View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Purdue E-Pubs Purdue University Purdue e-Pubs Purdue University Press Books Purdue University Press Fall 9-15-2009 Ross–Ade: Their Purdue Stories, Stadium, and Legacies Robert C. Kriebel Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_ebooks Part of the Higher Education Commons, and the Nonfiction Commons Recommended Citation Kriebel, Robert C., Ross–Ade: Their Purdue Stories, Stadium, and Legacies. (2009). Purdue University Press. This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. Ross-Ade Ross-Ade Their Purdue Stories, Stadium, and Legacies Robert C. Kriebel Purdue University Press Copyright © 2009 by Purdue University. All rights reserved. Front cover photo courtesy of Purdue University Sports Information Archives. The typeface used on the front cover for the title and subtitle is CentaurMT. The typeface Centaur was designed by Bruce Rogers, Purdue University class of 1890. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kriebel, Robert C., 1932- Ross-Ade : their Purdue stories, stadium, and legacies / by Robert C. Kriebel. p. cm. -- (The founders series) ISBN 978-1-55753-522-1 1. Ross, David, 1871-1943. 2. Ade, George, 1866-1944. 3. Purdue University--Benefac- tors--Biography. 4. Ross-Ade Stadium (West Lafayette, Ind.)--History. I. Title. LD4672.65.R67.K75 2009 378.772'95--dc22 [B] 2009006172 Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi PART I Ross-Ade: Their Stories Like being in jail 3 Mechanic or farmer? 7 A good spectator 9 Much of the time lonely 15 In the Big Arena 19 A different breed of cat 43 Chicago, here he came 51 Meanwhile, down on the farm 65 “Fables” and more 73 Plays and more plays 91 Made for the movies 111 Peace and War 123 At war with Purdue 133 Together at last 141 Walter Scholer 149 Ross-Ade 163 PART II Ross-Ade: Their Stadium A time for reflection 185 Out of the Joke Division 191 Events of great importance 197 Governor Leslie 209 Darkest memories 217 Maybe sports? 227 Fast growing seeds 233 Promising news, growing Depression 241 A time of change 249 Purdue Airport 257 Earhart at Purdue 265 The “Flying Laboratory” 277 Pride, sadness, mystery, hope 287 A new season of pride 299 Golf courses, parties, and war 305 The Hall of Music 311 Getting serious 319 Wartime! 327 “A multiplier of the power of men” 333 “Home is the Hoosier” 343 Hovde for Elliott 347 Gaining in value 353 The “Golden Girl” and “Purdue Pete” 355 “I am an American” 359 A hallowed centerpiece 365 The “PAT” era 371 Not your average Joe 377 Bermuda and “The Boilermaker” 381 An economic plus 385 And then some 389 References 393 Index 395 Acknowledgments The author is indebted to the following persons for their helpful cooperation in the preparation of Ross-Ade: Their Purdue Stories, Stadium, and Legacies: Byron L. Anderson, Purdue Alumni Association, West Lafayette James F. Blakesley, West Lafayette, President, Purdue Class of 1950 Richard “Dick” Freeman, International Pacific, Corona del Mar, California, Purdue Distinguished Engineering Alumnus, 1973. Amanda Grossman, Library Assistant, Purdue Archives and Spe- cial Collections Kelly Hiller, Director of Creative Communication and Editor, The Purdue Alumnus. Chris Horney, President, Sigma Chi Fraternity, Purdue University, West Lafayette David Hovde, Associate Professor, Purdue University Libraries Fern Martin, West Lafayette Kathryn Matter, Purdue University Department of Bands Joanne Mendes, Archives Assistant, Purdue Archives and Special Collections, Purdue University Libraries Sammie L. Morris, Assistant Professor of Library Science and Head of Archives and Special Collections, Purdue University Librar- ies. Cory Palm, Purdue University Sports Information Department. ix Nicki (Reas) Meneley, Assistant Executive Director, Purdue Alumni Association. Tom Schott, Assistant Athletic Director-Communications, Purdue University C. Wesley Shook, President, The Area Plan Commission of Tippe- canoe County, West Lafayette James C. Shook, Senior Chairman of North Central Health Services Inc.’s Board of Directors, West Lafayette Bernie Sergesketter, Winnetka, Illinois, Sigma Chi Fraternity Philip R. Steele, Sigma Chi Fraternity The late Robert W. Topping (1925-2009), retired Senior Editor, Pur- due University Publications Paula Alexander Woods, retired from the staff of the Lafayette- West Lafayette Convention and Visitors Bureau x Introduction As the crow flies (they measure distance that-a-way in Indiana), the country towns of Brookston and Kentland lie thirty-six miles apart. Between them the crows out there flap over level fields of corn, oats, soybeans, wheat, and hay. With Purdue University off to the south, Brookston and Kent- land have formed