Artifacts in the Archives

Posted by T. A. Gobert on March 8, 2013 in
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Every now and then unusual things cross my desk and I get to figure out what to do with them!  One case in point is a shopping bag of sports memorabilia, a pair of skates, and four wooden hockey sticks that were forwarded to me recently.

Old athletic equipment isn’t something we tend to collect.  We have pretty good records on RPI sports teams, but the actual game equipment… not so much.  As I looked over the individual items, though, I realized this was a pretty neat cache.  Each stick has someone's name on it, and two are autographed by a number of people.  Now we’re cooking – hockey sticks with documentation!  Right up an archivist’s alley!

            Signatures of Ned Harkness and John Stoper on one of the hockey sticks in the RPI Archives.

Fortunately three of the sticks have the name Ned Harkness on them, so I figured they must date from his tenure as head coach, 1949 to 1963.  And one of the sticks is annotated with information about the 1958-59 team, so that helped narrow down the time frame.

Team photo, 1958-59.  First row:  R. Ottone, D. Seminski, R. Belaski, P. Midghall (co-captain), N. Harkness (coach), K. Balland (co-captain), L. Bradley, B. Dunn, G. Lee.  Second row:  “Pop” Harkness, P. Chiarelli, T. Holbrook, R. Groves, L. McMullen, M. Eustace, D. Wishart (assistant coach), C. Borck (manager).

I consulted our collection of hockey programs and quickly identified many of the signatures, including Richard and Pat Chiarelli, Bob Ottone, Charlie Urmson, Don Wishart, and John Stopen.  These guys played in the mid- to late-1950s following RPI’s first national championship.  Someone thought to collect their autographs for posterity, and decades later they found their way back to Rensselaer.

RPI hockey players holding Northland Pro hockey sticks in a team photo in the 1957 Transit.

Looking through our old yearbooks, I found an additional clue.  Paul Midghall (Class of 1959) was named the 1958-59 Athlete of the Year, and a photo of him shows his name scrawled near the top of his stick, just like the lettering on the sticks we received.  That makes a lot of sense, since all of the players used the same brand of hockey sticks at the time (even the goaltenders).  But each stick would have been a different length and taped to the player’s specifications.  Names must have been essential to quickly identify a particular player’s equipment.

Paul Midghall, Athlete of the Year, 1958-59 (The Transit).    This detail from a 1959 Transit photo faintly shows Paul Midghall’s last name lettered near the top of his hockey stick

One last thing.  One of the donated sticks appears to have been used by RPI’s illustrious coach, since it has “HARKNESS” written down the front of the shaft in red marking pen.  Unlike many hockey sticks of that era, its blade has a slight curve that suggests the coach was a left shot.  Can anyone confirm (or refute) that?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Comments

Tom martinetto
Thu, 02/19/2015 - 16:20 Permalink

Your blog entry is about 2 years old but I came across it trying to figure out if anyone might be interested in the Freshman Physics notes used circa 1957. They were the Resnick and Halliday pre publication freshman Physics text. Let me know if I can send them to anyone or should they go to the dump.

If you never received an answer to whether Ned Harkness was a left hand shot I am sure Paul Midgehall would know and would be interested in this blog entry. Paul's email is paulmidghall@yahoo.com

I enjoyed this blog entry and look forward to seeing more.

In reply to by egglel

TAG
Thu, 03/05/2015 - 11:56 Permalink

Thanks for the tip, Tom. Paul Midghall responded to my email, as follows:

Ned Harkness was definitely a left shot...and the little left curve to that stick was typical of sticks in our time ...we used backhand shots more then and they were harder for goalies to stop, although not as fast...and the stick name markings we put on by our selves.

Ned used his hockey stick at beginning of every practice, mainly to give the goalie a tremendous/lengthy workout...probably helped develop great goalies like Bob Fox, John Stoppen and Bob Ottone of my era.

In reply to by egglel

TAG
Thu, 03/05/2015 - 11:59 Permalink

Tom's freshman physics notebooks are now in the Institute Archives and not the landfill. Thanks for donating them!

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