Connections:
LINFIELD FOOTBALL
2023 TO PLAY DENISON IN OHIO
By Tim Marsh, Wildcatville, updated
and corrected 4/18/2023
There are two
interesting connections between Linfield U (McMinnville, Ore.) and Denison U
(Granville, Ohio), which will play football Sept. 9, 2023, in Granville, Ohio.
And, there’s another connection between Linfield and Ohio, too.
CONNECTION --
Wilkie Moody, a former McMinnville College student, played in the earliest days
of the NFL/National Football League. In fact he played on the first day in 1920
of the xx which would become the NFL.
Wilkie Osgood Moody attended McMinnville College during the
1914-1915 academic year. He transferred from McMinnville College to Denison
University in Granville, Ohio, and graduated from Denison in 1920.
If he had wanted to play football at McMinnville College – which
later became Linfield College and then Linfield University -- he could not
have. McMinnville College did not play football 1906-1921 because the college’s
Board of Trustees deemed football too violent. The sport was dropped in the
summer of 1906 (McMinnville College) and not resumed until the 1922 season
(Linfield College).
But, Denison did
have football. The Denison University football media guide shows Moody
lettering in the university's 1916 season.
After graduating from Denison
in 1920, Wilkie Moody played professional football, between 1920 and 1935, for
the Columbus, Ohio, Panhandles, the Dayton, Ohio, Triangles, and the Columbus,
Ohio, Tigers. The teams and 12 other teams in other cities were members of the American Professional Football Association, a league that would become
the National Football League (NFL).
On Oct. 3,
1920 the first game between two professional teams of the American Professional
Football Association, was played in Dayton, Ohio. Moody was a player the
Columbus Panhandles which lost 14-0 to the Dayton Triangles.
Although white,
Moody is the first African-born player to play in what would become the NLF. Born
May 12, 1987, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he was the
son of Baptist missionary parents.
A veteran of
U.S. Army service during World War I, he was coach and athletic director of
Atlanta, Georgia high schools from 1929 to 1961.
Willie Moody,
an alumnus of McMinnville College (now Linfield University) and a graduate of
Denison University, died at age 76 on Feb. 2, 1976, in Newark, Ohio.
Via the URL
link below read about Wilkie Moody in a Newark, Ohio, Advocate story from Sept.
18, 2020:
https://wildcatville.blogspot.com/2023/04/in-1920-granville-ohio-resident-wilike.html
CONNECTION-- A.
M. (Arthur Marion) Brumback taught at McMinnville College and Denison
University. One source says, “Player/coach A.M. (Arthur M.) Brumback organized
Linfield's first football team in 1896. He coached for five seasons before
being appointed college president in 1903, a position he held for two years
(1903-1905). Brumback taught natural sciences at the college.” According to one
write-up, "Brumback had a passion for sport, playing center on and
coaching the college’s first football team. While enormously popular with
students" he was not successful in dealing with Linfield's financial
crisis. He left Linfield in 1905, to take a position at his alma mater, Denison
College, in Ohio. At Denison, he was that college's first chemistry professor.
CONNECTION --
Linfield Athletics Hall of Fame member Henry Lever was born in Loveland, Ohio,
near Cincinnati, Oct. 4, 1883. (Loveland is about 120 miles from Granville,
home of Denison.) According to Lever’s biography, “He survived a near fatal
burst appendix at age 15 with a life-saving operation on the kitchen table of
his family's farm home.”
Lever Street
(running behind Memorial Stadium at Maxwell Field/Catdome) on campus is named
for him. And, in 1998 he was in the first “class” to be enshrined in the
Linfield Athletics Hall of Fame. In 1930, Lever came to Linfield as coach of
all sports (football, basketball, baseball, track & field) and athletic
director was the start of Linfield Athletics as it's known today.
During Lever’s
years, 1930-1949, at Linfield he coached/guided hundreds of Wildcat athletes
and positively influenced them and others – athletes, coaches, faculty, staff,
family and friends -- on or off the field, court or track. Among the many
Linfield students he coached was Paul. He later hired Durham as Linfield
football coach. That done, Lever served as athletic director one more school
year and then turned the program over to Durham in 1949.
………………
Arthur Marion
Brumback was born 7 Dec 1869 in Boise, Ada County, Idaho, and died 12 Aug 1916
(aged 46) in Granville, Licking County, Ohio. Buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in
Granville, Licking County, Ohio.
