Brown, Francis W.: Oral History, January 11, 1991

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The following oral history of Francis Brown was done January 11, 1991 by G. David Anderson (with Ed McKee from the Athletics Department) for The George Washington Oral History Program:

ANDERSON: This is an interview with Francis Willis Brown, class of 1924, later class of 1926 at the George Washington Law School. The interview is being held in the home of Mr. Brown on January 11, 1991. The interviewer is G. David Anderson, University Archivist at the George Washington University.

First of all, Mr. Brown, I’d like to thank you for allowing us to come into your home and tape some of your memories and reminiscences about George Washington in the 20’s.

BROWN: I’m happy to have you here. My pleasure.

ANDERSON: It’s something that I know is going to be very beneficial to the history of the University and a personal thrill for myself. To begin with, could you give a brief background of your family, and where you went to high school and what decisions brought you to go to George Washington in the first place?

BROWN: Well, I’m one of the few persons who is a born Washingtonian. I was born at 214 E Street, N.E, in the shadows of the Capitol. We lived in the Northeast near Lincoln Park, for until I finished High School. I went to Central High School at Thirteenth and Clifton, which is now Cardoza. It was new, Central, a completely new building, and provided excellent facilities. On graduation from Central, I had choices. My brother had, who was thirteen years older than I was, had gone to Michigan, a graduate of Michigan. And there really is not much explanation. At the time I did not want to go away to school. I was happy living at home and decided I’d go to a local school. At that time I might say there were no SATs. I probably wouldn’t get in today. And as I recall it, I may be a little off; the fees were six dollars a semester hour, making the total fee for the semester ninety dollars. I registered in due course and became a freshman in 1920. Well the university at that time, as I’m sure is well known, consisted of probably three or four buildings on G Street, with a brick sidewalk in front of it, and an old school making up the main, the Lisner Hall. The Law School was over on K Street, the Medical School on H, as well was the hospital. The school at that time was predominantly night school. The day school was smaller and made up of mainly kids out of high school. The night school was mainly employed students, and to a large extent, return veterans.

ANDERSON: Had you been interested or active in sports before you came to George Washington?

BROWN: I had played . . . the answer to that is yes, in a sandlot way. In those days, sandlots were available. We played football on sandlots where you had stones and glass to contend with, played baseball in the same way. We had . . . the church Sunday school had a basketball team. That’s where I got my initiation in basketball. At Central, I went out for football. Unfortunately, I also went out for the high school cadet corp, which was a major factor in those days, and that took two afternoons a week, so that unless you were a real gifted athlete, you didn’t indulge in both. You were either in the cadet corp or you were an athlete, so I did not indulge in athletics in high school, to that extent.

ANDERSON: In reviewing your background I was fascinated to see that you went out in your freshman year for varsity baseball, varsity basketball and varsity football.

BROWN: That’s right. That’s right.

ANDERSON: Did you have a favorite, or what were your thoughts on this one?

BROWN: Well, I suspect probably I was intrigued by football more than anything else. We had a, we played . . . . Our home field was where the Jefferson Memorial now is. There was a bathhouse, a swimming beach there in the old tidal basin, and they had a bathhouse where we dressed and showered. But no hot water, and believe me, when October, November rolled around it took a hardy soul to take a shower. I didn’t shower, and you put those sweaty shoulder pads on and it was cold. But we enjoyed it. We, as I say, we were mainly kids, mixed up with a lot of veterans. That first year we played, we got the heck beat out of us, varsity wise. I recall one trip we made to, the freshman team took a trip to Norfolk, to play the Norfolk Naval Base. We took the night boat, which then went from Washington to Old Point Comfort, and had a wonderful trip. It was terrific, and at Old Point Comfort we were taken by Navy cutter across to the naval base. We thought we would be playing a bunch of young apprentices, and so on. We were playing old men, and when we got out there we found that the quarterback was a guy named Weelock, who was a Carlisle Indian, and had been a teammate of Jim Thorpe. So what he did to us shouldn’t happen to a dog. We were beaten 66 to nothing. And, our manager had a bet with the varsity manager that we wouldn’t be beaten as bad as the varsity, and we could hardly wait to get home to look at the Sunday papers, and sure enough, the varsity took it 88 to nothing. So . . . . But it was fun. We all enjoyed it. As I say, it’s amazing to look down there now and realize that the Jefferson Memorial is where we were.

ANDERSON: What about the baseball team?

