Glenn Killinger, Service Football, and the Birth
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School School of Humanities WAR SEASONS: GLENN KILLINGER, SERVICE FOOTBALL, AND THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN HERO IN POSTWAR AMERICAN CULTURE A Dissertation in American Studies by Todd M. Mealy © 2018 Todd M. Mealy Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2018 ii This dissertation of Todd M. Mealy was reviewed and approved by the following: Charles P. Kupfer Associate Professor of American Studies Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee Simon Bronner Distinguished Professor Emeritus of American Studies and Folklore Raffy Luquis Associate Professor of Health Education, Behavioral Science and Educaiton Program Peter Kareithi Special Member, Associate Professor of Communications, The Pennsylvania State University John Haddad Professor of American Studies and Chair, American Studies Program *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines Glenn Killinger’s career as a three-sport star at Penn State. The thrills and fascinations of his athletic exploits were chronicled by the mass media beginning in 1917 through the 1920s in a way that addressed the central themes of the mythic Great American Novel. Killinger’s personal and public life matched the cultural medley that defined the nation in the first quarter of the twentieth-century. His life plays outs as if it were a Horatio Alger novel, as the anxieties over turn-of-the- century immigration and urbanization, the uncertainty of commercializing formerly amateur sports, social unrest that challenged the status quo, and the resiliency of the individual confronting challenges of World War I, sport, and social alienation. I attempt to present a profoundly moving American success story that offers a glimpse into a chaotic period of military training, combat experience, and athletic valor that gave rise to the American hero. Some scholars have provided arguments that the so-called “American hero” was created by a paradigm shift within the field of communications. Others view fitness crazes or lifestyle changes of working-class families motivated by higher paychecks and more leisure time. While important in fueling sports hysteria in the 1920s, those views fall short of identifying the roles of the Wilson Administration and War Department that monopolized the media’s messaging and used intercollegiate and intramural sports to prepare soldiers for the front lines of World War I. The war, I argue, did more to make sports the cornerstone of American life in the 1920s; thus placing the college [and subsequntially professional) athlete in the category of great American heroes. iv I deconstruct American society during World War I and a few years thereafter into order to show how sports hysteria of the 1920s created America’s first celebrities. By examining this historically important cultural movement, I argue that the notion of the American hero emerged because of six factors: (1) newfound mass media models that included sports journalism, mass circulation of local stories through the Associated Press, and live broadcast radio, (2) the implementation of service sports at army and navy installations in 1917, (3) the creation of the Student Army Training Corps (which kept draft-age men in college by promising officer training in conjunction with a regular degree) and massed athletics (physical education) that mandated every college male participate in two-hours of military drill and one-hour of physical activity per day, (4) gender anxiety brought on by the “intrusion” (author’s quotes) of women into male- dominated areas like the workplace and political arena, (5) the shift from amateur to professional sports, and (6) the modern art of ballyhoo promotion that helped a sports- crazed public replace war heroes with sport celebrities. I used four major research methods: (1) archival research, (2) historical reconstruction, (3) content analysis, and (4) oral history collection. Data has been collected from special collection archives, interviews, newspapers, military records, and Killinger family documents that included Glenn Killinger’s unpublished memoir. This interdisciplinary investigation is part biography, part cultural study, and part history. By situating Killinger in his time and place, an enduring legacy of manufactured heroism that has carried over into the twenty-first-century is revealed. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures …………………………………………………………………….. vii List of Tables ……………………………………………………………………. viii Preface …………………………………………………………………………….. ix Methods…………………………………………………………………… xv Organization of Chapters…………………………………………………. xix Scope of Project ………………………………………………………….. xx Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………….. xxv Dedication …………….