Shortly after I graduated from Texas A&M, I was back home in San Antonio, visiting a used book store called the Great Exchange. An elderly gentleman wearing maroon head to toe, including an A&M baseball cap and sweater, was seated near the register. I introduced myself and asked if I could see his Aggie ring. He wistfully told me he’d lost it, but introduced himself as Ben Beesley, class of 1922.
As we talked, I learned that Ben had played football at A&M. I believe this was when I started to realize what Ben was hinting.
January 2, 1922, was the day Texas A&M’s 12th man tradition began.
For those who don’t know, or need a review, Texas A&M won the Southwest Conference in 1921, and was invited to play Centre College in the Dixie Classic, a precursor to the Cotton Bowl, on the subsequent January 2nd. The Aggies led the Praying Colonels 2-0 at the half, but injuries had reduced the number of A&M players available for the second half to 11. Of course, you’re supposed to have 11 players on the field for each play, so another injury would have forced A&M to play shorthanded.
A certain E. King Gill HAD been on the football team, but left the squad after the regular season to play on the basketball team. Gill was at the Classic, though, helping out a reporter in the press box by identifying players on the field. (This was before uniform numbers were universal in football, so Gill was actually doing the reporter a big favor.) Once Bible learned he was down to 11 healthy players, he called on Gill to come to the field, suit up, and be ready to play in case one more Aggie was injured.
Gill did not have to play; the remaining Aggies played the entire second half. Texas A&M beat Centre College 22-14. Gill is commemorated by a statue outside Kyle Field, and all A&M students attending football games stand the entire game to show their “readiness, desire, and enthusiasm” to come to the field and play like Gill was ready to do.
And Ben Beesley, the man seated four feet in front of me at a used bookstore in San Antonio, was on the A&M football team for the Dixie Classic.
Then it was time for Ben to leave; he was frail at this point, so he put his hand of his wife’s shoulders to steady himself as he walked away and left the store.
Ben passed away in January of 1991 at the age of 88, and is buried in San Antonio.
Flash forward several years. In the mid-1990s, I was a network administrator at Kelly Air Force Base. One day, Domingo Villafranca, one of technicians in our directorate, came to our cubicle (which we called the Swamp) to ask me something. I wrote a periodical called WordProven, distributed throughout the directorate, which updated people on technology updates and offered helpful hints. It had a good following, and Domingo was a fan. He told me about his son Charlie, a student at A&M, and asked if he could interview me for a school project. I said sure.
A couple of weeks later, Domingo brought Charlie to the Swamp and introduced us. Charlie was writing a paper making a case that even in an increasingly technological age, writing skills were important. I shared my thoughts on the subject, and we discussed how I wrote WordProven with an approach to try to appeal to all levels of computer users. I gave several issues with him as well.
Charlie said, “This is excellent. Is there anything I can do to return the favor?”
I thought of Ben Beesley.
I told Charlie my story of meeting Ben and the big question I forgot to ask him: was he one of the players who played the second half of the Dixie Classic? Meaning, had he been injured, E. King Gill would have had to enter the game. Charlie said he’d see what he could find.
A few weeks later, a smiling Domingo brought me a folder. Charlie had found two team photos with Ben in them, as well as a yearbook page including him. He also included a page that looks like it’s from a media guide, writing about Ben’s contributions to the team. The writer, in the purple prose of the day, commended Ben's performance in a scoreless tie against UT, then added, “It was the Center (sic) game, however, that he came into his own. Playing the game like the veteran that he is, returning punts through a broken field and smashing through the line on the offense were the features of his game that day.”
It doesn’t say for SURE that Ben played in that fabled second half. But it sure sounds like he did.
I recently found the folder Charlie gave me while going through some old papers. That folder will go to a very safe place.
By 2021, I was still in working information technology, but I had taken up sports broadcasting as well. That summer, I got to broadcast home games for the Texas Collegiate League’s Flying Chanclas de San Antonio, a team owned by the San Antonio Missions. The Chanclas were hosting the Brazos Valley Bombers, the team based out of Bryan-College Station, and their two broadcasters were A&M students. I realized they’d enjoy hearing about Ben Beesley, so before one of the games, I asked them what graduating class they were.
The older one said he was class of ’22.
I told him I’d met a man named Ben Beesley, who was class of 1922.
The student's face lit up; clearly he was already impressed.
Before I continued, I said, “It gets better!”…….
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