Welcome! Imaginary Shirt is a project where I research visual elements from high schools’ histories and then use them to make new t-shirt concepts. If you’re associated with one of these schools and would like to make any of these imaginary shirts a reality, let me know! I’d love to help you accomplish that. This companion newsletter gives some more details on process and on the schools featured. Enjoy!
Instagram Week in Review
Monday, 24 July 2023—Walnut Hills Eagles, Cincinnati, OH
Walnut Hills’s website mentions that around the school are examples of pottery from famous local pottery business Rookwood Pottery. Rookwood is still a thing, and the history on its website notes that in 1880, “Maria Longworth Nichols founded Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati. Rookwood is one of the first female-owned manufacturing companies in the United States.”
But apparently, founding Rookwood Pottery is just one of the interesting things about Maria Longworth Nichols. I was surprised that the subtitle of a December 16, 1906 New York Times profile that reads, “Mrs. Bellamy Storer Has Always Evinced a Genius for Affairs of Church and State—Energetic at Home and Daring Abroad” was referring to the same person who I was trying to research.
Maria was born into a prominent Cincinnati family (“The Longworth’s usually do as they choose, whether it be rough riding, ruling in society and the arts, or dabbling in politics.”), and married George Ward Nichols (“He found in Maria Longworth a wife whose temperament and positive nature conflicted with his eccentricities and predilections like flint striking steel. The marital sparks thus engendered led to a separation.”)
Maria then married Bellamy Storer, who entered politics. (Her Times obituary notes that he was,"a lawyer, whose political career was largely induced and aided by his able and forceful wife.”) The Storers became close friends with the Roosevelts, and at Theodore’s behest pressured President McKinley (also a friend) to appoint him Assistant Secretary of the Navy. When Maria was trying to get the archbishop who had converted their family to Catholicism to be made cardinal, she prevailed upon now-President Roosevelt to return the favor. Roosevelt demurred, noting that exerting his influence in such a way would violate the separation of church and state. He asked her to stop representing that she had his support, and when she didn’t, he fired now-Ambassador to Austria-Hungary Bellamy Storer.
Maria did not like this, and she had receipts. She began publishing letters from Roosevelt acknowledging her help, which became known as the “Dear Maria” letters. According to the August 20, 1921 New York Times, she also made one hundred copies of a book consisting of his letters and circulated it privately. It was entitled Theodore Roosevelt, The Child.
The families were estranged, even though Mr. Storer was Archie Roosevelt’s godfather and Maria’s nephew was married to Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice.
See more designs from the Walnut Hills set here.
Tuesday, 25 July 2023—Western Hills Mustangs, Cincinnati, OH
Western Hills is the alma mater of Will Radcliff, inventor of the Slush Puppie. According to Radcliff’s New York Times obituary, he was already pulling down six figures selling peanuts when he came up with the idea for the Slush Puppie in 1970, realizing he could make the product for just three cents and sell it for ten. Radcliff bought about 3,500 acres in Florida and set up his Flyin’ R Ranch. He became interested in nature conservation there, and sold about 3,000 of the acres to the St. Johns River Water Management District.
See more designs from the Western Hills set here.
Wednesday, 26 July 2023—Withrow Tigers, Cincinnati, OH
Withrow High School might be the most beautiful school I’ve ever seen, and website Cincinnati Refined’s gallery called “We Wish Our High School Was as Pretty as Withrow” is well worth checking out. Withrow was designed by famed American architect Frederick Garber’s Cincinnati firm Garber & Woodward. It includes an arched bridge leading up to the school and a clock tower in front. It has been very well maintained in its over-100 year history, and if I was visiting Cincinnati, I would consider going there just to look at the outside.
See more designs from the Withrow set here.
Thursday, 27 July 2023—Woodward Bulldogs, Cincinnati, OH
Woodward is the alma mater of President William Howard Taft. As last week we looked into an incident in which Taft’s son Robert inadvertently struck a pedestrian with his car, I wondered if there were any interesting automobile facts about his father.
As it turns out, Taft was the first president for whom Congress budgeted money for official presidential cars. The February 3, 1909 Washington Post’s article “House Demands Auto,” the expenditure was far from a sure thing. The Senate has tried to strike it from the budget, but the House insisted. Even inside the House, the car was not entirely agreed upon, with Tennessee Representative Thetus Sims rising to speak against it:
“The automobile,” declared Mr. Sims with emphasis, “furnishes a dangerous means of travel, not only for the people who ride in it, but for pedestrians. The automobile is a genuine, all-around nuisance. I don’t want to be ‘chinkapiny’ about this, but I am not in favor of this appropriation. I am opposed to this Congress going on record favoring automobiles as a means of travel.”
“Does the gentleman think the President should be required to use Tennessee mules?” Representative Mann of Illinois, interrupted to inquire.
“Tennessee mules would be safer for the President,” said Mr. Sims. “I do not want anything done here that will amount to us saying to the automobile fanatics of the country, ‘We hereby encourage you.’ Let us vote this thing down.”
It seems that Representative Sims was fighting a losing battle, although one wonders if he felt any sense of validation when the President’s son struck a bystander with his car little over a year later.
