal reported that he passed through Albuquerque, New Mexico the previous afternoon and, after a short stay, continued on to Santa Fe, bringing his total mileage that day to just over 350. From Santa Fe, Baker traveled through Las Vegas, New Mexico on to La Junta, Colorado before making it into Kansas. He reached Topeka, Kansas seven days and six hours after starting his journey in San Diego and was well on his way to breaking Davis’s previous transcontinental record.
Men help pull “Cannon Ball” Baker’s Stutz Bearcat across a river during a transcontinental trip, circa 1915. Photo courtesy of the IUPUI Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection
However, Baker encountered some trouble at this point in his trip. According to the Topeka Daily Capital, while road conditions in Kansas surpassed those of the desert, Baker had to contend with seven nail punctures along this leg and hit a dog that had crossed his path, causing him to topple from his motorcycle and the machine to fall. Baker injured his elbow and knee, but did not allow the incident to discourage him. He made it to Indianapolis on May 12 and even stopped for a quick dinner at home before continuing on. He had been on the road a little over nine days when he made it to his home state and had already covered 2,600 miles. It’s no wonder that the Indianapolis News referred to him as “Here-He-Comes-There-He-Goes Baker.”
Philadelphia Inquirer, May 17, 1914, 27, accessed Newspapers.com
Baker arrived in New York City on May 14, having driven well over 3,000 miles. The 11 day trip effectively shattered Volney Davis’s record by almost nine full days. The Indianapolis News rightly wrote on May 15 that the trek represented “not only the sturdy qualities of [Baker’s] machine, but the endurance of the rider.”
Reflecting on his record-breaking run in the days and weeks following, Baker credited his preparation and calculation before the trip as a large factor contributing to his success. He also praised his Indian motorcycle, noting that throughout the entire journey, which included fording streams and riding on railroad ties, he experienced no mechanical troubles. He noted that his batteries needed no recharging and that the original light bulb on the machine still burned brightly. According to Baker:
Four mountain ranges were negotiated. At one point at the northern end of Arizona, I climbed from 200 feet below sea level to an altitude of 9,647 feet into the mountain snows. It was in this mountain work that the two-speed showed its supreme qualities. My [brake] power, too, in making the precipitous descents of the winding mountain trails, never failed me for a moment. If it had I might not be able to tell this story.
Reno [Nevada] Gazette Journal, May 30, 1914, 2, accessed Newspapers.comBaker even reported that when he arrived in Indiana, the authorities raised the speed limit for one day so he could travel through at a faster pace.
I am a Hoosier, and the welcome and encouragement my home state gave me as I passed from town to town was a generous and appreciated demonstration.
The 1914 transcontinental run was just one of numerous record-setting trips Baker would make in a variety of vehicles from the early 1900s through the early 1940s. In 1915, he set the “Three Flags record” for “touching three countries” during a run from Canada to Mexico on an Indian motorcycle. According to the Wichita Daily Eagle, he “crashed down the Pacific Coast . . . at a speed faster than any man ever rode before on a motorcycle on any long journey.” It took him three days, nine hours, and fifteen minutes despite facing mountainous terrain and even passing through forest fires. It is not surprising that reporters christened him “Cannon Ball” Baker, as he barreled through towns and states at ever-increasing speeds. Baker died in 1960, but his legacy and contributions to motorsports continue to live on.
In the fall of 2017, the Indiana Historical Bureau will help commemorate “Cannon Ball” with a historical marker near his former home across from Garfield Park in Indianapolis. The marker celebrates the pioneer racer and test driver, while also paying tribute to his 1922 Indianapolis 500 run, in which he finished in 11th place, and his role as the first commissioner of NASCAR. Follow IHB’s Facebook page and Twitter for information about the marker dedication.
Photo courtesy Indiana University Archives Photograph Collection. For more on the state historical marker dedication commemorating McCracken see the Indiana Historical Bureau’s press release.
On April 8, 2017, the Indiana Historical Bureau, working alongside historical marker applicants Tom Graham and Bob Hammel, members of the Bill Garrett family, staff from Indiana University, and a host of others, helped unveil a new state marker honoring Hoosier basketball star Bill Garrett. The timing of the dedication and commemoration of this important athlete in IU and Big Ten history was most fitting, coming just days after the 2017 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship game and two weeks after Crispus Attucks won the 2017 Indiana high school basketball state tournament. It was Attucks’ first state basketball title since Garrett coached the team to victory in 1959.
Bill Garrett’s children pose with the new historical marker commemorating their father after the unveiling ceremony on April 8. Photo courtesy Bloomington Herald Times Online.
The marker celebrates Garrett’s accomplishments as a player and coach, while also commemorating some of the men who helped him break the longstanding “gentleman’s agreement,” which barred African Americans from playing on Big Ten varsity basketball teams into the late 1940s.
On April 19, 2017, IHB is honored to dedicate a new state historical marker to commemorate another Hoosier hardwood hero, IU basketball player and coach Branch McCracken, who also had the distinction of coaching Garrett at IU from 1948-1951.
Emmett Branch McCracken was born in Monrovia in Morgan County, Indiana on June 9, 1908 to Charles and Ida McCracken. He attended Monrovia schools and became a star on his high school basketball team, leading the small town school to consecutive Tri-State Tournament championships in 1925 and 1926. The Tri-State Tournament was an annual basketball tournament played in Cincinnati between high school teams from Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. In 1925, the Muncie Star Press reported that fourteen of the fifty-three teams entered in the tournament that year were from Indiana, with Anderson, Columbus, and Logansport considered favorites. Not surprisingly, the Logansport Pharos-Tribune favored Logansport High School, coached by Cliff Wells, as “a leading contender for the title.” However, Logansport would lose in the semifinal game to Aurora High School, which McCracken’s Monrovia team would then defeat in the final, 29-21. After six consecutive victories, Monrovia had earned the title of Tri-State Tournament champion. Tournament officials selected McCracken on the mythical All Tri-State Team, a testament to the skills he exhibited during the tournament.
