When schools go back in session and fall approaches, many of us become preoccupied with thoughts of football.  Be it on the professional level or the Pee-Wee level, or for that matter, anything in between, we are saturated with the sport at this time of the year. 

For many in our community, watching the Eagles play has become a Friday night ritual.  Today’s Eagle Squad, with its coaches, equipment and facilities is “big business” compared to the very first team fielded in Westmoreland.  

The year was 1931, in the early days of what would come to be called the “Great Depression”.  Economic times were hard, but Westmoreland High School’s principal, H. H. Howser, had agreed to add a football program to the school’s extracurricular activities.  At the time, the school nickname was the “Hilltoppers”, since the school was located on top of the hill at the corner of Bledsoe and Locust Streets.  The name would not be changed to the “Eagles” until 1958, two years after the opening of the new high school on Old 31-E, the present-day south wing of Westmoreland Middle School.  

H. H. Howser was Henry Harrison Howser and was principal in the early 1930s before eventually moving back to his native Macon County and a teaching job there. A member of a prominent family there, he soon found himself elected by the citizens as the Superintendent of Schools of Macon County, a post he would hold until his untimely death on October 23, 1941. On that day, Professor Howser had spoken at a meeting of the Wiseman Baptist Association and left Lafayette traveling east when his vehicle left the roadway and overturned, breaking his neck and killing him instantly.

The first coaches of the Hilltopper team were Walter Mullins and Ralph Howser.  

At a sizable discounted price, the school purchased the “used” uniforms of a nearby prep school.  No one seemed to mind that the color of the uniforms – they were yellow – did not match the school’s adopted color.  As best as could be done, alterations had to be made for the uniforms to fit and the leather helmets and shoulder pads had to simply be worn, whether they fit or not.  Shoes were purchased by the players at a local general store owned by T. C. Harrison.  Being unable to afford cleated shoes, the players would buy a regular pair, then cut small square strips of leather and stack them on the soles.  The pieces of leather would be held on by tacks.  Occasionally, players were heard to scream out in pain as the tacks pushed up into the bottoms of their feet.  

Practices were held in a field just below the old high school.  This is the present-day site of the Little League ball field on Oak Street.  

Shortly after the first practices had begun, it was announced that Hartsville would be the first opponent for the Hilltoppers.  According to Mr. Harris Brown, a member of that first team and the source of much of this information concerning the team, our boys eagerly anticipated this first victim.  Now, even at that early date, Hartsville had a rich tradition of football success.  And, one of their star players that year was Phil Dickens, who would later play football at the University of Tennessee as a tail-back and be listed as an “All-American” and “All-SEC”, followed by a successful college coaching career.  The game against Phil Dickens and the Yellow Jackets was to be played in Hartsville.  

Come game day, September 25, 1931, the new team from WHS made the short drive to Hartsville.  With nervous excitement, the boys suited up and the coaches went over last minute plans.  The crowd began to build, with a large following from Westmoreland having made the trip over.  Soon, the whistle was sounded and our boys pitched head-long into the fray.  From the beginning, the battle was fierce but one-sided.  Our boys spent the better part of the day attempting to figure out just what this game called football was really all about.  One WHS player, having had his feel of being roughed-upped and man-handled most of the game, knelt into his stance before the next play and looked across the line square into the eyes of his Hartsville opponent and growled, “You don’t hit me and I won’t hit you!” 

Mercifully, the final whistle was blown and Westmoreland High School’s first football game came to an end.  The final score told the story: Hartsville 126 – Westmoreland 0.  

WHS never really held much of a home-field advantage when playing in Westmoreland.  The reason was simple: there was never much of a “home field”.  The first home game was against Lafayette and was played in a vacant lot at the location of the present-day Cathy’s Country Cupboard restaurant.  The field was actually a lumber yard, normally used by the nearby sawmill owned by Clay Law as a storage place for lumber.  

Another site for games was a vacant field at the present-day site of the Traditional T’s T-Shirts and U’Haul Rentals at the corner of Old Highway 31-E and Old Highway 52.  Regular opponents included Lafayette, Donelson, Gallatin, Adams, Gainsboro, Monterey, Bell Buckle and Cedar Hill.  

Though no pictures of this first WHS football team have been located, the following video of a game between Princeton and Yale offers a glimpse of what the game looked like in those days.

