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Transcript from "College Years"

 

Well that was the last time, yeah, when I was in college we didn't have many managers on the football team. I used to field the punts, you know when the punters were punting, and also in the scrimmages I would hold the chain, you know, in the scrimmages. And this was in 1946. Georgia was playing a big game in mid-season against Alabama. Both teams were undefeated. Charley Trippi was our big star. They had a great All-American quarterback named Harry Gilmer, great passer. And I was a young sports writer for the Atlanta Journal then. I just got out of the Marine Corps, in fact, in December 1945, and I was working for the Journal. And I was just a young sports writer and I wanted to see that game, and they were going to send their older more experienced sports writers to cover the big game, Georgia and Alabama. But I said to Colonel Ed Danforth, I said "Please, let me go over there in some capacity." I said, "I'll ask Coach (Wally) Butts if I can hold the chain and I will write a sideline bar, you know." So Coach Butts let me hold the chain. In those days, alumni, it was a great honor for them to hold the chain with an alumnus of the opposing team, and that day the opposing team's alumnus was an old fellow, in his 70s or 80s. He had been captain of one of Alabama's first teams. He was a lawyer in Birmingham. And on this particular play, Charley Trippi ran about forty-five yards down the field for a touchdown. And when I used to hold the chain on practices, you know, I'd run down the field with them. We would run down. Well, you wasn't supposed to do that. An official chain holder wasn't supposed to do that, but I ran down the field and jerked the little old Alabama guy, I carried him halfway down the field with Trippi and he was cussing me from here to kingdom come, and after that game, the Southeastern Conference or after that season said no more alumni will hold the chains. The chains will be held by regular striped officials. So that was…

You brought about another change.

So that was a great honor for…

Tell us a little bit about your college years. I know you got an ABJ in 1942, but you played on the varsity tennis team and you swam?

Well, there is a good story connected with the Athens YMCA. They had a good swimming program. They pioneered the development of swimming. We had a 20-yard pool, and the physical instructor was originally a guy named Clarence Jones, and he later became the trainer, and boxing, and swimming coach at Georgia, Jonesy. But, we used to win the state high school swimming championship every year. Athens High would win it every year. And I thought we were supermen, but I found out why we used to win it. There wasn't but three swimming pools in the state of Georgia. One of them was in Athens, and the other one was at the Atlanta YMCA where Tech High and Boys High swam. But for some reason, we'd usually win it. I just figured it out, the other boys had to swim in rivers and lakes. But that's another great thing that the Athens Y did. Develop a lot of swimmers. Have I already told about Thomas R. R. Cobb?

Bringing the Y here?

Yeah.

Yes.

I did tell you.

Did you meet Mrs. Magill while you were in college?

I was lucky to meet my wife from an old French family in New Orleans. Her father's name was Louis Favreau-Reynaud from a very old French family, and in fact, this past summer they had their 250th family reunion. Five families down there had their 250th. That was before the United States became the United States ! There were Spanish and French that were down in that part of the United States and they called them Creoles when they intermarried, so there were five families. One of the families was the Reynaud, and the other family was the Favreaus, so they were two of the five families. But anyway, her father did not…the Reynauds started the Tulane University Medical School, but her father didn't go there, he went to LSU and graduated with a law degree. And he happened to be head of the claims department at the Hartford Insurance Company in Atlanta when she was in high school. She went to old Decatur Girl's High. And there were so many of her friends coming to the University of Georgia, that she came to the University of Georgia, was a Phi Beta Kappa, and president twice of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, and I was real lucky when she agreed to marry me. She graduated in three years. It took me four and a half, but she graduated in 1943, I was in the Marine Corps. We were married in the old Episcopal Church here in Athens, in May, May 21, 1944. And we have…