John Shearer: Random Thoughts About Mocs Football History, Harry Burn, Golfing Ancestors, And New Street Signs

Reading about the postponement of the Southern Conference’s fall sports until possibly next spring – and the apparent likelihood UTC will not play this fall unless they come up with a non-conference schedule – started me thinking about history.

 

A few years ago, I had written the book, “Mocs Football: A History,” and when I looked back in it this week, I realized the last time Chattanooga did not field a college football team was during the 1943 and 1944 seasons.

 

Of course, the United States was heavily involved in World War II then, although many schools continued to field teams, even if they were often makeshift ones.

 

Despite the advent of America’s entry in the global conflict after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec.

7, 1941, Chattanooga had a team in 1942 and even hosted Georgia and star players Frank Sinkwich and Charley Trippi at Chamberlain Field. They also played at Georgia Tech.

 

But with so many young men of college age heading off to serve, the school – then the private University of Chattanooga – decided not to field teams the next two years. Top assistant Andy Nardo went off to serve in the war effort, while head coach A.C. “Scrappy” Moore, who was approaching 40 years old, stayed at UC as a physical education instructor.

 

He also had an opportunity to manage the Chattanooga Lookouts in 1944. Since team head Joe Engel feared American players would get drafted, he stocked about a third of his team with Latin American players. It was likely an early effort at having a large number of international players on the roster of an American professional baseball squad.

 

The Lookouts finished a disappointing eighth out of eight teams in their league, although one of the star players was Gil Coan, who would become a popular Lookout again in 1945. He enjoyed a lengthy major league career with the Washington Senators, the Baltimore Orioles, the Chicago White Sox and the New York Giants.

 

Interestingly, he just died this past Feb. 4 at the age of 97 in his native North Carolina.

 

The Mocs started their football program back up for the 1945 season and had one of their best teams ever ability wise under coach Moore, as they beat both Vanderbilt and Ole Miss of the SEC late in the season. The Ole Miss game, a surprising 31-6 trouncing by the Mocs, came on Thanksgiving Day at Chamberlain Field.

 

* * * * *

 

As this month marks the 100^th anniversary of Tennessee’s role in becoming the last state needed to ratify the 19^th Amendment giving women the right to vote, I was trying to think of another story angle to cover in addition to the series I have written throughout the year.

 

I had read in Tyler Boyd’s new biography of Harry Burn, the 24-year-old from Niota who cast the surprising deciding vote, that he had worked for the Southern Railway at stations in Ooltewah and East Chattanooga before America’s entry into World War I.

 

I checked with the Chattanooga Public Library, but unfortunately nothing could be found in any city directories regarding where he might have lived in the area, including in East Chattanooga. Each of these jobs likely lasted only a few weeks or months.

 

But Sheldon Owens with the local history and genealogy department did forward scanned copies of some of the newspaper stories they had on Mr. Burn. And two of them featured interviews by Chattanooga News-Free Press writers with him in the 1970s during the last few years of his life.

 

In the first one, from July 11, 1971, he told News-Free Press political writer Bob Poe that history remembered him for what he did not do, rather than what he actually did do. He was referencing the fact that it had been commonly said over the years – and still is in 2020 -- that he changed his mind or vote and voted for ratification at the end after his mother wrote him a letter encouraging it.

 

However, he tried to clarify that he always supported women’s right to vote, even though some say he had at the time considered voting against it because a lot of his McMinn County constituents were against it. And he had earlier voted to table any roll call vote until after the 1920 elections, adding further to the confusion when looking back at his role.

 

In the interview more than 50 years after the fact, Mr. Burn tried to clarify that any mixed feelings did not exist beforehand. “I went to Nashville with my mind made up to vote to let women vote,” he told Mr. Poe.

 

He was being interviewed primarily because the then-Rockwood resident was getting ready to serve as a delegate to the state Constitutional Convention, and he wanted to see state agricultural tax laws changed into what eventually became the green belt law. 