Mr. Harris Brown, who was the father of Johnny Brown, and the grandfather of Ken , Brad, and Clint Brown, each of whom would go on to make their mark on WHS football teams of the 60s, 80s and 90s, related several humorous events that took place during some of those early games of the 1930s.  

Against Gallatin, Brown said, the game was to be played in Westmoreland.  Gallatin had a rather large band for that time and it was discovered that they would be coming to the game.  Westmoreland did not have a band but the coach at that time, Leo Boles, enlisted the help of Mary Frank Caldwell, one of the WHS cheerleaders and who was known for playing practical jokes.  Coach Boles told Mary to spread the word for those attending the game to bring pots and pans, cow bells and anything else they could find that would make noise.  The effort was successful for every time Gallatin’s band played, the Westmoreland fans would reply with the sounds of pots, pans, chains, cowbells, horns, and the like.  

In another game with Gallatin, at their field, Mr. Brown suffered a separated shoulder.  The coaches ran onto the field and they, along with the players crowded around to examine the injury.  Unknown to Harris Brown, his father, Squire W. Brown was in attendance.  The elder Mr. Brown, not knowing much about how the game was played, sprang to his feet and charged the field.  To him, the game appeared to be little more than a bunch of out-of-control boys fighting each other and he’d had enough of such behavior.  Seeing his son injured in this “fight” Squire Brown ran across the field, forced himself through the crowd of players and grabbed his son, saying, “You get of here right now!” and promptly took his son home.  After an explanation of the rules of the game and how it was naturally a “rough and tumble” sport, the elder Brown agreed to let his son play again after he had recovered from his injury.  

Later, in an away game against Bell Buckle, Harris Brown sustained a blow to the head which left his face feeling numb.  Concerned about this injury, the coaches permitted him to ride in the cab of the truck on the return trip home.  The other players had to ride back to Westmoreland the way they had come, sitting on wooden benches in the back of an open cattle truck.  The roundtrip journey was a little over 160 miles.  The girls at the Bell Buckle school had prepared a large dinner to be had by both teams following the game and Mr. Brown recalled that he did not feel like participating in the meal due to his injury.  

The 1932 season didn’t fare much better, as the two articles that appeared in the Nashville Banner proclaimed the sad results:

Walter Mullins and Ralph Howser stepped aside as coaches and Harold Leftwich and Leo Boles replaced them as the new coaches of the football team.

Leo Lipscomb Boles was the son of Dr. Henry Leo Boles, the president of David Lipscomb College (Lipscomb University) in Nashville. The elder Boles was also a minister and the editor of The Gospel Advocate. Leo Boles signed on in July, 1933 as both principal and football / basketball coach at WHS. He had previously been the basketball coach at Lipscomb, showing success there in that sport. Lipscomb did not have a football squad. At the time of his hiring, Boles stated, “Westmoreland didn’t fare so well on the gridiron last fall, but we intend to lay more stress on the sport in the future.”

An amusing incident for all the team involved a game at Gainsboro.  Instead of traveling in one truck, the team was taken to the game in a number of separate cars.  Unfortunately, the car carrying players Edison Doss and Collins Brown got lost and did not make it to the game.  Without them, Westmoreland did not have enough players to field a team, being one player short because of their absence. The coaches had brought all the team gear with them and it was decided that Coach Harold Leftwich would put on the uniform of Edison Doss and play his tailback position.  Of course, this was illegal, so the attempt was made to disguise Coach Leftwich.  After placing the leather helmet on his head, it was discovered that the prematurely gray hair in his sideburns was still visible, so a thick coating of black shoe polish was used to give the coach a more youthful appearance.  Weighing in at just under 140 lbs, the wirey coach played as tailback the entire game without the referees nor anyone else from the opposing team realizing the truth.  

Westmoreland’s first football program was short-lived, ending in the fall of 1934 with the arrival of a new, less supportive school principal, John W. Williams of Hendersonville. The present football program at WHS began in 1960.  

Some of those men from ninety-plus years ago are pictured in the school’s composite of the Class of 1934: Harris Brown, Doug Roark, Edison Doss, Robert Morris, Etheridge Dodson, Kermit Cornwell, Funston Carr, and Elmer Calvert are pictured while Corbit Keen, Forrest Roark, Paul Fykes, Harris Howser, Clay Jent, Cary Cornwell, Collins Brown, W. C. Majors, Robert Mays, Edward Simmons and Billy “Bully” Bell had been on the earlier teams.