Scrap Day Injury Causes Broken Arm, 1940

       Although it died out some forty years ago, people still remember Scrap Day.  Scrap Day was an annual contest between Otterbein College’s freshman and sophomore classes.  There were slight variations over the years, but the main attractions were a sack race in the morning and a tug-of-war in the afternoon.  If the winners of the competitions were the Freshies, they were allowed to ditch their beanies at Thanksgiving.

        How quaint!  Or was it?

 “The published rules clearly warned participants that choking, strangling, blocking, tackling or other unsportsmanlike conduct would not be tolerated.  No matter what the rules said… the event was not so much a sack race, but   more of a “sack war.”[1]

        In actual practice, the Scrap Day events were often rough and sometimes a tad violent.  The tug-of-war rope stretched across Alum Creek, causing students to fall into the water.  I’m not sure just how wide Alum Creek at Westerville was in the early twentieth century; the current bridge (built in 2011) is 210 feet long.[2]  It’s a wonder nobody drowned.  The sack race was if anything more combative.  Racers were not above pushing, shoving, tripping, and various other mean tricks.[3] To say nothing of pants moving below the equator, a hazard when jumping up and down in a sack.

        One such incident happened in September of 1940.   One of the participants in the sack race, sophomore Joseph McNaughton (x1943), “was injured Wednesday morning in the first minutes… “ of the sack race.  “His left arm was injured at the elbow.  He was taken to a Columbus hospital for x-rays.”[4]  No clue that I could find as to whether there was pre-race rough-housing, a score to settle, or just bad luck.

       Joe McNaughton recovered from his injury.  As with so many college students in the early 1940s, his fate was not graduation, but military service.  He served in the United States Navy, serving in both World War 2 and Korea, rising to the rank of commander. After his military service, he served the Navy again as a civilian employee, beginning in 1966.  He died in 1977 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.[5]

        I cannot say whether a sack race injury is good preparation for a career in the U. S. Navy, but I doubt it.  Joe McNaughton, like many contemporary students, was a product of small-town Ohio, in this case New Athens in Harrison County.  I can wonder whether the crowded, boisterous life of a Navy sailor ever left time for memories of small-town Ohio.

        Just for the record, McNaughton and the sophomores lost to the freshmen.

From the 1941 Sybil yearbook.  Joe McNaughton is third from left. Lambert Hall in background. Courtesy Otterbein University Archives

[1] Daniel Hurley, Otterbein College:Affirming our Past/Shaping Our Future (Westerville, 1996), p. 49.

[2] https://www.franklincountyengineer.org/bridge-builders-biography-chapter-14/

[3] Hurley, P. 49.

[4] Westerville Public Opinion. September 26, 1940.

[5] Washington Post, October 18, 1977; Otterbein Towers, Winter 1978.