Tom Benjey's Weblog

Reviews are coming in for Gridiron Gypsies and they’re very good. However, none of them say anything about what some consider a real bonus in this book: the list of  the 495 young men who were on Carlisle’s varsity and the years they played. Creating this list was a difficult, time-consuming task that was sometimes frustrating. Several names that appeared in newspaper coverage of the games are still a mystery. Any help in sorting out those names would be most welcome. These names can be found on page 324 of the book.

In order to compile this list, I scoured team photo captions, newspaper coverage both pre- and post-game, school newspaper articles, Spalding’s Guides, and Carlisle Indian School student files. There were probably other sources but they don’t come quickly to my muddled mind. A sample page is included to give you an idea of what was produced from this toil.

In January 1943, Angus received word that his stepson, Sgt. Conover B. Nichols, age twenty, has been taken prisoner by the Japanese in the Philippines. In September, Phebe received a postcard from her son, who was then interned at the headquarters of Military Prison Camp No. 3. He was reportedly in good health. In October 1944, Phebe was elected president of Wisconsin Women of the Philippine Defenders, formerly known as Wisconsin Women of Bataan.

Phebe’s 1931 book, Sunrise of the Menominees, gets a second printing in November 1944 due to popular interest.

In January 1945, the War Department informed the Lookarounds that Conover had been transferred to Osaka Camp in Japan. In August they received a “captured document” from the War Department which was in Conover’s handwriting. He listed the names of over 20 American prisoners who were hospital patients. In November the Wisconsin Women of the Philippine Defenders hosted a “liberation dinner” which both of Phebe’s sons were able to attend, although Conover had to return to Vaughn Hospital afterward.

Angus died on April 15, 1946 at Wood Veterans’ Hospital in Oshkosh at age 52. Phebe established the Angus F. Lookaround Memorial Museum and Studio in their house on the Menominee Reservation where she continued living. She served as custodian and continued to promote Gus Lookaround’s contributions until shortly before her death in1964 at age 79. The museum’s contents were transferred to University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh in 1966.

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In 1929 Gus organized and directed the Keshena Indian School band that was composed of twenty-one boys and one girl. The band won second place in the Wisconsin High School Band Tournament with grade school children after having been organized only four months. That August, he married Miss Alice Hampton (Cherokee) of Bradley, Oklahoma. She was the kindergarten teacher at the school. The following year he was selected to direct the Shawano City Band due to his success at Keshena. When his bride’s health failed in 1932, they relocated to Chickasaw, Oklahoma, to be near her family one assumes. She was buried in the Bradley Cemetery and Gus returned to his home in Wisconsin.

In 1933 he was a member of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. In 1934 Gus was selected for the Indian Achievement Medal to be awarded at the Century of Progress (also known as the Chicago World’s Fair).

Gus remarried in June 1934 to Mrs. Phebe Jewell Nichols, who was nine years his senior. They must have known each other for some time because she was a member of the committee that picked him for the medal. She was an attractive upper-middle-class novelist who had been widowed three years earlier. Gus, who had had no children of his own immediately became stepfather to three: Howard Gardner Nichols Jr. (19), Patricia Nichols (17), and Conover Nichols (12). Phebe’s late husband, a real estate investor and insurance agent a decade, had died after having a nervous breakdown over financial losses incurred during the Great Depression. They had married in 1913 when he was 38 and she 28. They likely became acquainted while she was teaching school in the Oshkosh area. Originally from Wabasha, Minnesota, Phebe had attended Oshkosh Normal School after graduating from Carlton College.

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