Thursday, August 12, 2010
John Mims made an unlikely discovery of a photograph of the 1924 Mustangs
men's basketball team at an antiques and collectables show in Phoenix, Ariz. and recently
visited The University of Western Ontario to find out more about the players and team.
For On-line article Click Here
John Mims had no idea where London, Ont., was, nor had he heard of The University of Western Ontario. But for approximately 25 years, he unknowingly harboured a piece of Western's athletic history in his home.
“I fell in love with this picture as soon as I saw it,” says Mims, who paid his first visit to the university on Monday, Aug. 9. The Albuquerque, N.M., resident dropped by Thames Hall to meet with Ted Hessel (BA ’58), curator of the J.P. Metras Sports Museum at Alumni Hall.
John Mims made an unlikely discovery of a photograph of the 1924 Mustangs men's basketball team at an antiques and collectables show in Phoenix, Ariz. and recently visited The University of Western Ontario to find out more about the players and team.
Mims wanted answers to a mystery that has been hanging on his wall for years.
Around 1985, Mims and his wife, Mary, visited an antiques and collectables show in Phoenix, Ariz., and purchased a framed black-and-white photograph of a basketball team for $10. Written in white ink on the matting is “U. of W. O. Basketball Team, Intermediate Intercollegiate Champions, Runners-Up in S.O.B.A.”
Having never visited the area, Mims did not recognize the university referred to in the inscription. At a time before Google became the go-to search engine for finding out worldly facts, Mims turned to Webster’s Dictionary to identify the initials.
“I saw ‘U. of W. O.’ and didn’t know what it meant,” he says, finding Western among a list of universities at the back of the dictionary.
He considers himself an amateur historian and loved the idea of unraveling the story behind his prized photograph.
Now both retired and travelling in the area, Mims and his wife decided to venture to the university to find out more about the team and the date of the photograph.
A stamp on the backside says it was framed in Galt, Ont., which is now part of Cambridge, Ont.
“I had fantasies of meeting relatives of some of these players,” he says. “I wondered what these guys went on to do; why they played. I’ve been taking this step-by-step and this was the culmination of the efforts.”
“It was nice because it was a dream he had and we got to do it,” adds Mary, admitting she wondered about the source of her husband’s fascination with the photograph.
“It was special to him,” she says with a smile.
The image of nine basketball players in uniform, which he later discovered was taken in 1924, reminds Mims of a simpler time.
“Am I nostalgic for a time like that? Yes,” he says. “There was a certain look of a team here that I always admired.”
Mims also played basketball in high school.
Part of the appeal of the photograph was the names identifying the players written in ink below the image.
Shortly into their visit, Hessel found the yearbook from 1924, which contains an exact replica of photograph. Through this discovery, Mims dated his antique find.
The names of the players printed on the matting also mirrored those in the yearbook. Some of the players were also identified in the 1922 and 1923 yearbooks.
Reconnecting pieces of Western’s athletic history with the university is “the kind of thing we are trying to do,” Hessel says of the museum. “It is almost just as exciting for me as it is for him.”
Hessel shared information about the Mustangs with Mims and helped make the yearbook discovery. He hopes a copy of the image will be made available in the museum.
The unlikely find is “one of those things that is exciting,” adds Hessel, noting it is uncertain whom the photograph originally belonged to.
No comments:
Post a Comment