The Cemetery on East Field

One day after lunch when I was in fifth grade, in about 1962, Mr. Peter told his class that he had a surprise to show us. He led us our class and a couple other classes out of the school, and we all walked down Faculty Lane to the football stadium and then up onto East Field.

Earlier that day, some workers were digging for some reason on East Field, and they found some old coffins buried in the ground. The sensational news about this discovery then spread like wildfire and reached St. John's by lunchtime. Therefore Mr. Peter immediately organized this excursion to East Field so that we all could see the dug-up graves before they were removed to some more restful location.

I think that the bodies already had been removed from the coffins, but the coffins and some clothing still remained in the holes that had been dug up. We were told that some Nebraska pioneers apparently had been buried there about a hundred years previously, and now their little, long-disappeared cemetery had been discovered.

We students looked at the empty coffins and scraps of old clothing and pondered our own mortality. We too might eventually be buried, and then our own gravesites might eventually disappear and be re-discovered a century or two in the future. If Judgement Day did not come first!

My brother Steve wrote:

I recall the day when we St. John School students went up to where the new CTC dorms were being excavated to see the bones that were unearthed. I vividly recall the outline of the pine box casket, and that there was still a tuft of hair on the skull. The conclusion spoken of that day was that the site was an abandoned pioneer cemetery of some sort. My memory is that there were two caskets unearthed. Perhaps it was a farmstead family cemetery, but maybe the burials were made by pioneers passing through the area.

The haunting referred to at the link below suggests that the area was once an Indian burial ground. If that is true, my understanding is that Indians consider their burial grounds to be sacred places. If that is so in this case, then there might have been some difficult times in the area of the CTC campus when white people first started to appear in the area.

Now that I (Mike) have read Steve's memory, I too confirm that we could see a skull with some tufts of hair. I did remember that from the beginning, but I thought that they would not show us kids a dead body, so I decided that the bodies must have been removed before we kids came. But, Steve is right, we did see the dead bodies.

Steve provided this link to another website about haunted places, which says:

Concordia University-David DormLocated at 800 N. Columbia Ave. in Seward, Nebraska.

The History:

This is a Christian college that is affiliated with the Lutheran Church. It serves approximately 1500 students. It was founded in 1894 as Concordia Teacher's College. During World War I, the school was subject to some anti-German regards. Women were admitted to the college for the first time after World War I, but they had to live off-campus. Finally in 1932 they were permitted in the dining hall and then in 1941, the first women's dormitory was constructed.

David Dorm was purportedly built in the 1970's and bones were discovered at the building site, most likely those of Native Americans. The bones were turned over to researchers and were discovered to apparently date back to the 1700's. Permission was granted by the city of Seward, to continue building on the site, but all the remains discovered at the location had to be turned over.

The Haunting:

Electrical equipment will occasionally turn on or off without explanation.

Observations:

Native American burial grounds are often associated with reports of paranormal activity, as are colleges and universities. In fact, dormitories are the most likely location to be reported as a site of paranormal activity. The fact that David Dorm was built on an Indian burial ground definitely adds to the story and makes the claims of paranormal activity quite a bit more interesting.

Steve Sylwester Remembers -- Sports

I [Steve] remember:

Playing tackle football on the campus lawn between Link Library and the single tennis court across the street from the Becks and the Schwichs. I remember this because I broke my collarbone while playing. I had to wear a vest cast for a long time, but I still continued to play sports until the doctor finally very sternly warned me that he would have to repair my broken collarbone surgically if I did not allow it to heal.

CTC football and baseball practices on East Field. I spent endless afternoons watching CTC [Concordia Teachers College] sports practices. The football coaches finally let me shag punts for the punter to help, and I became quite good at catching punts as a result. The benefit of watching baseball practices was that occasionally you were rewarded with a broken bat. Of course, this was in the era of wooden bats at all levels of play. A CTC broken bat that was merely badly cracked could be nailed and screwed and glued and taped back into use as a prized sandlot bat.

