Friday, November 29, 2013

TROPHY...

I’ve seen trophies in other people’s houses – you know, the shelf in the living room, the table in the hall, even the occasional glass case in the den stuffed to the brim with trophies and ribbons from high school and/or college sporting events – but in my family, trophies are put to better use...
 ...like this copper number, won by my grandfather (and three others) in 1907 at a Boston Athletic Association track meet: Holy Cross vs. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It was for the four-man relay race, won for M.I.T. by R.B. Todd, C.W. Gram, H.W. Blackburn and G.S. Gould, my grandfather.

The family lore suggests he was overly proud of this trophy. He lugged it around to various boarding houses in Boston, Providence and even Ohio where he worked on his first engineering projects during the few years between his MIT graduation and his marriage to my grandmother.
They settled in Providence, bought their first house.
And the trophy went with them.

My grandmother thought it was pretty ridiculous to put such stock in an athletic trophy. She would hide it in the attic; he would find it, polish it up, redisplay it someplace in their living room, where it would stay until she grew tired of its uselessness and hid it again.

This went on for years; their children – and even their grandchildren – knew about this routine!

When my mother died, I inherited the task of sorting through boxes of family stuff that she and my father had saved over the years: books and papers and photographs and diaries; old letters and army commissions and theater programs, etc.
And one of the things I found was the trophy, passed down to my father and tucked into a box for future generations.

I’m not that into trophies, frankly – like my grandmother, I think they’re pretty useless – but I am definitely into family memorabilia; I couldn’t bear to throw it out.

I’ll bet she’d approve of the ivy!


18 comments:

  1. You have given me an idea, Deb of what I can do with my trophies but they are somewhat smaller than the one you've shown,

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    1. I thought golf trophies were statues of men swinging clubs -- good luck with tucking some ivy into one of those little numbers!

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  2. What a marvelous idea with the ivy! I'll bet you've given several of us ideas about what we might do with some of our trophies. You are very sentimentally creative! Kudos!!

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    1. I've got a friend who has a trophy chock-a-block full of pencils and pens! That works, too! More ideas?

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  3. No trophies in our house, I finally convinced my husband to part with all his sports trophies when we downsized!

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    1. You're not alone, Jackie! I think trophies are one of the first things to go when we downsize; the next seems to be BOOKS (of which I had tons when I moved); toys...downsizing is tough, but worth it!

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  4. My dad has a huge collection of bowls trophies and he even has a 'trophy room' - the second toilet!! He has built a shelf up high that goes all around the room. I nearly took photos in there when I visited to post this week!

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    1. Now THAT would be a great ivy room -- all that German ivy, hanging down from his upper shelf!

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  5. Love the ivy. Newer plastic trophies just don't rate.

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  6. You're right -- and it's too hard to twine that ivy around a baseball player's ball and bat...

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  7. Have to agree with you about trophies. I liked the ones that could be used, even if they usually got broken and thrown out. I do like the use you have made of that old trophy.

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    1. The only thing I could think of was planting stuff in 'em. But my friend who uses one for pencils was pretty clever...any other possibilities?

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  8. Now THAT is a trophy I could live with.

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    1. The ONLY way I could live with it was to plant something (but then, that's my cure for all sorts of problems!).

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  9. I'm not so sure about the "clever" part, Pauleen; now I have to maintain the ivy!

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  10. Great idea. You've given me an idea of what I could do with some that I have tucked away.

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  11. I'm still searching for other uses...if you find one, let me know!

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