1942: War
The effects of Pearl Harbor were almost immediate on fencing. Young men, mostly of college age dominated it. Almost to a man they entered military service. In January 1942, fencing captain Clement D’Albergo, at a meeting of the Moody Club and all its affiliated sports teams, reviewed the five years of the club’s history. After covering their many victories and titles, he advised that national defense activities had absorbed the entire team save one, and that fencer, D’Albergo noted, would probably be leaving soon. He did announce, however, that he would carry on matches until other fencers were obtained.
Among those Galveston fencers answering the call was Worthington Franks. In January 1942 he enlisted in the U. S. Army Air Force.
Perhaps it was the war, but the Southwestern Fencing League by now consisted of only nine organizations: Texas A&M College, Galveston, Texas University, Baylor, Southern Methodist University, the Dallas YMCA, the Fort Worth YMCA, Texas Tech and NTAC. The League’s regular tournament season climaxed, as always with their championship. This year it was held in Dallas. Aggie fencer E. R. Stillinger did make it as far as the semifinals before being knocked out. It was a respectable accomplishment, but a low point for A&M overall.
On March 28-29, the Texas Division’s championships were held at the Hotel Adolphus in Dallas. In the women’s foil team event, the Dallas Women’s Fencing Club took the gold and the Royal Assassins, also from Dallas, came in second. In women’s individual foil, Harriet Knight of Forth Worth took the top honors by defeating Dallas’ Kathleen Gill.
The University of Texas, captained by Hal Lattimore won the men’s team event. Second place went to the Dallas YMCA. The UT team thus won the Vander Wal Memorial Trophy, named for Steve Vander Wal who had been the national champion in men's foil in 1941, only to die in an automobile accident in September of that year.
In individual men’s foil, Rois Brockman of Dallas took the gold and Galveston’s Clement D’Albergo took silver. First place in sabre also went to Brockman, with second going to George Beakley from Texas Tech. Top honors in epee went to Cleve Spiller from UT, with D’Albergo placing second.
The northern Texas schools finally were displaced in the Southwest Conference fencing championships. 1942 saw Texas University in Austin capture the Southwest Conference’s top fencing honors.
On July 4, 1942, at Kelly Field, Worthington A. Franks won his wings in the Army Air Force.
1943: Worthington Franks
The Southwest Conference collegiate fencing championships were held January 16-17 in Austin. Once again, Texas University captured the championship.
Many of the past years’ champions were not in attendance, being scattered all over the globe by the war. Galveston’s W. A. Franks, for instance, was serving as a navigator on the Liberator bomber "Old Baldy." He and his crew were based in North Africa, making raids on Southern Europe
On August 1, 1943 Franks and the entire crew of "Old Baldy" went down following the massive Allied air raid on the Axis refineries around Ploesti, Romania.
1944: Harold Van Buskirk
The year 1944 may not have seemed a particularly good one for local fencing. For one thing, there was no Southwest Conference fencing championship, no doubt due to the war.
This was, however, the year that Charles Harold Van Buskirk moved to Houston. Affluent, handsome, athletic, well educated in the Ivy Leagues, and a successful businessman, Charles Harold Van Buskirk was the very image of the American elite in the years between the world wars. He was elected three times to the position of President of the AFLA and a 3-time Olympian, having fenced on the US teams to the 1924, 1928 and 1932 Olympic Games. In 1927 he also became the US national epee champion. His wife was herself, a highly accomplished fencer and a past national champion. Together they raised a family with several children..
For all their success, however, the Van Buskirk family also knew tragedy well.
On August 4, 1936, their 19-year-old son Charles Harold van Buskirk, Jr., was injured in a shooting accident at summer camp where he was working as a counselor. He and another counselor had been engaged in target practice with a shotgun. When the other counselor fired, his barrel shattered and fragments of steel lodged in the young Van Buskirk’s neck. Three operations were performed in an attempt to save his life, but he succumbed on August 12.
On November 7, 1941, another son, Douglas, 20 years old, was killed when his Stirling bomber was shot down over Germany. This was a full month before America entered the war with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Flying Officer Douglas van Buskirk had been one of the first Americans to enlist in the Royal Canadian Air Force in order to fight the Axis. He was posted overseas only a week after he married a young woman from Ottawa.
1945: Interregnum
There was no Southwest Conference fencing champion awarded.
There were, of course, national fencing championships to be fought for and awarded that June. The top winners were presented their prizes by the current president of the AFLA, Harold van Buskirk. Even as he returned to New York to preside over the championships, he was already settling into life in Houston.
