MORE COWBELL!!!

My Quaker Club cowbell, one of several 
collected over the years.
(Pic is my own.)

For as long as most living Guilfordians can remember cowbells have been a common sight (and sound) at Quaker sporting events, particularly football games. Although the exact origin is unclear it seems to have stemmed from the fact that Guilford has, almost from the beginning, periodically operated a campus farm and dairy barn, with several cows to supply the cafeteria with fresh milk.

No doubt, many Guilford students were raised on a farm - and were familiar with the actual purpose of cowbells - but in fact, the school tradition may have started with a prank. According to alumni footballer, Tom Evaul '50, the boys from the 1949 squad decided to surprise the co-eds of Mary Hobbs Hall by secretly placing one of those dairy cows inside their dorm parlor late one night. (How they managed to get the poor bovine all the way across campus, up the Hobbs steps, past the housemother's door and into the parlor without anyone noticing is beyond me!). As a homage to the prank, the young ladies from Mary Hobbs, and then Founders, began using cowbells to cheer on the Crimson and Gray at football games. Thus, a venerable campus tradition began.

Alumni ringing the bells.
(Photo: Guilford College.)

Besides being a noisemaker for athletic events, the cowbell was also used by the designated "ringer" of Hobbs and Founders to wake up the residents at first light - well before the campus bell - rousting the ladies of the dorms to breakfast. Many an alumnae have fond memories of having bell ringer duty, including Tanya Feagins '74.

Most Guilfordians have a few cowbell memories, at games, events, parties or otherwise.

I distinctly remember Bev Rogers, wife of Guilford College President (1980 - 1996) Bill Rogers, gleefully clanging an over-sized cowbell during many a football contest of the early 1990s. Today, with our Quaker gridders enjoying a resurgence in the program, the cowbells after a key play or touchdown can drown out the loudspeakers from the announcer's box.     

We're certainly not the only college to do this; it's also an old, well known tradition at Mississippi State University (THUNDEROUS cowbells during games). However, it's a tradition here at good ole' NCAA Division III Guilford College too. In fact, I'll probably have one in each hand for the home contest against rival Washington and Lee University next weekend.

(* Fan pics with cowbells, courtesy of Guilford College.)

   

The Guilford Guns?

1911 Murad Tobacco College Series;
"Guilford College Shooting Range." (Front)
(Source: eBay)

(Back)
(Source: eBay)

Some interesting oddities can turn up on a web search, like this old cigarette trading card from 1911 depicting a dapper student marksman at the "Guilford College Shooting Range."

I'm guessing Murad Tobacco knew little about Guilford College. For one, I don't think Guilford ever had a rifle team, or even a shooting range. There's no reference to either in school publications of that year.
Plus, guns were a regular point of contention between peace-minded Quaker administrators and rural but refined country boys of the College, who usually towed their guns back to school in the fall - all the better to hunt small game on the fringes of campus.

"[In the mid-1800s] there were no intramural sports, but there was time for recreation...The boy's chief recreation, apart from mischief making, seemed to be hunting squirrels and rabbits. Contrary to the rules of the school, the boys stubbornly insisted on keeping their hunting guns in their rooms, a practice the faculty 
did---not---like---at---all." 
(The Guilford College Bulletin; Supplement 1979.)

Despite campus rules, long guns were not uncommon around campus. There are several candid pictures in yearbooks from the early 1900s to 1950s of students (male and female) in hunting vests, holding up small game harvested in the woods and fields nearby, rifles or shotguns at their sides.

Advertisements for gun manufacturers were also pretty common in the "Sponsors" section of early yearbooks, such as these from The Quaker, 1914. The faculty probably wasn't jazzed about taking ads from gun companies. And the yearbook staff probably ignored that sentiment...for the sake of the bottom line.










Also ironic but common were student "mascots" dressed in nineteenth century Quaker garb, prowling the sidelines of 1940s football games brandishing (and possibly blank-firing) an old musket...a practice the faculty grudgingly tolerated. To them, guns were for putting food on the family table back home, not warfare, and certainly not celebrating touchdowns! Students obviously did it anyway.

There is a humorous (and kinda' scary) reference in Alex Stoeson's history of the college, of a bored student shooting his initials into the ceiling beams of his dorm room with a .22 rifle.
(Yeah, try that in this day and age...instant dismissal from the College and a trip to the Guilford County jail.)

It's doubtful Guilford ever condoned such a shooting range or team depicted in the tobacco advertising card, and these days "shooters" equal double shot glasses of party libations. But, the old cigarette card of the fictional Guilford rifle team marksman is an interesting little piece of nostalgia.


(* "Fighting Quaker" pic and old ads: The Quaker, 1949 and 1914, respectively.)

A Song for Ole' Nathan

There seems to be an endless number of anthems crooned by Guilford students back in the day. If you go back far enough, it appears half the campus was in a unified chorus literally half the time. (So much for Quaker "silence.") Prolific Guilford songsmith, Russell Pope, even penned a song about Guilford founder Nathan Hunt. This gem is noted in a yearbook from the World War II period. Does anyone know the tune?