Bradbury Robinson
Bradbury Norton Robinson Jr. was a pioneering American football player, physician, nutritionist, conservationist and local politician. He played college football at the University of Wisconsin in 1903 and at Saint Louis University from 1904 to 1907. In 1904, through personal connections to Wisconsin governor Robert M. La Follette, Sr. and his wife, Belle Case, Robinson learned of calls for reforms to the game of football from President Theodore Roosevelt, and began to develop tactics for passing. After moving to Saint Louis University, Robinson threw the first legal forward pass in the history of American football on September 5, 1906, at a game at Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He became the sport's first triple threat man, excelling at running, passing, and kicking. He was also a member of St. Louis' "Olympic World's Champions" football team in 1904.
Robinson graduated from Saint Louis University in 1908 with a medical degree and practiced as a surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
In World War I, he was commissioned a captain of infantry in the U.S. Army, arriving in France in 1918 where he became an instructor in the use of the newly developed tank, later serving as a front line infantry officer in the last ten days of the war.
He returned to France after the war to study advanced medical techniques at the University of Bordeaux. In the early 1920s, he oversaw the medical screening of immigrants while serving on the European staff of Hugh S. Cumming, Surgeon General of the United States.
He returned to the United States in 1926 and practiced medicine in St. Louis, Michigan, where he was twice elected the city's mayor.
In the 1940s, Robinson was among the first to warn against the dangers of DDT use in agriculture.
Early life
After Robinson's birth in Bellevue, Ohio and while still a toddler, his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri where Robinson's father, Bradbury Norton Robinson, became general baggage agent for the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad. The senior Robinson spent most of his adult life working for railroads. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, he served one year as a sergeant in Company C of the 6th Massachusetts Infantry at the opening of the Civil War. During the Baltimore Riot of April 19, 1861, one week after Fort Sumter, the 6th Massachusetts became the first Union unit to take casualties in action. After his discharge, he moved his family to Missouri in 1862 to participate in the construction of the Missouri Pacific Railroad from St. Louis to Kansas City.The younger Robinson was three years old when the family moved again in 1887 to Baraboo, Wisconsin, to be near his mother's family. Amelia Isabella was born in London, England and moved with her parents to the Baraboo area in 1878. She married the senior Robinson at her parents' farm in Merrimack, Wisconsin, some 11 miles from Baraboo, in June 1881. Her husband served as Baraboo City Marshal from 1903 to 1904. The Marshal's office was the predecessor to the city's police department.
Brad Jr. and his sisters, Jennie and Nellie, grew up on the Robinsons' small farm across from the Sauk County Fairgrounds. He attended Baraboo public schools and graduated from high school in 1902. Robinson later joked that Baraboo was "made famous by the Ringling Brothers Circus... and myself." The Circus was founded the same year that Robinson was born.
He was a first cousin four times removed of Bradbury Robinson, who fought for the patriots at Concord in 1775. Generations of Robinson descendants have included males named "Bradbury" in honor of the Concord minuteman.
1903: Freshman "star" at Wisconsin
Robinson enrolled at the University of Wisconsin and played for the Badgers varsity team as a freshman in the 1903 season. His arrival was seen by a sports reporter at the time as something of a godsend. Writing on August 23, 1903, the unidentified journalist reported:... a temporary disappointment, the information that O'Brien, the best candidate for the place of Center Remp, had decided not to return to the university, but had accepted a place for $500 to coach the Appleton high school eleven. The disappointment was cured, however, by the announcement that Robinson, who weighs nearly 200 pounds, had resigned his place at the state insane asylum at Mendota and would enter the football squad in perfect trim, having systematically trained for the past six weeks.
In Robinson's first and only season at Madison, "the Cardinal team" under Arthur Hale Curtis went 6–3–1, suffering shut-out losses to rivals Minnesota and Michigan. Robinson did get a chance to shine in the Badgers' 87–0 defeat of Beloit on October 17, when he scored two touchdowns. A newspaperman wrote, "Robinson's star work seems to show second eleven is not far behind the first."
Spring and summer 1904: The origins of the forward pass
The political roots of the pass
In addition to the Ringling brothers and Robinson, another notable person from Baraboo, Wisconsin, was Belle Case. The suffragette and attorney was, according to The New York Times at the time of her death, "probably the least known yet most influential of all the American women who had to do with public affairs in this country". She taught high school in Baraboo before marrying future Wisconsin Congressman, Senator, Governor and Presidential candidate Robert M. La Follette. Belle La Follette played an active role in her husband's political career.In the spring of 1904, Robinson was summoned by Governor La Follette to the Executive Mansion, which was just a short walk from the U of W campus. In a February 5, 1946, interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Robert Morrison, Robinson recalled that the Governor's "wife was from my home town and our families were acquainted... So at the university football practices, where La Follette used to come occasionally, he would often stop to talk to me."
