A War, a Flu Pandemic and a Golden Tornado

© Tim Peeler, 2018

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They were American heroes, though on the eve of the armistice that ended Europe’s Great War in 1918, these survivors of disease, military conflict, drought and bureaucratic mandate hardly felt like it.

So thoroughly was NC State’s football team beaten on Nov. 9, 1918 — 100 years ago Friday — it couldn’t even make it through the entire game. Five minutes into the fourth quarter, team captain William Wagner and head coach Tal Stafford waved the white flag, telling Georgia Tech head coach John Heisman and the rest of the Golden Tornado that they, like the trench-bound German forces in France and Belgium, were surrendering under a constant and withering onslaught.

The score, with 10 minutes still to play, was 128-0.

Heisman’s defending national championship team, aided by rowdy fans, scored 19 unanswered touchdowns, despite having its two best players, halfbacks Joe “Big Chief” Guyon (a future Pro Football Hall of Fame selection) and Ralph “Buck” Flowers, on the sidelines almost the entire game because of pregame injuries. Four of Tech’s touchdowns were scored by halfback David Barron, who of course was nicknamed “Red,” after German fighter pilot Manfred von Richthofen. End Bill Fincher booted 14 extra points.

This was indeed the golden era of the Golden Tornado. In 1916, Heisman’s team embarrassed Cumblerland College 222-0, the most lopsided game in college football history. In 1917, Tech outscored its nine opponents 491 to 17 en route to the famous coach’s first national championship. The game against State was the third 100-point outing in five games, in which Tech outscored its opponents 425-0.

John "Gus" Ripple

NC State, which lost four players to injuries on the opening kickoff, never crossed midfield. All 12 of its passes fell incomplete. Its only two first downs came with the aid of Georgia Tech penalties. The only threat Stafford’s team made at scoring—a 75-yard third quarter fumble return by lineman John “Gus” Ripple—was called back by a phantom offsides infraction. It was a negated play that nonetheless turned Ripple into the state of North Carolina’s first football All-American.

After his team took a 33-0 lead in the first quarter, Heisman put in his second unit. They extended the halftime lead to 75-0. The Hurricane added 53 points in the second half before Stafford and his team called it quits.

According to halfback Thomas Park in a 1975 interview with NC State historian Bill Beezley, State College never had a chance. Three times in the early going, Georgia Tech kickoffs sailed into the stands, only to have fans throw the ball back into the end zone, where Georgia Tech recovered the “fumbles” for touchdowns.

It was, in short, the most miserable day in NC State football history.

Meanwhile, Tech rambled to its 33rd consecutive game without a loss, a 31-0-2 streak that would come to an end in its next game with a 32-0 blowout by Pop Warner’s eventual national champion Pittsburgh.

On the surface, it was an overwhelming mismatch of unequal teams that probably shouldn’t have been played.

However, State was coming off a 6-2-1 season in 1917, in which it was declared state champion thanks to wins over Guilford, Davidson and Wake Forest (at the time, NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill did not play because of disagreements over eligibility). Prospects were so high at the end of the season, an excited Agromeck editor taunted: “The morale of the squad has improved wonderfully, and already each man is looking ahead with keen anticipation to the crisp days of next November. Georgia Tech? Sure. Why not?”

Here’s why not:

State coach Harry Hartsell was drafted into the U.S. Army for military service. Most of the students became cadets in the Student Army Training Corps. On Oct. 15, more than 30 students were shipped off to training schools around the country, including seven starters from the 1917 football team.

Hartsell turned the program over to Stafford, his only assistant, who had a splendid athletics career in baseball and football at State, remembered for completing the first forward pass in school history. But he eventually gave up his low-paying job as a college football coach to become the editor of the NC State Alumni News magazine.

The school was fully devoted to military training, which required all 1,017 students to participate in five days of drills and multiple military science classes.