1946: Jack Baird and the Carbide Fencing Club
There was no Southwest Conference fencing championship in January 1946.
In November of 1946 John P. "Jack" Baird, the one-time Texas A&M and ANICOs fencer, announced that fencing was to return to Galveston. He stated the fencing season would begin with the Galveston Amateur Open, ironically dated for December 7-8, 1946, at the Galveston YMCA. Local press coverage of the time identified Baird as the coach and captain of something called the Carbide Fencing Club.
Baird stated he had sent out invitations YMCAs and colleges throughout the state. He advised that all matches would be fenced according to AFLA rules and that the winners would be determined in round-robin pool competition.
When the weekend arrived, the first competitors began to show up. Competitors came from Houston, Beaumont and Dallas. While it drew nowhere near the 50-75 entrants Baird had publicly stated he thought might show up, he did get eight women and 22 men. With so many young men lost or still in the service, this was probably the best one could realistically hope for. The growth would come later. Right now it was time to plant the seeds.
The first event fenced was women’s individual foil. Betty Allen of Houston captured first place. Second place went to Laurette Eckstein of Dallas. Naomia Abbott of Houston was third.
In men’s individual foil, Jack Baird captured first place for himself. Clem D’Albergo, Galveston’s pre-war fencing coach came in second. Third place fell to W. A. Waitkus of Beaumont.
Baird also took first place in individual epee. Again, D’Albergo was right behind him in second place. The third place finisher was Charles Holland of Houston.
Baird did not command the sabre event, however. Everett Abbott of Houston took first place in that event. Another Houstonian, John Kramer came in second. Baird did finish a respectable third.
1947: Sonny Mercado
On March 15th, the Galveston fencers faced off against the Houston Fencing Club. In what a local paper described as, "a team match in the Texas Division of the Amateur Fencers League of America," the islanders defeated the Houstonians 12 bouts to six. The results, all favoring the Galveston club were 4-1 in men’s team foil, 3-2 in men’s team epee, 3-2 in men’s team sabre and 2-1 in women’s team foil.
On March 30th, the Galveston contingent traveled north to Dallas for a tournament at the YMCA there. Naomia Abbott captured the gold in women’s foil. Jack Baird did likewise in men’s foil. Clem D’Albergo took third place in sabre and first in epee.
The Galveston cadre made a second visit to Big D on April 12 to compete in a Southwestern Fencing League tournament there. They would be facing one team from Texas A&M and two from Texas Tech.Those making the trip were Jack Baird, Bill Brown, Laurence McMillan, Steve Steinbach and John Gottlob.
The Galveston Fencing Club was back in Houston, at the Rice Institute, on April 19th, to participate in a four-club tournament, which also included the Houston Fencing Club and the Dallas YMCA. Both the Galveston and Houston Fencing Clubs managed to best the fencers from Big D. Galveston fencers Jack Baird, Lawrence McMillan, Clem D’Albergo and John Gottlieb won men’s foil, epee and sabre events in contests with Dallas. In the women’s foil event, Galvestonians Silvia D’Albergo, Naomia Abbott and Mrs. Lawrence McMillan defeated their north Texas counterparts.
The Galveston fencers had also settled in to teaching weekly fencing classes at the Galveston YWCA and at the Menard Youth Center.
This same year, Arnold "Sonny" Mercado arrived at Houston University and began to take fencing classes. He had two instructors. "One was [a] middle aged, chubby guy and the other a young fencer. I'm eternally grateful that they believe in balanced, well done footwork and a balanced, correctly executed lunge."
"John Hime was one of my original coaches. He was young and the other was older by about fifteen years, a little heavy and I think balding."
As a matter of fact, John Hime, Jr., was, in the 1947-1948 academic year, the President of the University of Houston Foil Club. The Vice-President was Ignatius Joseph Huacuja. "I.J. was a WW II Air Corps vet, did something on bombers. He ended up being a good personal friend," Mercado recalled. Hime and Jack W. Weir, Jr., also served as the club’s bout committee.
C. A. Steele was the Foil Club’s sponsor, but they were largely indebted to Harry Fouke (the Director of Athletics at the University of Houston from 1946-1979) and the college’s Health and Education Department for their equipment. The official fencing instructor was H. Edmund Stamm (Rice Institute, class of 1946). "I think I started the previous year but I remember that in the next year Ed Stamm came aboard for a little while; he had been fencing with Van Buskirk. Ed never taught me." Stamm also fenced with the Houston Fencing Club.