Logansport Pharos Tribune, February 16, 1925, accessed Newspapers.com
Monrovia returned to the tournament the following year as one of twelve Indiana teams to compete. The team won for the second year in a row, defeating Summitville High School (Indiana) in the final game, 19-17. In a December 1927 article, the Richmond Item reported that Monrovia’s high ranking during the 1926 tournament “was largely due to the playing of McCracken,” captain of Monrovia’s team. McCracken won highest individual honors for a player during the 1925 and 1926 Tri-State Tournaments when he received the medal for most valuable player both years. The Logansport Pharos-Tribune praised McCracken’s play in its February 27, 1926 issue, reporting that he had not only led the offense, but that he was also “the bulwark of the Monrovia defense.” According to the paper, “The star pivot player gave one of the best exhibitions of basketball displayed by any individual player here this season.”
Indianapolis News, March 3, 1926, accessed Newspapers.com
After completing his senior year at Monrovia, McCracken entered Indiana University in the fall of 1926. In early November 1927, the Indianapolis Star reported that he was one of the chief candidates for the center position on IU’s basketball team for the upcoming season. His position on the varsity football team prevented him from joining basketball practice though until after November 19. After just a few games, the Star reported on December 18: “The first new man to come through with promise is Branch McCracken of Monrovia.”
McCracken may not have had much Big Ten basketball experience at the time, but he was already beginning to excel under Coach Everett Dean. On New Year’s Eve 1927, IU played the University of Cincinnati and defeated them, 56-41. An article in the Cincinnati Enquirer the following day noted that McCracken “was high point man along with [Dale] Wells, the two accounting for 28 of Indiana’s points by virtue of their accurate shooting from various angles of the court.” The following game, IU defeated fellow Big Ten member the University of Chicago, 32-13. In this game, McCracken showed his true potential. According to IU yearbook, TheArbutus, he “became at once a hero and a marked man,” having scored 24 of the team’s 32 points. The Star also took note, writing: “With the Hoosier victory came a new Indiana star on the horizon in Branch McCracken . . . The Indiana sophomore scored eleven more points than the entire Chicago team.”
IU varsity basketball team, 1927-1928. Photo courtesy The Arbutus, IU Yearbook, 1928, p. 106, accessed Ancestry.com.
McCracken continued to be a strong presence on the court throughout the 1927-1928 season. Despite his youth, he was the high scorer for the Hoosiers and led the Big Ten Conference in scoring during most of the year, only losing the lead to Bennie Oosterbaan of Michigan in the last few weeks of the season. McCracken finished the season tied for second place in conference scoring. In late November, he again turned in his football jersey to join the basketball squad for the 1928-1929 season. He returned as center and continued to put up big points, again finishing second in Big Ten scoring as a sophomore.
1927-1928 scoring totals and standings. Photo courtesy The Arbutus, IU Yearbook, 1928, p. 112, accessed Ancestry.com
McCracken’s junior season in 1929-1930 would prove to be his best. According to IU’s yearbook TheArbutus:
After three years of hard struggle Capt. Branch McCracken plowed his way through the Conference foes to score a total of 147 points to top all other players and to break the all-time record set last year by [Charles ‘Stretch’] Murphy of Purdue. McCracken was one of the best pilots ever in charge of an Indiana basketball team and was named on nearly every all-conference team.
McCracken graduated from IU in 1930 and soon after accepted a position as head basketball coach at Ball State Teachers College (now Ball State University). An article in the Columbus Republic in 1938 noted that during his time coaching the Ball State Cardinals, he made them “a constant threat in Indiana collegiate conference competition,” leading them to an 86-57 record over eight seasons.
Coach Everett Dean with Joe Platt and Jim Birr, November 30, 1937. Photo courtesy Indiana University Archives Photograph Collection.
In late spring 1938, newspapers began reporting that IU basketball and baseball coach Everett Dean was close to accepting a basketball coaching position at Stanford University. McCracken, who had played under Dean at IU, was among those considered to replace the future Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer. By June, IU hired McCracken as the school’s head basketball coach.
McCracken coached the Hoosiers to a 17-3 record in his first year with the team. It was a strong season, but one that would be eclipsed quickly the following year. McCracken’s squad finished the 1939-1940 regular season 20-3. Despite finishing second in the Big Ten, one game behind Purdue, IU was invited to represent the Midwest in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Eastern tournament. IU had won all of its non-conference games and beat Purdue twice, while the Boilermakers had lost two non-conference games, bringing their total losses to four on the season.
On March 22, IU defeated Springfield College (Massachusetts), 48-24 in the first round of the Eastern tournament. The following day, the team topped Duquesne University, 39-30, earning the opportunity to play the “Phog” Allen coached University of Kansas team for the national college basketball championship. McCracken’s Hoosiers defeated Kansas 60-42 to claim IU’s first national basketball championship. In expressing his pride and congratulations to the team, IU President Herman B Wells told the squad “the game which you played at Kansas City was to the glory of yourselves, to Indiana basketball, and to Indiana University.”
Indianapolis Star, April 2, 1940, accessed Newspapers.com
In just his second season at the helm, McCracken led IU to their first national title, setting the bar high for the seasons to come. He would not let the school nor the state down. After a three-year break (1943-1946) to serve in the United States Navy, McCracken returned to his alma mater ready to resume his coaching responsibilities and again lead the Hoosiers to victory.