BROWN: Well, the baseball team was probably . . . . It was the only year, I think we had it while it was there, and it was mixture of the varsity and, I mean of . . . . It wasn’t even the freshmen. We practiced down on the ellipse, where they do now, I guess, and uh, we played Maryland. As a matter of fact, we played Maryland. As a matter of fact, we beat Maryland, out there. They put me in right field. They figured I could do the least damage out there. And I remember this. We had a fast ball pitcher and there was a left hander up, and he was hitting everything. He hit high flys to right field, and I’m out there staggering under each one of them, and I came in, and Brian Morse, our coach said, “well, I’m scared to death very time a fly goes out there.” I said “what the heck do you think I am?” Then we had a second baseman who leaked like a sieve, so I had to back him up and make his throws in, but we did beat them. We had a football player who would catch, and he hit two big home runs, so that took care of that. We played various; we played the local high schools and things of that kind. It wasn’t a spectacular episode.

ANDERSON: Leading on to basketball. It was your freshman year. What was it about basketball that led you into basically pursuing that all the way through your college career?

BROWN: I suppose it was, I like basketball and I had always been doing a lot of shooting. The freshman year, we had a freshman team, and we played a small schedule. At the moment I don’t remember exactly which. The teams in those days, it may be of interest, the game was so much different than it is today. You had the center jump after each basket. The teams were made up of the tallest man on the squad, usually six foot or slightly over. The forwards were small. They were fast. The guards, you had a running guard and a stationary guard. The stationary guard was usually the football fullback, and it was his job to block anybody that came down the floor. That was the makeup of general squads. I recall, in a scrimmage against the varsity on one time, I was up to make a layoff, and all of a sudden Dinty Hughes hit me, I flew off the end of the court, landed, but lights, flashes going off and everything in the background, I heard Brian Morris saying “Dinty, don’t do that. You won’t last five minutes in a game!” He wasn’t interested in me . . . .

MCKEE: I’d like to ask you . . . was the stationary guard not allowed to dribble the ball or anything?

BROWN: His duty was to be there to prevent against a breakaway basket. Our particular code said that the stationary guard was only supposed to come up beyond, into the defensive end, maybe once or twice a game. His job was to block. That was about it. No, you speak of dribbling, and that’s an interesting point, because the dribble was not an integral part of the game. You were supposed to pass. This fancy dribbling you have today was not there. You passed the ball. And the only time you used to dribble was when it was necessary to advance it. I recall one game over in St. John’s in Baltimore. Somehow, I’ll never know to this day how I got so completely loose. The guard must have lost me. I got a pass from inbound and there was nobody between me and the basket, so I had to dribble all the way into it . . . my god, suppose I blow this! Fortunately, I didn’t, but it is a different game.

ANDERSON: Were the rules still in effect of returning the ball to center court after the baskets?

BROWN: Oh yes. As a matter of fact they were in effect, oh way late. They were in effect in the Tin Tabernacle, and I don’t remember, just, it’s been comparatively recently they eliminated this other jump. I think the game is not as good, although I think what happened is they got, in our day, you would have set plays off the center jump, so that if you controlled the jump, you’d have a play running. It got so that they would jam around the center, and they’d just play for possession, so that it . . . lost it. I think maybe that was it. I’m not sure . . . one of the reasons why they cut it out.

ANDERSON: No, I have, uh, in discussing with students at the university when they see scores from these earlier periods, they do not understand them, because twenty, nineteen, and fourteen to thirteen and so forth just does not equate.

BROWN: No, and then of course the fouls were less. They were, the technical foul and a personal foul. Frankly, I can’t remember how we scored. I think the technical foul must have been in taking it out of bounds. The personal foul, there weren’t too many. If you, uh, one I recall, it’s two on one. That was a personal foul. In other words, if two guys tried to get the ball, the guy who had it, that was a personal foul. But the others, I don’t recall too much. As I say, you were out three fouls, only. And then you were out. And in two years I played, two full years, I fouled out just once, so it’s not . . . the fouls are just not in there. The time-outs, that was another thing, which I don’t like now. I think time-outs, we used the time-outs when we were pooped. We didn’t use them for strategy. And we didn’t play as many men. We didn’t have as big a squad. You probably played almost . . . the five men played most of the game.

McKEE: Did you play two halves the way they do now or did they play quarters like they do …

BROWN: At some point, we changed from the quarters, and I can’t remember just when it was… early on. So it must have…

McKEE: Were they like two twenty minute halves? Is forty minutes the total you played also?

ANDERSON: As a freshman basketball player, I have in front of me, you asked but you said that you did not remember the teams. Gallaudet Reserve, Central High School, Army and Navy Prep, Western High School and Catholic University freshmen were the schedule. This did not involve very much travel as a freshman.

BROWN: None.

ANDERSON: Could you tell us something, a little bit about some of your teammates as a freshman, and of course we’ll go on to your later years. I’ve got Butler, Birmingham, Coburn, Hill, Bellstein. Do you have recollections?

BROWN: Oh yeah, Dutch Hill, most of them were out of local high schools. Joe Coburn was out of Business, I believe, and Dutch Hill, I don’t remember where he was. Goldstein, I remember, he moved on to varsity. He was a stocky guy. He was probably stationary guard.