Mercado also recalled, "When I first came to Houston, [Harold] Van Buskirk was there [at the Rice Institute]. What we heard was that he had moved to Texas from New York. There he had had a construction firm and I was told that the apartment building on the East Side where the Fencer's Club had the first two floors was built by him. I don't remember if, in 1947, I knew about Van Buskirk but I'm sure that I knew about his coaching at Rice the next year."
"Van had the bushiest eyebrows I have ever seen, no New York accent, just sort of neutral American: constantly with a pipe in his mouth. He taught a sabre style that became outdated by the mid-fifties, but a good fencer in the old style was better than a poor fencer in a new style. He taught well in all three weapons but sabre was his favorite. Occasionally he yelled when he taught but that wasn't his dominant style."
Fencers and coaches in the 21st century like to believe these were simpler times, in so far as the rules of the sport are concerned. More recent debates over scoring times, the flick and issues of right-of-way and the debate between whether the weapon arm must be extended or extending to be a threat feel very much of the moment.
It is a modern conceit to believe all controversies are contemporary. Arnold Mercado, recalled in 2001, "When I learned fencing 53 years ago, the emphasis was on extended. Of course, how a coupé was delivered created arguments. I have always believed that calling a coupe a one tempo attack like a properly made disengage was always a mistake and led to many of the modern abuses. When the electric foil entered the scene fencing guard house lawyers from the newly dominant countries were probably the ones who led the way in going from extended to extending to the body moving forward with a bent arm being acceptable as an attack having the right of way."
"The discussion about what is an attack has been around as long as I've been fencing, over fifty years. It intensified with the electric foil. And the problem of what is feint for a coupe or a final flick has been with us for a long time and the idea of when a stop hit has priority keeps getting kicked around."
While American fencers in 1947 probably had as many controversies as fencers of the early 21st Century, they had fewer upper level events. At that time, there were only three sectional championships: Pacific Coast, Midwestern and Eastern.
Fencing was also making a post-war comeback at Texas A&M. One fencer, Gerald Monks, recalled being talked into it by his friend, Gustave Mistrot. "We didn't have a great team in 1947 when Gus Mistrot talked me into joining the team and learning how to fence. I took up foil and epee. The reason I did was because it kept me out of evening drill and marching to mess hall, and I got to eat with the athletics which was much better in those days. We only had about 10,000 people in college. I was fortunate and Gus taught me how to fence and I went on several tournaments as a newcomer, and won a couple and normally came in at least third in all of them. Fenced in SW conference that year against Texas and lost 5 to 4."
Another allure was that the fencers could leave campus on some weekends to attend tournaments.
As Monks put it, a fencer could get a letter in fencing if they won 50% of their bouts for a year, or won an individual event in the Southwest Conference Championships or in the school championships. "I fenced ten or twelve matches my first year and won two or three of them."
The problem, it turned out was getting to those tournaments. As with Alvin Goodstein, the Texas A&M fencer from the 1930s, Gerald Monks recalled, "We had to hitchhike. If we went to Dallas, for instance, and we had a fencer with family there, we would stay with them."
"Sometimes we would sleep in a hotel lobby. When you’re young you can do that."
"At some meets they had women fencers. So, naturally, we would go out dancing with them all night. We would get worn out before the meet, but when you’re young, dancing is more important than fencing."
"Rice had a good team, good sports. They were very nice."
"When I started, all they [the Texas A&M Fencing Team] had, to loan, were French foils. I fenced my first six months with a French foil. It taught you to control it." Later getting a Belgian-style orthopedic grip, he added, "I think it made my Belgian foil fencing better."
In addition to Texas A&M, the Rice Fencers and the U of H Foil Club, there was also the Houston Fencing Club. Led by Ardien Bennau Rodner, this was a separate club, not affiliated with the local colleges and universities. Edwin Stamm fenced with them. Arnold Mercado remembered years later, "The Houston Fencing Club was Rodner's group. They met at Cherryhurst Park. He was a much older man."
When collegiate fencing competitions resumed in 1947, Texas University in Austin resumed the leading spot, capturing the Southwest Conference title.
1948: The Franks Memorial Tournament Begins
By early 1948, Galveston sported two fencing clubs. In addition to the Galveston Fencing Club, there was also a second group known as the Galveston Buccaneer Fencing Club and, occasionally, as the Galveston Buccaneers of Chemical Carbide Company. The Galveston Fencing Club included stalwarts like Naomia Abbott and William T. "Bill" Brown. The Buccaneers included Jack Baird, Clem D’Albergo and Lawrence McMillan.
