{"id":850,"date":"2015-11-10T16:24:47","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T16:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/?p=850"},"modified":"2018-02-08T13:34:50","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T13:34:50","slug":"paddles-up-wearing-the-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/paddles-up-wearing-the-t\/","title":{"rendered":"Paddles Up: Wearing the \u201cT\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"T-club\"<\/a>Pulling a tire in a little red wagon and trying to swallow\u00a0cracked, raw eggs dropped from a rooftop is likely not\u00a0many current students\u2019 idea of fun.<\/p>\n

But before the 1980s such antics were an\u00a0unforgettable part of the Tech student experience\u00a0because of the T Club, a lettermen\u2019s group.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a status symbol, I guess \u2013 \u2018he\u2019s a member\u00a0of the T Club,\u2019\u201d said Gehrig Harris, \u201966 mathematics.\u00a0\u201cYou got a swagger that maybe you shouldn\u2019t have\u00a0had. I\u2019m glad I did it for the friends and to be a part of\u00a0something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before fraternities were legal on campus, the club\u00a0sponsored dances and concerts, and sold popcorn at\u00a0home games.<\/p>\n

Members also gave fellow students something to\u00a0watch and laugh at every spring during initiation week. T\u00a0Club initiates went through what would be hazing today,\u00a0according to alumni.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the things we did in initiation we can talk\u00a0about,\u201d said Phil Wilbourn, \u201964 civil engineering. \u201cThere\u00a0are others we can\u2019t put in print. I still can\u2019t eat black olives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d do it again for the friendships. It\u2019s the camaraderie\u00a0that it built.\u201d<\/p>\n

The initiation changed slightly through the decades,\u00a0but the wagons, the eggs and several other rites were\u00a0constant, according to university archives and club\u00a0alumni. Each new member had a sponsor who, with\u00a0varying skill, shaved Ts into the initiate\u2019s hair. They also\u00a0got wooden paddles, measuring 18 inches long, three\u00a0inches wide and three-quarters of an inch thick.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time during initiation week that you met a T\u00a0Club member, you had to salute them and ask if they\u00a0would sign your paddle,\u201d Wilbourn said. \u201cYou bent over\u00a0and held your ankles and they hit you. Then they\u2019d sign\u00a0your paddle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilbourn and Harris still have theirs, though the\u00a0signatures are faded. One of the people who signed\u00a0Wilbourn\u2019s paddle is responsible for a crack down its\u00a0length. Initiates learned to avoid crowds because the men\u00a0standing with girls hit the hardest.<\/p>\n

In another ritual, members were blindfolded, driven to\u00a0isolated areas and abandoned. After walking a few miles,\u00a0Sam Peaty, \u201963 physical education, and another athlete\u00a0fell asleep after midnight at a four-way stop. They woke\u00a0to headlights bearing down on them; they would have\u00a0been run over had the car not swerved.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the purpose of the T Club was to\u00a0build a relationship between the student body\u00a0and the athletes,\u201d said Bobby Young, \u201966 business\u00a0management. \u201cI believe it worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

The T Club was open to athletes who lettered\u00a0in their sport. The club was approved in 1921 and\u00a0its first members inducted in 1924. Originally, it was\u00a0open to men and women. By the early 1950s, only\u00a0men could join, possibly because of cuts to women\u2019s\u00a0athletic programs.<\/p>\n

More than a dozen men joined every spring.\u00a0Membership was not obligatory but Harris said\u00a0there was intense pressure to join. Wilbourn said one\u00a0baseball letterman didn\u2019t join because of protests\u00a0from his girlfriend.<\/p>\n

Harris, Peaty and Wilbourn lettered in baseball,\u00a0Young in basketball. Young was on the 1962-1963\u00a0championship team whose banner hangs in Hooper Eblen Center.<\/p>\n

\"Left<\/a>
Left to right: Young, Beaty, Wilbourn and Harris share a laugh in Memorial Gym about their time in the T Club.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Many T Club members remain friends but those\u00a0who have lost touch seem able to quickly re-establish\u00a0old ties. Wilbourn, Harris, Peaty and Young swapped\u00a0stories as though 50 years hadn\u2019t passed since the\u00a0four had been together. All of them were often on\u00a0academic probation because of the demands of\u00a0balancing games, practices and schoolwork.<\/p>\n

Some T Club members remain fixtures at\u00a0Tech games, in the stands rather than on the field.\u00a0Wilbourn and Harris went to Jackson, Tennessee,\u00a0to cheer for the Golden Eagle baseball team in this\u00a0year\u2019s Ohio Valley Tournament.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think coach [Matt] Bragga has done a real\u00a0good job. The baseball team is competitive every\u00a0year,\u201d Harris said. \u201cWe weren\u2019t great; almost every\u00a0year, we would win a few more games than we would\u00a0lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

After he was commissioned through Tech\u2019s\u00a0ROTC program, Harris served in the Army for two\u00a0years, one in Vietnam. He worked in banking and,\u00a0later, as an FDIC bank examiner. Peaty taught in Kentucky for 35 years. Young held a variety of jobs,\u00a0including working on a cow farm, owning a business\u00a0and, most recently, serving as town judge.<\/p>\n

Wilbourn and his family moved around the world\u00a0for his engineering job but retired to Cookeville and\u00a0reconnected with TTU. He is on the College of\u00a0Engineering dean\u2019s advisory council and the College\u00a0of Business board of trustees. He also taught an\u00a0ethics and professionalism in engineering course.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere is an opportunity to give back,\u201d Wilbourn\u00a0said. \u201cAs I worked with those students, they were\u00a0sitting in buildings named after Brown and Prescott.\u00a0Those guys taught me so I tell the students, the\u00a0names of the people who teach you today will be on\u00a0buildings someday.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, if they\u2019d told me that when I was a\u00a0student, I probably wouldn\u2019t have listened either.\u201d V<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Pulling a tire in a little red wagon and trying to swallow\u00a0cracked, raw eggs dropped from a rooftop is likely not\u00a0many current students\u2019 idea of fun. But before the 1980s such antics were an\u00a0unforgettable part of the Tech student experience\u00a0because of the T Club, a lettermen\u2019s group. \u201cIt was a status symbol, I guess \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-fall15"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850","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=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1164,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions\/1164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}