 

That would allow a farmer to continue operating a farm with lower tax rates if it remained a farm, even if suburban sprawl was creeping up around it and causing nearby property taxes to rise.

 

The story also pointed out that Mr. Burn had also been a national advocate for 18-year-olds getting the right to vote, which had become the 26^th Amendment only days before the 1971 article.

 

He was also interviewed in March 1974 by Warren Herring of the News-Free Press regarding an upcoming television show about women’s rights.

 

Then 78 years old, Mr. Burn told Mr. Herring how memorable a moment that ratification vote was in 1920. “Nothing as big or tense ever happened in the Tennessee legislature, and I’ve been in state politics for 35 years,” he said.

 

He also told him of how he avoided the crowds after the vote, including by walking on a dangerously narrow ledge of the capitol to get to a safe and private area.

 

He added in the interview that his convictions that day in casting the vote for ratification and to give women the right to vote was a result of his mother, but not just because of her letter she sent him. 

 

“It was really due to my mother that I had strong conviction about the worth of the amendment,” said this man who died three years later. “There were laborers on McMinn County farms … who could hardly read or write, but they could vote. Yet my mother, a college graduate, wasn’t allowed the right simply because she was a woman.”

 

He also said he was honored to have played such an important role in history. 

 

“I appreciate the fact that an opportunity such as seldom comes to mortal man – to free 17 million women from political slavery – was mine,” he proudly told Mr. Herring.

 

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I happened to notice a couple of obituaries last week on the same day, I believe, and both deceased were descendants of two of the more accomplished and pioneering amateur golfers in Chattanooga’s history. 

 

Successful insurance salesman and local civic leader Lew Boyd died at 92, while Anne Acker, a 1950 graduate of Notre Dame High, who spent much of her adult life in Knoxville, died at 88.

 

I was quite aware that Mr. Boyd’s father, Pollack “Polly” Boyd, had won what became the NCAA individual golf championship in 1922 while at Dartmouth. I had even once had a nice interview with the younger Mr. Boyd about his father and wrote a story on him one time close to 30 years ago.

 

I had also heard of pioneering local woman golfer Regina Hahn. A copy of a newspaper story from 1958 found online said she had started playing golf in 1910 in her early 20s after trying traditional male sports and horseback riding. At the time of the interview, she was still using the putter she had started with 48 years earlier.

 

She had won a city women’s championship and reached the semifinals of the Southern Women’s Tournament during her career.

 

A Regina Hahn golf tournament was in 1958 in its 10^th year at Brainerd Golf Course after being started by city commissioner George McInturff and her woman friends. Her 93-year-old mother, Mrs. Clyde Hahn, was baking all the cakes for the banquet after the tournament that year.

 

In the Anne Acker obituary, Ms. Hahn-Smith was credited with helping raise her, as was Ms. Acker’s great-grandmother, among others.

 

* * * * *

 

I am not sure if this has been going on awhile, but in the last couple of weeks I have started noticing what seems to be some new green street signs going up around Chattanooga. 

 

I say that in part because, while I have seen they are new, I actually cannot read them as well as the older signs, at least the streets with long names. I have driven by both Worthington Street off Barton Avenue in North Chattanooga and Valleybrook Circle in Hixson and have realized they are harder to read than the previous signs there. I think the same was true when I drove by an intersection with Orchard Knob Avenue.

 

This might be because they are now trimmed in white and perhaps there is less room for the words, or they are in smaller type. The letters do seem to be a little more squeezed together.

 

I know a good reporter would contact the city of Chattanooga to do a full story on the thought and production process that has gone into the newer signs and then maybe interview some residents for their feedback. And I am sure that will probably be done by some media outlet.

 

But at a quick glance, I believe the words need to be a little more legible to a car going by at 30 to 40 miles per hour, unless GPS has made street signs on the way to being obsolete.

 

At least that is my big picture view of the situation.

 

Jcshearer2@comcast.net