It was an historic day Oct. 13, 1923, when 15,000 football fans gathered on Nebraska's campus — and not just because the school's Scarlet and Cream gridmen donned blue jerseys for their battle against the Oklahoma Sooners.
It marked the first game ever in Memorial Stadium, the football cathedral, a cultural touchstone of joy, heartbreak, thrills and triumph for generations.
Constructed on the north end of the prairie campus, it stood as a memorial to Nebraskans lost in the recent “Great War†as well as a testament to the state’s growing love for the hard-nosed sport.
But to know the full story behind the building of Memorial Stadium, it’s remarkable that first game was played at all that day.Â
Because an agricultural depression drained the promise of state tax-dollar support, every cent that went into the stadium's construction had to be raised from university alumni, students and private donors. The funding campaign faced stiff opposition from some veterans groups.
And that first game was played before the stadium was complete — on a field of dirt, with construction equipment, concrete forms and braces still in the upper grandstands. A late start to construction, heavy rains and even a direct strike from a tornado set the project back.
But showing pluck and drive, the Cornhuskers of the day plowed through adversity to make the venue a reality.
In the 100th year of Memorial Stadium, here’s a look at the history behind the birth of a treasured state landmark.
RAISING THE FUNDS
Memorial Stadium came about due to a confluence of two different forces rising in Nebraska just over a century ago: a desire to recognize the state’s recent World War I dead and the need to upgrade university athletic facilities that were becoming among the shabbiest in the Missouri Valley Conference.
In those leather helmet days, Nebraska’s Cornhuskers had established themselves as a regional football powerhouse.
Coach Bummy Booth’s teams won 25 games in a row between 1901 and 1904. Just before the war between 1912 and 1916, Jumbo Stiehm and his “Stiehm Rollers†ran off an unbeaten string of 34 games.
But the Huskers’ stadium in those years, 10,000-seat Nebraska Field, was little more than a collection of wooden bleachers.
By 1919, a new football stadium and gym for the basketball team were under discussion on campus.
At the same time, the university was also proud of its role in the recent war. In all, 2,300 university students, alumni and staff enlisted. More than 100 died.
Gen. John J. Pershing, who had led the U.S. forces overseas, was a former head of the University of Nebraska’s military sciences department.
In March 1919, the University of Nebraska athletic lettermen’s club proposed creating a memorial to Roscoe “Dusty†Rhodes, who had been captain-elect of the 1918 football team before crossing the Atlantic with the American expeditionary force and dying in France.
The Daily Nebraskan campus newspaper suggested it would be appropriate to name the school’s proposed football stadium after Rhodes. “It would doubtless be far more fitting to do this than setting aside a tablet of some kind,†the paper wrote.
By May 1920, the stadium vision had grown much larger, calling for a grand memorial that would recognize all the state’s veterans of the war.
The Nebraska Soldiers and Sailors Memorial would be a sprawling complex featuring a football stadium, gym, war museum and a gathering place for veterans.
In a rendering drawn by a Chicago architect, it looked more like a place for gods to dwell than a football stadium. But there was optimism the school would soon have the finest facilities in the country.
The estimated cost for the memorial was $1 million, but it was thought to be achievable with backing from the state Legislature and private fundraising. In 1920, the governor and state lawmakers pledged to set aside $350,000 for the project.
But Nebraska’s economy was rocked by a deep farm depression, fueled by drought and the loss of war-era farm price supports. There would be no money from the state.
The private fundraising effort also foundered in the face of unexpected opposition.
Each county in the state was assigned a fundraising target based on the number of NU alums who lived there. But many of the county fund drives struggled in the face of concern the state war memorial would hurt efforts to raise money for local memorials and fraternal posts for veterans of the war.Â
In October 1921, Harold Holtz, the new secretary of the university alumni association, attempted to reset the effort. Holtz was a war veteran, having served as an aviator on the Austrian front.
Holtz asked two local architects to donate their services for a scaled-back plan, limited to just a football stadium costing roughly $450,000. One of the architects was Omaha’s John Latenser, whose projects still visible in Omaha today include Central High School.
The new plan called for concrete grandstands on the east and west sides of the stadium six stories high, with seating for more than 30,000. The north and south ends would not feature permanent seating but were to be enclosed by a structure featuring curved, Roman-esque colonnades.
University philosophy professor Hartley Burr Alexander was recruited to write the inscriptions that would adorn the stadium’s corners.
"Not the victory but the action; Not the goal but the game; In the deed the glory," read the most well-known inscription in the stadium’s southwest corner.
"Their lives they held their country’s trust; They kept its faith; They died its heroes,†reads the homage to the war's dead, in the northeast corner.
The fundraising drive was also restarted and alums and supporters were encouraged to “give ’til it hurts.â€
The stadium campaign would mark the first time alumni were asked to formally contribute to the university.
Along with the county alumni efforts, each student was expected to pledge $25, a drive that netted almost one-fourth of the funds.
In the 16-page pamphlet the alumni association produced in favor of the project, it noted the school’s history of gridiron success. A 12-3 record against Iowa, 18-9 vs. Kansas and 13-0 over Missouri.
It also noted that Nebraska was among two schools in the Missouri Valley that did not have a new stadium in the works, which would make its current stadium the smallest in the conference.
“Nebraska today has the proud distinction of the greatest football team and the poorest football field of any college of standing in this section,†the pamphlet read.