Concurrently, the worldwide Spanish flu pandemic—which killed more people than medieval black plague and World War I combined—hit campus. The flu was particularly bad in Raleigh and on NC State’s campus, where some 450 students were infected. A total of 13 students died, as did some 13,000 people across the state. Among the fatalities were two nurses at the State College infirmary, Eliza Riddick and Lucy Page. Eliza was the niece of Wallace Carl Riddick, the school’s president and former engineering professor who is generally considered the father of NC State football and the namesake of the Wolfpack’s former football home, Riddick Stadium.

The flu outbreak ended all extracurricular activities, including all athletics, dances and any activities that required students to gather in indoor spaces. Five football games, including an Oct. 13 meeting with Navy, were cancelled. The student newspaper was shut down.

Ripple was one of the many students who contracted the flu, which prevented him from joining the Navy in October. He recovered in time to continue his football career once the campus-wide quarantine ended on Nov. 1.

The team, which had started with 50 players at preseason training camp, dwindled to fewer than two dozen members after military callups and flu casualties. Yet they voted to resume practice in order to make their scheduled date with Heisman’s Tornado, despite the fact they were in class until 5 p.m., had to make their way to the football field as quickly as they could and squeeze in a half-hour of drills before it became too dark to see on the unlit practice fields at what is now Pullen Park.

“We are working under serious handicaps,” Stafford wrote in his regular update in the Alumni News. “But we will try hard to finish the season, and we hope our friends will not be ashamed of us.”

Stafford and his squad, along with a handful of fans, boarded a train for Atlanta the day before the game, arriving at about the same time it was announced that Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated his crown and the German army was given a 72-hour ultimatum to end all hostilities in Europe.

The team — called the Aggies or the Farmers at the time — arrived in a city that had also been completely shut down by the city’s board of health since Oct. 7 because of the flu, which forced all schools, churches, libraries, movie houses, theaters, dance halls and other places of public amusement to close in the wake of the outbreak. Those that violated the order were imposed a hefty $200 fine. The limited streetcars that were operating from downtown Atlanta to Georgia Tech were ordered to keep their windows open.

The city was also suffering a power shortage caused by a drought that drained the Tallulah River, the engine behind Atlanta’s hydroelectric power grid. Only outdoor activities — such as football games and the Southeastern Fair and Liberty Pageant (featuring Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford) — were permitted, as long as patrons wore masks to stave off the flu and were back home by 6 p.m. to reduce the need for lights around the city.

Five former State College students — all starters on the 1917 state champion team — were stationed at Camp Gordon, which was located just a few miles outside of Atlanta in Chamblee, Georgia. They cajoled and pleaded with their superior officers to get weekend passes to help fill out the football team’s roster. They arrived at Grant Field just in time for the 2:30 p.m. kickoff, though it is not certain how much any of them played, if at all, because they were not listed in the postgame newspaper box score.

Here’s the thing, though. Many of the players, beginning with Ripple, who made the effort to aid their teammates were richly rewarded. The day after they returned to Raleigh, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the armistice to end the Great War was signed in Compiegne, France, securing a different future for all the school's students.

Less than a year after losing to Georgia Tech, two-sport star and Hatteras-native Dick Burrus made his major league debut with the Philadelphia Athletics. In 1925, he batted .340 in 152 games with the Boston Braves, the highest ever recorded by a former NC State baseball player in the majors. In all, he played six seasons in the majors for the Athletics and Braves.

Just after receiving his master’s degree in Textiles from NC State, Charlotte-native George Murray, a star pitcher for Stafford’s baseball team for four years, was a teammate of Babe Ruth on the 1922 New York Yankees that played the New York Giants in the World Series. He spent six seasons with the Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Washington Senators and Chicago White Sox.

Ends Andrew Willis McMurry, a native of Kentucky, and Burt Mitchell, born in Cleveland County, settled in Shelby. Both became textile executives. Mitchell’s son, Burton Mitchell Jr., was a U.S. Army tailgunner in World War II who died when his plane was shot down in Austria in January 1945.

And Thomas Letson Nooe returned to his Pittsboro home to become a historian, prominent architect and forester.

In the end, as is often the case with sports, their long-term outcomes greatly exceeded that of the game decision.

You may reach Tim Peeler at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.

State College's 1918 corps of cadets