42 Nebraskaland • May 2023
hat's the proper way to break ground for the new
home of the Cornhuskers? With a team and a plow, of
course!
University offi cials broke ground on Memorial
Stadium on April 26, 1923. An estimated thousand people
showed up to hear speeches and watch Chancellor Samuel
Avery ceremonially plow a furrow.
There was a recent precedent for this. A year earlier,
Governor Samuel McKelvie had plowed a furrow to break
ground for the new state capitol.
Naturally, these groundbreaking ceremonies were publicity
stunts, but they had a greater degree of authenticity than
modern-day groundbreakings in which executives don shiny
hardhats and turn over pre-dug dirt with golden shovels. Both
McKelvie and Avery had actual farming experience. McKelvie
was a farmer and cattleman who edited The Nebraska Farmer
before serving as governor. Avery's parents had farmed near
Crete when he was growing up, and he was a professor of
agricultural chemistry before becoming chancellor.
In the 1920s, driving a horse-drawn plow was a way of
demonstrating that both the capitol and the football stadium
were connected to lives of ordinary Nebraskans, and that the
state's leaders were proud of Nebraska's agricultural identity.
The construction of Memorial Stadium was a risky move.
The wooden bleachers of Nebraska Field were torn down to
make way, but it was not clear that the new stadium would
be fi nished in time for football season — or that fundraisers
would bring in enough money to pay the contractors. They
would have to do it without tax dollars.
Fundraising began in 1920 for a grand World War I
memorial that was to include a museum, stadium and
gymnasium. But the economy fell on hard times in the early
1920s. The legislature not only refused to fund the project,
but cut the university's operating budget. Meanwhile,
opposition mounted across the state as local groups and
American Legion chapters feared that fundraising for Lincoln
would make it that much harder to build their own local war
memorials.
No pressure here, freshmen! These signs adorned the
Temple building on the university campus, 1923.
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