Beach volleyball, anyone?

No? OK, then. I agree. It is too hot, still, for all of that. I spent a little time in the evening — when it wasn’t 1,000 degrees, but rather 997 — taking a few pictures to give us something else to chat about on the site. You didn’t demand it, but I knew you were thinking about it, so here are a few bits of local history.

Drake was still listed as the university surgeon in 1927, so he must have worked right until the end. They named a building after him, the medical clinic. It was still in operation when I was in school, but by then had earned an unfortunate reputation. The students joked you were only diagnosed with strep throat or pregnancy if you went in for a visit. I served as the official photographer of a renovation project at Drake while I was still a student.

These days, the clinic is gone. The new medical facility is across campus, the old spot now home to a sparkling new engineering facility.

As for Drake’s military service, noted on the original marker, he rode with the 53rd Calvary during the Civil War.

The 53rd Alabama Cavalry Regiment, Partisan Rangers, was organized by increasing the 1st Cavalry Battalion to regimental size at Montgomery on 5 November 1862. Recruits were from Autauga, Coffee, Coosa, Dale, Dallas, Lauderdale, Lowndes, Macon, Monroe, Montgomery, Pike, Tallapoosa and Wilcox counties. It proceeded in a few weeks to Mississippi. In moving from Columbus to Decatur, in Lawrence, a portion of the regiment was there equipped and proceeded to join Gen’l Earl Van Dorn. This battalion was in the fighting at Thompson’s Station, and at Brentwood. The regiment was engaged in the fight with Union Gen’l Grenville Dodge at Town Creek and in the pursuit of Union Col. Abel Streight. Soon after, the 53rd joined the main army at Dalton as part of Gen’l Moses W. Hannon’s Brigade, Gen’l John Kelly’s Division. It operated on the right of the army as it fell back towards Atlanta and was engaged in constant duty. When Union Gen’l William T. Sherman reached Atlanta, the 53rd was the principal force engaged in the daring raid in his rear, whereby a valuable train was destroyed. It was then at the heels of Sherman as he devastated Georgia and the Carolinas, and it took part in the last operations of the war in that quarter. It surrendered a small number with Gen’l Joseph E. Johnston at Durham Station, Orange County, NC, on 26 April 1865.

I’m sure it was miserable.

Incidentally, to ride with cavalry you had to weigh less than 165 pounds.

There doesn’t seem to be a good picture of Dr. Drake, but if you look here you’ll find him third from the right, on the front row, at or around 69 years of age.

Here’s one more:

Dr. Charles Thach, who’s marker reads:

Guided by a humble faith in the Christian religion he dedicated his life to the education of the youth of the South. The lives of Auburn men made larger by his influence and the institution to which he gave forty years of loving service, and of which he was president from 1902 to 1921 are his real memorials.

“And whosoever of you will be the chiefest shall be servant of all.”

Not a bad thing to have said about you. The University’s historians continue:

Following (API President Leroy) Broun’s (1902) death, the board elected Thach, an API graduate who had spent his entire career at the school, to succeed to the president’s office … Thach immediately launched a campaign to bring the school’s financial needs to the attention of the state legislature at its upcoming session.

[…]

In June, 1906, Thach began preparing the board of trustees for the upcoming legislative session. He called their attention to the higher costs of scientific education over that of classical education and warned that they faced a choice: either support scientific education and thus allow Alabama’s natural resources to be developed by Alabamians or ignore it and the state’s resources would be developed by outsiders, a euphemism for Yankees.

It goes on like this for a while, the first 1o years of Thach’s tenure as president focusing a great deal on raising money. This did not sit well the University of Alabama. If you keep reading the link you see the good old fashioned classism at play. There were promises of money from the legislature that never came to fruition and they haunted Thach’s administration for the second decade of his tenure. He needed buildings, he got empty words and stalls. Those issues were somewhat resolved after World War I and the end of Thach’s time in office, but there were many ramifications to the funding problems from the Progressive Era.

Here’s the only picture of Thach I have, from the 1918 Glomerata:

He’s probably writing an alumni there, probably asking for money, the two things for which he’s generally remembered. Today, he has a building and a street named after him.

Tomorrow: meetings, and the 1939 World’s Fair.