The Library of Congress has this picture of President Taft in the presidential automobile:
See more designs from the Woodward set here.
Friday, 28 July 2023—Valdez Buccaneers, Valdez, AK
“DOUBLE MURDER AND A LYNCHING.” exclaimed the front page of the February 3, 1898 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “Port Valdez, Alaska, Christened in Crime. THREE GRAVES IN THE ICE. Montana Cowboy Shoots Two Companions and Is Hanged.”
The story reported Doc Tanner, who had stood outside a tent and heard some people in his party speaking about him:
Outside in the darkness was the cowboy, Tanner, listening to the plot against his welfare. Ankle deep in the snow he waited, and what he heard caused his cowboy blood to boil with rage. Leaving his post he hastened to a cabin, fifty yards distant, and armed himself with a revolver.
He used it. Apprehended immediately, the P-I seemed eager to justify what came next in a section entitled “Vigilantes Act Promptly.”
Tanner was securely bound, hand and foot. It was quickly decided to rouse all the prospectors who could be reached that night and call a general meeting to decide on the fate of the murderer. The summons was answered by thirty-eight men. In the still watches of an almost Arctic winter night the crime of Tanner was weighed. The majority advocated immediate retribution; a minority held out for sending the prisoner to Sitka to be dealt with by the regularly constituted authorities. It was no unreasoning mob; no crowd of lawless border ruffians thirsting for blood of their fellow man; but a calm, determined gathering of such as at home rank among the most respected and law-abiding citizens. There were professional men, merchants, office men, artisans and laborers. The prisoner was the coolest of them all. He even dozed during the proceedings. He urged that he be sent to Sitka, where he thought he would be able to clear himself. As excuse for his deed he pleaded self-defense. His companions had planned to abandon him, he said, and in such a country that meant death.
A vote was taken. Twenty-nine were for immediate execution, nine for conveying him to Sitka. The decision seemed to have no effect on Tanner. When, by the same vote, he was doomed to perish by the rope instead of by a shot, his only comment was:
“Gentlemen, I guess you are doing what is right.”
See more designs from the Valdez set here.
Saturday, 29 July 2023—Huntsville Panthers, Huntsville, AL
The March 5, 1980 Spartanburg Herald article “Mother Obsessed With Photograph of Mass Suicide” began like this:
The gravemarker is simple enough to look at. But the space it marks contains no grave, and the epitaph is bitter:
“Jerry Bibb Balisok. Born Sept. 8, 1955. Murdered in Guyana Nov. 18, 1978. Buried in Oakland, Cal. May, 1979. Damn the State Dept.”
Balisok’s body is not here. Indeed, he may not even be dead. But his mother, Marjorie Balisok, is convinced her son, his wife, and his step-child died in the horror of the Peoples Temple mass murder-suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, and she ordered the tombstone placed in the family plot.
Mrs. Balisok, a widow and a retired hospital worker, is obsessed by a Life magazine photograph of some of the more than 900 bodies at Jonestown. She believes the photo, which appeared two months after the atrocity, shows her son’s body lying next to that of his wife, Debbie, and her 5-year-old son, James Kindred.
Her son was Jerry Balisok, Huntsville High graduate and professional wrestler Mr. X. Balisok had disappeared once he had been charged with forgery relating to bad checks, and his mother was insistent that it was his body in the photograph. The authorities were less sure. And the authorities were right.
Nearly ten years later, a man calling himself Ricky Allen Wetta was charged with attempted murder in Washington state, but when he was fingerprinted, it was determined that he was not the real Wetta. He stood trial known as only John Doe, but at long last the prints were matched—to Jerry Balisok.
This was just one of many bizarre episodes in the life of Jerry Balisok. His Wikipedia page is a good starting point if you are interested in learning more.
See more designs from the Huntsville set here.
Sunday, 30 July 2023—Hot Springs Trojans, Hot Springs, AR
President Bill Clinton attended Hot Springs. In a September 1992 Washington Post article leading up to that year’s election, David Maraniss wrote:
The cosmopolitan nature of the town also attracted an excellent corps of teachers to Hot Springs High, the elite school in Garland County. While many schools in Arkansas were so backward they offered no foreign languages and gave students credit for parking cars at football games, Hot Springs High offered Latin -- which Clinton studied for four years -- all the higher mathematics courses, and sophisticated world-events classes where Clinton examined the early stages of the Vietnam War and President Kennedy's initiatives in Latin America.
"The whole culture surrounding the high school was of a very strong middle class. Education was extremely important," said Bob Haness, one of Clinton's classmates. "We were the Chosen Ones. We were the ones who were going to do better than our parents did. We never skipped school and never thought about skipping school. It was a small town but a very liberal town in a sense. We always felt different from the other people in Arkansas, who were hicky and redneck."
See more designs from the Hot Springs set here.
A Recommendation
I was aware that speedruns through Super Mario Bros. was a thing, but this video breaking down why the current record will likely not be substantially broken was fascinating to me—there’s so much more to it than just holding the buttons down hard.
See you next week! Tell your friends!