Even so, Robinson was puzzled by the Governor's invitation until, "he showed me a letter from Teddy Roosevelt. There had been a lot of injuries in football and a movement was afoot to abolish the game. Roosevelt wrote that he did not want it wiped out and he thought it was an excellent game for character building, so La Follette asked me 'what do you think can be done to spread the game out and soften it up a bit?'"
Writing in his memoirs, Robinson remembered suggesting "increasing the distance to be gained in a set number of downs, to develop the kicking angle and introducing some of the elements of basketball and English Rugby; with perhaps allowing the throwing of the ball forward."
Sometime later, Robinson "met with the Governor and he told me to develop handling and throwing the ball because he was sure that eventually there would be changes in the rules along that line."
Robinson learns to pass
It was in the preseason of 1904 that Robinson first completely recognized the potential of the pass. Robinson later wrote:... there came to the Wisconsin U squad a tall young Irishman from Chicago. His name was H.P. Savage, the same who later... became the National Commander of the American Legion and was known as "High Power" Savage. They were trying to develop me into a kicker at Wisconsin and H.P. generally teamed up with me to catch my punts. I noticed that he could throw my punts back almost as far as I could kick them. Here was the trick I must learn. I got H.P. to show me how he did it.
Twenty-five years later, Robinson told St. Louis Star-Times sports editor Sid Keener that Savage threw "the pigskin to his players with the ball revolving as it sailed through the air. "From then on," Robinson wrote in his memoirs, "my football hobby became forward passing or anyway passing the ball."
A short time after Savage instructed him in the art of throwing a spiral, Robinson got in a fight with the "school bully" and was dismissed from the Wisconsin football team. Robinson wrote that the incident occurred in the locker room after a practice in which the bully roughly blindsided a teammate. Robinson warned the miscreant not to repeat such unsportsmanlike play. The bully responded by sucker punching Robinson, who defended himself with enthusiasm.
At that moment, according to Robinson's memoirs, a coach arrived on the scene and incorrectly identified Robinson as the aggressor and dismissed him on the spot. His teammates later explained the situation to the coach, who withdrew the dismissal but refused to give Robinson the apology he demanded.
1904: Transfer to St. Louis, the Olympics and a perfect, unscored upon season
Absent the apology, as a matter of honor, Robinson chose to leave Wisconsin, enrolling as a medical student at the Jesuit Saint Louis University, where he played the 1904 season, although he sat out many games with a broken shoulder blade. More than half the St. Louis squad consisted of future medical doctors.Soon after arriving in St. Louis, Robinson met 31-year old sportswriter Ed Wray, beginning a professional friendship that would last for the rest of Robinson's life. Wray was sports editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat from 1904 to 1908, which encompassed all of Robinson's playing years. Wray left that post to rejoin the staff at the rival St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where he had worked as a sports reporter from 1900 to 1904. He remained at that paper as a sports editor and columnist until his retirement in 1955. As an eyewitness to what he considered football history, Wray wrote extensively about Robinson and the development of the forward pass, both contemporaneously and in retrospective columns published over the next four decades.
David C. Todd, an instructor at the SLU Medical Department, served as an official for most St. Louis area games of the period. He remembered that, "Robinson spoke to me about the pass the fall he joined St. Louis University." Wray described Todd as "a factor in St. Louis University athletic circles" who, along with SLU athletic director Father Pat Burke, set out to build up the football program at St. Louis in the early 20th century. In an interview with Wray, Todd remembered that Robinson, "came to me and told me he thought the forward pass was going to be a great asset. He told me that he had tried it and found he could throw the ball like he could a baseball. I spoke to Father Burke about it in the presence of one of your reporters, also named Burke, and he was interested."
St. Louis went 11–0 in 1904, outscoring its opponents 336 to 0 that year—including a win over Kentucky by the score of 5–0, the 17–0 victory over Missouri and a 51–0 defeat of Arkansas.
Some argue that St. Louis University won the Olympic gold medal in American football in 1904, with the sport being featured in the demonstration programme.
Both the third Olympic Games of the modern era and the World's Fair were held in St. Louis – and Blue and White games were played before Exposition crowds. The Spalding Athletic Almanac of 1905 offered this commentary:
The Department knew perfectly well that it would be unable to have an Olympic Foot Ball Championship, though it felt incumbent to advertise it. Owing to the conditions in American colleges it would be utterly impossible to have an Olympic foot ball championship decided. The only college that seemed absolutely willing to give up its financial interests to play for the World's Fair Championship was the St. Louis University and there is more apparently in this honor than appears in this report. There were many exhibition contests held in the Stadium under the auspices of the Department wherein teams from the St. Louis University and Washington University took part and competed against other teams from universities east and west of the Mississippi River. The Missouri–Purdue game was played in the Stadium on October 28... The Olympic College Foot Ball Championship was won by St. Louis University, St. Louis, Mo., by default.