By Jim Junot
Sports Information Director
Virginia Union University
The year was 1907. In Philadelphia, boxer Jack Johnson knocked out former heavyweight champion Bob Fitzsimmons in two rounds. In Chicago, a rookie manager named Rube Foster guided the Leland Giants to a record of 110 wins and only 10 losses before going on to found the Negro National League in 1920. Musician Cab Calloway and actors Katharine Hepburn and John Wayne were born.
And in Richmond, Va., a man named Hovey was about the change the face of football at Virginia Union University.
George Rice Hovey had been born on January 17, 1860 in Newton Center, Mass. The son of a Christian minister, Hovey was the oldest of four children born to Alvah Hovey and Augusta M. Rice Hovey.
He attended Brown University and became a standout baseball player as well as an excellent student. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown in 1882, and received the Foster Prize for Greek studies.
After teaching at Yale, he moved to Richmond, Va., in 1887 when he became a professor of Hebrew at the Richmond Theological Seminary. Ten years later, Hovey found himself as President of Wayland Seminary & College in Washington, D.C.
In the meantime, Hovey had met and married Clara K. Brewer in 1890, and welcomed a daughter, Ruth.
Although religion and theology were the prime components of the Hovey family, sports were always present.
Hovey had been an outstanding baseball player at Brown University, where he graduated in 1882. His brother, Frederick Hovey, won the U.S. Open Tennis Championship in 1895 and would go on to be inducted in the Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame in 1998.
As the 19th century came to a close, Hovey found himself as a professor of Theology and Philosophy at a small school for African Americans, Virginia Union University, in Richmond, Va., in 1899.
Little could Hovey have known that his imprint would still be visible at VUU more than 110 years later.
On May 17, 1904, the morning of Commencement, Dr. Malcolm MacVicar, the first president of Virginia Union, died suddenly at his residence in Richmond. Less than a year later, Hovey was appointed the second President of VUU.
Five years earlier, Virginia Union had formed a team to compete in a new sport that was sweeping the nation: football. Like most colleges of the time, VUU had no home field. The school played their home games at Broad Street Park, located between Allen and Lombardy streets in Richmond.
But being an African-American school in the city which was the capitol of the Confederacy only 50 years prior made it very difficult for VUU to get the required space. Virginia Union was third when it came to scheduling games, behind the University of Richmond and everybody else.
Hovey, who had been treasurer of the Brown baseball team decades earlier, took it upon himself to raise funds for Virginia Union. He raised more than $60,000 ($1.4 million in 2011 dollars) to erect Huntley Hall on the VUU campus. He then turned his attention to the football team.
But Hovey found that the donors willing to donate to the school for academic purposes balked at the thought of giving money for athletics, something that was considered by many at the time to be frivolous at an institute of higher learning.
But Hovey thought otherwise.
“Sports are for older boys and girls and for young men and women what play is for children,” Hovey wrote in his 1932 book “Christian Ethics for Daily Life.” “They are not to be condemned, for they are of real value both to mind and body.”
So Hovey put his own money up.
“In the Spring of 1907 eleven acres of land east of Lombardy Street were purchased at a cost of $8,483.55,” Miles Mark Fisher wrote in his book “A Century of Service to Education and Religion” in 1965. “This made it possible for the University to make provision for an expanded athletic program. Because of Dr. Hovey's interest in athletics this was later designated as Hovey Park and is referred to now as 'Hovey Field.'”
The donation of $8,483 was by no means a small amount. When adjusted for inflation, the land would be valued at just under $196,000 in 2011.
Hovey wouldn't stop there. Once the land was acquired, he then went about trying to raise money to put the field in playing order. Hovey wanted to do two things, put a fence around the field and charge admission for sporting events.
But going was slow. One year passed, then two. In desperation, Hovey enlisted the VUU football and baseball teams to help.
“At the suggestion of Dr. Hovey, the boys were out on a three-day campaign last spring and succeeded in getting many of the people of this city and Manchester to subscribe in building a fence around our new park,” the Union-Hartshorn Journal reported in November, 1909.
