Historic Texas Gyms: A Tribute to Vanishing Traditions

By Jackie McBroom

For generations of small-town Texans, the school gymnasium was the hub of the community. If it was a Tuesday night in Texline, most folks could be found in the old tin barn of a gym, rooting for their Tornadoes against the arch-rival Adrian Matadors. Transcending the role of a sports arena, the gym also provided a place to gather in celebration or shelter in crisis. Sadly, with the dramatic reduction of school districts around the state, many of the polished floorboards that once hosted graduations and beauty pageants now splinter beneath the weight of storage, farm equipment and guano-covered junk. From the pickup basketball game Elvis played in Hawkins to the tragic account of four Ennis war heroes, Jackie McBroom recounts stories from these beloved halls.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: May 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781439666920

Jackie McBroom

A proud native Texan, Jackie McBroom coached basketball, football and track and taught English at Aubrey High School. He later became the middle school principal at Pilot Point for ten years, and he finished his career as a teacher, principal and assistant superintendent at Sanger ISD. Jackie and his wife, Sharen, have loved their home in the country near Aubrey for the last twenty-eight years.

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McMurtry.

INTRODUCTION

A WORD ABOUT THE WPA

The Work Progress Administration (WPA) was a very ambitious (and some said desperate) attempt by the U.S. federal government to create jobs for millions of struggling Americans on many different public projects, such as the construction of public buildings, roads and bridges. The WPA also offered jobs for musicians, artists and writers on art, drama and literary projects. However, for the sake of our discussion here, we will focus primarily on the construction of schools—especially gymnasiums— throughout the state. In the end, almost every community in the United States had a new park, bridge or school constructed by the agency.

The WPA was established in 1935 by an executive order of President Franklin Roosevelt. It provided work for citizens during the Great Depression, which essentially lasted from the stock market crash in 1929 throughout the 1930s. At its peak in 1938, these programs provided paying jobs for more than three million men and women.

Mired in the misery of the Great Depression, voters elected Roosevelt, then New York’s governor, as their president in 1932. After being sworn in to office, Roosevelt quickly pushed a package of legislation, termed the New Deal, through Congress to set up new federal agencies to funnel direct payments to suffering Americans. Most agencies were designed to provide work on government projects.

The WPA not only built traditional infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, schools, courthouses, hospitals, sidewalks, waterworks and post offices, but it also built museums, swimming pools, parks, community centers, playgrounds, coliseums, markets, fairgrounds, tennis courts, zoos, auditoriums, city halls—and gyms. Most of these projects are still in use today. In all, WPA projects built 5,900 new schools and gyms and 2,302 stadiums around the country.

The beautiful Moran gym and wall. A WPA project.

Incredibly, this was all accomplished by largely unskilled laborers who were put to work under different New Deal initiatives, mostly WPA projects. Total expenditures on WPA projects through June 1941 totaled approximately $11.4 billion—the equivalent of $183 billion today.

Of all of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, the WPA is the most famous, because it affected the lives of so many people. Roosevelt’s vision of a work-relief program employed more than 8.5 million people for an average salary of $41.57 a month.

Give a man a dole, and you save his body and destroy his spirit.

Give him a job and you save both body and spirit.

—Harry Hopkins, WPA director

UNDER THE DIRECTION OF Governor Miriam Ma Ferguson, Texas was very active in the WPA initiative throughout the 1930s, up until the outbreak of World War II. Prior to the WPA, crippling unemployment in Texas had been faced by Ferguson by persuading the state legislature to create the Texas Rehabilitation and Relief Commission in 1933 to coordinate the state’s efforts with Roosevelt’s relief plans. This enabled Texans to participate in various early New Deal programs, like construction.

While most of the workers available during this time were unskilled laborers, fortunately for us, there were also unemployed engineers and stone and brick masons, and beautiful examples of their artistry are spread all over this great state. One unique aspect of these projects is that, whenever possible, the construction crews used local materials. As a result, many gyms in the Hill Country were built with materials from the nearby limestone quarries. In north Texas, many facilities were constructed with the red sandstone so prevalent in the area. Almost every WPA gym is a unique work that stands alone, exclusively