Years later, Arnold Mercado reminisced about his Galveston colleagues and rivals. "The Galveston group led by Jack Baird, Bill Brown, both lefties were the class of the area. Clem was a spirited, flashy fencer who did well."
"Jack Baird had polio as a child and his right arm was withered but useful but he could not fence with it. His left hand was huge and his left arm was strong. Someone told me that he got that from hauling himself up ladders on the side of chemical tanks. He was a power fencer and he intimidated a lot of people including me as a beginner. Eventually I became confident about fencing left-handers and handled him in all three weapons."
"Bill Brown was a smoother fencer and it wasn't until I beat him in epee that I realized I could handle left handers."
The Buccaneers faced the University of Houston on January 10th and triumphed.
On January 17th, former GFC fencers Jack Baird and Clem D’Albergo, now with the Buccaneers, met the Houston Fencing Club at the Galveston YMCA for an epee open. Baird and D’Albergo captured first and second places, respectively. Edwin Stamm of the Houston Fencing Club took third. All three then advanced to Dallas on March 6th to fence for spots on the Wilkenson team.
March 20th saw another tournament at the Galveston YMCA. The event consisted of open foil with fencers from Texas A&M, Rice Institute, the University of Houston and the Houston Fencing Club contending. Also on the program was a team competition in men’s foil, epee and sabre between the Galveston Fencing Club and the Galveston Buccaneers.
The day belonged to the Galveston Buccaneers Fencing Club. Buccaneers Clem D’Albergo, Jack Baird and Lawrence McMillan placed first, second and third, respectively. This earned them the right to compete in the state finals in Austin in April. In the intra-island team event, they defeated the Galveston Fencing Club team of Bill Brown, Everett Abbott and Joe Fuller 7-2 in foil, 8-1 in epee and 8-1 in sabre.
Of Joe Fuller, Arnold Mercado said, "I'm not sure but I think he started fencing the same time I did, if he is the young man who married a lovely Chinese girl."
The University of Houston Foil Club also followed the AFLA competition schedule. The U of H fencers found themselves competing with fencers from the Rice Institute, Texas A & M, the Houston Fencing Club, and the Galveston Buccaneers of Chemical Carbide Company. In the state finals they faced Texas Tech, John Tarleton, Hardin-Simmons, Texas University and the Dallas Fencing Club.
The Rice Fencers enjoyed a particularly successful run in various tournaments during the 1947-1948 fencing season. Starting with a competition on December 20, 1947 and culminating in the Southwest Conference Meet in Austin on April 30 and May 1, 1948, the Rice Fencers, coached by Harold Van Buskirk and Lt. Commander Oliver, won seven first place trophies, eight second place awards and four third place trophies.
Once again, however, the Gulf Coast colleges were defeated and the University of Texas held on to its earlier Southwest Conference fencing championship.
Prior to the Southwestern Divisional Championships, Rice fielded a three-man team that consisted, variously, of fencers Carpenter, Charles Holland, Frank Leever, C. K. Campbell, Horace Flatt and W. L. "Leroy" Cherico. This was the team sent out to the preliminary competitions, ultimately scoring victories over fencers from Houston University, Texas A & M College, and the Galveston Fencing Club, but losing out to the Galveston Buccaneers.
The Rice Institute played host on April 4th for an open epee tournament and a dual-team meet between their team and the Buccaneers’ Jack Baird, Clem D’Albergo and Lawrence McMillan. The Buccaneers won the team event 9-0 in foil, 8-1 in epee and 7-2 in sabre. In the open epee event, first through third places went, respectively, to Lawrence McMillan, E. R. Stillinger from Texas A&M, Jack Baird and Clem D’Albergo.
The Galveston YMCA was the site of a sabre tournament on April 17th. The local fencers dominated the event with Galveston Buccaneers Lawrence McMillan and Jack Baird placing first and second, respectively. Everett Abbott of the Galveston Fencing Club placed third.
Newspapers reported that the Southwest Division of the AFLA held their championships in Austin on April 24-25. This would appear to be a moment of confusion with either the Southwest Conference or the old Southwestern Fencing League. In fact, the division was the Texas Division.
Rice and Galveston fencers gave excellent accounts of themselves in contests with their rivals from north Texas. Harold Van Buskirk served as director and official representative of the AFLA.
In women’s prep foil, Houstonian Elaine Byrd captured first place. Lee Kinney and Dolly Trigg, both of Galveston, took second and third. The top spot in women’s novice foil went to Betty Jean "Foxie" Fox, Harold Van Buskirk’s protégé. UT fencer Ruth Cole came in second. Third place went to another Rice fencer, Peggy Hall. Foxy also captured first place in women’s open foil. Galvestonians Naomia Abbott and Mildred Lyday placed second and third.
