This day in history: Whitworth’s homecoming game was canceled; Spokane principal warned that children were learning to gamble at fair

From 1975: Whitman College dealt Whitworth College’s homecoming celebration a blow when Whitman announced that it was forfeiting its upcoming game at Whitworth.

The reason? Injuries had reduced Whitman’s squad to only 20 players.

Whitworth alumni and parents were now facing a football-free homecoming.

The Whitworth head coach expressed dismay and wondered aloud if his team’s 35-0 shellacking of Pacific University the previous week had played a role in Whitman’s decision.

This was the second game this season that Whitworth had won by forfeit.

“We are the most forfeited-to team in America,” said the coach. “They must be afraid of our coaches.”

From 1925: Mary A. Monroe, a Spokane school principal, warned of a new “evil” facing children: Lotteries and games of chance.

She said her students wrote essays about their experiences at the Interstate Fair, and she was alarmed by what they wrote. One wrote that they “won a beautiful scarlet blanket,” but only after spending $9.40, an extravagance at that time. Another girl wrote they tried four times to win kewpie doll and lamp, and failed.

Another said they tried their luck so many times they had only enough money to buy a sandwich and carfare home.

Monroe noted that some candy stores even offered games of chance.

“In this age of love for money and getting something for nothing, children can be very easily led into crime,” she said.

From the Whitman sports beat, again: 50 years before having to forfeit to Whitworth, the Spokane Daily Chronicle was predicting Whitman would lose to the University of Washington in what the newspaper described as “their annual blood-letting.”