Bill Hargiss Leaves Long Shadow
by Robert Eckland Editorial in The Emporia Gazette

     Emerson said, "All history is but the lengthened shadow of great men." If true, then the history of Emporia State University would include few men who cast longer shadows than did Homer W. "Bill" Hargiss. He was a former student, athlete, and coach, and a lifetime staunch supporter of the university. He died Sunday at the age of 91.
     Bill Hargiss was born in 1887 on a farm three miles west of Cherokee in Crawford County. He went to high school in Beulah, a fading town five miles south of Girard, and then came to what was then the Kansas Normal School in Emporia in 1905.
     A look at his schedule when he was a 21-year-old senior would be enough to scare most students away from school. His senior year was his second as captain of the football team: his second as captain of the track team; and his second as captain of the basketball team. He was on the baseball team, the boxing and wrestling teams, he sang in the glee club, and he was working his way through school waiting on tables at a boarding club for his meals and earning money by delivering laundry.
     In spite of his busy schedule, Bill Hargiss had become one of the best fullbacks in the history of the school. It was also the year that he met the girl who was destined to become Mrs. Homer W. Hargiss, Vera Strickler, a coed from Solomon.
     "She had transferred to Emporia from Liberty College in Missouri that year,- Hargiss had related.
     The first job after college for Bill Hargiss was coaching and teaching at Marion. His assignments there included coaching all sports, including the girls' basketball team, as well as teaching history and math. All his teams came through that year with winning records. The following year he went to the College of Emporia, where he coached all sports. He was at C. of E. for three "pretty good years," as he expressed it.
     Hargiss then moved to the University of Kansas as an assistant coach in basketball and track, with the understanding that he would take over football the next year. But there was some confusion on policy matters in the athletic department and he learned that he wouldn't be coaching football, so in the summer of 1914 he got the opportunity to return to his alma mater, an opportunity that was greeted with glee at the Normal in Emporia.
     Before this, he had found his way to Halstead where a Miss Strickler was teaching music in the high school, and convinced her that she should give up teaching to become Mrs. Hargiss.
Football Teams Thrive
     His coaching years at the Normal were good ones. In his first year at Emporia, 1914, his team won six games and lost one. In 1915 and 1916 he had conference championship teams; the 1915 team winning 5, losing 2, and tying 2; the 1916 team had a 6-3-1 record. The 1917 team came up with a 5-3-1 record, but that year Hargiss departed for a coaching job at Oregon State in Corvallis. He was gone for just two years, however, before he returned to Emporia. The news at the Normal that "Hargiss is coming back" brought a revival of football spirit to the campus.
     Hargiss stayed for eight years at Emporia this time and in that span of time the Kansas Normal became the Kansas State Teachers College. Those years included some of the finest football in the history of the school. In that period there was just one losing season, 1924, when the team had a 34-2 record. The next years were years of quick resurgence however. The 1925 team reversed the won-lost column for a 4-3-1 record. The next two years were golden ones, with 1926 producing a perfect 7-0 season, and 1927 a 7-0-1 record.
     The 1926 team set marks that have never been duplicated. The 1926 Yellowjackets, as the team was called at that time, won the Kansas Conference championship, were undefeated and untied, their goal line was never crossed, scored 149 points to their opponents' 3, beat one of the strongest C. of E. teams in that school's history, placed six men on the all-conference team, and placed two men on the all-state team.
     While at Emporia from 1920-27 Hargiss also coached track and produced some outstanding teams. His track teams won seven state track championships during his two coaching periods at Emporia.
     In 1928 Bill Hargiss went to the University of Kansas as football and track coach, and he remained at K.U. for 16 years. He gave up the football coaching job in 1932, but remained as track coach, freshman coach and scout until 1943 when he went into the armed forces as a recreation director. He coached some outstanding athletes in his stint at KU, including Glenn Cunningham, the great miler who held the world's record for a number of years, and Jim Bausch, who broke a record in winning the decathlon in the Olympic Games in 1932.
Hargiss Innovations
     Hargiss brought some innovations to the game of football during his years also. He was the first coach to use the huddle. a familiar part of football now; he was the first to run the guards as interference, and he used the T-formation for many years.
     After the war Hargiss returned to Kansas but not to coach, except for a brief stint in 1960 when he was asked by the Air Force to coach selected personnel in track for the Olympics. He was in the real estate business in Topeka for some years and from 1952 to 1962 was executive secretary to the State Athletic Commission.
     Bill Hargiss retired in the early 1960's, but his was an active retirement. He developed an interest in painting, worked in wood with power tools, played golf, traveled, and above all he retained an active interest in sports and was a familiar figure at Homecoming time at Emporia State.
     Bill Hargiss' picture hangs in the Kansas Athletic Hall of Fame of which he is a charter member. Among the pictures hanging along with his are four Kansas boys whom he coached: John Kuck of Emporia State who held the world's shot put record and won a gold medal in the 1928 Olympics; Jim Bausch of KU, all-America football player and world's record holder in the decathlon; Glenn Cunningham of KU, who held the world's record in the mile; and Arthur Schabinger of the College of Emporia, whom Hargiss considered one of the greatest quarterbacks ever produced in Kansas.
     Several scholarships in Bill Hargiss' name are offered to athletes at Emporia State University on an annual basis. On the new Physical Education Building at Emporia State is a plaque that reads: This building stands in tribute to H. W. "Bill" Hargiss.
     His wife Vera died in 1955, but he is survived by two daughters, Dr. Genevieve Hargiss, who has retired from teaching at KU and with whom he lived at the time of his death; and Mrs. Shirley Oberheide, a teacher in St. Louis, Mo.; a son, Willard Clarke Hargiss of Pittsburgh, Pa.; six grandchildren; a sister, Vetra Beringer of Salina; and a brother, Meade Hargiss of Sun City, Calif.