Clyde Stinson

“Ordinary runners would have quit, but they were a bunch of champions”


Clyde Stinson ran on one of the strongest cross country teams the University of Maine ever had and, in addition, he was a highly successful high school track and cross country coach. A great role model for his boys, he trained right along with his team. His boys from Houlton won the National Interscholastic Cross Country Championship in 1932. It is understandable why Stinson and his team of 1932 have been enshrined forever in the hearts of Houlton townfolk.

Stinson grew up on the coast of Maine in South Deer Isle. It’s said he never set foot on the mainland until he went to high school. At the University of Maine at Orono, Stinson found a niche for himself in the university fieldhouse and on the cross country course. It was at this time that UMaine was blessed with running talent. Two of the school's greatest distance runners were there. Harry Richardson of Lee, and his teammate Bud Lindsay from Springfield, Massachusetts, would, during these four years, win three straight New England Cross Country Championships while also winning the national title at Van Cortland Park in New York in 1929. They did this all while tying for first place.

But if it had not been for Stinson and a few other good runners, UMaine would never have won three straight New England Cross Country Championships, two New England track championships, and placed second in the nationals.

Stinson recalled his national championship Houlton high school team in a speech he gave to the Rotary Club in Houlton later in his life. "I'll start off by saying that the Houlton High School cross country team did win the National Championship at Newark, N.J. on - Thanksgiving Morning, November 24, 1932…I knew for sure that future prospects looked very good when, in a track meet at Caribou during the spring of 1931, seven Houlton boys tied for first in the mile run. The next fall, Houlton surprised everyone downstate by winning the state meet by a very wide margin. We placed five runners among the first 12 finishers and Frank Sherwood came in first, breaking the record.

“We kept running all winter and all spring. The next fall, the fall of 1932, the team started off at the MCI Interscholastic run in competition with 10 downstate teams and put five men in the first six. The only one not wearing the black and white jersey was Frank Sherwood of Houlton, running for Higgins C.I. He placed second. Garald Wiggins had beaten him out for the first time.

“Later in the season, they ran the Maine freshmen at Orono, and five Houlton runners came in hand-in-hand for first place. The 6th man was also a Houlton runner. In the state meet, Houlton placed six men in the first 10 to dominate that race. All the rest of the state just placed four men among our six. No other school had more than one star among them. Ted Curtis. the faculty manager of athletics, labeled the Houlton High School team ‘the best high school cross country team ever developed in the state of Maine.’

"The boys and I were beginning to think of bigger and bigger things. I read the results of the two big meets in New York State in the New York Times. A team from Nott Terrace H.S. of Schenectady, N.Y. was running away with the Columbia University Interscholastics where over 300 boys competed. They had won all of the big meets in that area and were considered invincible. I studied the positions in which they finished and figured that we might place second in the National Meet that was to be held in Newark. N.J. on Thanksgiving Day.

The more I studied the results of the big meets, the more I began to believe that we might win the meet. I told the boys the positions that they would have to take for us to win. Then I went to Mr. Lambert and told him that we would like to compete in the national competition. He was quite strongly against us going. He said that there were some very strong teams there and that we didn't stand a chance of placing in such competition.

Money was scarce then and the school couldn't help us any financially. So I borrowed $25 from Charles Wood and asked the boys to chip in some, and I managed to pay the rest of the expenses for the trip. No one other than ourselves thought that we could win the National Championship. We thought that we were going to either take first or second. Well, you all know the results. It was the biggest thrill that I ever got in my life when the official results were announced and we took home the big three-foot-tall trophy to keep for one year.

The following Monday, the team and I were guests at the Rotary Club at the Monday noon meal. After the meal, the Houlton High School held a parade through town, followed by the team, the Rotary Club members and others. The parade ended at the high school where a large reception was held. The president of every organization and club in town spoke in a special assembly in tribute to the team. The student body was given the rest of the day off.

A couple of things happened that made the boys victory all the more remarkable. Two weeks before the big event, Roy Gartley, who had placed second earlier in the state meet, was sick in bed with the flu. He was up and running again in a week, but his weakness accounted for him placing 32nd instead of among the first five positions. Another incident in the race itself almost cost us the victory. In the congestion and confusion at the start of the race, someone stepped on Fred Murphy's heel, badly spiking him and ripping off his shoe. Fred ran the whole 2.5 miles on one shoe and with a bloody heel. Ordinary runners would have quit, but they were a bunch of champions. They never quit."

When Stinson graduated from UMaine he found a job in Houlton teaching chemistry and physics. At that time his future wife, Mildred, was a sophomore at Houlton High. A year after she graduated, they got married.
Harry Richardson was coaching track and cross country in Caribou while Stinson was coaching at Houlton. "They were rivals, yet they were friends," said his wife. Houlton took state team honors in cross country from 1931 through 1933, as well as in 1935, 1937, 1939, and 1953. In addition to the memorable year of 1932, Stinson coached a number of individual state cross country champions. Among them were: Frank Sherwood, 1931; Ralph Carpenter, 1935; Sterling Hall, 1939; Paul Miller, 1946; and Joe Grant, 1964 and 1965.

In 1945, he got a job in Old Town "but absolutely hated it," said his wife, Then, the teacher who was hired to take Stinson's place in Houlton found another job, and Stinson was asked if he wanted to return. He did, and stayed 10 years. In 1955, he took a teaching job in New Jersey where he taught seven years. But once again, Houlton needed a chemistry teacher, called Stinson, and he returned, retiring there in 1962.

When Stinson's 1932 team won the nationals, they had brought home a big trophy which they were allowed to keep for one year. If they ever won the nationals three years they were allowed to keep it. But, of course, they didn't. So one year Coach Stinson was so bothered by the fact that the school did not have a permanent trophy in remembrance of the national championship, "he bought one with seven runners on it, and a big one, to give to them to put in the cabinet," his wife remembers.