Although the football and baseball teams raised a substantial amount, it still wasn't enough to get the field in playable condition. So Hovey did something unheard of: He gave the University a voluntary personal loan.
“When the question of putting a board fence around our athletic field agitated in the minds of students for a number of years, the project seemed like a hopeless dream, until Dr. Hovey, by a voluntary personal loan, transmitted the dream into a tangible reality.” E.E. Smith wrote in the January, 1919, edition of the Union-Hartshorn Journal.
“Because of this interest by him as well as his efforts in the preceding year in soliciting funds to have a fence built around the park, the enclosed field was named 'Hovey Field,” Robert Daniels wrote in “Virginia Union University and Some of Her Achievements: 1899-1924.”
Hovey Park, which it was originally known, hosted it's first football game on October 30, 1909. Virginia Union battled Virginia Normal Institute (now Virginia State University) to a scoreless tie. The Panthers gained their first win when they beat Fredericksburg College 28-0 on November 25, 1909.
The earliest known time the term "Hovey Field" was used was in the November, 1913, Union-Hartshorn Journal when the game between VUU and Howard University was written about.
“The value of such sports is great,” Hovey wrote in “Christian Ethics for Daily Life.” “They give health and strength to the body, quickening the flow of blood, quieting restless nerves developing quickness and accuracy of movement, and giving rest to a weary brain.”
But by 1918, times had changed. Virginia Union was changing, and the school administration felt the University had to change with the times. Hovey, therefore, was asked to resign as VUU President.
“Dr. Hovey was not perfect; he did not please everyone as he went about his work,” wrote J.E. Jones in the January, 1919, edition of the Union-Hartshorn Journal. “He had his faults – he was a man. No one was more conscious of this than he.”
On December 26, 1918, VUU said good-bye to the man who had transformed the campus.
“Although smiles, pleasantry and a warmth of friendship prevailed, an under-current of sadness was felt,” wrote Kate E. Gale in the January, 1919, edition of the Union-Hartshorn Jounal.
Hovey was presented with a silver loving cup and a pair of gold cuff links.
“(The cuff links were) a symbol that we were linked to him by the enduring ties of friendship and service,” wrote Gale.
So Hovey moved on. From 1919 until 1930, Hovey was the Secretary for Education of the American Home Baptist Mission Society. From 1930 until his retirement in 1935, he was the Director of the National Ministers Institute.
Hovey died on January 17, 1943, in Upper Montclair, N.J., at the age of 83, having never returned to VUU. His wife, Clara, would pass on seven years later in 1950.
Hovey's closest living relative, grand-nephew George Bridges, is currently the President of Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash.
“I once saw Hovey Field from a distance,” he said, referring to a visit to Richmond, Va., which took place a few years back.
Over time, Hovey Field became the premier football stadium among Historically Black Colleges and Universities. In 1948 lights, a press box and additional seats were added to the Hovey Field at a cost of $35,000. In 1985, the stadium underwent extensive renovations. In 2001 a new irrigation system and sod were placed in the stadium.
With a seating capacity of over 10,000 seats, Hovey Field is the largest football stadium in the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association and the second largest stadium in Richmond.
Over the years, every VUU football player has called Hovey Field home, including such greats as Andre Braxton, Fred “Cannonball” Cooper and Carl Wright. With 103 years of continuous service, Hovey Field is the second-oldest college football stadium in operation, second only to Harvard Stadium.
The stadium has been the home of 11 Virginia Union CIAA Championship Teams, and two VUU National Champion teams.
And for over a century, Hovey Field has stood as a silent monument to a man who believed.
NOTE: The University of Pennsylvania's home field, Franklin Field, opened in 1895 and is deemed by the NCAA as being the oldest football stadium still in use. However, the original Franklin Field was torn down and a new stadium built in it's place in 1922. Harvard and Virginia Union both recognize Harvard Stadium as being the oldest continuously operating college football stadium.
