Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Six members of Portland’s Lincoln High School football team were stranded in Spokane after they missed their train home.

They had gone to the wrong depot. When they wired their coach explaining their predicament, the reply read, “Football coach says nothing doing in mileage for six players who got left on No. 3.” The boys had less than two dollars between them, about enough for one meal.

“I found the boys standing in front of the hotel this morning with the longest set of faces I ever saw on healthy young Americans,” said a Portland traveling businessman, who promptly promised to stake them as many meals as they needed.

The boys said they had missed the train due to a mistake – their train left from a different depot than it had arrived in. Nobody bothered to tell them of the change.

The six players vowed never to play another game for their coach again, even if it cost them the city championship. They felt the high school that sent them to Spokane should pay to get them back. If not, they vowed to get jobs and earn enough money to come home.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1954: The U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, depicting the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, was dedicated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Arlington, Va.