………………………………………………………….. xxvii Part One: FIRST QUARTER Chapter 1: Beginnings …………………………………………………………… 2 The Killinger Clan ………………………………………………………. 8 Chapter 2: Evolution of an Athlete ……………………………………………… 25 Sport and Class ………………………………………………………….. 25 Sport and Masculinity …………………………………………………… 28 Chapter 3: Dreams and Diversity in an American City…………………………. 45 Learning from Jim Thorpe ………………………………………….…… 45 Thanksgiving Day Football……………………………………………… 56 Race and Ethnicity in Central Pennsylvania ……………………………. 59 The Coming of World War I ……………………………………………. 68 Part Two: SECOND QUARTER Chapter 4: Wartime Football Adventure ………………………………………… 74 Penn State College and Military Preparedness…………………………... 77 Service Sports and Football’s Growing Popularity ……………………… 83 Chapter 5: Military Arrogance, University Misperception ……………………… 94 Glenn Killinger, Harold Lloyd, and the Hero on Campus ………………. 94 Wartime Closure of America’s Colleges and Universities………………. 98 War and Community Sports …………………………………………….. 105 The Student Army Training Corps ……………………………………… 108 Chapter 6: Massed Athletics Experiment…………………………………………. 120 Hugo Bezdek and the Construction of Massed Athletics………………… 120 Merging Massed Athletics with the Student Army Training Corps …….. 127 Massed Athletics, the SATC, and Intercollegiate Football ………………. 131 vi Football, War, and Truce ………………………………………………… 147 Part Three: THIRD QUARTER Chapter 7: The Veterans …………………………………………………………. 164 Reintegrating Intercollegiate Athletics …………………………………. 166 Hysteria ………………………………………………………………….. 174 Amateurism to Professionalism …………………………………………. 178 Chapter 8: War, Sport, and Brotherhood …………………………………………. 185 Sport and Identity ………………………………………………………. 186 Defining A Champion …………………………………………………… 200 Chapter 9: Harold Lamb Moments ………………………………………………. 203 Mascot and Homecoming Culture ………………………………………. 217 Affirming a Golden Era at Penn State ………………………………….. 224 Part Four: FOURTH QUARTER Chapter 10: Class of 1921 ………………………………………………………. 240 The Golden Era of America’s Pastime at Penn State …………………… 245 Chapter 11: A Crafty Field General ……………………………………………… 254 Mass Media and the 1921 Intercollegiate Football Season ……………… 255 Radio and Football ………………………………………………………. 259 Polo Grounds …………………………………………………………….. 268 Radio and Penn State ……………………………………………………. 285 The Railroad, Sport, and Coastal Rivalry ………………………………… 288 Chapter 12: All American Hero ……………………………………………….… 296 Walter Camp All-American Team ………………………………………. 297 Sport Journalism, Professionalism, and the Hometown Hero …………... 300 Chapter 13: Post Game ………………………………………………………….. 321 New York Baseball Yankees ……………………………………………. 323 College Coaching is More Lucrative ……………………………………. 326 Great Depression and the Loss of the Sports Hero ……………………… 339 The Legacy of World War I Service Sports and Massed Athletics – Pre-Flight School and Sport on the World War II Home Front ………………………. 344 Hall of Fame ……………………………………………………………... 353 Conclusion: ……………………………………………………………………… 357 The Vestige of 1920s Heroism ………………………………………….. 359 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………. 364 vii LIST OF FIGURES Wm. Glenn Killinger, 1921 …….………………………………………………. xxviii viii LIST OF TABLES Table I: Deaths and Serious Injuries, 1905-16 …….……………………………. 33 ix Preface I came across the name William Glenn Killinger in 2014 when I was working on a book about the history of Harrisburg. This dissertation is the offspring of that project. When the research process began, I was attempting to write an article for the magazine Pennsylvania Heritage about Killinger’s experience as a football and baseball coach as well as a lieutenant commander at the North Carolina Pre-Flight School during World War II. In October 2015, Killinger’s unpublished memoir, titled A Penn State Walk-On, surfaced when his granddaughter, Jessica, who, after bravely handling the death of her own father—and Killinger’s only child—unearthed the dossier in a pile of boxes at the retirement home where her dad had lived. The memoir was a boon to the narrative I was trying to compose as it corroborated much of the research I had previously completed. It was, up to that moment, a study based on media coverage of Killinger’s athletic feats and interviews that I conducted with people close to Killinger, including his son, Bill, before he passed away. As it turned out, I became fascinated with Killinger’s experience as a student-athlete at Penn State during the Great War. Though mostly forgotten in the twenty-first century, I soon learned that Killinger was one of the most popular athletes in the country—including Jim Thorpe and Babe Ruth—during the 1920s. He was first considered a college star and later became a venerated intercolleagiate coach. The sports-crazed cultural “dreamland,” as New York Times