OLD-TIMERS’ SAKE

Thirty-six players made the train trip south from Pullman, Wash.: seven halfbacks, six tackles, six guards and six ends, four quarterbacks, four fullbacks and three centers.

The Washington State Cougars took the Rose Bowl field on Jan. 1, 1931, looking more like the Fightin’ Corpuscles--bedecked in crimson from head to toe.

The game-day uniforms were so outlandish--”Spectators gasped when the husky Cougars rushed on the field,” the L.A. Times reported--they were rumored to have been gathered up after the game and burned.

O.E. “Babe” Hollingbery was the coach, Mel Hein the sensational All-American center.

Never imagining it would take 67 years to get back to a Rose Bowl game, Washington State apparently partied as if were 1999 and fell to Alabama, 24-0, no doubt vowing to “get ‘em back next year.”

One Depression, World War, Beatlemania, six trips to the moon, the invention of the microchip and 11 U.S. presidents later, next year has arrived.

Most of Washington State’s 1931 Rose Bowl traveling squad did not live to see this day.

But seven did.

“We’re the survivors,” former fullback Henry Butherus, 89, says.

All who remain are Butherus, the Hansen brothers, Joe and Sam; Clem Senn, Art Freeborg, Howard Moses and Myron “Mike” Davis.

It would be nice to report all will meet at midfield Jan. 1 for a happy 67-year reunion. This is not the case.

Davis, who lives in Studio City, will be there. Freeborg and Joe Hansen, though frail, will fly down from their homes in the Pacific Northwest.

Four others will stay home.

Sam Hansen, 91, has diabetes, and is in poor health. Butherus is blind and almost deaf, and will ask his wife to be his eyes and ears as she watches the Rose Bowl telecast in their living room in Walla Walla, Wash.

Senn lost most of his memory in an auto accident several years ago.

Moses, 87, from Toppenish, Wash., is in good health, but says, “I just don’t feel like taking the chance.”

Since that 1931 Rose Bowl game, Moses has not been back to Los Angeles.

Carl “Tuffy” Ellington, a star of that 1930 squad, died Oct. 25 in Pullman during halftime of Washington State’s overtime victory over Arizona.

Memories have dimmed, life lights now barely flicker. Legs that once carried young men to glory on “the gridiron” are withered and tired.

“It’s hard for me to believe, 67 years,” Moses says. “It must have gone by pretty fast.”

Joe Hansen says there’s a reason it has taken Washington State so long to get back to the Rose Bowl.

“We needed that much time to forget the one in ‘31,” he says. “They beat us bad.”

Davis, a pretty fair 170-pound halfback in his day, sits in his Studio City home, wearing a bright, crimson and gray, Washington State T-shirt.

He is busting with pride, having become a celebrity at 89 for merely having outlived his alma mater’s Rose Bowl drought.

It took recovery from open-heart surgery in the mid-1980s to do it.

“It got to the point where I just about gave up on them coming down,” Davis says of his beloved Cougars.

Memories. Will someone please help with the memories?

Recollections are murky. Some survivors remember more than others, some not at all.

There was the train trip. Yes. Very exciting for a bunch of 20-year-olds.

“Just a bunch of country kids coming down there,” is how Butherus describes it.

Washington State was 9-0, had won the 1930 Pacific Coast Conference championship and actually was already road savvy, having defeated Villanova, 13-0, that December on an East Coast swing that included a White House visit with President Herbert Hoover.

Butherus, a reserve fullback, remembers that the train trip to Pasadena reminded him of his childhood journey from pre-revolutionary Russia, his father fleeing the Czar’s army to meet a brother who had earlier escaped to Walla Walla.

The Butherus family--Henry was 5--took a train to Germany, then rode steerage on the Kaiser Wilhelm II to New York.

“I remember being down at the bottom of that boat,” he says. “There were a lot of sick people down there.”

It took the Washington State party several days to get to Pasadena. Players remember stops in Portland and Oakland, then a ferry ride to San Francisco to visit the Olympic Club, where Hollingbery was a member.

Davis distinctly recalls a picture taken “in front of the Hollingbery family’s tire shop.”

Along the way, there were a scrimmage at St. Mary’s and a discussion about Alabama, a mysterious team from the South about which Washington State players knew little.

They relied on hyped-up press accounts.

“They really got the propaganda out,” Butherus recalls of the Southern media. “They described this player--I’m not sure of his name--they said, ‘He wears a size 14 shoe. He’s a giant!’ ”

Washington State arrived on Dec. 22 and checked into the posh Huntington Hotel.

“That was pretty sumptuous,” Butherus recalls.

Most remember being swept away by the pageantry and Hollywood night life.

Contributing factors to defeat?

“We were royally entertained,” Joe Hansen says. “We were down there playing around too much while ‘Bama came to play football. We would go out nights, sneak out, hit around. We made a lot of side trips, as I recall.”

Most had never seen oranges and grapefruit hanging from branches. A few Cougars made the mistake of plucking fruit from the trees outside the Huntington Hotel.

“A couple of the fellas took their pillow slips off their pillows and went out and got a few grapefruits,” Davis says. “Boy, were the hotel people mad. So, our guys took the oranges and taped them back to the trees.”

Their coach was clearly concerned about the distractions.

In a diary account provided for The Times on Dec. 30, 1930, Hollingbery noted, “The only hard part getting to serious work yesterday was the fact that the squad was still ‘in the air’ after a fine trip in the morning to the RKO studios.”

Swimming pools, movie stars.

Butherus will never forget actress Irene Dunne stopping by a practice.

