Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 11,400 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

The KU football team posing with turkeys, Wednesday, November 27, 1946.
The image was printed in the Kansas City Star.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 66/14 1946 Team Prints:
Athletic Department: Football (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

According to newspaper clippings in a University Archives Athletics Department scrapbook (volume 4, pages 36 and 42), the photograph shown above was taken when the Jayhawks stopped in Kansas City en route to play the University of Missouri in Columbia. The game was the final one of the season and a Thanksgiving Day showdown.

Players, coaches, and cheerleaders were guests of KU alumnus Bill Anthony, who was a member of the 1922 football squad. Anthony was inspired to host the event earlier in November when the Jayhawks defeated Oklahoma in dramatic fashion. According to one article,

Bill had for years taken the jibes of his employees, an astonishing number of them being Missourians, anent the impotencies of Jayhawker football teams.

The man had suffered in silence, waiting for that day when more encouraging reports would emanate from Mount Oread.

“I will do something nice for the first Kansas team that goes into this game against Missouri with at least an even chance,” he resolved.

And so to the home of each member of the squad he sent a turkey. But the stunt, if it had stopped there, would have lacked the flair Bill thought it needed and besides he wanted a picture of the boys holding his turkeys in front of his manufacturing company at 201 West Gregory.

It was arranged for the Jayhawkers to be taken from the Union Station this morning to the Anthony Manufacturing Company. Turkeys were unloaded and passed out one to a customer, the boys were lined up and a battery of cameramen loaded their instruments.

To make the scene even more realistic the Kansas cheerleaders, their cheeks made pink by the sharp wind, were brought into the picture.

The gridiron stalwarts seems to be a little out of their element as they stood first on one foot and then on the other while they clung desperately to the huge birds.

Quite a crowd of curious collected to witness the unveiling of Bill’s dream.

According to another article, “the live turkeys [were] only props for the photographers because the birds [that] grace[d] the tables of the footballers and their coaches [had] already been killed and oven-dressed; full-breasted turkeys, totaling 691 pounds of white and dark meat, [were] frozen and shipped to the boys at their Lawrence addresses.”

The event was deemed a “crowning success,” and all players and turkeys survived the ceremony without incident or injury. Moreover, KU won the game against Missouri the next day, 20-19, spoiling Homecoming for the Tigers and their fans. The Jayhawks finished the season 7-2-1.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 11,400 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Construction nears completion on McCollum Hall, 1965. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/45 1965: University General: Buildings: McCollum Hall (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

As part of the goal to transform undergraduate education on the KU campus, two new residence halls opened on Daisy Hill in 2015. To make way for the new halls and a parking lot, McCollum Hall will be razed next Wednesday, November 25th. This selection of photographs highlights the fifty-year history of the building and those that lived there.

Aerial view of Daisy Hill and Iowa Street looking north (top) and southeast (bottom), 1968.
McCollum Hall is the t-shaped building. Lawrence Journal-World Photo Collection,
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG LJW 0/24/1 Daisy Hill 1968:
University General: Campus: Areas and Objects: Daisy Hill (Photos).
Click images to enlarge.

Opened in the spring semester of 1965, the dormitory was planned as the fifth and last along Iowa between 15th and 19th streets in the area known as Daisy Hill. The hall was originally built as an all-male dorm to house 976 students. It has since become a co-ed dorm, dominating the Daisy Hill skyline. Thousands of students have called this hall home while at KU.

McCollum Hall residents read newspapers in the main lounge, 1965.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 56/15 1965: Housing:
McCollum Hall (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Students in McCollum Hall, 1967. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 56/15 1967: Housing: McCollum Hall (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

A student carries clothes into McCollum Hall, 1978/1979.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 56/15 1978/1979:
Housing: McCollum Hall (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Students in their dorm room at McCollum Hall, 1993.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 56/15 1993:
Housing: McCollum Hall (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

McCollum Hall was named after two noteworthy Kansas brothers, Elmer and Burton McCollum, who are among the University’s most distinguished graduates and the nation’s men of science. Elmer (1879-1967) discovered vitamins A, B, and D while Burton (1880-1964) developed many of the processes for finding underground oil with sound waves. The two brothers worked their way from impoverished youths on their family farm to remarkably successful and parallel careers, graduating together from KU in 1903. They never forgot their early struggles to earn an education. Burton designated that half his estate be used to aid deserving students and the University. The generosity, tenacity, and brilliance of the McCollum brothers made their name a natural one for a campus building.

