Freshman Follows in Footsteps of Great-Great-Grandfather to USM

Thu, 10/10/2019 - 02:35pm | By: David Tisdale

More than a century ago, George Thatch arrived on the tree-stump dotted Hattiesburg campus of Mississippi Normal College (MNC) to become a member of its first class in 1912, composed of students who wanted to become educators in the state’s rural schools through training at the newly-minted teacher’s college.

One hundred and seven years later, Thatch’s great-great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Thatch Jones, is a freshman at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM), that same fledgling teacher’s college George Thatch attended that is now an internationally recognized research institution of higher learning. 

Jones, a member of university’s Pride of Mississippi Marching Band who plays alto saxophone, said she was aware of her historic connection to the school when she took the advice of an uncle, who also attended USM, to give it a look.

“He (Jones’ uncle) told me “You’ll love it,” and I knew my great-great-grandfather was one of its first students,” said Jones, a native of Port Neches, Texas who initially considered attending nearby Stephen F. Austin University.

“My only visit (to USM) before I enrolled in the fall was to audition for the band, and it was then I knew this was the place for me,” she said. 

Jones says USM is small enough to navigate but big enough to meet people, a plus for the self-described social butterfly who jokingly said if there was such a job in which you “just meet people, I’d do that for a living in a heartbeat.”

She loves the new friends she’s made in her classes and in the band, as well as her professors, who Jones praises for their desire to “make a real connection with their students, not just check them off as another name on the class roll.”

Laura Malone, one of Jones’s teachers who serves as instructor for her University Studies (UNV) 110 class, says she’s impressed with her “enthusiasm, inquisitive nature and passion for life and her experiences here at USM.”

“It’s really neat that she has such long-standing ties to the university,” Malone said. 

Jones hopes she “lives up to, and exceeds” what her great-great-great grandfather’s expectations for her might have been. Although she has yet to choose a major, her plans for the future include possible careers in public relations or law, a good family life, and a good “me” life.

George Thatch and USM - humble beginnings, noble legacies

George Thatch was born in Eastabuchie, Mississippi in 1892 and grew up in the Rawls Springs community, located a few miles north of the USM campus in Hattiesburg. In addition to being one of the first students at then MNC, he was a charter member of the school’s Platonian Literary Society and an offensive and defensive lineman for its first football team, nicknamed “The Normalites.”

With a sparse athletics budget, few players and even fewer scheduling opportunities for a first-year program, MNC’s 1912 football campaign included only three games, the first an opening 30-0 win over the Hattiesburg Boy Scouts. The team’s home games were played about a mile east from campus at Kamper Park, located at Hattiesburg Zoo. Thatch and his Normalite teammates went on to record a winning inaugural season, 2-1, under the direction of head coach Ronald J. Slay, an MNC faculty member from Purvis, Mississippi who taught science and modern language at the school.

In 1948, Thatch was awarded letterman status from then Mississippi Southern College for his participation in its football program’s early years. John Cox, USM’s Director of Broadcasting and a historian of Golden Eagle athletics said Thatch, his teammates and Coach Slay laid the groundwork for the USM football program’s future successes, which he details in his book, ‘Rock Solid: Southern Miss Football.” 

“When I look back and read and study about the accomplishments of the players in the early days of Southern Miss football, I think of the men who did it for the true love of the game,” Cox said. “Coach Slay and players from those early years, like George Thatch, helped build the foundation that makes Southern Miss football what it is today.”

With only 14 players on the school’s first team, Thatch likely could not have imagined at that time the heights the program would later reach from such humble beginnings, going from a first victory against the Boy Scouts to wins decades late over the likes of Alabama, Georgia, Auburn and Nebraska, and Florida State, and produce Pro Football Hall of Famers Ray Guy and Brett Favre.

“We owe a great deal to these men that got football started at Southern Miss, and we should always remember their dedication, their love of the game and love of the university, every time we watch our Golden Eagles play,” Cox said.

Thatch earned his diploma from MNC in 1916, worked as a teacher and then joined the U.S. Navy, a World War I veteran who served from 1918-1919. He married Ida Claire Norton in 1919, and they moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where he worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 42 years delivering mail via rail line before retiring in 1962.

Thatch maintained his relationship with USM through the years through its Alumni Association, and returned to campus in 1962 for a 50^th anniversary celebration of the first class, where he and former fellow students received golden anniversary diplomas.

He died at his home in 1967, at age 75.

Thatch’s granddaughter, Pat Werne of Ridgeland, Mississippi, has fond memories of shopping for groceries with him, “his favorite pastime,” at Jackson’s famed Jitney Jungle no. 14 grocery store on Fortification Street in Jackson (also often patronized by author and fellow Jackson resident, Eudora Welty), where he would always buy Werne a box of animal crackers. She said his favorite dish was rice and gravy, “a Cajun roux,” which he ate with nearly every meal. 

Werne recounted Thatch telling her about a football game he played in when MNC took on Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. Short a player, MNC had to “borrow” a Spring Hill gridder, according to Thatch, in order to hold the contest. In later years, Werne said Thatch would be called upon occasionally by the university to identify people in photos taken during his days as a student.

“He was a hard-working Christian man, a devoted husband who loved his family and his country, his church, and his alma mater, USM,” Werne said. “I think it’s just marvelous that Elizabeth is following in his footsteps, and I know George would be smiling aplenty if he could see her there now, immersing herself in campus life and making lots of friends, the same way he did.”

Jones carries her great-great-grandfather’s USM legacy into not only a new century, but a new millennium. “To have such a deep connection to the university, and now be a part of continuing our family’s long history with USM, it really means a lot to me,” she said. 

 

PHOTO CAPTIONS: Elizabeth Thatch Jones, a USM freshman and member of the Pride of Mississippi Marching Band, stands at the entrance of College Hall on the Hattiesburg campus, where her great-great grandfather, George Thatch, posed with members of the then Mississippi Normal College football squad (second row from front, far left) for a team photo more than 100 years earlier (USM photo of Elizabeth Jones by Kelly Dunn; team photo contributed by John Cox).