DATE SHOT: 1921 SUBJECTS: Textiles Senior Class with, George Murray, Gus Ripple APPROXIMATE SIZE: 9-3/4"x6-7/8" MARKS / STAMPING: Vintage fountain pen notation of the photo's subjects. ORIGINAL or REPRINT: Original - Printed from the original negative in the time period in which it was shot COMMENTS / CONDITION: Offered is an original, vintage photo of the entire North Carolina State College (now University) 1921 Senior Textiles Class which included future major league baseball player George Murray and the 1st All-American North Carolina State College football and basketball player Gus Ripple. Photo includes: (top row) James Furman Lewis, George Tarry Peoples, Fred Sherwood Childs, Charles Snead Allen, George King Murray, John Hollis Ripple, George "Grady" Washington Bowers, Martin Luther Rhodes, (middle row) Robert Cliff Hinkle, ?, Andrew J Leddy (instructor), Percy W Price (instructor), Thomas H Nelson (head dean), ?, Thomas Roy Hart, Josephus Daniels Pell, (bottom row) Otis Allen Zachary, Samuel Craighead Alexander, Louis Broaddus Daniel, Richard Greene Kendrick, Edwin Clinard LeGrand, Edward Branham Manning and Bartholomew Figures Moore. See scans for further details including condition. BIO: George King Murray (Smiler) was born in 1898 in Charlotte, NC and died in 1955 in Memphis, TN. He went to college at North Carolina State University. He played major league baseball from 1922 to 1933 as pitcher for the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Washington Senators and the Chicago White Sox. John Hollis Ripple (Gus) was born in 1897 and died in 1965 in Durham, NC. Gus Ripple arrived at the newly named North Carolina College of Agriculture and Engineering in the fall of 1917 from Lexington, the oldest son of a single mother. He was the first person from his part of town to earn a high school diploma, not to mention go to college. He paved the way for his younger brother to join him in Raleigh four years later. Ripple came from modest means, but he excelled as an athlete, particularly on the basketball court. He had never played football before arriving at NC State, but he joined Harry Hartsell’s gridiron team because he believed it would be his gateway into college athletics. The Agromeck called the inexperienced freshman “the find of the season. He developed into one of the most dependable players on the team and a tower of strength to the center of the line.” He definitely had an advantage: at 6-2, 200 pounds, he was one of the biggest
players on the squad. Still, he played sparingly on a team that finished with a 6-2-1 record and claimed the North Carolina state championship. The fall of 1918 was a trying time worldwide, across the nation and on the NC State campus. “The Great War” was raging in Europe and all 590 regularly enrolled students were enlisted in the Student Army Training Corps, in an effort to populate the various branches of military with trained officers. The school had five infantry battalions and one naval unit, turning the entire campus into a military college, with regimented drills conducted every morning and military science classes held throughout the week. Earlier in the year, a Spanish influenza outbreak started in the Rocky Mountains and quickly spread around the globe, creating a pandemic that was worse than the outbreak of bubonic plague in medieval Europe. For the next two years, the virulent flu bug killed more people than died throughout the course of World War I. More than 675,000 people in the United States alone died of the flu, 10 times the number of American military that died in the trenches across Germany and France. Ripple, a Boatswain Mate First Class in NC State’s Company F (Naval Unit), was affected by the bug. He enlisted in the Navy in the summer of 1918, but caught the flu and was quickly discharged. He returned to school in time for the team’s 54-0 season-opening victory over Guilford. By then, the flu had arrived at NC State, killing 13 students and two nurses at the college infirmary. (One of the nurses was the daughter of school president W.C. Riddick, for whom Riddick Stadium was named.) In all, some 450 students, faculty and staff were infected by the outbreak. For five weeks, all extra-curricular activities, including football practices and games, were cancelled. In addition, more than 30 students who had not been affected by the flu bug were shipped out to Army camps across the country as officers, including seven regulars from the ’17 football champions.