ANDERSON: Were you, let me backtrack just a little bit, because you began as a student at a rather fascinating time in the university’s history, the centennial celebration. What are your recollections of that first year, and basically the hoopla that went on concerning the celebration?

BROWN: Actually I don’t remember too much about any hoopla. It must not have penetrated the students very much. I don’t recall too much about it at all. As I wrote in this article, it was, we had a lot of fun at GW. Fraternities played a major part in the social life of the school. They had houses all over town. Our house was on Calvert Street out here. But I don’t remember much about the centennial. I tell you what, I think maybe they made us all pledge to the building fund. I think I do remember that. ANDERSON: Did you play basketball all four years, I mean three years on the varsity?

BROWN: No. Well, it was a screwy sort of thing. I would get out of class about eleven in the morning and I would then go down to the Y. I don’t know if it’s still there or not, down on G Street, Seventeenth and G. Still there, is it?

ANDERSON: No, it is not.

BROWN: Well, I’d go down there, get into my gym suit, and even if there wasn’t anybody else on the floor, I’d start shooting baskets, and I’d run from one side to the other, shooting on the fly, and I got so I could really hit the ball from outside. And then I went out for basketball when the season started. I couldn’t hit the backboard! I’d apparently gone stale, because I, or the difference in the set up . . . something, and I think maybe Brian put me in one game, and after that I decided, well I’d concentrate on interfraternity basketball. And unfortunately, Brian ruled that the game I played in was enough to make me ineligible for fraternity basketball, so we had quite a hassle over that. But, that year I did not play, after the first few games. Then the next year I did, the next two years. And then I started on the forth year, played the first game in the Tin Tabernacle, and I was in law school then. I was working, and I, thought uh uh, this is not for me anymore. I’m gonna have to call it quits. So I called up Jack Daily, who was then coach, told him I was sorry, it was just too much.

ANDERSON: You were listed as the pivot man in ’24.

BROWN: By pivot, that means center.

ANDERSON: Right, I understand. I was going to say that the center position has taken on a different connotation today.

BROWN: Yeh, absolutely, absolutely.

ANDERSON: What was his primary function, when you were playing? I mean, as opposed to pushing people out of the way and working to . . . .

BROWN: As I say, basically, it was to try to get that tip-off. And it always struck me that the center caught heck, because he was supposed to do, first he was supposed to jump center while the rest of the guys were kind of resting. Then, he was supposed to enter into the offense, to be an integral part of the offense. Then he was also supposed to be a part of the defense, which put a heavy burden on the center compared to some of the other guys, the stationary guard, for example.

ANDERSON: Could you, you alluded to this earlier, but speak to the playing facilities and you mentioned the Tin Tabernacle you played the first year in, the old, now the old Tin Tabernacle. What did you think of this?

BROWN: Oh, it was quite wonderful, because we’d had to go to the facilities at the coliseum. The coliseum was over the center market. And the center market, it was a great big institution; it sold all kind of things – poultry, meats, everything…vegetables... It was a huge place. And the coliseum was a huge place. It was used for roller-skating, used for professional wrestling, they had poultry shows and things of that kind. So that it was not the finest place on earth to play, and then there were times when it wasn’t available, so you didn’t get to practice. We did not practice every day. And we did not practice like they do today, for hours. We practiced at night, probably a couple of hours. Then when we moved to the Tin Tabernacle we found our own locker room, which was pleasant, because at the coliseum you had to carry your uniform back and forth…no place to leave them.

McKEE: What was the following, or the crowd situation like? The Tin Tabernacle, they tell me, was a nice playing surface but it didn’t have much of a seating capacity.

BROWN: It had practically none, but it has been, I have seen it jammed. I’ve seen the door to the place where there’d actually, there actually would be a fire hazard. There were so many people who came to the game.

McKEE: If they jammed that building, about how many people could get in there?

BROWN: Oh gosh, that’s hard to, it would be hard to say . . . darned few, because there were no, the seats were on the side and at the end, and it would, I think a thousand would be probably optimistic. But I have seen, I’ve forgotten whether it was a little balcony, maybe it was a little balcony. I don’t remember now, for certain.

McKEE: Did they have any, like, neutral sites. In other words, if it was a big game coming up . . . .

BROWN: No.

McKEE: You couldn’t go to, like the Uline Arena or another facility in town?

BROWN: We didn’t, and, I don’t . . . . Wait a minute, Uline was there. We did play in Uline. Right! That was later on. You are absolutely right. We played our games in Uline. I had forgotten that, because I . . . This was long after I was active, but I followed sports at GW for many years, and we’d drive over to Uline, and they would fill that place with their games. There was this place down along the river. I can’t remember what it was now. We played down there a number of times, played Minnesota down there, I remember. The crowds were better than they are today. I really don’t understand your student body lack of interest today. We had a group, the year we won one game who had vowed not to shave until we won a game. Fortunately, we were able to nose out Maryland.