The publication also made an argument still heard today in defense of big college football in the face of an increasingly loose tether to schools’ academic mission: The sport serves as a front door to the university, helping to attract students and academic support. “In no other way can you so effectively advertise the University of Nebraska. No matter what your personal interest in athletics may be, you must admit that the athletic teams of Nebraska are powerful agents in ‘selling’ the University to the people of this section.â€
BREAKING GROUND
Through such appeals — and lots of hectoring — the drive reached its goal. In early 1923, the association went out to bid.
The lowest bid submitted by Omaha’s Parsons Construction Company came in some $100,000 above what was raised and pledged, creating another construction barrier. To make the project work financially, plans had to be scaled back, the final figure ultimately coming in at $482,939.
Among the stadium features “temporarily†dropped included the enclosed ends on the north and south.Â
On a drizzly, muddy April 26, 1923, a thousand supporters looked on as Chancellor Samuel Avery used a horse team and plow to officially break ground. Participants stood on boards to avoid becoming mired in the sea of muck.
Construction began immediately after. It had to. Parsons had just over five months to deliver the stadium — in time for the opening of the 1923 season.
“The contract calls for use of the football stadium in the season next fall, regardless of the contractor’s convenience in completing the work,†the Lincoln newspaper wrote.
Parsons’ two principal builders on the project, brothers Earl and Kenneth Hawkins, were also personally invested.
The Wisconsin natives were NU engineering graduates while Earl played football and basketball and Kenneth ran track for the school. (Kenneth Hawkins and his son would found today’s Hawkins Construction Company in Omaha decades later.)
The Hawkins brothers also recruited a number of other current and former Huskers to join the construction crew.
“Among the laborers on the force of the stadium contractor are many candidates for the 1923 football team who have selected the stadium as a fitting place in which to harden up their muscles for the big battle for a place on the Cornhusker eleven,†the Falls City newspaper wrote that summer.
The rain that fell on the day of the groundbreaking proved a precursor.
BUILDING THROUGH THE ELEMENTS
Rain plagued the project. Earl Hawkins would tell the Omaha World-Herald decades later that he had to issue raincoats to all the workers. At one point, he said, there was 6 feet of water inside the stadium.
On Aug. 4, a tornado destroyed some of the wooden forms used to pour sections of the concrete stands.
“Material was picked up and moved and in some places the wind dipped down below the surface of the ground and picked up heavy material and tossed it about like eggshells,†the Lincoln Journal reported.
As the Oct. 13 home opener approached, work was continuing in the upper decks, pictures showing concrete forms still held aloft by wooden braces. But the alumni association insisted the game would be played in the new stadium, as donors had been promised.
Earl Hawkins wrote a letter to the alumni association indicating that the association — not Parsons — would be responsible if any spectators were hurt. He also suggested Latenser inspect the stadium to determine “any possible danger of falling timber, form work or debris†and find “what parts of the structure at this time have developed the strength to avoid collapse.â€
Seating would only be allowed in the lower sections, with guards placed at the entrance ramps to keep fans out of the upper stands.
In deference to the visitors from Oklahoma — a team that wore a shade of red close to Nebraska's — the Huskers donned blue jerseys that day. (In a nod to that, Nebraska’s alternate uniforms this season feature red jerseys with white numerals outlined in blue.)
The Huskers otherwise proved ungracious hosts with a 24-0 victory.
Herb Dewitz of Stanton, Nebraska, kicked a field goal for the first points in Memorial Stadium history. His brother Rufus served as the holder. Star running back and Omaha native Dave Noble scored on a 4-yard run in the third quarter to record the first touchdown.
A week later, the still-incomplete stadium was dedicated during the homecoming game against Kansas.
Then the next month, a record 30,000 packed Memorial Stadium to watch NU eke out a 14-7 win over Notre Dame, legendary coach Knute Rockne and his famed “Four Horsemen†backfield.
Coach Fred Dawson’s Huskers went on to post a 4-2-2 mark that season, claiming the school’s third straight conference championship. And the new stadium — which wouldn’t be finished until 1924 — was viewed as a great success, too.
“A master structure, expressive of Nebraska’s virile strength and beauty,†read a World-Herald advertisement by Omaha’s Fuchs Equipment Company, which provided construction equipment for the job.Â
BECOMING A SPECTACLE
Memorial Stadium would stand the test of time, becoming the scene of countless breathtaking moments, uniting the state each fall and making legends of the likes of Train Wreck Novak, Bob Devaney, Johnny Rodgers and Tom Osborne.Â
The stadium has since undergone numerous renovations. It now seats over 85,000 and has sold out every game since the Kennedy administration.
Due to additions in recent decades to both the west and east stadiums, the original concrete exterior is now largely encased and preserved like a museum piece inside the structure. But venture inside stadium corridors and you can still read the original inscriptions that speak to honor the war dead and the gridiron battles the stadium's founding generation envisioned.
The state’s pride in Memorial Stadium and its future impact was summed up at the time by Lincoln Star sports editor Cy Sherman after that inaugural game.
“The verdict was general that when the upper balconies and stadium walls are completed and a grass gridiron provides the proper setting in the middle of the bowl, football at Nebraska will become a spectacle, rather than a game — a spectacle which will so appeal to followers of the pigskin sport as to regularly pack the stadium at all important contests of the home schedules.â€
He proved prescient.Â
Photos: Nebraska football hosts Northern Illinois, Sept. 16
NU Chancellor Samuel Avery, watched by members of the Women's Athletic Association, uses a horse team and plow to turn the earth at the Memorial Stadium groundbreaking in April 1923. The women are standing on a board amid the mucky conditions.Â