{"id":79,"date":"2014-05-01T18:11:45","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T18:11:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/?p=79"},"modified":"2018-02-08T13:38:22","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T13:38:22","slug":"the-eagle-caper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/the-eagle-caper\/","title":{"rendered":"The eagle caper"},"content":{"rendered":"

The honest truth of how the Derryberry eagle came to campus.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"eagleCrop\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tom Moran\u2019s hand gripped the tin snips he had brought with him. Cutting through the base of the statue, he kept working in the dim light from the restaurant across the street.<\/p>\n

He was alone, for the most part, as he worked. His partners in this caper checked on his progress before heading back through town, driving around to not raise any suspicion in the residents of Monteagle, Tenn.<\/p>\n

It was wet and dark; rain had started on their drive from Cookeville, Tenn., earlier that evening. Moran thought that this was going to be worth the effort when they returned to Tennessee Polytechnic Institute with their trophy. The eagle would make its surprise debut at a pep rally before the annual Thanksgiving football game against hated Middle Tennessee State College.<\/p>\n

\n

In November 1952, three students at Tennessee Polytechnic (later to become Tennessee Tech University) wanted to do something memorable to get everyone fired up for the big game, said Moran, physics \u201958, originally from Cookeville and now living in Arnold, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis.<\/p>\n

The three students, Moran, Roy Loudermilk, biology \u201956, and Albert \u201cLewis\u201d Brown hadn\u2019t heard of the university president\u2019s attempts to purchase a large eagle statue from the owner of the burned-out hotel.<\/p>\n

Moran knew about the eagle because his work with his father\u2019s telephone company took him to the small city north of Chattanooga.<\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/a> \"Lewis<\/a> \"Roy-Loudermilk\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tom Moran (left), Albert ‘Lewis’ Brown (center) and Roy Loudermilk (right) were “the three guilty ones that had their hands on the eagle, according to Moran.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

He discovered the eagle statue on one of these trips during high school. According to Moran, there was a bunch of buildings that had been abandoned.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the front of this main building was a rock mount and on top of that was an eagle,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The eagle statue is large, weighing more than 70 pounds with a six-foot wingspan. Made of block tin and perched atop a four-foot pile of stones, its wings spread for flight. Before making its home at the Monteagle Hotel, it had been an attraction at the Monteagle Episcopal Assembly grounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what happened but something clicked in my mind that I associated that eagle with Tech,\u201d Moran said.<\/p>\n

A few years later, Moran, who lived at home, got his father\u2019s blue pick-up truck, went to campus to get Brown, also from Cookeville but living on campus, and Loudermilk, from Oak Ridge. At 6 p.m., they set out for Monteagle.<\/p>\n

The main road in the town was highly travelled and had a restaurant directly across the street from the hotel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had bought a pair of tin snips. That\u2019s all. I had no idea of what would work,\u201d Moran said. \u201cWe just wanted to bring it back. I think I had a blanket to cover it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown and Loudermilk drove the truck out of sight as not to attract attention and Moran started working on the eagle. It was dark and the only lights were dim from across the street.<\/p>\n

At first, Moran wasn\u2019t sure how his snips were going to work. He started trying to cut at the globe, and discovered it was hollow and \u201cjust kept cutting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every so often, the others would come back and ask, \u201cHow are you doing? How much longer is it going to be?\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, they came back and Moran only had an inch left.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cut the final piece of the globe and then stood on the stone foundation and put my hand underneath the wings because it\u2019s pretty big,\u201d Moran said. \u201cI had to spread my arms wide just to put them under the wings.”<\/p>\n

\u201cI put my hands under it and lifted it and it wouldn\u2019t budge. Now we got the darn thing cut loose what are we going to do?”<\/p>\n

\u201cI just know that it was approaching kind of a panic. I\u2019m still standing up there on this stone pedestal,\u201d Moran said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI discovered that if I wiggled the thing, it moved slightly.\u201d<\/p>\n