Those CTC baseball bats that we taped were bats that you had to grow into. When we moved from Seward after my 8th grade year, I still had not grown into most of the bats I had squirreled away in the corner of our garage. I had a pretty good arsenal. Even choking up on some of those bats with skinny handles and big barrels was not enough.

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After Plainview and Fairlane filled up with houses, the kids on those blocks created a baseball field and football field as needed in the open field that separated the backyards between those two streets at that time. Sometimes our neighborhood played their neighborhood, and sometimes we just picked teams from those who showed up to play — and everyone got to play.

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If I carry any want-to-cry sad laments into today from those days, it is that I NEVER see sandlot games of any sort played by kids anywhere in Eugene, Oregon, where I live. Everything is organized with coaches, and all of the games have a multitude of parents watching and rooting for their children. No parents ever watched our sandlot games. Sometimes I see adults playing sandlot ball, but I NEVER see kids playing anything but organized play — even all of the practices are organized under the supervision of adult coaches. The kids today have no concept of even the simple skill of negotiating ground rules for a game based on how many people have showed up to play, and they have no experience self-officiating. It is easy to imagine that some kids would not know what to do if there was no adult present to umpire or referee a game.

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Of course, there were the Concordia Raiders cheers:

(The Tarzan Cheer)

Uh! Ungawa! The Raiders got the Powah!
Uh! Ungawa! The Raiders got the Powah!

Uh! Ungawa! The Raiders got the Powah!

Give me a C and a Raiders and a cha-cha-cha
Give me an O and a Raiders and a cha-cha-cha
Give me an N and a Raiders and a cha-cha-cha
Give me a C and a Raiders and a cha-cha-cha
Give me an O and a Raiders and a cha-cha-cha
Give me an R and a Raiders and a cha-cha-cha
Give me a D and a Raiders and a cha-cha-cha
Give me an I and a Raiders and a cha-cha-cha
Give me an A and a Raiders and a cha-cha-cha
What's that spell? CONCORDIA!
What's that spell? CONCORDIA!
What's that spell? CONCORDIA!

Go! Fight! Win!
Romp! Mangle! Disembowel!
Romp! Mangle! Disembowel!

(I cannot imagine that that was an approved cheer, but we yelled it)

(The Song Cheer)

On Concordia, On Concordia
Pep that team of yours
Fight Concordia, Fight Concordia
Til we win the game
Rah! Rah! Rah!

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Even today, after an excellent athletic play has just occurred in a sports game I am watching, I will sometimes blurt out:

Way to go, Russy baby!

With enthusiasm! That response was first yelled in the playing field between Plainview and Fairlane in response to an excellent play done by Russ Meinke, who is three years younger than me (Joel Klammer's age) and four years younger than his older brother Lance.

The great thing about the Faculty Lane sports ethic that infiltrated into all of the playing fields in the nearby neighborhoods was that the older kids actually worked hard to include the younger kids in the games, and endured with both patience and honest enthusiasm the learning of sports skills by the younger kids. There was always a moment of sincere, enthusiastic praise when a younger player made a good play.

For some unconscious reason that I cannot pinpoint any specific event to, I credit Jody for that constant inclusion of younger players. If someone else either deserves or shares credit for that Faculty Lane sports ethic, please identify that wonderful person so he/she can be rightly praised. Jody (and whomever) deserve(s) a standing ovation!

Geography

Faculty Lane ran along the north side of the core campus of Concordia College in Seward. The core campus occupied a square area that measured about 200 yards on each side. The front of the campus is Weller Hall, which faces Columbia Avenue.

There is a good map of the campus at this webpage, but I have not been able to embed it into this blog. In the meantime, we will make do with this aerial photograph:

Columbia Avenue is the street running vertically along the left edge of the image. The large building to the right of that street is Weller Hall, and it is the front of the campus. The sides of the campus are described as follows:

* Behind the campus, on the east side, lay a football field. (About two football fields could have fit along that side.) At the north-east corner stood an athletic building that had been built only a couple years before our arrival, perhaps in about 1958.

