About
that bourbon
When Wade Hampton
('62) cheered at North Texas from 1960
to 1961, he thought he was outsmarting Dean of Women Imogene Bentley,
who supervised the cheerleaders.
"My squad used to take a bottle of Hiram Walker bourbon,
wrap it up in a blanket and stuff it up in my megaphone so we could
have it on breaks," he says. "When everyone else yelled
through their megaphones, I only pretended to yell through mine."
The secret stash,
however, was discovered one football game. As the megaphones
were lined up on the sidelines and the cheerleaders
ran onto the field, "someone kicked my megaphone over, revealing
the bourbon," Hampton says.
Bentley was in the stands watching, along with William Woods,
the dean of men.
"I thought I was going to lose my cheerleader position," Hampton
says. "I was one of two Kappa Alpha fraternity members on
the squad, so my fraternity sent Dean Bentley red roses to apologize.
And she didn't kick me off."
Hampton, who calls
his cheerleading years "an incredible
time," says one member of his squad later became a sports
superstar – Sandra Palmer ('63), who had 19 victories
in the Ladies Professional Golf Tournament from 1964 to 1986 and
won the U.S. Women's Open in 1975.
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