ANDERSON: Did you make any of the dances over at the Willard?

BROWN: Well our, yes I did. But our main, Pallitan was where we’d have, Pallitan Hotel, was where we’d have a lot of our dances. And Rauschers, Maison Rauscher, that was a private dance facility. Most of our balls and proms were there. You must realize too that this was an interesting period. It was prohibition, during prohibition. And there were the, you had a difference, you had the drys, which were mostly the kids, and you had the wets, who used the bathtub gin and things of that character. I remember one occasion, my wife as a Pi Phi was running a dance at the Pallitan . . . a tea dance at the Pallitan. And somebody cached a whiskey bottle in the pocket of the president’s wife’s coat, which ended the practice of having tea dances. But it was an interesting life. You spoke about trips. We had one trip with basketball, and it was quite a trip. As a matter of fact, it is . . . am I ahead of myself?

ANDERSON: No no no, please. I’ll cue you when the tape is about to finish out.

BROWN: We, our manager promoted a trip through Virginia. We played, you had to take a train, you had to go by train. We took a train to Charlottesville, checked in at a hotel, played Virginia that night, got beat. It wasn’t too bad, we played a pretty good game there, went back to the hotel, played blackjack ‘til all hours, tried to sleep, and I’ll swear that switch engine went right along the railroad track, that came in one window and out the next all right long. So we didn’t get much sleep. Next morning we took the train to Williamsburg. These were day coaches, they were dirty, the cinders. We arrived at Williamsburg, which at that time was a quiet college town. There was no historical set up, no renewal, the main street was dusty and muddy, had a corner drugstore and meeting place. I think the Wren building was in, and the powder magazine. I recall that. Those are the only two buildings I recall. But we were met, beaten by . . . . It isn’t on your list, he didn’t letter but he did play, and I was met by our fraternity, hauled off to the fraternity house. After the game, they grabbed us and they kept us all night, telling us stories about things happening at William and Mary. The next day we took, now this is not on your list of games. We took the train to Richmond where we were scheduled to play the Richmond Athletic Club. Our manager felt it was necessary to help finance the trip, to get the guarantee from this Richmond Athletic Club. That was quite a game, and that was in a big floor and that’s the one game where I really, I developed cramps in the middle of the game. Boy, was it rough. I’d yell time out, and bend over until I’d get the better of the cramps, then go back playing again. Half-time, I doubled over. They didn’t have any place to go. We had to sit against the wall. And finally in the second, I know Beaten (??) always said I played my best game there.

ANDERSON: I want you to continue on this, because I want to hear about this, but the tape is coming to an end on the first half. We can discuss this, and I’d like to discuss your literary career in college, as well.

ANDERSON: This is side 2 of Tape 1. Additional questions in these are presented by Ed McKee, who is the director of sports and media relations. Am I correct in that?

MCKEE: No, it’s Sports Media and Campus Community Relations. My being here - Mr. Brown is in sports, and has certainly been involved with campus and community all these years.

ANDERSON: If we could, it was starting to sound very fascinating, especially about the cramps and the other things in Richmond. So, can you pick up on your 1923 season, your junior year?

BROWN: I think so. Um, well that, in the middle of the, finally, Jack Daily, who was coaching at that time, had sense enough to take me out. And I got to feeling a little bit better, and we went, it was colder than all get-out. It was the coldest snap, we were housed in the Murphy Hotel in Richmond. And we went to bed. We roomed with Bob McNeil, who was manager, and about, sometime in the morning, I developed, redeveloped the cramps, and boy was it something. I got up and went over and sat by the radiator, tried to get the best of it. They called the hotel doctor, and the hotel doctor came over and gave me one look and said, take the next train home, appendicitis. Well, I guess I got to feeling a little better. He gave me some kind of liquid medicine. And Jack, said, “why don’t you go on and make the trip.” Well, it was okay with me, so we took the train and went, again, this time, to Lexington, Virginia, and there we were housed in the gym, and we were given cots, and I’ll swear that place wasn’t heated.

