Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 58) 100 01 Dean George Griffin, in his 1971 autobiography, “Griffin — You’re a Great Disappointment to Me,” recalled the assessment of Atlanta’s first automobile given by John Saylor Coon, chair of mechanical engineering from 1891 to 1923. “Young men, I have just seen a machine to which they have harnessed many horses. It smells, runs like hell and they are going to give it to all the college students, women and delivery boys to drive. They are going to kill more people than all the wars in history.” Facts and F Tidbits of Tech information and trivia in honor of the Alumni Association’s centennial By Kimberly Link-Wills 72 percent of them smoked; 99 percent cursed; 15 percent chewed tobacco; 85 percent drank; and 92 percent gambled. 05 02 Today, E.M. Jackson’s original Saturday Evening Post illustrations fetch upward of $10,000 at auction. Elbert McGran Jackson, Arch 16, also illustrated the covers of Collier’s, Good Housekeeping and Cosmopolitan magazines. According to The Artists’ Bluebook, Jackson was “known for his illustrations of glamorous, seductive women.” Jackson produced dozens of illustrations for the Blueprint (below) during his years at Tech. The Augusta, Ga., native also was the staff artist for the Yellow Jacket and a performer with the Marionettes. As an alumnus, he created the frontispiece for the 1925 Blueprint with the subject “American youth using knowledge to guard civilization.” Joseph Napoleon “Indian Joe” Guyon, Cls 19, was born on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota in 1892. A Chippewa Indian, he played for John Heisman at Tech in 1917 and ’18 before joining friend Jim Thorpe as a professional football player for the Canton Bulldogs. Inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1966, Guyon died in 1971. According to senior class statistics in the 1919 Blueprint, Football and athletic relations with the University of Georgia resumed in 1924. The rivalry was suspended in 1916 because of what President M.L. Brittain called “fever-heat tension” between the two schools. In March 1924, the Technique advised students to “uphold their own honor and reputation, as well as that of the school, under what may prove to be trying conditions. … Let us show our supporters and our knockers that we are gentlemen, true to our word, under any conditions, and that ill will is not harbored here after forgiveness has been granted.” On Dec. 19, 1928, 49-year-old bandleader Frank Roman “died suddenly before noon at his offices on the campus,” the Georgia Tech Alumnus said. “His death was the result of a heart attack.” In addition to directing the Georgia Tech band for 14 years, Roman ran a barbershop in the YMCA, now the Alumni/Faculty House. Roy Evans attended night school at Tech in the early 1920s. In 1931, he bought what became the American Bantam Car Co. and led a team in the design of the Jeep for the military. Arnold F. Willat, EE 1907, stood the hairstyling world on its end with his 1932 invention of a cold permanent waving solution. In 1981, Willat, then living in San Rafael, Calif., was inducted into the Cosmetology Hall of Fame. Willat, who also invented a telephone cord coiler, died in 1988 at age 102. The 1934 counselors at Camp Tate for Boys in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia included Bobby Dodd, a Tech assistant coach as well as the camp instructor of “field sports, fishing, woods games and tumbling,” according to a 06 07 08 09 03 04 58
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