r !t iluii
lazine wo« never dispal
by lesser scribes.
Whltnqr was the forerunner
of Walter Camp and Grantland
Rice, and his evaluation of the
Trinity thunderbolt was
equivalent to later All*
American selectioas. Southern
feotbi^ in its infi
Daniels qi
The NBW BERN
PUBLISHID WIIKLY
IN THI WART OR
lASTRRN NORTH
CAROLINA
VOLUME 15
sko
NEW BERN, N. C. 28560, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1972
NUivibi-. 26
No list of cidorful North
Carolinians would be complete
if it failed to include Captain
Tom Daniels—the South’s flrst
football star, and later a
maimed hero of World War I
who refused to die from his
wounds.
Tom was a rip snorter in his
day, so much so that a fearful
member of the State legislature
sought to have him outlawed
from every college gridiron
within the bounds of
civilization. Opposing teams
understood why.
Father Time alone was able
to tone him down sli^tly, in the
sunset years. A man
surrounded in his seventies by
mellowed memories of sports
and military mayhem, he was
content in the afterglow of his
glory to let others scramble for
the limelight he knew so well.
As a pigskin pioneer^ he not
only brought national fame to
Dixie, but revealed the stamina
and spunk that was to stand him
in good stead when his body was
all but ripped apart by German
shells that finally felled him on
a blood-drenched French
battlefield.
That was on August 19,1918,
but the Daniels saga really
began in 1888. Playing halfback
for Trinity (now Duke
University) the cocky New
Bemian led his team to a 2(H)
victory over the University of
North Carolina. Southern foot
ball was bom that day, and
Tom, almost singlehandedly,
made the delivery in the
presence of a few hundred
excited but slightly bewildered
spectators.
He ran roughshod over every
foe he faced for the next six
years, and was picked as the
greatest halfback in the country
by the nation’s top sports
authority, Casper VIRiitney—
whose writings in Outinf
was
fancy v
scoffed at by Yankee critics, but
juickly squdched
doifoters witti his greatness.
the
Auburn, understandably
impressed, latdied onto him to
coach that school’s first
football team against the
University of Alabama, in 1898.
Somebody, and we rather think
it was T(Hn, suggested per
mitting the coaches to play. It
was a bad day for Alabama
udien the Crimson Tide agreed.
Daniels had a field day,
scoring most of the points as
Auburn went on to win by a
margin of 32 to 22. Spurning
offers to play professional
baseball, he came back home
and coached a number of high
school football teams before he
eventually went off to war.
Actually, Captain Tom wao an
old hand at military service
before World War I. He Joined
the Naval Militia of the North
(^iuolina State Guard in 1892,
and for 16 years was com
mander of the North Carolina
(Continued on page 8)
YOU’LL FIND HISTORIC CHARM AT OLD SALEM.