UH-McVea LbNA #77105
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Add Location| Owner: | Baby Bear
 |
|---|---|
| Plant date: | Oct 17, 2024 |
| Location: | Little Cypress Creek Preserve |
| City: | Cypress |
| County: | Harris |
| State: | Texas |
| Boxes: | 1 |
| Found by: | Not yet found! |
|---|---|
| Last found: | N/A |
| Last edited: | Oct 17, 2024 |
Difficulty: Easy
Distance to Letterbox: about 100 yards
This box is located in Little Cypress Creek Preserve. Nice wooded park to explore. The story behind McVea:
It was Houston, Texas. The United States of America.
A forward-thinking place that sent men into space and to the moon. A city that could conceive and create the world's first indoor sports arena. But it was a different world back then. Black men and white men on the same college football team? Well, that just couldn't be done. Not in the South. Not in Texas. Not in 1965. Not in that world.
Running back Warren McVea, "Wondrous Warren" as many writers called him, might have been the state's best-known football player on any level, but he was a teenager who didn't know much about that world or any world for that matter.
Bill Yeoman - Indiana-born, Arizona-bred, West Point-educated - refused to recognize or even acknowledge such a world existed. The head coach at the University of Houston saw no reason skin color should be a factor in putting together a football team. "It made no sense to me," Yeoman said. "Never did, never will." McVea didn't see himself as a pioneer. Yeoman cringes when he hears the term trailblazer.
Playing football indoors wasn't a popular idea in 1965
They didn't set out to change the world, but they changed it. Fifty years ago, Sept. 11, 1965, McVea broke a color barrier by becoming the first black player to suit up for a major college football team from Texas. UH lost to Tulsa 14-0 on the field that day in the first football game played in the Astrodome. The score mattered not. It was a victory. The sports world would never be the same. Some smaller programs in the state had integrated, but UH, an independent that played a schedule stocked with SEC, SWC and ACC schools, was the first major domino to fall in the South. By the time McVea finished his college career, he'd appeared in games at a host of hostile environments - places like Knoxville, Tenn.; Lexington, Ky.; Tallahassee, Fla.; and Oxford, Miss. - where he was the first black player to take the field against all-white teams that wouldn't remain all-white for much longer. "If they were going to compete with us, they had no choice," Yeoman said. "They had to do it. But they didn't really acknowledge it until we went over and beat 'em. "That's when the integration in the South took place. I don't care what anybody says. Football was so meaningful to those people over there they couldn't stand to be in a thing where they didn't think they had a chance of winning. (We were) contributing to this country's coming to grips with the idiocy of the mentality in the South." That is Yeoman's retrospective view. At the time, he was a young football coach trying to build a relatively new program that was 92-93-1, including 11-18-1 in his three seasons, before McVea joined the squad. "I was trying to win football games," Yeoman, 87, said this week as he sat in his cubbyhole of an office in the UH Alumni Center, with numerous awards, plaques and mementos stacked on the floor. At the front of a row of frames is a picture of No. 42. Wondrous Warren. A dynamo who was 170 pounds of flash and fury, McVea built such a legend at San Antonio's Brackenridge High School that some 75 colleges offered him a scholarship, a number that would have been significantly larger had he not been black. Most Texas high schools and colleges were still segregated. Mattie McVea was a woman of faith, so recruiters figured if they had a prayer of signing her son, they'd better get some of his mother's old-time religion. She saw through that. According to McVea, his mother turned and ran from the recruiter who flashed a case of $100 bills and the one who handed her a blank check. Harry Truman wrote McVea a letter, touting Missouri. Even Texas, the state's premier program, which had never offered a black player a scholarship and six years later would become the last all-white team to win a national championship, came calling. McVea was drawn to UH, a school he had never heard of before he met Yeoman. "Coach Yeoman promised my mama that he would always take care of her son," McVea said. "And he did just that." McVea 69, choked up when talking about Yeoman's support during often difficult post-NFL playing days. He had issues with drugs and spent time in jail in the mid-1980s. "He never turned his back on me," McVea said. In 1964, Mattie McVea wasn't concerned about the future. Her worry was for her son's immediate safety. Times were a-changin', but it was a dangerous time for those leading the change. While almost all football integration stories involve struggle, tension, hostility even - and that is among teammates - McVea says he rarely had issues with fellow Cougars. When a teammate would "slip up" and call McVea or others like him the N-word, McVea didn't respond with anger. "What I would do is kindly get up and walk out, because I didn't want to make things any worse than what they were," McVea said. "Later, they would apologize." McVea said Yeoman spread the word that his star recruit, the first black player on the roster, was not to be harassed, an order of protection Yeoman downplays as making sure all his players were treated fairly, "even if their skin was of a different hue." There was hate mail and threatening letters from outsiders, but in-house - 21/2 months after McVea's debut, Don Chaney and Elvin Hayes stepped onto the basketball court in Cougar Red - UH made sure its first black athletes were taken care of. Yeoman had faced black players in high school when he was all-state in football and basketball in Glendale, Ariz. As an Army officer in Europe, he coached the division artillery football team and went to all the units, black and white, to find players. After a stint as an assistant coach at Michigan State, which had an integrated team, Yeoman took the UH job in 1962 and told administrators from the start that he intended to recruit black players. The first one had to be the right one. As soon as Yeoman saw film of McVea, he knew. He wasn't about to let skin color keep him from going after one of the best players in the country. "I didn't see what the issue was," Yeoman said. "I guess if I had realized that people were distressed or concerned, I might have been concerned, but I didn't pay any attention to all that. I just wanted someone that could carry the football." Yeoman was smart enough to meet with a group of Houston's black leaders to tell them he planned to start recruiting McVea and other black players. It didn't take long for the group to take a liking to Yeoman. Especially after he admitted to them he was prejudiced. "I'm prejudiced against bad football players," Yeoman told them. McVea, who integrated the Texas High School Coaches Association All-Star Game before a sellout crowd of more than 49,000 in Fort Worth, was so good - and so popular - that UH held an intrasquad scrimmage before a packed house in San Antonio. A crowd of 8,000 saw his first freshman-team appearance against Air Force in 1964, and on cue, he went 55 yards for a touchdown on the game's third play, with nine defenders laying a hand on him to no avail. It wasn't fair. There were no such highlights in that first varsity game against Tulsa on the grassless Astrodome surface - AstroTurf didn't appear until 1966 - as he never found his footing and fumbled four times in 11 first-half carries. "It was the worst game I ever played," McVea said. But perhaps the most important. McVea rebounded from his poor start to lead the Cougars in rushing that season, and he was a two-time All-American.
Directions:
From Hwy 290, exit Telge Rd and go north. At Spring Cypress light that goes right, turn left instead into park, and park by the green sign with "Park Rules" on it.
To the Letterbox:
Walk up the gravel ramp and into the woods to the pavillion. Go right on the dirt path. Pass an open area (pipeline), and a trail going off to the left. When you reach a trail going right, take it, and count 70 steps. Go right off trail for 10 steps to large pine tree. Box on front side under sticks.
Distance to Letterbox: about 100 yards
This box is located in Little Cypress Creek Preserve. Nice wooded park to explore. The story behind McVea:
It was Houston, Texas. The United States of America.
A forward-thinking place that sent men into space and to the moon. A city that could conceive and create the world's first indoor sports arena. But it was a different world back then. Black men and white men on the same college football team? Well, that just couldn't be done. Not in the South. Not in Texas. Not in 1965. Not in that world.
Running back Warren McVea, "Wondrous Warren" as many writers called him, might have been the state's best-known football player on any level, but he was a teenager who didn't know much about that world or any world for that matter.
Bill Yeoman - Indiana-born, Arizona-bred, West Point-educated - refused to recognize or even acknowledge such a world existed. The head coach at the University of Houston saw no reason skin color should be a factor in putting together a football team. "It made no sense to me," Yeoman said. "Never did, never will." McVea didn't see himself as a pioneer. Yeoman cringes when he hears the term trailblazer.
Playing football indoors wasn't a popular idea in 1965
They didn't set out to change the world, but they changed it. Fifty years ago, Sept. 11, 1965, McVea broke a color barrier by becoming the first black player to suit up for a major college football team from Texas. UH lost to Tulsa 14-0 on the field that day in the first football game played in the Astrodome. The score mattered not. It was a victory. The sports world would never be the same. Some smaller programs in the state had integrated, but UH, an independent that played a schedule stocked with SEC, SWC and ACC schools, was the first major domino to fall in the South. By the time McVea finished his college career, he'd appeared in games at a host of hostile environments - places like Knoxville, Tenn.; Lexington, Ky.; Tallahassee, Fla.; and Oxford, Miss. - where he was the first black player to take the field against all-white teams that wouldn't remain all-white for much longer. "If they were going to compete with us, they had no choice," Yeoman said. "They had to do it. But they didn't really acknowledge it until we went over and beat 'em. "That's when the integration in the South took place. I don't care what anybody says. Football was so meaningful to those people over there they couldn't stand to be in a thing where they didn't think they had a chance of winning. (We were) contributing to this country's coming to grips with the idiocy of the mentality in the South." That is Yeoman's retrospective view. At the time, he was a young football coach trying to build a relatively new program that was 92-93-1, including 11-18-1 in his three seasons, before McVea joined the squad. "I was trying to win football games," Yeoman, 87, said this week as he sat in his cubbyhole of an office in the UH Alumni Center, with numerous awards, plaques and mementos stacked on the floor. At the front of a row of frames is a picture of No. 42. Wondrous Warren. A dynamo who was 170 pounds of flash and fury, McVea built such a legend at San Antonio's Brackenridge High School that some 75 colleges offered him a scholarship, a number that would have been significantly larger had he not been black. Most Texas high schools and colleges were still segregated. Mattie McVea was a woman of faith, so recruiters figured if they had a prayer of signing her son, they'd better get some of his mother's old-time religion. She saw through that. According to McVea, his mother turned and ran from the recruiter who flashed a case of $100 bills and the one who handed her a blank check. Harry Truman wrote McVea a letter, touting Missouri. Even Texas, the state's premier program, which had never offered a black player a scholarship and six years later would become the last all-white team to win a national championship, came calling. McVea was drawn to UH, a school he had never heard of before he met Yeoman. "Coach Yeoman promised my mama that he would always take care of her son," McVea said. "And he did just that." McVea 69, choked up when talking about Yeoman's support during often difficult post-NFL playing days. He had issues with drugs and spent time in jail in the mid-1980s. "He never turned his back on me," McVea said. In 1964, Mattie McVea wasn't concerned about the future. Her worry was for her son's immediate safety. Times were a-changin', but it was a dangerous time for those leading the change. While almost all football integration stories involve struggle, tension, hostility even - and that is among teammates - McVea says he rarely had issues with fellow Cougars. When a teammate would "slip up" and call McVea or others like him the N-word, McVea didn't respond with anger. "What I would do is kindly get up and walk out, because I didn't want to make things any worse than what they were," McVea said. "Later, they would apologize." McVea said Yeoman spread the word that his star recruit, the first black player on the roster, was not to be harassed, an order of protection Yeoman downplays as making sure all his players were treated fairly, "even if their skin was of a different hue." There was hate mail and threatening letters from outsiders, but in-house - 21/2 months after McVea's debut, Don Chaney and Elvin Hayes stepped onto the basketball court in Cougar Red - UH made sure its first black athletes were taken care of. Yeoman had faced black players in high school when he was all-state in football and basketball in Glendale, Ariz. As an Army officer in Europe, he coached the division artillery football team and went to all the units, black and white, to find players. After a stint as an assistant coach at Michigan State, which had an integrated team, Yeoman took the UH job in 1962 and told administrators from the start that he intended to recruit black players. The first one had to be the right one. As soon as Yeoman saw film of McVea, he knew. He wasn't about to let skin color keep him from going after one of the best players in the country. "I didn't see what the issue was," Yeoman said. "I guess if I had realized that people were distressed or concerned, I might have been concerned, but I didn't pay any attention to all that. I just wanted someone that could carry the football." Yeoman was smart enough to meet with a group of Houston's black leaders to tell them he planned to start recruiting McVea and other black players. It didn't take long for the group to take a liking to Yeoman. Especially after he admitted to them he was prejudiced. "I'm prejudiced against bad football players," Yeoman told them. McVea, who integrated the Texas High School Coaches Association All-Star Game before a sellout crowd of more than 49,000 in Fort Worth, was so good - and so popular - that UH held an intrasquad scrimmage before a packed house in San Antonio. A crowd of 8,000 saw his first freshman-team appearance against Air Force in 1964, and on cue, he went 55 yards for a touchdown on the game's third play, with nine defenders laying a hand on him to no avail. It wasn't fair. There were no such highlights in that first varsity game against Tulsa on the grassless Astrodome surface - AstroTurf didn't appear until 1966 - as he never found his footing and fumbled four times in 11 first-half carries. "It was the worst game I ever played," McVea said. But perhaps the most important. McVea rebounded from his poor start to lead the Cougars in rushing that season, and he was a two-time All-American.
Directions:
From Hwy 290, exit Telge Rd and go north. At Spring Cypress light that goes right, turn left instead into park, and park by the green sign with "Park Rules" on it.
To the Letterbox:
Walk up the gravel ramp and into the woods to the pavillion. Go right on the dirt path. Pass an open area (pipeline), and a trail going off to the left. When you reach a trail going right, take it, and count 70 steps. Go right off trail for 10 steps to large pine tree. Box on front side under sticks.