"Old" Dornblaser

[RABIDAWG]

So, I got a question for you old boys. Were girls easy back in the day? I've got mixed reports. You always hear about the free-lovin 60s and the one guy above said the statue would only move if a virgin walked in, but then I hear about of the clothes, strict rules, goofy activities, mean old vets for fathers, and think it must have taken an epic amount of work to get into their pants. I mean, shit, everyone married their high-school sweetheart back then.

The "break" came in the period 1966-1968. Homecoming King and Queen were abolished sometime around there. Used to be all their photos in the Lobby of Field House going back to Moses. Then the Yearbook stopped publishing. David Rorvik at the Kaimin took on everyone with his radical editorials. Cheerleaders? Gone. Pep Band? Pep bad. Denny Blouin was hired by the English Dept and penned a nasty little essay in 1969 called "Student as N*****," in which, among a variety of attacks on traditional education, he complained that the English Dept had the nerve to grade students in poetry class on their poems, offering his observation that "grading students on how they write poems is like grading them on how they F...". Well, he got everyone's attention, that's for sure. Woodstock in 1968 was an inspiration. You couldn't go across the Milwaukee tracks down by the river without stumbling across various mini-Woodstocks "in progress" along the river. Stoianoff's "parties" up in the woods became legendary for drugs, alcohol and nudity. Yes, the times were much more conducive to "free love." Then, an ROTC colonel who was pushing back publicly got arrested for soliciting in Salt Lake City. Then just to top things off, Jack Swarthout and the Athletic Department financial aid scandal that turned much of the student body against collegiate varsity sports as corrupt and corrupting.

It was a rout.

It was a marvel that when Jud Heathcote arrived, he was able to restore many of the sport traditions on a campus that had thoroughly rejected them. And I mean that, singlehandedly, without much exaggeration, he turned things around.

However, that period of time is no doubt why the temporary "Dornblaser" ended up staying out at South Avenue for nearly 20 years.

And, Stoinoff is still pushing the sausage!

 

[RABIDAWG]

So, I got a question for you old boys. Were girls easy back in the day? I've got mixed reports. You always hear about the free-lovin 60s and the one guy above said the statue would only move if a virgin walked in, but then I hear about of the clothes, strict rules, goofy activities, mean old vets for fathers, and think it must have taken an epic amount of work to get into their pants. I mean, shit, everyone married their high-school sweetheart back then.

Pretty easy, actually! The sexual revolution was in bloom, "good" girls were aggressive, and going into the 70's, we young men were at their mercy. Good Lord, those were challenging days indeed!

 

[garizzalies]

I got another question for you old boys. My old man is always going on about an epic brawl between the students in the stands during Cat/Griz. I'm guessing it was at this version of dornblazer, maybe late 60s? The story goes that the Griz were losing so a friend of my dad's, who is a fairly prominent dude now but was apparently a total badass in the day and will remain nameless, started the brawl when he stood up on the railing in front of the Cat students and gave them the double-bird. The fight was so big and long the players on the field were looking up into the stands watching the brawl continue between plays. Anyone truth to this?

 

[THE BETCH]

1962.

 

[THE BETCH]

1962 was actually a fight on the field. Gariz's old man might have been referencing another yr. when the fight was in the stands.

 

[UMGriz75]

Football game fights? Psshaaw!

Headline, February 22, 1966: "Massive out-of-control snowball fight on UM Campus leads to student suspensions."

 

[UMGriz75]

The "white building" in the color photo was built in 1903, according to Gene Burns in the HHP department. This is the "eastside" that faced the "first" Dornblaser Field, as the building appeared in 1906. Photo courtesy of Gene Burns.

 

[UMGriz75]

This is the west side (facing the Oval) of the "University Gymnasium." Gene says his research shows that it was torn down in 1965 to make way for the UC construction. For the life of me, I do not remember that building being there. Also courtesy of Gene Burns.

 

[stilwtrgrizz]

This is the west side (facing the Oval) of the "University Gymnasium." Gene says his research shows that it was torn down in 1965 to make way for the UC construction. For the life of me, I do not remember that building being there. Also courtesy of Gene Burns.

Here is a picture of it still there in 1962. (Date from page info) Was apparently taken for post cards. Remember them?
http://content.lib.umt.edu/omeka/items/show/909

 

[UMGriz75]

I did not know this until today. The field east of the University Gym is the original football field, and was named "Dornblaser" in 1920, after the war death of Paul Logan Dornblaser in WWI. The "bleachers" were part of the backside of the "University Gym."

The larger facility, which has been referred to as the original Dornblaser, was actually the second one by that name. From the September 27, 1925, p. 9, Helena Independent Record:

The new athletic field at the State University of Montana will be formally opened on October 3, when the Grizzlies meet Washington State College in their first game of the season.

The new field will retain the name Dornblaser, which was given to the old field in memory of Paul Dornblaser of the class of 1914, who lost his life while serving overseas during the war. In the fall of 1920, the students and faculty of the State University selected "Dorn" as perhaps the best representative of Montana's students who lost their lives in the war, and because of his athletic achievements while a student at Montana, his intense loyalty to his school and later to his country, the field was formally named "Dornblaser."