After starting the 1952-1953 season with a 1-2 record, McCracken’s team would go on to win its next seventeen straight games. By mid-January the United Press board of coaches ranked them fifth in the country. On February 23, 1953, IU trampled Purdue 113-78. According to the Indianapolis Star, IU’s 113 points in the game broke the previous Big Ten record of 103 set by the University of Iowa in 1944. By March 1, the Hoosiers were guaranteed sole claim to the Big Ten title after defeating Illinois, 91-79.
Albuquerque Journal, March 3, 1953, accessed Newspapers.com.
By the end of the regular season, Indiana’s record was 19-3, with seventeen conference wins to one loss. The team defeated DePaul University, the University of Notre Dame, and Louisiana State University, in the postseason, earning the chance to play Kansas once again for the national championship on March 18. With thirty seconds remaining in the title game, Bob Leonard of the Hoosiers made his second of two free throws to give IU a 69-68 lead and their second national basketball title.
McCracken’s team won the Big Ten conference again the following year and twice more under him in 1957 and 1958. In 1960, he was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player. The Indianapolis Star reported on the induction on April 27, 1960, noting that “Purdue and Indiana had hit the jackpot.” Three of the five men inducted as players were from the two universities: Charles (Stretch) Murphy and Johnny Wooden from Purdue, and McCracken from IU. Ward (Piggy) Lambert of Purdue was also one of the three coaches inducted that year.
Coach Branch McCracken celebrates with his team after winning the 1953 NCAA basketball championship. Photo courtesy Indiana University Archives Photograph Collection.
In 1965, after twenty-four seasons, McCracken retired as head coach of IU’s varsity basketball team. Between his thirty-two years at Ball State and IU, his teams had amassed a 450-231 record (66% win percentage), complete with two NCAA titles, and four Big Ten titles. Reflecting on his experiences as coach, McCracken stated:
I’ve never regretted my profession. Taking kids and helping to make something out of them is the most rewarding part of my job. Basketball has been good to me. It’s made me lots of friends and I owe the game more than I can ever repay.
In September 1918, the sports reporter for the Bloomington Evening World wondered how the expanded Selective Service age range (revised to include 18-21 year olds) would affect the local high school basketball team’s prospects. Only two of Bloomington high’s players were young enough to be exempt from draft registration. A month later, the World reported that the influenza epidemic had incapacitated six of the squad’s fourteen players. The intrusion of World War I and a worldwide influenza pandemic disrupted the lives of many Hoosiers. In particular, this article explores how war and the Spanish flu affected Indiana athletes and sports. The Great War and the Great Pandemic had calamitous short-term effects on Indiana athletics, but long-term benefits in developing athletes and sporting culture in Indiana.
In September 1917, these thirty-nine civilians from Blackford County were drafted into military service for WWI. They are posed on the courthouse grounds in Hartford City. Source: Indiana Historical Society.
A month after Congress declared war in April 1917, the legislature passed the Selective Service Act re-instituting the military draft. The first draft registration began in June 1917 for men ages 21-31. A second draft registration occurred a year later in June 1918 for those who had turned 21 since the last draft, and by September 1918 Congress expanded the conscription ages from 18-45. Indiana as a state contributed 130,670 soldiers to the conflict, over 39,000 of them volunteers. Indiana University claimed that 35% of their alumni and current undergrads had enlisted. Purdue University and Rose Polytechnic in Terre Haute stated that over 12% of their alumni were in the service, whereas Butler College [changed to university in 1925] and Quaker affiliated Earlham College counted around 2% of their graduates at war.
Enlistments of college men would ultimately erode the short-term quality of college athletics. A March 1918 article in Indiana University’s Indiana Daily Student reckoned that enlistments and the draft would reduce the number of quality players for the upcoming football season. At Wabash College, several athletes left school at the close of the 1917 football season and enlisted, including multi-sport star Francis Bacon. A Crawfordsville Journal reporter assessed that these athletes had attributes that would make them excellent soldiers. The reporter wrote, “Training, alertness, physical fitness and courage to tackle a hard task and stick to it along with the habit of “team work” have all contributed to their advancement [in the military].” Meanwhile in Lafayette, a Purdue sports reporter held out hope that Purdue’s athletes could avoid military service. He wrote, “If Uncle Sam can do without several of Purdue’s basketball stars until the present season is over, Purdue should be able to look forward to a very successful season.” Uncle Sam could not do without, and Purdue lost the athletic services of several basketball players as well as basketball Coach Ward Lambert, a future Naismith hall-of-famer, to the military.
1917-18 Purdue basketball team. After being conference runner-up in ’17, Purdue fell to .500 in Big Ten play in ’18 without Coach Ward Lambert to guide them. Source: Purdue University Debris yearbook, 1918.
College athletics experienced great uncertainty during the war, especially regarding the loss of student athletes to the military. South Bend News-Times reporter Charles W. Call calculated that 13 of the 15 Notre Dame basketball players from recent years were in the armed forces, which was a higher service percentage than any of Notre Dame’s four major sports. Among Call’s statistics was multi-sport athlete, and basketball captain-elect Thomas King, who, in October 1917, awaited a summons to Camp Zachary Taylor, the mobilizing center for Indiana recruits near Louisville.