That was the coldest night we ever experienced. Sam Solomon and I did one smart thing. We put our cots together and, we were only issued so many blankets. I think it was two. And we put one of our blankets underneath us and doubled the other two so that we were using, we each, we doubled up and used our blanket. The other kids were just on one cot, and they nearly froze. It was bitter cold. I did not play that game. They held me out. I was feeling much better by that time. But then, the next night, we moved over to VMI, Virginia Military Institute, and a more desolate place you have never seen in midwinter. And we watched those poor kids parading up and down in front on sentry duty, looking cold and frigid. Why any girl would want to go to that institution beats me. [laughs] They put us in the dormitory there. From a heat standpoint, it was okay. They had a very tiny gym. It was extremely noisy, and I didn’t play very much in that game either. And we were again beaten pretty good. After that, we took the train home, and when we got home, we were met by the athletic director, Brian Morrison. Brian said “well, you’re in for it now. Solomon and Gosnell are both ineligible scholastically,” and I’ve forgotten, maybe somebody else. In other words, “the rest of you guys are going to have to play by yourself.” And we had a game scheduled that night. It was against Lynchburg, as I recall. So the coach said “Brown, you jump center, and then drop back, and play stationary guard, because he knew I was pooped by that time. As a matter of fact, I lost t eleven pounds on that trip, which I could ill afford to lose. You’ve got to remember that we were playing with probably a squad of ten men, and most of them playing a full game. But that was some trip. It was fun, but it was still a rugged trip.

ANDERSON: You’re listed as being the chairman of Junior Week. What exactly was Junior Week?

BROWN: I think the main thing was the prom, the junior prom. That was the main event. What else there was, I don’t remember now. I know the junior prom was always the big social event. The entire university went. The girls in . . ., tuxedos, the whole works. It was probably at Rauschler’s, which was out on 14th Street.

ANDERSON: This was a black tail, a black tie event?

BROWN: Oh yes. Oh yes.

ANDERSON: I’d like to, before we go on to 1924, which was your final, your main, your senior year, as far as the basketball team was concerned, I mentioned, I alluded to before, your literary activities. You’re listed as being the sports editor for the G.W. Hatchet.

BROWN: That’s right

ANDERSON: For basically three years. Was it?

BROWN: It could be. I don’t remember. I know I was the sports editor for quite a, for a number of years.

ANDERSON: For four years, actually.

BROWN: I did not cover basketball. [laughs]

ANDERSON: What did you do in this capacity?

BROWN: Well, wrote the games up. Wrote stories about them.

ANDERSON: Every sport?

BROWN: Yes.

ANDERSON: What were your feelings, I mean, the difference between playing and being the sports writer, in respect to going to a game?

BROWN: I can’t answer that. That’s a hard question to answer. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the whole thing. I enjoyed it very much.

ANDERSON: You also wrote for the Ghost, which we have copies of in the University Archives.

BROWN: As a matter of fact, I sent my copies to the university. Now, there’s one issue there that really made it for us. We - it was suppressed. Dean Hodgkins thought, “oh, this is naughty.” So, he suppressed it, and collected all the copies. Well, I have one, and the stuff was not, well, it’s too mild for today. It was the humorous magazine, like the Harvard Lampoon, although it wasn’t in the Lampoon type. It was, we had some darned good artists. Winnie Deboe was an excellent artist. Jim Berryman was a cartoonist. His father was the cartoonist for the Star for many years. And he was also a cartoonist for papers. And a lot of good writers, Dick Vidmer ended up with the New York papers, a sports writer. We had a, oh, Earle Chesney was a writer, an excellent writer. And Earle was later on Eisenhower’s staff in the White House. So, we had quite a bunch there. That particular issue was really something.

ANDERSON: What was your principal . . .

BROWN: I just wrote odds and ends for that. I really was on, more or less on the staff of that. The keys were people like Earle Chesney and Berryman, people of that type.

ANDERSON: Did you do take-offs of sports in the Ghost?

BROWN: No, just whatever I could think of.

MCKEE: Did you have any aspirations as a writer for the Hatchet, as a person who enjoyed doing that, of maybe taking your personal career toward the writing side of things?

BROWN: No, because I was always headed for the law. My father was a lawyer. My brother was a lawyer. I never had any other thoughts, although I did like to write. There’s a column, there was, in the Hatchet, you will find a column, the Dubville (??) Foursome. I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not. I have it over there. I can show it to you later. At that time, there was a cartoon character called a Dubville foursome in the papers, and they went through all sorts of gyrations in this cartoon. So, I thought it would be interesting, I wrote a column about, very brief, about like that, titled That Dubville Foursome. It was a story about the professors, Hill, Croissant, Griggs, and who was the other one? I can’t remember now. Talking about them and lampooning them a bit about their golf, and how it had, did this, oh, I remember one time, saying they’d had a bad day, and Doc Hill kicked a sick cat on the way home. They got a terrific kick out of it. The president would wait for the column. [laughs]

ANDERSON: What was the, could you go into a little bit more detail of the article that the dean was so, objected so much to?

BROWN: It is so hard to, what you ought to do is to get the issue that was suppressed and look at it. You’ll see, it was so mild that, really today, you’d laugh. It’s just not that bad. In fact, it wasn’t bad at all.

ANDERSON: He just did not particularly like it, so.