Alabama also did some star gazing. Johnny Mack Brown, star back for the Crimson Tide’s 1926 Rose Bowl team, stayed in Hollywood and became a cowboy star.

Crimson Tide Coach Wallace Wade reported from a Rose Bowl function, “I sat between Will Rogers and the beautiful Joan Bennett. Spent all my time listening to Will and looking at Joan.”

As it turned out, media accounts of Alabama’s football prowess were not far from accurate.

Pregame press reports predicted doom for Washington State.

“It is the boast of many of the Southern newspaper men accompanying the squad that Wade could start a second team just as strong as the first,” The Times reported.

In a tactic comically imitated by coaches in years to come, Hollingbery tacked newspaper accounts to a bulletin board at the Huntington in an attempt to inspire the Cougars.

“That’s raw meat for my boys,” he said.

Game memories are foggy.

Butherus remembers entering the Rose Bowl: “It was awesome, massive, I thought. I’d never been in anything like that before.”

The crowd of 65,000 was disappointing, which Times sportswriter Paul Lowry attributed to “Old Man Depression and an oversupply of holiday games.”

Davis recalls having to “go into a wooden gate to get to the dressing room.”

The game was a blur. Alabama, physically superior, scored three second-quarter touchdowns to secure the outcome. “Ears” Whitworth, a Crimson Tide guard, added a second-half field goal.

In the prose of the day, Braven Dyer wrote in The Times: “Babe Hollingbery couldn’t even salvage a single point from the wreckage and went down amid the death gurgles of Washington State supporters.”

Tackle Glenn “Turk” Edwards, the Cougars’ biggest player at 238 pounds, was neutralized with a high-low, double-team blocking scheme.

“Poor old Turk,” Butherus recalls. “He was so exasperated, he took off his helmet and threw it on the ground, but I think the ref made him put it back on. He couldn’t get anywhere. These guys just swamped him.”

A dance-reception at the Huntington Hotel was held after the game, Washington State players awkwardly arranged on one side of the dance floor while their conquerors from Alabama stared from the other side.

The Cougars were impressed that the Crimson Tide players chewed tobacco.

Butherus remembers “a whole flock of girls,” one of whom he worked up the courage to approach.

“We danced that first dance, and I found out as we danced that she was the Rose Bowl queen!” he says.

The mood on the train ride home was solemn. Sixty-seven years later, Davis and Butherus still recall being upset about not getting more playing time.

“If I drank a lot of water, and didn’t go to the toilet, I could get up near 175,” Butherus says. “I think Babe realized I was a little bit light in that kind of competition. I didn’t get to play in the game. Years later, I began to understand why he didn’t put me in there. I appreciate that now.”

Davis, who played sparingly in the ’31 Rose Bowl, was a star halfback the next season.

Players returned to Pullman in the thick of the Depression.

Hollingbery amassed a 93-15-14 record before retiring after the 1942 season. Mel Hein went on to star for the NFL’s New York Giants and was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.

The others?

Howard Moses struggled through the Depression, finished school, and has not strayed far from home since. He spent 37 years as an educator, the last 27 in Colfax, Wash., before retiring in 1971.

“It’s been fine,” he says of his life.

Moses has had little contact with his teammates--”I never have been one to keep in touch with everybody.”--and not even this year’s Washington State dream season has been enough to lure him back to Pasadena.

Henry Butherus also struggled through the 1930s, having to take time off school to work in a wheat warehouse.

He eventually made the Army his career, retiring in 1957 as a lieutenant colonel. He lives in Walla Walla and, on Dec. 5, he and his wife, May, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.

Butherus has very much enjoyed his late-life celebrity.

“Even strangers recognize me now in public places,” he says. “I really would like to go to Pasadena for the bowl game, but I don’t think I should.”

Joe Hansen went into the lumber business.

“I walked the streets of Seattle, Tacoma, I couldn’t get a job,” he says. “I even tried to go to sea. It was tough times in the early ‘30s. I hate to say it, but I guess Hitler kind of bailed us out because we needed lumber for the war effort.”

Hansen’s first wife, Florence, died in 1966. He lives in Portland with his second wife, Truda.

Of his life, he says, “I have no complaints.”

Mike Davis graduated in 1935 and became an electrical engineer. His father, who emigrated from Ireland in 1905, was fire chief in Walla Walla until he was killed in an auto accident in 1941.

Davis ultimately became a plant manager for Shell oil and transferred to Los Angeles in 1955, where he has been since.

He’s still a Cougar at heart, though.

“I really am out of my element,” he says of life in Southern California.

One of Davis’ most painful memories is of dropping a sure interception against USC during the 1930 season.

“Had it right in my breadbasket,” he says.

Married 61 years to wife Margaret, Davis had to be coaxed into attending the Rose Bowl game against Michigan by his eldest son Mike, who followed his grandfather’s footsteps and became fire chief for the city of Burbank.

Mike Sr. now calls his son “my agent.”

Davis thinks this year’s Rose Bowl experience will be different from the last.

Washington State, after all, has had 67 years to prepare.

“I think we have an awfully good chance,” Davis says. “If we score early and get rolling like we should.”

Butherus too has Rose Bowl revenge on his mind.

“I think they’re going to take it,” he says of the boys.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Remember When . . .

1930 SEASON (9-1)

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OPPONENT RESULT College of Idaho W 47-12 at California W 16-0 USC W 7-6 at Gonzaga W 24-0 Montana W 61-0 Oregon State * W 14-7 Idaho W 33-7 at Washington W 3-0 at Villanova W 13-0 Alabama (Rose Bowl) L 24-0

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* at Portland