I was a freshman with Tommy Jolmson in 1905. He was six and a
half feet tall and weighed 152 pounds, still frail and slender, but he
had an uncanny weave and hip shift that he had practiced through all
these years that made it very difficult for an opponent to tackle him.
He was one of the outstanding basketball players, a great catcher on
he varsity baseball team, and a hurdler and pole vaulter on the track

Against Nebraska in football in 1906 Tommy Johnson received the
ball from the snapper-back and ran 90 yards through a broken field for
a touchdown. Fred Cornell, the referee, ruled that the backfield was
in motion and penalized the Kansas team five yards. On the next play
Tommy Jolmson called the same signal and ran 95 yards on the same
identical play, wormed, twisted and squirmed his way through for a
touchdown over the sane terrain. ae ees

In 1909 in old Exposition Park Tomy Johnson was "high-lowed” by
two Missouri tacklers, Buck and Prancis Alexander, end an
old injury to his spine was opened up and two years from that day, on
Thanksgiving Day, Tommy Jolmson died at Bell Memorial Hospital in ;
Kansas City, Mo. Never a whimper did he mike. Rather, when he met his
friends who visited him, he never complained. He said, "T have lived
more in my 22 years than mat fellows have lived in 70. I have no cam-
plaints and if I had to do it over again I would want to do it the same
way. Life has been swoll to'me and I think the world is great.”

As I said, I played with Tommy Johnson for several years end ~
later became his coach in basketball here et the University of Kansas.
He was always cheerful, exuding « let of enthusiasm and plenty of fight,
but he was clean, hard and courageous. He had no time for bickering
or little things, but he gave everything that he had. No wonder, when
he passed away, he was em immortal in the eyes of the Kensas alumi.

When I returned to Kansas in 1919 as director of atthetics there
was but one motive in my mind end that was to build a stadium in the
memory of Tommy Johnson, Kansas greatest athlete, but the World War
had just finished and there were 129 Kansas men and women who made the
supreme sacrifice in the first world war end naturally the stadium was
given the nawe of the World Wer Memorial in the name of these heroes
and heroines. But if I had it to do of my own experiences and relation-
ships, had not the war happened, there would have been only one name
on that stadium, and that would have been “Tomy Johnson Memorial
Stadium". He deserved such an honor.

Mr. C. B. McBride, the sports editor of the Kansas City Star,
pays Glenn Cumingham a great tribute, featuring his searred legs which
have borne Glem Cumingham, the great Kansas rumer, to new records and
victory. When Glenn was 8 years old he and his older brother had as
their chore the job of lighting the fire in the schoolhouse. One cold
winter morning an explosion occurred, and before the brothers could be
rescued from the burning building they were terribly burned. The older
brother died, and Glenn fought his way back to life after six months of
_ guffering. Glenn Cunningham bears these sears on his legs today. His
legs are marked by the ravages of flames from the hips down, the right
leg being more scarred than the left.