BROWN: The old dean was, he was acting president then, and he was, they were all kind of stiff those days. There was one story, I wrote in conjunction with others. Our Spanish professor, a young guy named Patterson (??) took us into his confidence, and said he was going to take a week off. He was going to go down and elope, kidnap and elope with his wife, who had been put in a convent by her parents. So…sure enough, he was gone for a week. Next week, he came back, and he told us all about it. He said he had to put a ladder up against the window, taking the girl down the ladder, and married her. So, and there was a movie running about that time, “One Wild Week.” So, our headline read “One Wild Week Wins (??) by Professor.” And then we went on with lurid detail of how Professor Myron, not Myron, either, but Professor Patterson, with a six-shooter in one hand and a bottle of hooch in the other, had climbed the ladder, taken his girl down, and taken her off and married her. It made, it was quite a sensation. The local papers picked it up. He didn’t appear back to school the next year. [laughter]. We told him we were, we asked him. He thought that would be fine. He thought it was an interesting story. But, as an adjunct to that, Elmer Louis Kayser was going to marry his wife, Marjorie Ludlow, and because of that story, they married secretly, so it wouldn’t get out, [laughs] because he didn’t know we’d do with it.

ANDERSON: You mentioned Dr. Kayser. He is quite a personality at the University.

BROWN: He sure is. I’ll tell you something that I want to do before he’s dead, and I never did, and I think I probably shouldn’t. Elmer was quite a young character, and he liked all the young kids. One day he came out and he stood there with his arms akimbo, and he looks up at the flag, and he said “GWU, god, what a university! [laughter]. Of course, he’d never admit that now, I know it.

ANDERSON: What was your major as an undergraduate?

BROWN: Political Science.

ANDERSON: As you pointed out, you were basically preparing to go on to law school.

BROWN: As a matter of fact, you see, at that time, you took your first three years in the Arts School, and your fourth year, your first year law. You had your degree at the end of that. I don’t know whether they still do that or not.

ANDERSON: I don’t think so.

MCKEE: I think you go your four years to get your degree, and then enroll in law school.

BROWN: I think so too, but at that time they had a combined course. So, my fourth year was a first year in law school.

MCKEE: You were able to, in ’24, your senior year, play sports, in effect, as a graduate student? Were you a graduate student?

BROWN: No, no, no, no. You didn’t graduate until; well, wait a minute. I graduated in ’24. The next year, when I played in the Tin Tabernacle, I was probably a graduate student.

MCKEE: In ’24 and ’25?

BROWN: Yes. I wasn’t paying any attention to the way things were supposed to be.

MCKEE: The rules and regulations.

BROWN: That’s right. [laughs]

ANDERSON: I found from doing my own research into the basketball teams that, especially, from its beginnings in 1907, on into the ‘20s and into the ‘30s, there was a wide variety of students from medicine to law as well as some undergraduate.

BROWN: Yeh, oh yeh, yeh.

ANDERSON: Which is not the case anymore.

BROWN: No, no, no.

ANDERSON: But very much so at that time.

BROWN: Yes, oh yes Yes.

ANDERSON: How was that working with, I mean, I imagine there was some interesting locker room conversations when you had such a variety of people.

BROWN: No, not really.

ANDERSON: What about your senior year? I know that, you did a little bit more traveling, and you were the main pivot man during this particular time. I have here, you liked City Club in Maryland and Catholic, Georgetown. What about Georgetown? What was it like playing Georgetown in this period?

BROWN: Well, we weren’t good enough for Georgetown, to be perfectly honest with you. We weren’t in their class. We did, Jack Dailey, we were, Maryland had a tiny gym, and they had a, a racetrack went around it. And a part of the racetrack covered one corner of the court. So, you’d get in that corner, you couldn’t make a shot. And they were used to it, and it was heck playing up there. Incidentally, at that time, the endline was right at the basket. There’s none of this business beyond the basket, as you have today. But, we played Georgetown quite well down at The Coliseum. Dailey got the bright idea of starting four men on the second team and me with the, he said “just run as hard as you can, keep them as busy as you can, and tire them out,” he says. He says, “if the score is 3 to 2, or 4 to 4, or 4 to 1, that’s fine.” All he wanted to do is, us to run. Well, we ran, and I think the score was 5 to 2, and he finally took out the other four, and left me in. That was a mistake, because by that time I was pooped. I’d been running to keep the other guys together, but we played them fairly well in that game. I will say this. The first time we played Georgetown, that was the dirtiest playing team that I have ever seen. It was made up largely of their football team. And I, in those days, we had only one official, so it’s a little difficult to get fouled. I remember, one occasion, Jack Flaven was a half-back, reached up and deliberately tripped me, and I went flat, and I yelled “ref,” and the referee turned around, saw me on the floor, and Flaven up there, and whistled a foul. He didn’t see it, but he could conjecture what happened. We would have liked to beat them, but we didn’t have it.

