Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

The Spokane School Board voted unanimously to ban travel outside the city for athletic teams from the city’s two high schools, North Central and Lewis and Clark.

This was a reaction to incidents the previous year that resulted in the boys acting like “hoodlums,” according to the board president. Games in Spokane weren’t much better.

“The football game with the Wenatchee high school here was disgusting, to say the least,” the board president said. “Right in front of the grandstand filled with self-respecting girls and young ladies, I saw members of the football squad take their whiskey bottles from their pockets and drink. And when they got downtown, they continued their hoodlumism, congregating on street corners and passing remarks. At the ball grounds, the teachers couldn’t preserve order even if they wanted to.”

The board president said he was tired of spending money on events that benefit only “the fellow with 150 pounds of brawn.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill creating a women’s auxiliary agency in the Navy known as “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service” – WAVES for short. … 1956: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a measure making “In God We Trust” the national motto, replacing “E Pluribus Unum” (“Out of many, one”).