Bluford Library Archives – Lonnie P. Byarm, Sr. – A&T’s First Homecoming Championship Coach
Today it is hard to imagine a time when the Blue and Gold Aggie Football team weren’t known as the fierce “Bulldogs.” Or a time when there weren’t spectacular Homecoming games that were the talk of the Triad, or the nation. Up until a century ago, we weren’t in a major sports conference. Yet by 1930, the Aggies were a championship team with headline-making Homecoming games. How did this happen in just a few years?
All of those changes took place during the coaching tenure of Lonnie P. Byarm Sr. ‘1911. One of Aggieland’s greatest coaches, Byarm (1889-1955) instructed students in basketball, football, and baseball while also teaching as a professor of engineering and mechanics. During World War I from 1917 – 1919, Sgt. Byarm was one of five Aggie faculty members who served overseas in France. A 1914 football team photo taken by student photographer Alfred Mosby, suggests that at one time faculty and staff like Byarm may have played games along with students. In some histories he was the first A&T faculty able to coach full time, beginning in 1923.
To enrich the team, Byarm attended football training sessions each summer that was led by some of America’s most legendary football coaches. In the summer of 1929, he studied under the Knute Rockne. He also received training from Glenn “Pop” Warner at Stanford University in California, Hugo Bezdik while he taught at Penn State, and Bob Zupke a football legend of Illinois.
The results of these trainings brought about major changes in the plays of the A&T Aggies. Former rivals like Bennett College (when males were enrolled) would defeat our team with “0” scores. By 1924 they were being “trounced” by the Aggies in the old Bennett vs. A&T Thanksgiving Day classic of 1924. In the same season, neither A&T or Howard University were able to score a single point in a “surprise” game in October 1924.
That December, A&T was admitted to the Colored (later Central) Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA). The A&T Aggies played their first full season in the CIAA in 1925. During this time HBCUs were beginning to embrace the football-based Homecoming traditions that were growing at other universities. The earliest known homecoming at an HBCU took place at Morehouse College in 1924. In most A&T histories, our first Homecoming is said to have taken place in 1926. Recent research by faculty and staff in the F. D. Bluford Library uncovered a 1925 football schedule with a “Home Coming” game scheduled for November 07, 1925. In that game against the St. Paul College Tigers, they won by just one point at 14-13.
There were at least three home games for the 1926 season, and it is not clear which one was the Homecoming game. The most famous of those home games was the October 30 against Virginia Union that may have earned A&T the nickname of the “Bulldogs.” According to legend a game referee was seriously injured by a loose Bulldog that belonged to an Aggie veteran. Home games for the 1926 season were played at “Dudley Field”, the campus grounds where the Holland Bowl, Williams Cafeteria and the Fort IRC Building stand today.
Outstanding among our first Homecoming games was the September 30, 1927 bout against the Lincoln University Lions. This was our first Homecoming game in the Greensboro War Memorial Stadium. Rivals for years, “the Powerful A&T Machine” didn’t just “wallop” the Lincoln Lions at 20-0 under the “scorching September Sun”, but also were undefeated the entire season. A&T College emerged as the 1927 CIAA Championship Team. Coach Byarm became our first championship coach, and the first of one of only three A&T head football coaches with an undefeated season.
As the new champions, there was tremendous anticipation for Homecoming in the 1928 season. The scheduled Homecoming game on October 06, 1928 pitted the “Byarm Boys” of A&T against the “sons of Booker T. Washington” from Tuskegee University. Prof. J. A. Grimes made special arrangements to accommodate the Tuskegee Special, a passenger train full of players and spectators from Alabama. Grimes is an overlooked figure whose contributions to campus life and Homecoming need more research. He was a professor of history and math at A&T since 1920 and a vice-president of the CIAA from 1928-1930. A&T and Tuskegee played to a 7-7 tied game.
Accounts of the 1929 Homecoming vividly describe the “blue, gold, and grey” uniforms of our team, and a huge crowd of cheerleaders, alumni, and more at the big game. We lost to Bluefield State, 06-19, but the “Gold Ol’ Aggie Spirit” never loses. Also, as shared before, this was the earliest known homecoming with a musical guest, “Smilin’ Billy Steward and his Celery City Serenaders”, and a homecoming ball.
After a 20-year career at A&T, Byarm began coaching at Johnson C. Smith University in 1930. In his last few years at A&T he was honored with a golden football and several other prizes from A&T.
Coach Byarm passed away in 1955 and was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. His son L. P. Byarm Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps as an Aggie, a veteran of World War II, and as an athletic director for Greensboro Public Schools.
Information for this story comes from various sports accounts in historically Black newspapers. Also consulted were the writings of the great Aggie historians Dr. Albert T. Spruill and Evelyn Butler, and materials in our C.I.A.A. Football collections. Archives and Special Collections keeps Homecoming history boxes. For more information about this story, or if anyone knows the whereabouts of Coach Byarm’s sports memorabilia, please contact libraryarchives@ncat.edu.