ANDERSON: Were the teams that you, I was just going to say, you pretty much overpowered, but looking at the scores here . . .

BROWN: We never overpowered anybody.

ANDERSON: [laughs]

BROWN: That Maryland game, that is the game that I recall, of course, vividly. At half, just before the half, and by the way, with no clocks, so you didn’t know what the time was, I mean there was a clock on the referee deck but none that you could see, I got caught with the ball at about oh, the 3 point range, I guess. When I looked around, I couldn’t find the (??) and I let it fly, and it went in, which tied the score at 11 all at the half. Then, when we got a 1-point lead, 20 to 19, with about, we didn’t know how much, we knew there wasn’t much time to go, and Bob Newbee (sp) got poked in the stomach and was knocked out. We had possession of the ball, and the official said “did you want a time-out?” No way did we want a time-out. We had used all our time-outs, and we didn’t want to give them a chance to take a shot. So we kept the ball. It’s surprising how fast Bob got to his feet. [laughs].

ANDERSON: Did you find it, basketball can be a very aggressive game today, but it seemed to be even more aggressive in the 20s. Were there any serious injuries?

BROWN: No. That’s a thing that is surprising to me. There were not. I don’t recall. The worst injury I got was after I got through school, playing fraternity basketball, and stepped on somebody’s ankle, twisted an ankle. But I never had, well I did, I got my nose cracked one time down at William and Mary, but it, not enough to see stars. No, I don’t recall any major injuries. And of course, the guys are bigger and faster, and they train harder, and I suppose that’s why there are so many injuries. And this rebounding that you have. That wasn’t part of our game. You were coached to follow your shot in. If you took a shot from outside, you were supposed to barrel in. I remember Jack said “go in with your knees high and you won’t get hurt.” To my surprise, it worked.

ANDERSON: Were there many, as you well know, in today’s basketball, the tall man is the, or the tall person, whether it’s men’s or women’s basketball, is very predominant. This was not the case.

BROWN: No. In two full years that I played, I ran up against only one guy who was substantially taller, and that was O’Keefe, of Georgetown. He was about 6’ 4”. But generally they were, we were about the same or evenly matched. I don’t know where these big guys come from. It floors me. He’s one. What are you 6’?

MCKEE: I’m about 6’8’. My mom is 5’8”, and dad was 5’ 1l ½ “, so it’s unusual. When I go, I stand amongst our current players, we don’t have an extremely large team at G.W.

BROWN: No you don’t. But you’re up there.

MCKEE: I’m kind of amongst the 6’6” to 6’9” guys in our team.

BROWN: It was a small man’s game.

ANDERSON: What fraternity were you in? You’ve alluded to this.

BROWN: Theta Delta Chi.

ANDERSON: Any you were in that, you pledged in your freshman year?

BROWN: Yes.

ANDERSON: I’d like to just follow up on one thing. I’m fascinated by this. There seems to be am awful lot of a rule-out between the intra-fraternity basketball and the varsity basketball. You mentioned one time that if you played varsity, you couldn’t play intrafraternity. I mean, these were, did you have a set of hard-set rules as to . . .

BROWN: We didn’t think so, but the athletic director did, so that as it.

MCKEE: Who was the athletic director?

BROWN: Brian Morse. Brian Morse was a - he came from Western High School, where he’d been coach, and he was a part-time sports writer for the local papers. He did me a dirty trick. He wrote a story, “G.W. Center a Self-Made Star.” Then he went on to tell about how I went down to the Y and shot our baskets regularly. Boy, did I catch it from that Georgetown crowd that night. Oh boy [laughs].

ANDERSON: Were there large crowds at the other universities, or other teams that you played?

BROWN: Pretty good, at, yes, the gyms were full. They were full. I’d say that trip to the South, I’d say we filled the, but the gyms were smaller. Don’t compare it with today’s. You really couldn’t compare it. There was one guy who might be of interest. We had a kid come out for basketball named Carter Baum, and Carter was a fairly big boy. He left early to join the FBI, and he was shot and killed in the Dillinger affair.

ANDERSON: Well, that’s interesting.

MCKEE: We had basketball, football, baseball. What other sports did G.W. have, and secondly, did women play any kind of sport?

BROWN: They played basketball.

MCKEE: So they had a team that was considered to be like a varsity team?

BROWN: Yes.

MCKEE: Did we have things like swimming and soccer and things of that nature?

BROWN: No. They had tennis. At one time, they had track. It didn’t amount to anything. They did have wrestling at one time, and that didn’t last. Let’s see.

MCKEE: Somewhere along the way, they had sailing.

BROWN: No, not in my day. It comes along later. Before I forget, I want to, did you know that the George Washington football team played the inaugural game in RFK Stadium, did you know that?

MCKEE: Back in 1961. Yes. I think it was VMI that they played.

