While researching the 1907 game between Carlisle and Minnesota, I stumbled across an article that sheds a little light on Lone Star Dietz’s life before coming to Carlisle. A November 17 article in The Duluth News Tribune, a newspaper still in existence today, titled “Zenith City[1] Contributes Two Performers to Leading Football Elevens” mentions Lone Star Dietz. The top half of the article discusses a local boy named Ned Cogdon who was playing center for Yale at that time. The lower half discusses Dietz.
“Another boy who is coming right along in the football world is A. Deitz, who is playing sub-end for the Carlisle Indians. He is a descendant of the Sioux tribe and is well known at the head of the lakes.
“Last summer, when he was employed in the art department of the News Tribune, he played an outfield position for the Fitwell baseball team. Later on, he filled in with one of the Copper country clubs and early in September left for Carlisle university.”
Although the article contained several discrepancies, the person could only have been William H. “Lone Star” Dietz. Now we know what Lone Star was doing the summer before he came to Carlisle, but what was he doing before that?
[1] Zenith City is a historic nickname for Duluth, Minnesota, coined as “The Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas” in the late 19th century.
Tom Benjey's Weblog 
Leave a comment