Similar to Notre Dame, IU lost three-sport letterman, and 1917 team basketball captain, Charles Severin Buschman, to the Army when he graduated at the end of the spring semester, enlisted, and received a captain’s commission in September 1918. College athletes who became officers in the armed forces came as no surprise to DePauw University coach Edbert C. Buss, who had seen seven of his football eleven* enlist. He assessed the military value of athletics and said, “We feel that college athletics is as big a factor in developing our men as any other department in the university, and it is a well known fact that army officers are picking football and basketball men for some of the most important branches of service.”Arguably the most-famous Indiana college (or ex-college) athlete to be drafted into the Army was 6’4” basketball sensation Homer Stonebraker of Wabash College. College authorities stripped Stonebraker of his collegiate athletic eligibility his senior season in 1917 because he violated his amateur status. Although not an active college athlete, the Army’s drafting of Stonebraker carried such importance that the New York Tribune and the Boston Herald both carried news items on the matter.
Indiana University’s 1916-17 basketball team. Three-sport athlete and basketball captain, Charles Severin Buschmann (seated front row with the ball), graduated and immediately enlisted in the Army. Source: Indiana University Archives Photograph Collection.
An Indiana Daily Student reporter surveyed the college athletic landscape at IU in 1918, and wrote the following:
Athletics at Indiana, like all other activities, have been materially affected this year by the war. Not only has the status of the primary sports been changed but nearly every one of last year’s stars who were eligible to play this year are in the service, and the participants for this season must be culled largely from the ranks of the inexperienced.
Curiously, even while experienced college-age men were leaving academia for the military, college enrollment grew. At IU, student enrollment increased, even though the quality of their athletics decreased. The Daily Student in October 1918 reported the largest enrollment in the history of the school with 1,953 students; 1,100 of that number were freshmen, and 875 of the freshmen were men, or 600 more males than the first year class enrolling in 1917. More males enrolled to take advantage of the Student Army Training Corps (SATC) classes that were also available at Purdue, Notre Dame and other college campuses around the state. The 1918 freshman class at IU also saw a decrease in female enrollment: 695 down from 780 in 1917. The university authorities speculated that the decreased number of female enrollees was due to young women entering the workforce to take the place of men going to war.
Student Army Training Corps, DePauw University, Greencastle, Ind., 1918. Source: Indiana Historical Society.
The SATC proved a mixed blessing for the campuses that housed the corps. The War Department initially advised that intercollegiate football in institutions with SATCs be discontinued as a war measure. This policy would allow students to devote 14 hours a week to military drill and 42 hours a week to studying military tactics. Wabash College was without a SATC, and had no such time demands. The Crawfordsville college planned to proceed uninterrupted with their football schedule. The proposed change did not go over so well in football-crazed South Bend with first year coach Knute Rockne. The War Department ultimately backed off their initial proposal and instead set limits on travel, mandating that only two away games could be played during the season that would require the team to be absent from campus for more than 48 hours.
Another change the war prompted was changing freshman eligibility rules. Freshmen were eligible to compete in varsity athletics at smaller schools like Wabash and DePauw. Larger schools like IU, Purdue, and even Notre Dame prohibited freshmen from playing on the varsity. While not concerned with varsity athletics specifically, the War Department encouraged mass athletics participation by every enrollee in the SATC so that “every man . . . may benefit by the physical development which . . . athletics afford.” The Daily Student reporter assessed this development:
Sports on a war basis will probably lose some of the excitement and glamour, but the benefits derived from them will be much greater than it has been in the past. Not a favored few, but the mass of the student body will profit by the advantages thus afforded.
Notre Dame Coach Rockne opposed freshman eligibility. The South Bend News-Times explained Rockne’s position: “men . . . might be strong football players but not genuine college students.” Representatives of the Big Ten and other Midwestern college athletic associations met in Chicago and voted to allow freshmen to play in 1918. While Rockne may have opposed the measure in principal, in practice it was a good decision since he had only two returning lettermen including the famous George Gipp. Among the freshmen Rockne coached in 1918 was Earl “Curly” Lambeau from Green Bay, Wisconsin.
University of Notre Dame’s football team, 1918. Back row: Coach Knute Rockne, Charles Crowley, Early “Curly” Lambeau, George Gipp, Raleigh Stine, Frederic Larson. Middle row: Eddie Anderson, Maurice “Clipper” Smith, Captain Pete Bahan, Bernard Kirk, Heartley “Hunk” Anderson. Front row: Frank Lockard, Norman Barry, William Mohn. Source: University of Notre Dame Archives
Notre Dame’s need for athletes was not unique. At IU, only six players, including three who had never played football before, turned out for the team’s first practice. IU football coach Ewald O. “Jumbo” Stiehm remarked, “I have never before faced a season with so few experienced men to rely upon.” The Daily Student explained, “The teams will have to be built up almost entirely from green material, strengthened by men who had training on the freshmen squads throughout the year.” In Crawfordsville, seven Wabash College freshmen won varsity letters at the conclusion of the 1917 football season. To which the Crawfordsville Journal commented on the benefit, “This is an unusually large number of first year men to receive such recognition and the situation is brought about by war time conditions which have depleted the ranks of the older athletes. However, it is encouraging as it means that the majority of these men will be on hand to form the nucleus of next year’s team.”
As if the effects of mobilizing for war were not enough to inhibit Indiana athletics, the state also had to deal with an influenza epidemic. Indiana health authorities reported the first cases of influenza in September 1918. While the flu pandemic in Indiana was less severe than in other parts of America, it still afflicted an estimated 350,000 Hoosiers, and claimed 10,000 lives between September 1918 and February 1919. In October 1918, the South Bend News-Times reported on how the flu impacted college football:
Already staggering under the new military regulations, middle western football was dealt another blow tonight when a score of colleges and universities cancelled gridiron games scheduled for tomorrow because of the epidemic of Spanish influenza. Nearly 20 of the 30 odd games scheduled were called off. Reports received at Chicago indicated that some of the games had been called off because members of the teams were slightly indisposed, others because of probable attendance due to the influenza epidemic, and still others for the reason that it is feared crowds cause a spread of the disease.
