ULTIMATE CLEMSON FAN

Jun 6, 2023, 7:39 PM

I'm writing this in memory of my Mom. She passed away twenty years ago and I think she was about the greatest Clemson fan that ever lived. She was born on the Clemson Campus in 1919. Then there was on campus housing for Department heads and her father, Baylis Gordon , was the head of what they then called the Physical Plant. My Grandfather and Coach Frank Howard were good friends and I have several stories handed down that maybe I can write one day. Anyway, the house she lived in with her folks was in a row of two story wood frame houses on a street that paralled Sirrene Hall ( Textile Blg. ). The houses are long gone and the parking lot across the street from the southeast corner of the stadium now occupies the space. She liked to tell about watching DEATH VALLEY being built from her back bedroom window. Many of the football players helped with tree cutting and driving the mule drawn scrapers to move dirt. They would often go cool off in the small creek that ran down the middle of the valley. (And still does in an underground pipe). A story she liked to tell was that as a teenager she and her friends would go to the football games that were then on what is now the soccer field behind the YMCA. They would look for the gate where ASSISTANT Coach Howard was known to be there greeting Alumni. He would take off his hat and bend over where each girl in turn would kiss him on top of his bald head and get in free. She said at one game his hat blew off . Coach Neely saw all the red lipstick and thought he had been injured and thought he was bleeding.
In Mom's later years after my Dad passed away she still listed religiously to every game. There was a joke among family and neighbors that you could drive by her house and tell who won the game after it was over even if you did not know. When listening to the game she usually got nervous and would go to the front porch, grab a broom which hung on the wall, and start sweeping. When driving by and the porch still had leaves on it and the broom was hung on the wall in its place, then Clemson had won easily. If the porch was clean and the broom was hanging in its place Clemson had won a close game. If the porch was clean and the broom was in the front yard than Clemson had lost.
Rest in peace MOM. The family and the Clemson Tigers miss you. ( Written by her Son David Rankin ) Class of 1970 )

Message was edited by: Buz66®

flag link

military_tech

thumb_down

thumb_up

ULTIMATE CLEMSON FAN

TigerBoard POTD