a triangle for more than a century. As the crows fly, Purdue is fourteen miles from Brookston, thirty-seven miles southeast of Kentland In the space of fifty-eight years, a remarkable thing took place in that triangle. Two boys from farms near Brookston and Kent- land attended Purdue. One turned dreamer and became a writer. The other mastered drawing and invented machines. After gradu- ations six years apart, both men earned fames and fortunes. Distant strangers as Purdue alumni, they met at last in 1922, in a county judge’s office. That afternoon they got dust on their good leather shoes by hiking shallow hills and weeds on an old farm. They stood on a stretch of high ground and shared a vision that day, made a deal, shook hands, bought the farm, and on it started a football stadium still booming at Purdue. The strangers were Dave Ross and George Ade. Because they met, the rest is history. Robert C. Kriebel Lafayette, Indiana May 2009 xi D Part I d Ross-Ade: Their Stories Like being in jail eenage John Ade sailed over to the United States from a brew- Tery job in Lewes, England, in the summer of 1840. His family spent a week in New York City, then tried Cincinnati. John took up schoolwork and drove a team for a contractor. He married Adaline Bush when he was twenty-three and she was eighteen. Adaline’s mother was an Adair. Coincidentally, England’s Ades were kin to Scotland’s Adairs. When opportunity knocked in 1852, the newly- wed Ades moved to rural Morocco in Jasper County of northwest- ern Indiana. John Ade farmed and managed a country store in Morocco. In 1853, He became Morocco’s first postmaster, too, under Whig-Re- publican Millard Fillmore’s presidency. But when Franklin Pierce reached the White House, Democrat kingmakers fired Postmaster Ade for “offensive partisanship.” A Republican he was, by God, and a Republican he would stay. In 1859, Indiana government snipped off part of Jasper County and Morocco and with those acres formed Newton—Indiana’s last county. The voters in Newton County elected their grocer friend John Ade to be Recorder. The Ades left Morocco for Kentland, four miles from the Illinois line. Kentland was where the new court- house would go and where the Recorder’s office would be. The Ades’ little story-and-a-half frame house, the second one to go up in Kentland, faced the south side of the courthouse square. That house became the birthplace of George, the fifth of John and Ada- line Ade’s six children, on February 9, 1866. 3 4 Ross-Ade: Their Purdue Stories, Stadium, and Legacies John quit storekeeping to hammer out a living as a blacksmith and finally to put on a suit and be cashier of the new Discount and Deposit Bank in Kentland. George grew up in a happy enough home in the town of six hundred. He had two brothers and three sisters. He would call his mother’s goodness “unbounded,” remembering her as being so rooted in “unruffled common sense and entire lack of theatrical emotionalism that I sometimes marveled at the fact that, from no merit of my own, I was privileged to have such a remarkable mother.” (Kelly, Ade, 21) Sons and daughters alike in those days carried out their chores and attended some dinky village or township school. George, al- though dismissed by some as a hopeless work-dodger and day- dreamer, did at least show an early love for drama and literature. Writing, and doing so with a droll sense of humor, came to George naturally, early, and easily. “When I was a small boy,” he still recalled when he was fifty- two, “being on a farm the year round was a good deal like being in jail, except that the prisoners in jail were not required to work fourteen hours a day. The good old days were not so good, and the nights were worse.” Describing the same general era and his boy- hood job of lighting the household lamps, George wrote: I had to climb a ladder and struggle with slow-burning brim- stone matches to touch off the charred wick and eventually flood a few square feet with modified gloom. The old-fashioned coal-oil lamp threw out a weak yellow glare. After you had one lighted you had to start another so you could tell where you had put the first one. (Kelly, Ade, 24) As for the Indiana farmland spreading for miles around him, George would record: The explorer could start from anywhere out on the prairie and move in any direction and find a slough, and in the center of it an open pond of dead water. Then a border of swaying cattails, tall rushes, reedy blades sharp as razors, out to the upland, spangled Part I: Ross-Ade: Their Stories 5 with the gorgeous blue and yellow flowers of the virgin plain. A million frogs sang together each evening and a billion mosquitoes came out to forage when the breeze died away.