Arnold Mercado later recalled, "Mrs. Abbot and Betty Jean Fox were the best women in the state with Foxie usually coming out on top. Mrs. Abbot was cheerful, genial and a great person to be around. Her husband fenced also but his technique was limited and she usually beat him."
In men’s foil, the prep first place went to John Mayes of John Tarleton University, with Rice’s Horace Flatt taking second and Charles Sommers of John Tarleton in at third. In men’s novice foil, Texas A&M’s Ignacio J. Barrios and Fulton Dye took first and second places, respectively, with John Tarleton’s Jim Moss placing third. In the men’s open foil, Galvestonians Clem D’Albergo and Jack Baird claimed first and second, with John Tarleton’s George Beakley in at third.
In epee, the men’s novice lead went to James Towell and Don Chaney of John Tarleton, with A&M’s Fulton Dye taking third. In the open epee event, Galveston’s Jack Baird took first place, with George Beakley of John Tarleton and Clem D’Albergo of Galveston taking second and third, respectively.
In sabre, the first and second places of the novice event went to Rice’s Leroy Cherico and Charles Holland, with A&M’s Ignacio Barrios in third. The first and second spots in open sabre went to Galvestonians Lawrence McMillan and Jack Baird, with Houston Fencing Club’s Edwin Stamm in third.
At the awards banquet, Jack Baird was elected Chairman of the Texas Division. George Beakley became the Vice-Chairman. Edwin Stamm was elected Secretary. Additionally, the Texas Division as a whole had won the AFLA’s prestigious Connecticut Trophy for the most improved division.
If Rice fencers contended with tough rivals on the piste, they occasionally had to contend with difficulties far beyond simply besting their opponents. Arnold Mercado later recalled, "Cherico was the victim of a strange sabre cutting accident. Later another Rice fencer had an epee go through his mask but it didn't hurt him. It grazed the side of his temple. I observed both accidents."
On a side topic, there was a basic shift in how one sport was administered. The IOC had directly administered the Modern Pentathlon, itself, until this year. In 1948, the International Modern Pentathlon Union (UIPM) was founded by Gustaf Dyrssen (1920 Olympic Champion) from Sweden as the first President and Sven Thofelt, Secretary General, and later to be President for 28 years (IOC Member 1970 – 1976).
The 1948-1949 fencing season began with a new tournament that became a tradition. The Galveston fencers held the first W. A. Franks Memorial Tournament in August 1948. It was not only named after their fallen comrade, but featured competition in his weapon of choice, sabre. The first winner was Shafik Farid, described as "Texas University’s colorful Egyptian exchange student."
With the start of the 1948-1949 academic and fencing year, the Rice Fencers were captained by Frank Leever and coached by Van Buskirk and Oliver.
Their counterparts at Texas A&M were watched over by Lt. Col. Frank Vaden, the faculty administrator, with Ignacio Barrios as team captain. The team included Carroll W. Bell, Gustave A. Mistrot, Gerald Monks, James C. Fails, F. E. Neill, Alvin Hope and John Happ.
Lt. Col. Vaden was the team’s faculty advisor. He was not, himself, a fencer. Nor was he their coach. The Texas A&M fencers had no coach but were self-instructed. Gustave Mistrot did recall, however, that Vaden’s forte was the quarterstaff.
Years later, Alvin Hope noted, "As I recall… we were pretty well put together due to the efforts of Ignacio J. Barrios (Nacho) and were pretty much a scratch outfit. We started with a minimum of equipment and had no jackets at all until well into the season. I don’t recall that Col. Vaden… was ever around."
The Aggies started out strong. They started the season defeating Rice 21-6.
Their next competition proved more difficult. Facing off in a cadet competition against the perennially strong amateur fencers of the Corpus Christi YMCA, A&M was defeated 15-12. As Gerald Monks recalled, "Corpus Christi and Galveston had strong clubs. They were not students."
"You would win, maybe, two bouts on one of them and be happy."
Not everyone could continue with the team. Alvin Hope later recalled, "This was my junior year at A&M and due to the time taken up with the fencing team my grades in course subjects began to suffer, and I didn’t feel like earning a minor sport letter was worth a few Ds or Fs in my grades, so I dropped the team. It is my recollection that the team did not get much support from the school…"
1949: The Gulf Coast Division Is Born
Menard Park in Galveston was the scene of another tournament on January 15. A women’s team of locals defeated a Rice team 6-3. Three wins belong to Naomia Abbott, the Galveston team captain. Another three wins went to Islander Lee Kinney.
