Thanksgiving Day, 1928, Oregon State College became the first Pacific Coast team to play a football game on the East Coast, vying with New York University in an intersectional game at Yankee Stadium. The Beavers beat the Violets 25-13, and Pendleton was the first daylight stop for the team on the long train trip home to Corvallis.
Governor Patterson was among the welcoming committee Dec. 5 when the special train arrived in Pendleton. “I’m simply too happy for words,” he declared. “I first heard the news of your victory by radio; and those who listened in with us were so enthusiastic that for a time I feared for the furniture in our house.”
Mayor L.J. McAtee welcomed the team on behalf of Pendleton and, following a salute by the Pendleton High School student body and the American Legion drum corps, the players joined a parade through the streets of town led by Mrs. Berkeley Davis, OSC graduate and former Round-Up queen.
Each member of the Beaver squad was presented with a Hamley kit, wrapped in college colors, as a souvenir from the Pendleton Commercial Association and the Umatilla County alumni of the college.
The Pendleton stay was short (the railroad agreed to hold the train for only 30 minutes), and the team continued on to Portland with the governor and his wife in tow for a banquet hosted by city fathers. The OSC team finally arrived home at 10 p.m., where they were greeted by “a bedlam of whistles, bells and cheers as the cars rolled to a stop in a mass of yelling students,” the largest rally ever staged by the student body and townspeople of Corvallis.
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