It turned out there was a solid rod in the concrete with a rusted pipe in the statue that slipped over the rod.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen the idea was just twist it off and that would be fine,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it didn\u2019t want to break loose. There were several times when I had the eagle turned 45 degrees and a car would be driving by and I stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moran said there was a half an hour when he had the \u201cdarn eagle\u201d facing backward.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinally, it broke loose and we could lift it up,\u201d he said. \u201cWe carried it to the truck and then headed back to Cookeville.\u201d<\/p>\n

They stopped in Rock Island, Tenn., for coffee. When two highway patrol officers came through the door, Moran and company hastily left their cups on the counter and returned to the road.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cStudents almost went beserk. I bounded from my seat to the stage and asked Bill [Francis] how he got that eagle from Mr. Harton, and Bill stammered and stammered.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

The eagle made its way to its temporary home on campus as the trio arrived at the dorm room of Bill Francis, biology \u201953, student body president. From there, the statue made its way to Brown\u2019s home in Cookeville where it was given a coat of golden dimestore paint and prepared for the pep rally in a few days.<\/p>\n

As fans at the pep rally looked on, Francis took the microphone and said \u201ca strange bird has been seen flying around.\u201d As he finished his sentence, he pulled on a curtain to unveil the eagle, suspended from wires in Memorial Gym.<\/p>\n

As reported in The Alumnus, an early Tennessee Tech alumni magazine, the \u201cmost anguished cry\u201d was from Tech President Everett Derryberry. He is reported to have said \u201cMr. [John] Harton will never believe that I knew absolutely nothing about this!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents almost went beserk,\u201d said Derryberry in a 1984 television interview. Derryberry served as president of the university for 34 years and died in 1991. \u201cI bounded from my seat to the stage and asked Bill how he got that eagle from Mr. Harton, and Bill stammered and stammered.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Mancil Johnson, the archivist at Tennessee Tech, the stories that have grown over the 60 years since the initial \u201cliberation\u201d lead one to believe more than three people were involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way people tell it, there must have been an army of at least 150 students going down to Monteagle to get the statue,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt seems that each year, more older alumni take credit for being in on the theft.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Johnson, the whole incident was embarrassing to Derryberry, who is remembered as running the campus with close supervision.<\/p>\n

\"GG56Clement&Eagle\"<\/a>
Former Gov. Frank Clement looks at the statue mounted on its new perch on the library (now Jere Whitson Hall) in 1954.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just a few weeks before the theft, Derryberry had met with Harton on a trip to Chattanooga when he saw the hotel had burned and offered to buy the eagle. The owner \u201ccouldn\u2019t think of selling\u201d the grand eagle, which had been part of his family for a long time and had great sentimental value.<\/p>\n

Derryberry attempted to smooth over the situation, but Harton, a former state treasurer, was incensed. Attempts to purchase the eagle after-the-fact were rebuffed. Suggestions that the statue could be donated to the university were also refused.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, it took an intervention from Tennessee Gov. Frank Clement to settle the matter. During a visit to campus, Clement took part in a student meeting and addressed the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to have chapel everyday,\u201d said James Seay Brown, a former dean of Tech\u2019s engineering college. \u201cGov. Clement came one day after the eagle had been stolen.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Seay Brown, the governor said, \u201cI hear you\u2019ve been having trouble with an eagle. I can\u2019t keep them from arresting you, and I can\u2019t keep them from prosecuting you and putting you in jail. But I can sure as hell pardon you if they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harton eventually gave in, agreeing to sell the eagle to the university for $500.<\/p>\n

The statue, which had been hidden in the rafters of the Industrial Arts Building (now Lewis Hall) after its debut to stop anyone from stealing it back, was perched atop the university\u2019s new library building (now Jere Whitson Hall) in October 1954. It was moved to its current location on the Administration Building (now Derryberry Hall) in 1961.<\/p>\n

To continue reading about the eagle statue, see our other article in this issue: Return the eagle?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The honest truth of how the Derryberry eagle came to campus. Tom Moran\u2019s hand gripped the tin snips he had brought with him. Cutting through the base of the statue, he kept working in the dim light from the restaurant across the street. He was alone, for the most part, as he worked. His partners […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":107,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-79","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spring14"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1218,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions\/1218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}