A Veteran Squad

Beattie Feathers’ 1946 football team at NC State stands out in the university’s annals as the first Wolfpack team to play in a bowl game. The eight-win squad lost the Gator Bowl to Oklahoma, 34–13, on New Year’s Day. But the team also remains memorable for a roster largely comprised of men who had just returned from World War II, something that was happening at colleges around the country. “That era was the greatest talent glut in college football history,” says Kent Stephens, historian and curator at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta, Ga. “You had these 18- and 20-year-old kids. But you also had these older guys coming back from war who had fought.” Many of NC State’s men had their collegiate lives at NC State interrupted in the midst of the war and traded in their red and white jerseys, socials and textiles homework for Army fatigues, basic training and maps of the European front. Here are some of those men who served in World War II and came home to play for the Wolfpack.

John Wagoner ’47 played football in 1946 after three years away at war. When he was drafted as a U.S. Army infantryman, Wagoner’s animal production studies and career as a standout guard on the Wolfpack’s defensive line were interrupted. He had stops at Fort Bragg, N.C., and Camp Wolters, Texas, before ending up at Fort Benning, Ga., as a physical training instructor at the infantry training school during the war. According to a 2017 obituary, at the war’s end, Wagoner served with the Army’s grave registration units, which were responsible for locating the graves of U.S. servicemen who had been shot down over Europe and returning their bodies to U.S. soil for burial. But determined to pick up where he left off, Wagoner returned to Raleigh in time to be a force on the team’s “hard-charging line,” as the Agromeck read.

After graduation, Wagoner made his career farming crops, cattle and Christmas trees in Gibsonville, N.C. But every fall from 1948–1955, he left his Wagwood Farms to head north, where he was an all-Canadian player for the Ottawa Rough Riders and the British Columbia [then the Vancouver] Lions in the Canadian Football League. “John’s been at Ottawa so many seasons they don’t even rank him as an American player (on which each club has a limit),” read a 1952 Greensboro Daily News clipping. “They call him a Canadian.”

Fred Wagoner ’47, John’s twin brother, left NC State in April 1943 to join the Army. He moved around for the better part of a year, from Camp Croft, S.C., to New York before ending up in Camp Carson, Colo. He trained as a combat engineer and eventually served in northern France and Germany with the 104th Infantry Division’s 329th Engineer Battalion. His unit’s name was the Timberwolves. (“NOTHING IN HELL DID STOP THE TIMBERWOLVES,” read a map detailing the battalion’s trek across Europe during the war.)

After he returned to his other Wolfpack and graduated from NC State, Wagoner worked as a 4-H agent for 30 years.

Curt Ramsey ’49 captained the 1946 squad along with Al Phillips ’48. At first Ramsey’s career as an NC State tackle was in doubt after he broke his leg in the freshman game against Wake Forest in 1938. The Crumpler, W.Va., native took a year off of football and rehabbed the injury by playing baseball, and was ready to resume his spot on the defensive line. But in 1940, the sophomore textiles major left NC State for the Army. By 1946, he was back at NC State, once again playing football.

William Stanton ’49, ’63 MS came to NC State in 1941 from Rowland, N.C. He eschewed football due to his size — he was 5 feet, 11 inches tall and weighed 170 pounds, according to a retrospective on Stanton in a 1971 football game program. Instead, he played baseball for the Wolfpack until he entered the Army in 1943. But something about Stanton was different when he returned. “Military service apparently agreed with Stanton,” the program read. “Despite participating in several battle campaigns, including the Battle of the Bulge, he gained 35 pounds and grew to a solid 6-2 in height.” Feathers awarded Stanton a scholarship after only a few weeks of practice. Like John Wagoner, Stanton took his football prowess to the Canadian Football League, starring for the Ottawa Rough Riders and winning the league’s Grey Cup title in 1951. He returned to NC State in the late 1950s as a forestry professor.

James Rees ’49 began his collegiate career in Columbus, Ohio, playing tackle at Ohio State for the 1941 and 1942 seasons. His coach? The legendary Paul Brown, who would go on to become the head coach of the Cleveland Browns, named after him. Rees, who was from Greenville, N.C., also left Ohio State, albeit for a reason other than football. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy. When he returned from service, he found a home on the Wolfpack’s line, earned his degree in soil science and eventually worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

George Blomquist ’49 also came to NC State after beginning his studies at another college — Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas — and serving in the Navy during World War II. A favorite target for all-conference back Howard “Touchdown” Turner ’49 to throw to out of the backfield, Blomquist was a dependable receiver on NC State’s Gator Bowl squad. He played both sides of the ball, as many players did at that time. After graduating, he played a season with the Charlotte Clippers, a minor league football franchise, before beginning a long career as a textiles executive.