Note: The following appears in the The Citadel gameday football program.
Editor’s Note – This is the 125th season of Clemson football. To commemorate the first 125 years, Tim Bourret is writing articles this year on some of the most important moments in Tiger history. Below is the first installment of the series.
Happy birthday, Memorial Stadium! Seventy-eight years ago today (Sept. 19, 1942), Clemson opened the gates of Memorial Stadium (not known as “Death Valley” until the late 1940s) for a season-opening game against Presbyterian College.
There was considerable work accomplished leading up to that game, and most of it was supervised by Head Coach Frank Howard. Can you imagine Dabo Swinney supervising that project today?
Swinney is very involved in all stadium projects today, don’t get me wrong. However, he is not on the field supervising the laying of the sod as Howard did in 1942.
“About 40 people (including Howard) laid the sod on the field,” said Howard when he was asked years later about the stadium construction. “After about three weeks on July 15, we only had gotten halfway through. I told them that it had taken three weeks to get that far and I would give them three-weeks pay for however long it took them to finish.
“I also told them we would have 50 gallons of ice cream when we got through. After that, it took them just three days to do the rest of the field. Then, we sat in the middle of the field and ate up that whole 50 gallons.”