* Along the north side of the campus stretched Faculty Lane, a row of eight large houses. In the image, the prominent street running horizontally along the top of the image is East Hillcrest Drive. Faculty Lane is a crooked street a little lower, on the left side of the image. In the image, that crooked street runs into a large building, which is the college's Music Building. The area of that Music Building previously was occupied by four houses, which were removed in 1964.

* Along the west side stretched Columbia Avenue. At the intersection of Faculty Lane and Columbia Avenue, on the Columbia Avenue side of the street, stood St. John Elementary School. If you walked south from this school along Columbia Avenue there was a row of large houses, similar to the row of houses on Faculty Lane.

* Along the south side stretched College Avenue. Across that avenue stood a row of dormitories. I imagine that those dormitories had replaced a row of houses similar to those that still (in my time) stood along Faculty Lane and Columbia Avenue.

In 1960, Concordia College was at the northeast edge of Seward. Beyond the football field lay only farm fields. Beyond the athletic field there were three or four short streets with homes, but further was open country.

In this aerial photograph, the prominent street running horizontally all the way across and just a little below the image's center is Hillcrest Drive. (You can see the football field a little below Hillcrest Drive on the image's right side.) The image shows a large residential area in the top, right part of the image, above Hillcrest Drive. In 1960, most of that area was open countryside.

If you stood at the west end of Faculty Lane, across the street from St. John’s Elementary School and then walked north, you walked into a rural area after only one block. When we arrived in 1960, the Schlueter family lived there, a block away from the school, and they raised ponies on their property. They had a large barn and a corral for the ponies.

Place Campus Athletic

The athletic building was located across the street, east, from our home. That building had been built only a couple years before we arrive, so in about 1958. It contained basketball courts, a swimming pool and a weight-lifting room. We faculty kids could use these facilities. The swimming pool was open on Sunday afternoons for faculty families. Mr. Schwich and Mr. Meyer could open the building on holidays when it normally was supposed to be closed.

Next to the athletic building was a football field, surrounded by a running track. Next to the football field was a plateau, the so-called East Field, where there was a baseball field, some softball fields, and the area where the football teams practiced.

On the campus, near the cafeteria, there was a building with an old basketball court. We kids sometimes played basketball there, if the courts in the athletic building were not available.

Across the street from the first four, old houses on Faculty Lane were some tennis courts. I don't remember what the layout was when we arrived in 1960. I remember that there was an area (an old tennis court) surrounded by a lot of beautiful crabapple trees. In about 1962 this area was turned into new tennis courts, and the crabapple trees were removed. There were some old tennis courts that remained across from Faculty Lane House 3 (the Schwich house).

We kids could play tennis on these courts whenever they were available. I played there often and became a reasonably good player for my age.

Of course, St. John Elementary School also had a basketball court and a baseball field.

There were plenty of open spaces to play sports. We all had large back yards.

When we first arrived, we always played tackle football. The adults made us play flag football after a couple years, though.

Gene Meyer remembers:

The old tennis courts were across the street from Schwich’s, the new tennis courts were across from Griesse’s, where the Science Building is now. We used to roll down a grass hill by the new tennis courts. If we did play tennis, we tried to bomb the ball over the fence.

There was softball/baseball field to the west of the old tennis courts where the kids would play pick up games. Mike Mueller was the best athlete, by far, but Jody Schwich was second. She used to swing her arm around in a circle when she would talk.

I remember donating $1 (month’s allowance) to Danny Juergensen for a fund to build the new gym because he said there would be an indoor pool, which I thought would be pretty neat. I remember Mr. Schwich opening the original old gym on Sunday afternoons so we could jump on the trampolines.