Authorities cancelled the first three games on Notre Dame’s 1918 schedule on account of flu quarantines. Health officials even forced Rockne to cancel a practice. IU football coaches cancelled the team’s season finale, scheduled for Thanksgiving Day in Indianapolis, on account of the influenza situation in the capitol city.
The flu also affected high school sports. Bloomington High School expected to play their first basketball game of the season on October 18, but the city’s influenza quarantine forced the team to cancel games against Waldron, Orleans, Mitchell, Sullivan, Greencastle, and Indianapolis Technical. Coach Clifford Wells hoped that they could open their season on December 6 against 1918 runner-up Anderson. Hoping to stay sharp, the team played an exhibition game against an alumni team on November 17, but it was not much of an exhibition since health officials mandated the gym doors be closed to the public. The team succeeded in playing their first inter-scholastic game 43 days after their season was set to begin when they defeated Greencastle in Greencastle on November 29. The Bloomington team did not expect to play a home game until after the New Year on account of the flu.
Bloomington High School’s basketball team would win the 1919 state tournament despite a rocky season interrupted by flu and war. Their coach, Clifford Wells, was serving in the Navy reserves at the time. Source: Indiana High School Athletic Association Handbook for 1919.
At South Bend, the high school cancelled the first game of the season against Elkhart on account of the flu. They scheduled a replacement game against Michigan City, who had not practiced much indoors on account of the flu. The next game on the schedule against LaPorte was cancelled for the same reason. A replacement game against Valparaiso saw South Bend at half strength as one player was recovering from the flu, and two others had fallen ill.
While the Great Pandemic in Indiana officially lasted from September 1918 to February 1919, another wave of severe respiratory problems afflicted Indiana the following winter as well. In South Bend, there were 1,800 reported cases of the flu in January 1920. Notre Dame basketball coach Gus Dorais was among the afflicted and lay in the hospital for weeks. In his absence, Knute Rockne took over coaching the basketball team. Mishawaka High School lost a star player for the season on account of an attack of pneumonia that nearly cost him his life. At Goshen High School, basketball captain Clement McMahon recovered from scarlet fever, only to die a short time later from double pneumonia.
The effects of war and disease should have been enough to end competitive inter-scholastic sports for at least one season. Instead, Hoosier athletes played on. The ordeals Indiana sportsmen experienced at home and abroad strengthened athletic teams, developed sporting culture, and contributed to the growth of professional sports in the 1920s. As one observer noted, “On every side there is convincing evidence that the war has and will prove a great stimulus to sport.”
The playing experience first-year college athletes gained while upperclassmen were away became a competitive advantage to teams in the war’s immediate aftermath. As a Notre Dame sports reporter observed, Rockne made “a team out of a lot of fatheads” whose year of seasoning “will bring back the [glory] days [of Notre Dame].” Major college athletic associations rescinded freshmen eligibility after the war, but they allowed the athletes who had competed as freshmen to have a total of four years of athletic eligibility.
The combination of game-tested underclassmen, returning war-tested veterans, and an infusion of good athletes from the SATC who remained in college after demobilization produced extremely strong post-war teams. The best example of this was at Purdue for the 1919-20 season. Coach Lambert returned from his military service, which was enough of a boost in and of itself for the Boilermakers’ prospects. Several pre-war veterans returned to the court and joined four returning lettermen from the previous season. United Press reporter Heze Clark, who had followed college basketball for 25 years, forecasted a strong season for Purdue that should “net them not only the Big Ten Championship, but also western collegiate high honors.” Purdue ended the season as runner-up in the Big Ten, but they tied for the lead the following season, won the Big Ten outright in 1922, and continued to have strong teams throughout the 1920s and 30s.
The war’s aftermath not only created stronger teams it also gave an incredible boost to American sporting culture in terms of increased public interest and participation in sports. The fact that sports continued to be played during a war and in spite of a national health pandemic shows that sports meant something special to Americans, perhaps as an escape from worldly worries. In military camps, soldiers regularly engaged in boxing, baseball, basketball and football in military camps. In some cases, soldiers gained exposure to sports they never played, which developed not only new athletes, but also new sports enthusiasts. This was not unlike the growth baseball experienced after the Civil War when soldiers learned the game in camps, and brought it back to their communities after the war. One newspaper reporter assessed, “With thousands of Uncle Sam’s soldier boys equipped with baseball, boxing and football paraphernalia while in the service, thousands of young bloods coming [home] . . . will demand red-blooded recreations and pastimes on a larger scale than ever before and the country at large weary of death-dealing conflicts and grateful for the chance to relax, sports should thrive on a greater scale than ever.”
Purdue football fans celebrate a touchdown in 1918 by tossing their hats in the air. Source: Purdue University Debris (yearbook), 1919.
Reporters all around America drew the same conclusions. International News Service reporter Jack Veiock observed, “In spite of the war and the hardships it worked in college circles, the pigskin is being booted about by more elevens* today than in any season that has passed.” He observed that public interest had not only increased for the sport, but participation exploded in colleges and army camps. Men who had never even tried the sport drove the increased participation. A syndicated article printed in the News-Times agreed, “Boys who came away from desks to go into the fight have come back trained men who will want to continue in good red blooded competition. . . . The war has made an athletic team of about four million men.” South Bend News-Times reporter Charles W. Call added,
This world conflict has proved a number of things but none more emphatically than that intercollegiate athletics, often as they have been questioned in time of peace, have made sinewy and adroit the army of a nation hastening to the ordeal of battle.