E. R. Stillinger of Texas A&M won the fence-off for winner in the men’s event by defeating C. K Campbell of Rice. Galveston Buccaneers fencer Owen Holzheuser finished third.
Fulton Dye, who had grown up in Bay City and had done so well for Texas A&M the previous year began his post-collegiate fencing in 1949 on a strong note. On Saturday, January 29, now a resident of Longview, he took second place in foil in the "Northern Section, Southwestern Division Foil and Saber Tournament" at the Dallas YMCA. He also placed well enough in saber, but time ran out on the event and the finals of the saber event were postponed until February 19.
On March 19 a fencing tournament was held in the auditorium of the Menard Youth Center in Galveston. Competitions were held in women’s prep foil and men’s novice foil. The Connecticut Trophy, won by the Texas Division in 1948, was put on display.
On March 26 it was the Galveston fencers turn to be the visitors, traveling to the Rice Institute for a men’s open foil tournament. There were only eleven entrants, but they came from the Houston Fencing Club, the Rice Institute, Texas A&M and Galveston. Galveston’s first coach, Clem D’Albergo took first place by knocking out the current coach, Jack Baird, 5-4 in a fence-off. Third place stated in the Galveston family, going to Bill Brown.
In spite of their victory in Houston, they had a more humbling encounter during a tournament back in Galveston on April 2. The Island women fared well enough in the women’s novice foil event. Galveston’s Lee Kinney took first place with Peggy Hall from Rice in second. Third place ended in a 3-way tie between Galvestonians Dolly Trigg and Corine Lukovich and Rice’s Margaret Pack.
In men’s open epee, they also gave a good account of themselves. Galveston coach Jack Baird finished I first place. Steve Wilson from Texas A&M University came in second. Third place went to Bill Brown of Texas City. Houston’s Edwinn Stamm was fourth. Clem D’Albergo finished in fifth place.
The big feature event, however, was a team competition between Galveston and Corpus Christi fencers. Miguel Chaberrios of Uruguay fenced for the Corpus team and quickly proved to be the star of the show. As a local paper noted, "his style was far different from the American way." The Corpus Christi left as victors 17-10.
An April 9 tournament at the Menard Youth Center in Galveston featured competitions in novice epee and novice sabre.
A state preliminary competition was held in Austin on April 23, 1949. Once more old and new Galveston coaches dueled for first place in a fence-off, this time in men’s open epee. It was Baird’s turn to upset his predecessor and take first place, leaving Clem D’Albergo in second place. Third pace was another 3-way tie between Texas City’s Bill Brown, Texas A&M’s Curtis Wilson and Al Wilson from the University of Texas.
In the women open foil, Rice’s Betty Jean Fox captured first place. Naomia Abbott of Galveston finished second. Rice’s Margaret Pack came in third.
In team points, top honors went to Texas A&M University. With the Galveston team in second place.
In spite of little support and even less funding from their university, the Texas A&M fencers hosted the Southwest Conference fencing meet May 3-4, 1949. Texas University pushed out the host team for overall honors, retaining its title from the previous year. In individual events, however, A&M held the monopoly. On the first day, Gustave Mistrot seized first place in individual foil, while his team captain, Ignacio Barrios, took second. Barrios, a native of El Paso, was possibly the smallest at athlete at Texas A&M weighing in at only 138 pounds. None of which prevented him from being captain of the Aggie fencing team.
The next day, Mistrot again took the lead, capturing the top spot in individual sabre after defeating Al Wilson from the University of Texas. Mistrot’s team mate James C. Fails succeeded in taking first place in individual epee by besting another A&M fencer, Gerald Monks.
May 7-8 saw fencers from all over the state converge on Dallas for the Texas Division’s championships (some papers called it the Southwestern Division’s championship). The local press gave the event considerable notice for a fencing tournament. As an indication of the relative scale of event, then and now, one Dallas newspaper story carried the headline, "75 Fencers Enter Meet." The story began, "The four fencing strips of the two downtown YMCA gyms will see plenty of action this weekend as fencers from ten YMCAs, colleges and cities compete in the meet to be hosted by the Dallas Fencing Club."
The Galveston Buccaneers took the early lead on the first day as Jack Baird captured first place in men’s open foil and Corine Lukovich grabbed the top spot in women’s prep foil. A team made up of Naomia Abbott, Lee Kinney and Dorothy Trigg gave the islanders a sure route to victory in women’s team foil.
