Attic discovery leads to beginnings of Red Oak football

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a series on how four photographs found in a local attic tells the history of football in Red Oak. The next installment will be in the April 13 edition of The Red Oak Express.

If you are like many local residents, you would never connect Red Oak football to a mystery. After all, football is pretty straightforward. But recent events led me down a rabbit hole of clues and discoveries. Like a modern-day Nancy Drew, I eagerly investigated every clue.
Red Oak football began in 1894, as found in the Red Oak Express archives. In the Nov. 2, 1894 edition, this article appeared.
“A game of football will be played tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon at 3 o’clock, in the Pactolus Park between the Shenandoah and Red Oak high school teams. This will be the first game of football ever played in Red Oak and promises to be a good game, as the two teams are about evenly matched in weight. The Red Oak team will probably line up as follows: left end, Geo. Kerrihard; left tackle, Ed Rose; left guard, Floyd Rose; center, Will Hiett; right guard, Len Pettit; right tackle, Will Jeffers; right end, Will Moore; quarterback, J. W. Clark; right half back Henry Burnish; left half back, Ed Lane; full back, Barry Cook. Let every one see the game; admission, 25 cents and 15 cents.”
Some of the articles printed in The Red Oak Express from the early days of football were great to read. If only we could print in the same style today.
The headline for the Nov. 30, 1894 game against Villisca read, “Science and Skill Win. The Contest Between the Red Oak and Villisca Foot Ball Teams Easily Won by the former.” And the lede read in part, “… For a community taking practically its first lesson in the great game of foot ball, the enthusiasm which found vent through the lungs of the immense crowd was astonishing. Pandemonium let loose but faintly describes it.” According to the article, between 600 and 800 people were in attendance. Each half was 35 minutes long and the halftime break was 15 minutes. Red Oak led 31-6 at the half and won the game. The score was 44-12 when a squabble broke out and the Villisca captain refused to finish the game. It was considered a forfeit giving Red Oak a 6-0 win.
The Red Oak football team of 1894 found great success, which led me to the history of football in Iowa.
In 1860, secondary schools in the eastern part of the United States started playing football. There were 24 players on a team and each game was 90 minutes long. The game came to Iowa 30 years later, as some Iowa high schools began playing, but many teams were made up of players not enrolled in high school; or basically a “club or town” team. The game was reduced to 70 minutes in 1894.
In 1905, after 18 deaths and 180 serious injuries due to brutal play in college games, President Theodore Roosevelt called upon college leaders to “save the sport,” in testimony before the U.S. Congress. That same year, the newly formed IHSAA in Iowa banned member schools from playing football. The ban was lifted in 1909 with a physical before playing being required.
In the mid-1890s, when high schools in the state began to play football, most games were played in the afternoon due to no lights on the fields. Early “fields” included stock yards, fairgrounds, pastures, and as in Red Oak’s case, a horse track. The season began in mid-September and ended with a game on or near Armistice Day or Thanksgiving, both in November. Uniforms and safety equipment were nonexistent in the beginning.
In 1960, Iowa was the first state to mandate mouth pieces. In 1968, it became the first state to eliminate spearing and prevent the use of head-on tackling and blocking. In the late 1980s, Iowa was the first state to begin experimenting with coaches checking on players for heat stress or exhaustion, and by 2004, Iowa was the only state to provide coaches with instruments and tools to eliminate injuries related to heat and cardiac arrest.
Many changes have been made to the sport from the beginning to current time, but the sport of football continues to be the highest participation activity in Iowa high schools.
The history of Red Oak High School football became an obsession to me thanks to Don and Mary Gohlinghorst. Mary came to the office with a picture frame and four photos inside, which she had found in her attic. The four photos were the Red Oak High School football team photos from 1894-1897. The kicker was, no one in her family played football, and no one except family had lived in the house, built in 1959, in which she found the photos. How did this get there?
I kept going back to look at the photos as I read about the history of football and the important role our state played in the safety of the game. These boys were a part of the beginning of all of this in Red Oak. The 1896 team was the Iowa and Nebraska champion. That’s some great stuff. They had an undefeated season and went down in the history books.
I decided that I would solve this mystery and began with the question, “Wouldn’t it only make sense if the same person was in each photo?” I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t buy a team photo unless my son is on that team. So my next goal was to find a roster for all four years these photos were taken.
This simple task was met with some roadblocks as the Montgomery County Historical Society does not have yearbooks that go back that far, and the newspaper articles just listed the last name or a first initial and last name most of the time. I could not find a complete roster. However, I did organize the names into lists from each year as I read through the articles.
There was one name that was on all four lists: JW Clark. He was listed as the QB, referee and umpire, and coach in the various years.
And the Montgomery County Historical Society found the list of graduates from 1875 through 1903 and gave me a copy to match up the names. In the early stages of the game, players did not have to be students of the school district, but needed to be a part of the school district. Therefore, JW Clark, who graduated in 1886, was teaching in the school district and allowed to be a part of the team.
Any Red Oak history buff is going to recognize that name. He became a teacher in the Red Oak High School and later the county superintendent. A petition signed by nearly every member of the high school was presented to the superintendent and the school board in May of 1895 to retain him as an instructor. The board not only retained him, but gave him a raise from $60 a month to $75. It was not enough though, and in July, the school board elected to have Professor F. S. Williams succeed Clark.
Clark is perhaps most known for becoming the captain of Company M during the Spanish American War. I learned so much about JW Clark during the research and could not wait to tell Mary.
I excitedly told Mary, and she said there was no relationship. So I sent her a list of all the names I had found for each year, and none of them looked familiar as far as family or friends of family were concerned.
So I decided to research her family tree, going backwards, until I came across a name that was on one of the rosters.
To find out the answer to the mystery, grab a copy of next week’s edition.