After taking off all of October and the first weekend of November, first-year coach Tal Stafford’s team received permission to resume practice a week before the team was scheduled to face national power Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Tech coach John Heisman had led the Golden Hurricane, as his football team was then known, to the 1917 national championship with a perfect 9-0 record. Two years before, the Hurricane recorded a 222-0 victory over Cumberland College, the most lopsided game in the history of college football. (Neither team in that game made a first down Cumberland because it never got more than 10 yards away from its original line of scrimmage and Georgia Tech because it never needed more than four downs to score against its hapless opponent.) Heisman’s 1918 squad was better than the previous two, even though it lost to Pittsburgh 32-0 two weeks after playing NC State. With a team that was weakened by the flu and decimated by military call-ups, the Farmers had little chance against Heisman’s powerful crew. Four NC State players were hurt on the opening kickoff. The Hurricane scored two touchdowns in the game’s first four plays. The score was 33-0 at the end of the first quarter, and Heisman sent in his second string for the second quarter. They pushed the halftime score to 75-0. State’s only highlight came in the third quarter, when Ripple recovered a teammate’s fumble and returned the ball 75 yards for a touchdown. However, the play was called back because the Farmers were whistled for being off-sides. Ripple and his teammates long believed there were reasons besides attrition that they never stood a chance against Heisman’s team. Three times -- according to Tom Park, a freshman on the varsity that season -- Georgia Tech’s kicker sailed the ball into the stands behind the end zone, only to have the fans throw the ball back onto the field so their team could recover three “fumbles” in the end zone for touchdowns. Four minutes into the final quarter, State captain W.D. Wagner requested that the game end, with the Georgia Tech leading 128-0. But, it just so happened that legendary sports writer and football coach Walter Camp, who promoted college football with the most prominent annual list of All-America players, was in the stands for the contest between NC State and Georgia Tech and was greatly impressed with Ripple’s abilities. The Farmers went on to lose its final two games, 25-0 to Virginia Tech and 21-0 to Wake Forest, meaning Stafford’s team had been outscored 174-0 in its final three games. But at the end of the trying season, Camp named Ripple second-team All-America, perhaps for what he did on that single disqualified play in a blowout of historic proportions. Still, Ripple became the first football player from a North Carolina college to be recognized as one of the best players in the nation. Ripple played two more seasons, both under Bill Fetzer, who became NC State’s fifth coach in five years in 1919. State won a schoolrecord seven games in both ’19 and ’20, with the husky Ripple a key component for an offense that scored at least 78 points on five occasions. Ripple always considered himself better at basketball than football, and the Farmers were pretty good during a time when there were no postseason tournaments to look forward to. The goal was to win state championships, and teams had to agree to face each other in end-of-season playoffs. NC A&M won the 1918 and ’19 state titles, and had a chance to win it again in 1920. But a last-second shot from midcourt by a substitute allowed Trinity College (now Duke University) to win the state title. Ripple was elected captain of the basketball team for the 1920-21, but was suspended from the squad midway through the year because he questioned the judgment of a game official. Ripple’s replacement at captain, Robert Deal, also had to leave the team because of a finger injury. The Farmers fell to 4-13 in the regular season, including a bitter 62-10 loss to North Carolina in Chapel Hill and double-digit losses to Wake Forest and Duke. At playoff time, however, Ripple was exonerated and returned to the team to help the Farmers avenge earlier losses by beating Wake Forest 20-10 and North Carolina 32-31. Ripple scored half of his team’s points, including 14 in the first half, to set up a championship game rematch with Trinity. This time, however, the Blue Devils took an early lead and defeated A&M 34-24, ending Ripple’s NC State athletic career. Ripple graduated from NC State’s School of Textiles in 1921, and immediately moved to Fieldale, Va., to begin work as a trainee for Marshall Field and Company. He became the manager of the towel mill in 1940. In 1949, he became the manager of Fieldcrest’s Sheeting and Blanket mill in Draper, N.C., where he stayed until he retired in 1963. He was an active church leader and Rotarian in the small communities where he lived most of his life. He was on the advisory board of the Fieldale branch of the First National Bank of Martinsville and Henry County, Va., and an active member of the American Legion. SKU: L13465
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