Things suddenly turned bad for Naomia Abbott. For three years she had trained for this moment. The second day would include the women’s open foil event. If she won, she would earn a slot at the national championships in New York, the first Texan ever offered the trip. The second day saw her without a glove, mask or foil. In the dead of night after the first day’s events, her car was broken into outside the Central YMCA. Someone had smashed in a front window and absconded with her equipment bag (representing sixty dollars in gear in 1949 prices).
As fencers filtered in for the second day, word of Abbott’s misfortune spread among the competitors. Soon she was fully outfitted with a glove from Dallas, a mask from Rice and a foil from another Galveston fencer.
She honored her colleagues’ charity by taking those tokens to the victory line. Abbott captured first place in women’s open foil. (Third place went to Houstonian Betty Jean Fox, fencing unattached). She won her place in the New York finals. As for the thief, whoever they were, she had a challenge noted down by a local reporter, "Foils at sunrise, bring your own seconds."
The Oleander City contingent kept up the pressure. First place in men’s open epee went to Clem D’Albergo of the Buccaneers, with teammate Jack Baird close behind him in third. Baird was also victorious in men’s open sabre, finishing in first place. Galveston had less of a presence in men’s novice foil, but one Buccaneer, Owen Holzheuser, came in third.
An Aggie fencer, Curtis Wilson, grabbed silver in the men’s novice epee event.
Frank Leever, from Van Buskirk’s cadre at Rice, captured first place in men’s novice sabre.
The Buccaneers took gold in team epee and team sabre. In team foil it was a Gulf Coast one-two with the Buccaneers finishing first and Texas A&M in second. As the A&M yearbook noted, "However, the powerful Galveston Buccaneers, terrors of the Southwestern fencing scene, toppled the Aggies after the coast crew had taken the open bracket title." Barrios, however, did take second place in the individual foil competition.
Like so many others, Aggie fencer Gerald Monks kept strong memories of the Galveston fencers, especially Jack Baird. "I got two points on him one time and was happy as could be."
"He was nice. He’d let you get a few hits on him."
In 1949, the old Southwestern/Texas Division of the AFLA was split into two divisions. The North Texas Division had Hal Lattimore of Ft. Worth as the Division Chairman. In the new Gulf Coast Division, William T. "Bill" Brown of Texas City was the first Chair.
Recalling the formation of the Gulf Coast Division, Arnold Mercado recalled, "As far as the name of our division, I don't remember it's original name. Naomi Abbott came to me suggesting the Gulf Coast name. She was trying to tie it in with the recently formed Gulf Coast Athletic Conference that the University of Houston became part of. I vaguely remember it included Sam Houston and some other of the small non-SW Conference schools."
The weekend of August 6-7, 1949 began the 1949-1950 fencing season for the new Gulf Coast Division with the second annual W. A. Franks Memorial Sabre Tournament. The first round-robin pool was fenced on Saturday. On Sunday morning, the second round pool bouts were fenced on the terrace of the Buccaneer Hotel. The third and final round of eight was fenced Sunday afternoon.
For the second time in as many years, Shafik "Steve" Farid emerged as the victor. In his final pool of eight, he won six bouts, his only loss being to Jack Baird, 7-5. In second place was Clement D’Albergo with 5 wins and two losses in the final pool. Bill Brown, Hal Lattimore and Arthur McArthur all tied with three wins in six attempts, with Brown getting third place on points.
Arnold Mercado also recalled the Franks Memorial. "The trophy was created by the Galveston Fencers among whom the most prominent were Jack Baird and Bill Brown…Steve Farid won the Franks the first two times. That's when it was fenced on the sand itself…. Robert Shelby, one of my students at UH won the Franks many times.
"Shafik was primarily a foil fencer, epee secondarily, but somewhat like Jose de Capriles, in New York, he knew what to use from foil and epee to make him a fairly effective sabre fencer.
"I think I remember his [Baird’s] name on the Franks trophy. I wonder where that is now." [Amusingly, in the possession of Mercado’s own top student, Robert Shelby.]
At the September meeting of the Southwestern AAU in Dallas, it was noted that fencing was making a big comeback and that the district contained some 400 participants.
Still a Houston University student, himself, Arnold Mercado began teaching fencing. "I started coaching as a student at the University of Houston when I was a junior and continued for, perhaps, five years. During that time his [Harold Van Buskirk’s] teams and mine met several times. Texas A & M was also involved in team fencing as well as the University of Texas."