Another positive effect of World War I on sports was the growth and emergence of professional athletics in Indiana, including football, but specifically basketball. Professional football had a weak hold in Indiana in the early-twentieth century. Pine Village was a notable professional team before the war. After the war, Hammond was an inaugural member of the American Professional Football Association/National Football League from 1920-26.
Historical marker, Indiana Historical Bureau.
On the other hand, professional basketball in Indiana boomed in the 1920s. Todd Gould in his book Pioneers of the Hardwood: Indiana and the Birth of Professional Basketball just gives passing reference to the war and does not examine the impact war mobilization, male social fraternization, athletic competition in military camps, and demobilization had in the birth of professional basketball. During the war, an all-star amateur squad of members of the 137th Field Artillery, which was constituted of men from northern Indiana, fielded a basketball team in France to compete against other military units. Many such groups of athletic veterans would continue to play as league-independent teams, often with local business sponsorship after the war.
Indiana’s basketball star, Homer Stonebraker, made the acquaintance of Clarence Alter while serving in France. In pre-war civilian life, Alter managed an independent basketball team in Fort Wayne that competed against other independent clubs in the state. Alter and Stonebraker discussed joining forces after they were discharged. Their relationship became the basis of the Fort Wayne Caseys, one of Indiana’s most successful, early professional basketball teams. Alter recruited other veterans for the team, including Stonebraker’s old Wabash teammate Francis Bacon. Semi-professional teams cropped up all around the state in the 1920s in cities such as Bluffton, Hartford City, Huntington, Indianapolis, and Richmond. The athletes on these teams were often former local high school stars, but more often than not they were also veterans.
The Great War and the Great Pandemic changed sports in Indiana. In the face of severe, outside adversity, sports emerged from the war with greater popularity. In high school basketball, attendance at the state basketball tournament went from 2,500 before and during the war to 15,000 several years later. More racial diversity slowly appeared on high school teams because of the influx of African-American emigrants from the South during the war (although segregated black high schools were barred from IHSAA competition until 1942, individual black athletes could be on teams at non-segregated schools). Some military veterans returned to college and gave a boost to college sports fandom, if not actually contributing on the field of play. The veterans who returned home probably had a greater appreciation if not love of sports from being exposed to them in camp life. This rise in post-war interest in sports strongly contributed to the “Golden Age of Sports” in the 1920s, and the adulation of sports heroes like Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Red Grange, and Rockne.
*“Elevens” is a term commonly used at this time to refer to the eleven players on a football team. Similarly, baseball teams were often called “nines” and basketball teams “fives” or “quintets.”
In 1917, basketball was only twenty-five years old. Indiana high school basketball was a bit younger than that, and the state tournament was only in its seventh year (its sixth under Indiana High School Athletic Association control). Hoosier Hysteria was quickly taking root, as year after year more high school teams entered sectional tournaments with dreams of hardwood glory. Basketball in Lebanon began a bit later than other communities, but it quickly became a favorite sport of the town’s teenage boys. The school team’s reputation and skill-level improved year after year and culminated in a state title in 1912. Many influential figures in basketball’s development in the state walked the halls of Lebanon High School in the 1910s. The following narrative provides an overview of some of those people, and their accomplishments that culminated in Lebanon winning a second state basketball title in 1917.
Lebanon High School’s coach Ward “Piggy” Lambert was among the best Indiana high school coaches in the nineteen-teens. He came to Lebanon after their first state championship, and started coaching in the fall of 1912. He won 79% of his games in four seasons on the bench. His teams were perennial title contenders. Perhaps the best team that he coached at Lebanon was the 1914 squad, which due to an unfortunate draw in the state tournament played six games in a little over twenty-four hours before succumbing to fatigue and the well-rested, Homer Stonebraker-led, Wingate team, which won the 1914 crown. In 1915, Thorntown’s team surprised Coach Lambert’s squad in the sectional, and went on to win the 1915 title. Lambert and his boys reclaimed the sectional in 1916, but suffered a narrow, and disappointing defeat to Martinsville in the second round of the state tournament.
Lebanon coach Ward “Piggy” Lambert. Photo from Lebanon High School yearbook, The Cedars, 1915. Accessed via Ancestry.com
Lebanon projected to return most of its team the following season, including two impressive underclassmen who were first and third on the team in scoring. Unfortunately, Coach Lambert would not return for a fifth season. In the summer of 1916, he became the head basketball coach at Purdue University where he would go on to a hall-of-fame career, and positively influence generations of players, including John Wooden. Lebanon’s high school administrators hired Wabash College graduate Alva R. Staggs to replace Lambert, and teach English. However, Lambert’s coaching in the years before had honed athletic skills, developed high basketball IQs, and created a winning culture in his high school charges, and set the stage for Staggs’ successful season.
THE REGULAR SEASON
Due to injuries and eligibility issues, the 1916-17 Lebanon squad did not start the season as anticipated. Three year letterman and team captain Frank “Doc” Little, who played back guard, would miss most of his senior season due to a hip injury. Gerald Gardner, who the Indianapolis News described as “evasive as a mosquito,” had been a third team all-tournament player in ’16 after accounting for 42% of Lebanon’s points. Yet, academic eligibility issues erased most of the forward’s junior season.
Don White, floor guard, led the team in scoring with 11.4 ppg during the regular and post season. His scoring accounted for 30% of the team’s offense. Photo from Lebanon High School yearbook, The Cedars, 1917. Accessed at Ralph W. Stark Heritage Center, Lebanon Public Library.