The old Dornblaser then became a baseball field "behind the Women's Gym." Given the date of the article (1925), the new facility built in 1921 (now called Schreiber gym) apparently became the "Men's Gym " and the original "University Gym" became the "Women's Gym" at that time. The women got a new gym in 1953 (now called McGill Hall), and sure enough, when the new Campus Rec facilities opened in 1970, the "Men's Gym," became the "Old Men's Gym" then, in the 1980s, in a fit of renaming campus buildings after people instead of purpose, it became Schreiber Gym, just as the new Science Building became Clapp Hall, to much mirth and merriment.

 

[kemajic]

This is the west side (facing the Oval) of the "University Gymnasium." Gene says his research shows that it was torn down in 1965 to make way for the UC construction. For the life of me, I do not remember that building being there. Also courtesy of Gene Burns.

I came there in the fall of '64 and spent a lot of time on Dornblaser and the practice fields and this building was not there then.

 

[UMGriz75]

Among the Griz team playing that first game in Dornblaser II on October 3, 1925: "Wild" Bill Kelly.

 

[stilwtrgrizz]

Among the Griz team playing that first game in Dornblaser II on October 3, 1925: "Wild" Bill Kelly.

I love this quote from a Missoulian article about "Wild Bill Kelly" http://missoulian.com/wild-bill-kelly/image_fc01d5b0-0638-11e1-be80-001cc4c002e0.html


"During the first half of the 1926 Griz-Cat game in Butte, Bobcat fans taunted Kelly with lines like "Where's this Kelly?" His answer came in the second half during a 59-yard punt return for a touchdown.

"While he was dragging through the field, he made his way over to the sideline where Bobcat fans were," Townsley related. "He thumbed his nose and did the wiggly thing at the people, scored his touchdown and said, ‘I'm the great Kelly.' People have adjusted that story to their school. The Washington Huskies and Gonzaga have claimed it happened on their fields. But I had an official verify it was Cat-Griz."

 

['68griz]

Football game fights? Psshaaw!

Headline, February 22, 1966: "Massive out-of-control snowball fight on UM Campus leads to student suspensions."

I had a couple friends involved in this.

 

[GrizLA]

This is the west side (facing the Oval) of the "University Gymnasium." Gene says his research shows that it was torn down in 1965 to make way for the UC construction. For the life of me, I do not remember that building being there. Also courtesy of Gene Burns.

I came there in the fall of '64 and spent a lot of time on Dornblaser and the practice fields and this building was not there then.

Your friend is confusing that with the old ROTC building that was burned to make room for the future. That building was gone in the late 50s or very early 60s. I watched with glee as the ROTC building burned as I had lost my uniform for that year and got off free..

 

[Grizzoola]

This is the west side (facing the Oval) of the "University Gymnasium." Gene says his research shows that it was torn down in 1965 to make way for the UC construction. For the life of me, I do not remember that building being there. Also courtesy of Gene Burns.

I arrived at then-MSU as a frosh, Wtr Qtr, 1956. That building was not there. I'll go one step further: In 1951-54, I attended St. Ignatius HS. A local resident used to take us kids to the campus for basketball games in what is now Schreiber Gym. I attended a music camp on campus, summer, 1952, was first to stay in Craig. Anyway, that white building was not there, even then.

 

[UMGriz75]

I came there in the fall of '64 and spent a lot of time on Dornblaser and the practice fields ...

As an aside, when I am teaching or writing about the "philosophy of sports," I usually mention the old story about Lord Wellington, answering questions about the Battle of Waterloo, and how it changed the world, that "the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton."

The "playing fields" were where young men learned to play on teams, learned how to cooperate, learned how to take orders and to give them, learned how to assess risks, and learned how to be fighters and how to be leaders. So it is in sports today.

So it has always been at the University of Montana.

For those reasons, I have a reverence for the name "Dornblaser," the young man that died, and as it still exists after nearly a century at the University of Montana.

 

[Spanky]

Well said 75. Taking nothing away from Dennnis Washington, it would be good if a portion of the present facility could be named Dornblaser.

 

[Greybeard Bob]

Thanks for the great photo, my dad took me to my first Griz games there when I was around 10 years old or so. I don't remember a lot about it unfortunately but I have been a Griz fan ever since. I also remember freezing my ass off at the Higgins Ave field a few times.

Bob

 

[UMGriz75]

Reading old newspapers trying to run down the "story" on University Gymnasium. Not much luck so far, but, the wood beams for the Field House were "the largest in the world." Daily Interlake, September 10, 1953. Budget discussions for UM in 1949-1951 discussed funding for a new "women's gym," finally built as the "Women's Center" in 1953. Schreiber Gym was the "best facility in the Northwest" and "swimming was compulsory" for UM students with the new pool there. An odd reference, in an article about something else in the September 14, 1949 Montana Standard, "the State University at Missoula bewails the loss of a women's gymnasium." To what, it does not say. Classrooms? Termites?