BROWN: It was VMI. You’re right. And, GW won, but I’ll never forget that day. Those poor kids from VMI were standing at attention during all of the ceremonies. And it was hot. Every once in a while, one of them would flop down. Yes, that’s right.

MCKEE: You think of the stadium as being the home of the Redskins, and of course it is. But, they did not play the first game there.

BROWN: No, they did not. As a matter of fact, George Washington really started the Redskins. The George Washington teams of the 30s were good teams. They were top-flight. And they inaugurated night football out a Griffith Stadium, and the success of that, we think, led to the move of George Marshall from Boston to Washington. But we had some, it’s unfortunate that you don’t, one of the greatest athletes I think I ever saw was Tuffy Leemans. He was a true triple threat. Run, pass, kick and defense. And he was tremendous in all of them. Alphonse “Tuffy” Leemans. He was really a football player. He played in the All-Star game, and the owner of the Giants, football Giants, after seeing the game, said, “You mean to tell me he’s ours?” They had apparently drafted him and didn’t know anything about him. He said, “yes.” He played for years with the Giants. As did Ray Hanken. There was another one.

MCKEE: You’re right on target about him being a great athlete, because he’s the only player from G.W. that played football who went to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He is in the Football Hall of Fame.

BROWN: Yes, I remember when Tuffy went in it. Tuffy was terrific. He was, and he was a great guy, too. I remember playing baseball against him in inter-fraternity league.

ANDERSON: I’m sensing from just listening to you that after you graduated from law school that you stayed in the Washington area, and obviously you stayed in contact with George Washington.

BROWN: Very much so. Very much so. I was one of the charter members of the Colonial Club in [coach] Maud Crum’s day, when he formed the club as a booster organization. I think we paid a hundred bucks as charter members, if I recall correctly. Oh yeh, I’ve followed them all, in their road games, more football than basketball.

MCKEE: There was the Colonial Club, and there was an organization called a Letterman’s Club. How were they different?

BROWN: The Colonials were boosters, money raisers, and the Letterman Club was limited to lettermen. It’s that difference. There were an awful lot of people in the Colonials who had never lettered. The Letterman’s club was a good organization. When Dallas was there, his stories were terrific.

ANDERSON: But you were, in 1924, you were a member of the G.W. Club, Letterman’s Club. Was that the original, I mean, that was part of the original Letterman’s Club?

BROWN: I doubt if it had much to do with it. I think it was just something that you did in school. I don’t believe; it may have developed into that, but I won’t swear to it.

ANDERSON: Is there anything else that you would like to say, Ed, or any comments that you would like to make? Our tape is, we have another couple of minutes, but, is there anything else . . . .?

MCKEE: I just wanted, you know, from my perspective at the athletic department at the university, want to really thank you for your interest, your continued interest through the years, and your comments, when we’re doing things what you perceive to be well, and we were doing things you don’t think are so well, that you have the interest in following up and giving us a perspective on where athletics is going, that sort of thing.

BROWN: I appreciate that. There was one rather amusing incident when I was president of the Colonials. Cloyd Marvin called me and it seemed that some Georgetown students had painted the brickwork on the walls with yellow paint. He was most incensed, and he [said]. . . “what do you think I can do about it? “ [laughs]. He was a character, Marvin was.

ANDERSON: Yes he was. I believe he is still in . . . .

BROWN: Did you, are you familiar with the famous Tennessee incident? Probably not. G.W. had a great football team, and Tennessee had a great football team. We went out there one afternoon. We were going to play Tennessee. And the stadium was packed. And I mean packed. It was really packed. And then I began to hear rumors. “So and so is not going, not going to play, so and so is not going to play, and so and so is not going to play.” It seems that Hardy Pierce, Johnny Baker and Nig McCarver had been ruled ineligible. Well, we always thought it was Curly Byrd in Maryland who had blown the whistle, because he was part of the Southern Conference. Tennessee denied that they had anything to do with it. But with the loss of those three guys, Johnny Baker was quarterback, Nig McCarver was running back, and Hardy Pierce, who later was head of the athletic department of the District schools, was one terrific tackle. We got beat 14 to nothing, but boy, it really, it seems that they had received degrees from minor colleges. The Southern Conference, then the Southern Conference, took a dim view of that.

ANDERSON: Well, I’d like to thank you again. I’d love to hear more, actually, later. We ’re almost at the end of the tape. If maybe we could come back later?

BROWN: I’d be glad to have you. It’s a lot of fun, it’s a lot of fun to remember these things.

ANDERSON: Thank you very much.

BROWN: I appreciate your being here. (End of Interview)

See also: Brown, Francis W.

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Author or Source: MS0371/Oral History Collection
Document Location: University Archives
Date Added to Encyclopedia: May 1, 2007
Prepared by: Lyle Slovick, Assistant University Archivist

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