By this time, Mercado was the President of the Foil Club and Team Captain. Jack Weir was still fencing and served as both secretary and treasurer to the club. Mercado remembered him as, "a nice guy, an asthmatic." Harry Fouke was now the club’s sponsor. They had also borrowed Ardien Bennau Rodner from the Houston Fencing Club to serve as fencing instructor.
Mercado said, "I talked to Harry Fouke about bringing him in and that was done. In a few months we realized he didn't know as much as he said he did and he was dropped. The HFC disappeared after Rodner stopped teaching and/or died. They never produced any real competitive fencers."
Other fencers with the University of Houston Foil Club during the 1949-1950 academic and fencing season were: Everett W. Abbott; D. T. Batson; H. C. Beatty; D. M. Braun; H. P. Langston; and Edwin Ferrer. "Eddie Ferrer grew up with me in New York and came down to Houston in '50. Buddy Batson went into the Marines and Paul Langston was a great guy, a red head who studied, I think, Petroleum Engineering. He was married to a lovely woman from Mexico."
Of his years fencing and teaching fencing at the University of Houston, and the influences on him, Mercado would recall years later, "[Shafik "Steve"] Farid was an important influence as he believed in fencing correctly, French style. As we invited outsiders to come to the UH club and he was taking a degree there in Chemical or Petroleum engineering, (he had gone to U Texas for his first two years) we worked together very often.
"Steve Farid was named Shafik Farid and my guess is that he came to this country circa 1946-47. The story I heard was that he went to the University of Texas for a couple of years and then came to Houston.
"He was French trained in Egypt. For more information on his background check with Michelle A. Mamlouk, another Egyptian who fenced with Shafik in Egypt and, supposedly, came to this country at the same time. Mamlouk was a President of the USFA and is a USFCA certified Fencing Master.
"Shafik was a tall, perhaps six feet, two inches, big boned, handsome man who was dedicated to fencing fundamentals. I've never forgotten his statement: "It is not enough to make the touch; one must make the touch beautifully."
"His mechanics were impeccable: perfectly balanced en garde, scary advances, long, fast, strong lunges. All the parries and ripostes whether by beat, opposition, direct, indirect were deadly. Simply, he was, technically the best fencer we had in the Southwest although he didn't enter as many tournaments as he should have. Those he did he invariably won.
"Shafik was primarily a foil fencer, epee secondarily, but somewhat like Jose de Capriles, in New York, he knew what to use from foil and epee to make him a fairly effective sabre fencer.
"As I understand it, he came to the University of Houston to get his Master's. Something in petroleum or chemistry. It was a great day for me and others when he showed up and the UH fencing club. He was an excellent teacher and further grounded me in fundamentals, passing on in individual lessons what he had been taught.
"Money was tight for Shafik while he was going through school, once he taught me how far one could live on rice alone but when he graduated he had a good job in the petrochemical industry."
Photos from this era in Texas still showed epee to be fenced with French grips and foil to be fenced with either French or Italian grips. The orthopedic, or "pistol," grips were less common but could be found. In spite of the dizzying number of named variations of pistol grips available today, they were almost all referred to a "Belgian" grips by fencers of this era. Mercado later remarked, "I always fenced French except when, in epee, I needed a scroonch more strength."
In the fall of 1949 the fencers at Rice University could look forward to better facilities. A press release of the era mentions the decision by the university to build a million-dollar field house. It was to include a basketball court with seating for 5-7,000 spectators, a large swimming pool and facilities for boxing, wrestling and fencing.
The weekend of December 11 showed just how popular fencing was becoming. That was the weekend of the Dallas Invitational and the tournament saw participation by teams from Corpus Christi, Texas A&M, Oklahoma A&M, the Waco YMCA, the Fort Worth YMCA, Texas Tech, Tarleton State, Baylor, SMU, North Texas State College, Texas State College for Women and the Dallas Fencing Club.
CAMPECHE STEEL |
Prologue |
Early Intrigues |
The Swashbucklers of Campeche |
De Leon's Sword, Bowie's Knife |
Revolution |
The Republic of Texas |
Statehood & Conflict |
Civil War |
The Victorian Age |
The Perfect Exercise |
A Sport Evolves |
The Goodstein and D'Albergo Years |
The War Years & Rebirth |
The Van Buskirk & Baird Years |
Faces of Post-War Fencing |
The Mercado & Reed Years |
The Sebastiani Years |
The Skopik & Weathington Years |
Theatre & Tragedy |
Separate Paths |
Hamza & HACA |
A Time of Rapid Change