Even with these personnel losses, the Lebanon coach and players adapted. Staggs cycled through six different starting line-ups in the first ten games of the season. The two constants in the line-up were floor guard Don White and back guard Clyde Grater. White, a junior, was the team’s leading scorer as a sophomore and would retain the honor for the rest of his high school career. Grater, a sophomore, was in his first year on the varsity. At 5’ 8½” in height, he was much shorter than the prototypical back guard who was at this time the tallest and heaviest player on the team. Despite his average stature, Grater played the defensively-obsessed role very well. Other players who started for Lebanon in the early part of the season were George White (Don’s older brother), Charles “Dutch” Frank, Bob Ball, Harry “Peck” DeVol (the Whites’ first cousin), and Fred “Cat” Adam (the second-leading scorer from the previous season).
Lebanon rolled through the first half of the season. They compiled an 9-0 record against Veedersburg, Advance, Rockville, Washington, New Richmond (twice), Thorntown, Lafayette Jefferson, and Martinsville. The squad averaged ten points better than their opponents during this span. The game against defending state champ Lafayette Jeff was such an anticipated early season event that a Jeff physics teacher sent in-game updates via wireless to an amateur radio operator in Lebanon. The Lebanon receiver subsequently relayed updates of the game to local businesses via telephone.
Clyde Grater, defensive ace. Photo from Lebanon High School yearbook, The Cedars, 1918. Accessed at Ralph W. Stark Heritage Center, Lebanon Public Library.
After the triumph over Jeff, a few cracks appeared in the quality of the team’s play. A revenge-hungry New Richmond team played a physically rough game in which Lebanon escaped with a five point lead. In the next game, Lebanon had to go into overtime to defeat Martinsville by a last second field goal. They returned home to play Advance, and the wheels fell off. The up-start Boone County rival shellacked Lebanon, 28-6. A week later Lebanon lost to another Boone County team in Thorntown, 30-20.
Although on a two-game losing streak, the “Black and Gold” had a 9-2 record and a favorable schedule ahead against Frankfort (twice), Crawfordsville (twice), an away game against Rochester, and home games against Jeff, Washington, Martinsville, and Bedford. Over the final ten games, Coach Staggs settled on a regular line-up of DeVol and Adam at forwards, Ball at center, and White and Grater in the back court. With this line-up, Staggs fielded a trio of his best scorers. White was the team’s most consistent scorer all season with ten points per game. Ball and Adam disappointed over the first ten games with averages of less than three points. However, once inserted into the starting line-up the duo averaged ten points a piece over the final 10 games. With five games left in the season, “Doc” Little and Gerald Gardner returned to the team. Their immediate contributions were minimal, but they bolstered the bench of a booming Lebanon team. Over the final nine games, the Lebanon cagers routed their opponents by over 26 points a game. On the season, the team compiled an 18-2 record, with an offensive average of 33.15 points a game, and a defensive average of 17.9 points against.
THE SECTIONAL TOURNEY
Fred “Cat” Adam, forward/center, averaged 7.5 ppg as a junior in ’17. Photo from Lebanon High School yearbook, The Cedars, 1917. Accessed at Ralph W. Stark Heritage Center, Lebanon Public Library.
The Indiana High School Athletic Association selected Lebanon as a district host for a sectional tournament, which was held on March 9 and 10, 1917. The townsfolk welcomed squads and fans from Boone, Carroll, and Clinton counties, including: Advance, Bringhurst, Burlington, Colfax, Cutler, Delphi, Flora, Frankfort, Jamestown, Kirklin, Thorntown, and Zionsville. Don White and company had little trouble with their first two sectional opponents, Cutler and Delphi, and defeated the Carroll County teams by an average margin of victory of 59 points.
Their next challenger, Thorntown, would present a much tougher match-up. The friendly rivals had split their regular season series. Thorntown also had the advantage of having three players and a coach from their championship season in 1915. The scores were close throughout the sectional game. Thorntown held a 10-9 lead at intermission. This was only the third time all season that Lebanon trailed at half time, and they lost on the previous two occasions. Don White determined to not let it happen again. He came out white hot in the second half with seven unanswered points. His scoring whipped the fans into a frenzy. Thorntown was down seven with a quarter to play. They clawed back, and cut Lebanon’s lead to three, but a series of miscues including two missed free throws sealed the fate of the Sugar Creek Township team.
Prognosticators picked the sectional final between Lebanon and Advance to be another tough contest, especially after Advance’s surprise victory over Lebanon at mid-season. However, Advance lost their star player to injury in the semi-final. To compound matters for Advance, Lebanon’s bench depth allowed Coach Staggs to flex his line-up to rest his regular starters and give “Doc” Little and Gardner some additional playing time. In the final, White’s 17 points almost outscored Advance single-handedly as Lebanon powered past Advance, 37-18.
THE STATE FINALS
On March 16, twenty sectional winners convened at Indiana University to vie for the state title. Lebanon played three uncompetitive contests in the early rounds to advance to the finals. They sank Trafalgar in their first contest, 34-14. In the quarterfinals, the Lebanonites left Kendallville tilting at windmills, 43-8. In the semis, the Boone County boys sent Martinsville packing, 36-12.
The final pitted Lebanon against the speedy Gary Emerson team. The majority of the crowd of 4,000 rallied behind the underdogs from Gary at the start. Yet the crowd grew silent as Lebanon built a 25-15 lead by half time. The Steel City team went on a run in the second half to make it a three point game. With the score at 25-22, Lebanon surged ahead with a 9-4 run to ice the game, 34-26. White and Adam tied for team highs with ten points a piece.
With the win, Lebanon won its second state championship. White was a consensus all-state tournament first team member. Adam, Little, and DeVol appeared on various all-tournament lists either on the first or second teams.
