1953

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1953 in Clemson history

Notable Alumni

  • Dr. Louis Henry receives his degree from Clemson.


  • The restoration of the Hanover House is aided by the Spartanburg Committee of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America starting this year.
  • The Clemson Lodge No. 254, A.F.M., erects their Masonic Temple at what is now 327 College Avenue in Clemson.
  • April 13: British author Ian Fleming publishes Casino Royale, the first novel featuring secret agent James Bond, 007.
  • May 8: The Atlantic Coast Conference is founded, at the Sedgefield Inn near Greensboro, N.C., with seven charter membersĀ : Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina and Wake Forest. The seven schools withdraw from the Southern Conference early that morning, during the Southern Conference's annual spring meeting.
  • May 19: Future Clemson head basketball coach Oliver Purnell is born in Berlin, Maryland.
  • June 14: The seven charter members meet in Raleigh, N.C., where a set of bylaws is adopted and they take the official name of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
  • June 17: The final day that steam locomotives are operated in regular duty by the Southern Railway. Last steam-powered freight run arrives in Chattanooga, Tennessee behind Heavy Mikado No. 6330 and the fires are dropped for the final time since Christmas Day, 1830, when the "Best Friend of Charleston" made its first run on the South Carolina Canal & Railroad Company.
  • July 27: An armistace is signed in the Korean War.
  • September 5: WAIM-TV, channel 40, Anderson, signs on. It was the fourth television station in South Carolina and the first west of Columbia. The station was owned by Wilton E. Hall, publisher of the Anderson Independent and Daily Mail newspapers, along with WAIM-AM 1230. The callsign stood for Anderson Independent-Mail. It was a CBS station with secondary ABC affiliation. When CBS affiliate WSPA-TV signed on from Spartanburg in 1956, channel 40 became a primary ABC affiliate. However, until 1976, it cleared many CBS programs as well. It was sold to Harte-Hanks Communications in 1972. WAIM had a very weak signal that covered only Anderson and Pickens counties. Nearby Greenville could only receive a fringe signal. As a result, the station never thrived (only the revenues from WAIM-AM kept it afloat). During the week for about a year in the mid-1970s, the station would not sign on until 11 A.M. when ABC's afternoon shows began and would sign off 12 hours later when the network's primetime ended. The tiny bit of non-network programming during this time was mainly religious shows and travelogues. The station would eventually resume 7 A.M. sign-on but would sign off at Midnight even in the late-1970s. It is now WMYA-TV, channel 40, and is the MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station for western North and South Carolina and is licensed to Anderson, South Carolina. Its transmitter is located southwest of Fountain Inn, South Carolina. This location puts a Grade B signal to most of the North Carolina portion of the market. Owned by Cunningham Broadcasting, the station is operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group under a local marketing agreement (LMA). This makes WMYA a sister station to ABC affiliate WLOS. However, WMYA is effectively owned by Sinclair due to Cunningham's financial structure. The two stations share studios on Technology Drive south of Asheville, North Carolina.
  • September 19: Clemson defeats Presbyterian in home opener, 33-7, a night game.
  • September 26: Clemson ties Boston College, 14-14, in Fenway Park.
  • October 3: In the first Atlantic Coast Conference game that Clemson plays, number three-ranked Maryland blanks the Tigers, 0-20, in a night game in Memorial Stadium. The Terps will go 10-1, and win the National Championship - their only title through 2011.
  • October 9: The Tigers lose night game at Miami (Florida), 7-39. The field at the Orange Bowl was muddy and torn up due to recent torrential rains and a heavy high school schedule. United Press, "Clemson-Miami Meet In Muddy Orange Bowl", West Florida Daily Globe combined with The Okaloosa News-Journal, Crestview, Florida, Friday 9 October 1953, Volume 40, Number 168, page 4.
  • October 22: The Gamecocks defeat the the Tigers, 7-14, in Columbia.
  • October 31: Clemson blanks Wake Forest, 18-0, in Memorial Stadium.
  • November 7: The Tigers take on fourteenth-ranked Georgia Tech in Atlanta, lose, 7-20.
  • November 14: The Tigers play at the Citadel, win, 34-13.
  • November 21: Clemson is defeated by Alabama Polytechnic Institute (later Auburn), 19-45, in Memorial Stadium to complete a 3-5-1 season, 1-2 in conference for sixth place in the ACC.
  • December 4: ACC conference officials meet again at the Sedgefield Inn near Greensboro, N.C., and officially admit the University of Virginia.
  • December 15: Former Clemson President Henry Simms Hartzog dies in St. Louis, Missouri. (Kohl, Michael F., "A Youthful Administrator: Henry Simms Hartzog, 1893-1897", "Tradition: A History of the Presidency of Clemson University", McKale, Donald M., editor, Mercer University Press, Macon, Georgia, 1988, ISBN 0-86554-296-1, page 67.)
  • December 26: WFBC-TV, channel 4, signs on, South Carolina's fifth television station. It was owned by the Peace family and their News-Piedmont Publishing Company along with The Greenville News, Greenville Piedmont and WFBC radio (1330 AM, Greenville's first radio station, from May 20, 1933, now WYRD, and 93.7 FM). Call sign, a hold-over from a prior ownership, stood for "First Baptist Church". For its first two years of operation, its studios were located on Paris Mountain before moving to its current location on Rutherford Street in 1955. Norvin Duncan was the station's first news anchor, moving from the radio side. "Monty's Rascals" (started in 1960) was one of the station's popular children's shows, starring two channel 4 weathermen: Monty DuPuy (who left in 1978) and Stowe Hoyle as Mr. Doohickey (wearing a hat with an old Santa's beard). The show continued as "The Rascal's Clubhouse" after DuPuy's departure in 1978 and continued until 1982. Two years later, Hoyle retired. An earlier version of the program, "Kids Korral," was hosted by Johnny Wright. During the 1960s, personalities from channel 4 included Dave Partridge and Jim Phillips (Phillips died in 2003), better known to listeners of Clemson Tiger football radio broadcasts as "the voice of the Clemson Tigers". Locally televised color programming also began in February 1967. In 1968, News-Piedmont merged with Southern Broadcasting to form Multimedia, Inc., with WFBC-AM-FM-TV as the flagship stations. The callsign changed to WYFF ("We're Your Friend Four") in 1983 with a change in ownership.



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