Elmer McCollum, undated photograph. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: P/McCollum, Elmer (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Portrait of Burton McCollum by Kansas City artist
Daniel MacMorris. The painting, along with one of his brother Elmer,
previously hung in the lobby of McCollum Hall. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: P/McCollum, Burton (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

JoJo Palko
KU 150 Research Archivist
University Archives

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 10,100 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

KU fans taking a carriage to a football game, 1895. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/66/14 1895: Student Activities: Sports: Football (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

The caption on the back of the photograph states that it shows members of “Kappa Alpha Theta going to a football game in the ‘Jim Donnelley Talley Ho’. black and gold trimmings on the horse.”

James Donnelly (1842-1918) was born in Ireland and arrived in Lawrence with his siblings in 1857. A 1909 article in the Lawrence Daily Journal described him as a “fixture in this town [who] has always been one of our best citizens.” James, partnered with his brother Neill, managed a livery stable – where horses and vehicles are cared for or rented out for pay – under the name Donnelly Brothers. The 1909 article, which reported the sale of the business due to James’s poor health, stated that the “livery stable has a reputation all over the state. It has always been a favorite with the students. The firm always kept high grade rigs and accommodated the public.” The livery stable was located on New Hampshire Street at Winthrop (now 7th Street).

Caitlin Donnelly (no known relation to James)
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 9,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

If you’ve ever visited Spencer Research Library, you may have noticed a plaque adjacent to our third-floor entrance: “This research library is a gift of Helen Foresman Spencer in memory of her husband Kenneth Aldred Spencer, November 8, 1968.” That was date, forty-seven years ago Sunday, that the library was dedicated in a private ceremony attended by several hundred of Mrs. Spencer’s friends and educators from across the country. It marked the completion of the library’s construction, which took nearly two years. A public opening occurred one week later.

A story about the new library in the December 1968/January 1969 Kansas Alumni magazine noted that “Mrs. Spencer waxed and polished the furnishings and the floor of the Spencer Room [memorial office] herself before the opening and created floral arrangements for many of the rooms” (12).

Spencer Research Library dedication ceremony on the terrace, November 8, 1968.
British novelist, scientist, and government official Sir Charles Percy Snow is at the rostrum.
Mrs. Spencer is shown sitting to the right of the entrance, behind the speaker.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/22/82 1968 Dedication Prints:
Campus: Buildings: Spencer Research Library (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

We look forward to sharing more photographs and documents about Spencer Research Library’s beginning and early years as we approach our fiftieth anniversary in 2018!

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 9,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

This Saturday’s Homecoming game will be against Oklahoma, so this week’s photo – taken by well-known Lawrence photographer Duke D’Ambra – captures the Jayhawks’ dramatic win over the Sooners in the 1946 game at Memorial Stadium.

KU’s winning field goal against Oklahoma on November 9, 1946.
Photograph by Duke D’Ambra. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 66/14 1946 Games Oklahoma: Athletic Department: Football (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Information on the back of the photograph describes what happened.

At the KU-Oklahoma game in Lawrence, Kans. in 1946 it was foggy, dark, gloomy – and the score was 13-13 – and only one minute and 20 seconds remaining. With K.U. in possession, Paul Turner, an unknown, came on the field and kicked a field goal to win for Kansas. See the ball over the bars?

A May 22, 1972, article in the Lawrence Journal-World announced D’Ambra’s death and further described the scene captured in the photograph. As the article also noted, D’Amdra was a “familiar figure on the sidelines at KU sports events.”

One of [D’Ambra’s] most famous photos came in November of 1946 when Kansas and Oklahoma were tied 13-all in a league football title showdown. With 75 seconds left, KU’s Paul Turner was called on to try an “impossible” field goal from 41 yards out in a driving rain that made Memorial Stadium‘s field a quagmire.

D’Ambra, with a beat-up box-style Graflex camera was the only photographer to get into place for the shot. Turner did the “impossible” and D’Ambra chronicled the ball passing through the crossbars to give Kansas a 16-13 upset of the powerful Sooners.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants