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Shrine Bowl of the Carolinas
Strange and wonderful facts about the first high school all-star football game in America
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Coach Bob Allen didn’t have a full North Carolina squad five days before the first game in Charlotte’s American Legion stadium in 1936.
Wartime crowds were so slim that German war prisoners were trucked from Morris Field airbase to watch the game under guard.
Three days before one game one NC player wanted to go upstairs in the hotel and beat the devil out of the whole SC squad.
One Shriner would successfully choose the winning team by watching how much they ate during practice week at Barclay Cafeteria.
Doug Mayes superbly, but erroneously, introduced Governor Jim Martin’s tuba solo immediately after he finished playing.
Two Shrine Bowl coaches—Dave Harris and Don Hipps—won their state high school football championships Friday night and then coached their Shrine Bowl teams the next afternoon.
For years programs selling for $1 cost $7 to print.
City machines pushed a huge 1971 snowfall off the field, destroying a $30,000 tarpaulin doing it.
The 1986 Queen came from tiny Liberty, SC, which also produced two Miss South Carolinas, including a Miss America runner-up.
Pulitzer prize winner Ralph McGill wrote the Shrine Bowl slogan, “Strong men run so weak children may walk.”
Walt Disney drew the Shrine crippled children design and donated it to Oasis Shrine.
By 1986, the game’s 50th year, 62 million fans tuned in on the Shrine Bowl TV and radio networks. One million had watched from the grandstands.
One hundred thousand high school band musicians had played at half time.
$28 million had been raised (from projects plus game tickets), far exceeding all other North American Shrine fundraising events.
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Produced by the public relations committee of the Grand Lodge AF&AM of Masons in North Carolina,
2921 Glenwood Avenue, Raleigh, NC 27628 MMVIII
Author/editor: Walter J. Klein wklein(at)carolina.rr.com
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