While the Rice Owls football team will not be playing Texas A&M this season, we can reflect on seasons past when hating Aggies was a favorite Rice student pastime. This undated voodoo doll exemplifies that hatred.
Memorabilia Monday: Bayou Bucket
For the past few months, I’ve this seen this trophy sitting on a shelf.
Here is what I know. This trophy is not the official Bayou Bucket trophy pictured in this Houston Chronicle article.
Here is my guess. This trophy was made for a charity event wherein UH and Rice tried to raise money for the Touchdown Club.
What I’m asking all of you is: a) Is my guess correct? b) When did this happen?
Memorabilia Monday: Card Catalog
If you have visited the library and longed for the card catalog, here is a glimpse. We have two drawers with cards. They did provide a wealth of information.
Memorabilia Monday: Class Rings
We have a wide range of class rings in our collection. These are a representative sample.
For those who want more info, we also know the original owners.
The 1916 class ring belonged to Alice Crowell Dean, the library’s first librarian. Below is Ms. Dean on the left.
The 1933 class ring belonged to Harry E. Chavanne. He was a jack of all trades: “Besides banking, he was involved in numerous businesses as a Burger King franchise owner, a rancher, bowling alley proprietor, real estate investor, and serving as Executive Secretary of the Oldham Little Church Foundation.”– from his obituary. He also made an appearance in this previous blog post.
The 1946 class ring belonged to Leon Nad, an accounting firm executive.
The 1967 class ring belonged to Lynda Lasswell Crist below on the right. She worked for many years on the Jefferson Davis project and is now a volunteer at the Woodson.
Our last ring is from Margaret Eve “Meg” Perkins. In 1990, she was murdered in Berwyn Heights, Maryland. She was an intern at the Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2011, Prince George County police solved her murder using DNA evidence.
Hannah Holliday Stewart (1924-2010)
Installation of Atropos Key in Hermann Park, 1972
Hannah Holliday Stewart, American abstract sculptor and educator, was a prominent member of the art scene in Houston and Albuquerque. She was born on January 23, 1924 in Birmingham, AL, and received her Bachelors in Fine Arts from the University of Montevallo, AL. In graduate school she studied bronze casting, welding and woodcarving at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Shortly after moving to Houston in 1970 she began teaching in the studio art department at St. Thomas.
Hannah Holliday Stewart working in her studio
A second wave feminist, her works often refer to goddesses and mythical and historical female heroes. She is best known in Houston for her sculpture Atropos Key in Hermann Park.
Stewart exhibited, both individually and with groups, at the Smithsonian Institution, San Francisco Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Birmingham Museum of Art, and numerous venues in Houston. She died in Albuquerque, NM in 2010. You can find more about Stewart and her work on her web site, and in her papers in the Woodson Research Center.
Memorabilia Monday: O-Week T-shirt
Nothing says Rice O-Week like an O-Week theme and corresponding shirt. The new students wear them, along with the magisters, RAs, coordinators, advisors, and affiliates. In 2012, the Jones coordinators made another shirt.
For those who don’t get the joke, during Beer Bike or any other competition, Jones will chant, “Jones Wins Again!” This shirt plays with that idea. One that will no doubt be taught to all of the new Jones students this week.
Memorabilia Monday: Rice Institute Seal
It seems like Edward John Vogel ’30 was incredibly proud to be at the Rice Institute. So proud that he had a seal made.
If you look closely, you can see some wax residue.
Here is the man who owned the seal. There isn’t too much information him. He does appear in some Sallyport issues. We have recently digitized back issues of the Sallyport at scholarship.rice.edu, but our institutional repository is having a few struggles right now. It should be good as new in a few weeks.
50 Years of the Woodson
Lee Pecht and Melissa Kean, photograph by Jeff Fitlow
Rice News wrote a lovely piece about the Woodson celebrating it’s 50th. Hope you enjoy.
On a different note, if you are attempting to see items at scholarship.rice.edu, the website currently works, but the content is inaccessible. We will let you know when this issue has been resolved. At this point, it may take a couple of weeks.
Memorabilia Monday: Taps
The above permission slip highlights an unusual time in Rice’s early history wherein all of the incoming men became army recruits.
This letter from Allen Wade Mount describes what happened a bit more.
Here is the information from the 1919 Campanile.
What, at least to me is the most interesting piece of the permission slip, is that all the men had to listen to “Taps” every night before going to bed. If you are thinking that the students enjoyed this lights out routine, you are mistaken.
On February 9, 1918, the students met with the Trustees after submitting a list of proposed rule changes. “Taps” is clearly mentioned.
Yet the permission slip at the top is dated October 1918 and Eddie Dyer did not matriculate until 1918. Thus, “Taps” must have still been a part of the nightly ritual. There is one clue that this might have only applied to the incoming class. This news clipping is from February 20, 1919.
Also, in case you want to see a young Eddie Dyer.
Sugar Land Convict Leasing in the News
“Prisoners working construction, Convict Leasing Photograph 8,” Woodson Research Center – Fondren Library – Rice University, accessed July 23, 2018, https://exhibits.library.rice.edu/items/show/2425.
The activism highlighted in our collection entitled the Reginald Moore Sugar Land Convict Leasing System Research Collection took center stage last week. Articles in/on the Washington Post, CNN, the Houston Chronicle, and many others detail the discovery of 95 bodies believed to be former slaves and black prisoners leased to work on local sugar plantations.
To learn more and see images from the collection, please read the Rice News article, visit our online exhibit, and look over Moore’s collection inventory.
