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Glomerata

Looking back at 1957

Maybe you’ve heard my alma mater is playing for the national championship Monday night. Auburn lines up against Oregon and everyone that’s even a little bit emotionally invested is ready to see history be made in Glendale.

So this is a look back at history. In 1957 Auburn won its first national championship. These are pictures from that year’s Glomerata. Things certainly have changed.

The rare color photograph.

The cheerleaders of 1957. In a few of the action shots they look to be screaming fiercely.

Ralph “Shug” Jordan and his coaching staff.

These days Auburn boasts one of the largest HD screens around, measuring 30 feet high by 74 feet wide. In 1957 they had this.

Cliff Hare Stadium’s average attendance in three home games in 1957 was 27,667 per game. (The Tigers played in a handful of different venues back then.) The total attendance for the season’s on-campus games was 83,000. The modern Jordan-Hare Stadium seats 87,451.

The Tigers were in the middle of a 30-game home winning streak during the 1957 championship season.

That’s still Petrie Hall at the top of the picture. Built in 1939, it was named for George Petrie, a history professor, graduate school dean and Auburn football coach. He also penned The Auburn Creed. Petrie Hall used to be the athletic field house. Today that building houses COSAM and Geography offices.

How they celebrated in 1957.

UPDATE: This was picked up and adapted at The War Eagle Reader.

Auburn / Glomerata / history / Monday / photo — 2 Comments
13
Dec 10

Today’s history

Just the sporadic Monday history feature today. Everything else was spent up in uninteresting things like studying and laundry.

Dean Hallmark, in the center, approximately 21 years old in the 1936 Glomerata.

Dean E. Hallmark was an avid athlete, adventure seeker and U.S. Army Air Corps pilot. He was born in 1914 in the small west Texas town of Robert Lee. He was a standout football player, ultimately making his way to Auburn University on a football scholarship. He played there only one year, quitting school in 1936 to take flying lessons before becoming a civilian pilot.

In November of 1940, Dean was recruited by the Army and he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. After training he reported for duty with the 95th Bomb Squadron, 17th Bombardment Group stationed at Pendleton Field, Oregon. One of the first men to fly the North American B-25B Mitchell medium bomber, he caught Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s eye and ultimately flew with him on his raid of Japan in April of 1942.

This was the first offensive strike at the Japanese mainland, meant to shake the Japanese faith in their leadership and a morale boost back home after the surprise of Pearl Harbor and bad outcomes elsewhere in the Pacific.

Doolittle and his raiders had to launch from their aircraft carrier early after being detected by a Japanese ship. (The launch was actually the first time a B-25 had ever used a carrier deck. All of the practice runs had been on land.) Hallmark was the command pilot of the sixth B-25 off the aircraft carrier. He was 28-years-old.

He flew to Tokyo with the rest of the raiders, dropped his bombs and made his way to China. Dean’s bomber ran out of fuel and he ditched his plane about three miles from the coast. The two enlisted crew members on board drown. Dean and his two fellow officers were hurt, but survived the crash. Dean was catapulted through the windshield, the pilot’s seat still strapped to his body.

The officers made their way to shore, linked up the next morning and evaded the Japanese for eight days. Finally they were captured, and along with five captured crew members from another bomber, were tried by the Japanese on what are now considered phony charges of killing innocent civilians.

They were tortured and malnourished. Dean came down with beriberi and dysentery. All eight were sentenced to death. Five of those sentences were commuted. Hallmark and two officers from the other bomber — 1st Lt. William Farrow and Sgt. Harold Spatz were not so lucky. On October 15, 1942 Hallmark, Farrow and Spatz were executed by firing squad.

The bodies were cremated and located by American officials after the war. Today, Hallmark’s remains are at Arlington National Cemetery where he was interred in 1949.

Dean’s military awards and decorations include:

USAAF Aviator wings
Distinguished Flying Cross (awarded posthumously)
Purple Heart Medal (awarded posthumously)
Prisoner of War Medal (awarded posthumously)
American Defense Medal
American Campaign Medal w/ bronze star
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal w/ bronze star (awarded posthumously)
WWII Victory Medal (awarded posthumously)
Breast Order of Pao Ting (awarded posthumously by Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China)
China War Memorial Medal (awarded posthumously by Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China)

Other memorial honors include:
Greenville, Texas celebrated Dean Hallmark Day on April 28, 1943 in conjunction with the Second War Bond Drive
The Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4011 in Greenville, Texas, named their lodge after Hallmark
Auburn University dedicated a plaque to Dean’s memory in the Letterman’s Lounge in Jordan-Hare Stadium
Study carrel 4431P inside the Auburn University library was named in Dean’s honor.

Six decades later he was front page news once again.

I’m going to write a little piece on Hallmark next month, for his birthday, this is just the beginning of the notes.

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11
Nov 10

Glomeratas

The post-war years. For Auburn, like a lot of places, this was a period of great growth. Thanks to the GI Bill, the university was overwhelmed. For a time students were billeted in tents. For many of those students who’d seen a little too much of the darker side of humanity, a tent in the loveliest village might not be ideal, but it beat many alternatives.

The cover above is from last week’s installment, the 1943 book. For some reason the style of that particular cover makes me think of my grandfather. He didn’t go to the school, but the aesthetic just looks like something he might have liked.

Anyway, in this week’s three new additions you’ll see what might be my favorite cover and two other classy looks that help us reach across the last half of the 1940s.

If you’d like to start at the beginning, go here. For a slightly more in-depth look into a few of the books, try here. As always, check out the university’s collection as well.

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4
Nov 10

Glomeratas

You shouldn’t judge books by their cover, of course, let alone a community or a nation. But if you take a glance at this cover and foolishly try to glean something from the design about the country in 1941 you’d be both right and wrong. These were pastoral times in an idyllic place.

As you look at the covers from the next three years, uncertain years, war years, you’d never know what was happening in the world. Of course you couldn’t get away from the news anywhere else. Who needs a reminder on the cover of a yearbook? Inside the pages the drum beat could be heard. Male students were still required to take a compulsory enrollment in the ROTC. For all of the fun and games inside the pictures, there must have been something real and tense about their drills.

As this period was a turning point for the country, these were also important years for the school. Times in the state were changing when it came to how the various schools were perceived, and maybe you can find a little of that in these three new additions to the covers collection.

If you’d like to start at the beginning, go here. For a slightly more in-depth look into a few of the books, try here. As always, check out the university’s collection as well.

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28
Oct 10

Glomeratas

Beautiful, isn’t it? That’s the 1937 Glomerata, the Auburn University yearbook. I first shared that with you last week in this ongoing series. The Glomerata cover project continues today as we enter into a critical point in university and national history.

This week’s three covers round the corner from the 1930s and bring us closer to war. These are just the covers, but if you were to look through the books you’d see the Depression and the changing tone on campus. The ROTC students could see the writing on the wall. The nation wasn’t fighting yet, but it was only a matter of time. In the casual photographs the students look like they belong to the 1950s. The change from those two decades isn’t so steep. The change in the next two, of course, would be remarkable.

Go here to step back to 1939. You can start at the beginning of our little journey by clicking here. If you’d like a bit more depth than just the covers, try here.