1917 Indiana basketball champion team from Lebanon. Photo from Lebanon High School yearbook, The Cedars, 1917. Accessed at Ralph W. Stark Heritage Center, Lebanon Public Library.
POSTSCRIPT
Coach Staggs left Lebanon after the school year to accept a job at Anderson High School. Little, DeVol, and Frank would join mid-season graduate George White in the ranks of Lebanon alumni. Bob Ball although technically a junior would leave high school and enter DePauw University, depriving the team of its second leading scorer. Yet the core of White, Grater, and Adam would return for the 1917-18 season. Under the tutelage of a new coach, Glenn Curtis, and a younger cast of supporting characters they would win the state tournament again, and join the historical annals with Wingate as back-to-back state champions.
After graduating in 1918, Don White reunited with his old coach, Ward Lambert, and continued his athletic career at Purdue. He was second in the Big Ten in scoring as a sophomore, and led the conference in scoring as a junior while also leading the university to the conference title in 1921. After college, White entered the coaching ranks where he had a thirty-five year career at Washington University (St. Louis), the University of Connecticut, and Rutgers. He even coached Thailand’s Olympic team in 1956.
After high school, Adam and Grater teamed together again at Wabash College where they were multi-sport athletes, and fixtures in the basketball line-up. After graduation they both became high school teachers and coaches.
This may be the earliest photo of an Indiana high school basketball game. Wingate High School vs Kokomo High School, January 16, 1915 at Kokomo Y.M.C.A. Source: Kokomo High School yearbook, The Sargasso, 1915, accessed via Howard County Memory Project (howardcountymemory.net).
For all of basketball’s cultural worth to the state, finding a photo of a basketball game from before the 1920s is a difficult task. Early basketball team photographs are rather plentiful, and frequently appeared in yearbooks, and newspapers. Action shots are much rarer, likely due to early-20th century Hoosiers having cameras that required long exposure times, which were unable to clearly capture moving subjects.
The introductory photo at the top of this blog post is the earliest that the Indiana Historical Bureau has yet to encounter of Indiana high school basketball players on the court, and about to play a game. The story behind the picture is an interesting one. The photo depicts the teams from Wingate High School and Kokomo High School before a January 16, 1915 game at the Kokomo Y.M.C.A. This moment was photographically commemorated because Wingate was the defending state champion, having won back-to-back titles in 1913 and 1914. Situated in northwestern Montgomery County, Wingate was a small school with only 67 students. Among those enrolled in that student body, however, was one of the best Indiana basketball players of that generation, Homer Stonebraker. The 6’4″ Stonebraker was a giant among his competitors. In 15 of the 18 box scores that research could uncover from Wingate’s 1913-14 regular season, Stonebraker averaged 24.9 points a game. By comparison, Wingate’s opponents only generated 17.3 points a game. After leading Wingate to consecutive state titles, Stonebraker graduated in 1914, and matriculated at Wabash College where he continued his athletic success and eventually carved out an eleven season career playing with professional clubs and early American Basketball League affiliates like the Fort Wayne Caseys, the Detroit McCarthys, and the Chicago Bruins.
Wingate’s 1914 championship team. Stonebraker is seated in the middle of the first row. Source: Indiana High School Athletic Association Annual Handbook for 1914, accessed via Indiana Memory.
Wingate was hardly the same team after Stonebraker’s graduation. On the eve of their Kokomo game in 1915 they could not even boast about their 5-6 record. To complicate their season, they cancelled most of their December games as a result of the entire town falling under a small pox quarantine. Despite their struggles, fans and the press continued to hype any contest against Wingate. The Kokomo Tribune announced:
This game Saturday will be the most important home game for the locals this season. Wingate’s team is a real championship contender again this year and a victory for Kokomo would mean that we also have a team of first class ability.
The very calm composure of the players in the photo taken before the game hardly indicated the animosity that developed in the ensuing contest. Kokomo lost the contentious game 31-15. The Indianapolis Star reported that “Wild scenes, which threatened frequently to break up the game, marked the second period of play and may result in . . . breaking off athletic relations.” The hired referee failed to show up for the game. Consequently, the two schools agreed to let a representative of each of the respective teams officiate one half each. Wingate led 13-7 at half time with Kokomo’s ex-player Tyner Spruce officiating. Wingate’s coach Hugh Vandivier refereed the second half and according to the newspaper reports showed favoritism to his own team, which drew the ire of the Kokomo fans. Ultimately, both squads would finish the season with disappointing records [Wingate (11-8) and Kokomo (7-10)], and neither team would advance out of their division tournaments to qualify for the state tournament.
1918 state championship game between Lebanon and Anderson at Indiana University’s “New” Gymnasium. Source: Indiana University yearbook, The Arbutus, 1918.
Attempts at basketball action photography continued to be a novelty throughout most of the 1910s. The 1918 title game between Lebanon and Anderson is one of the earliest-known attempts to photograph an Indiana high school championship game. Even then the visual chronicle leaves much to be desired, as the camera’s exposure time had yet to catch up to the action on the court. All of the players are out of focus, and several are nothing more than blurs in the image. Despite this, these pictures can give modern viewers small windows to glimpse the earliest years of Hoosier Hysteria.
For your bonus enjoyment, here’s another photo of a non-high school basketball practice from the 1912 Purdue University yearbook, The Debris. This photo is likely posed, which is why all the players are in focus with the exception of the top right defender’s blurry arms.
Purdue University yearbook, the Debris, 1912. Credit: Archives and Special Collections, Purdue University Libraries.
Do you know of any Indiana basketball action photographs that are earlier or contemporary with these shown here? If so, let us know at ihb@history.in.gov.
