Mum’s the word

Homecoming

Clear eyes. Full hearts.

Gigantic mums?

The Northeast Texas tradition of football mums has taken on a life of its own from its humble beginnings as a gesture between sweethearts to the hometown pride we see today.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association recognizes the first official homecoming game as 1911 at the University of Missouri. Baylor University, however, claims their first homecoming happened in 1910. In the 1936 edition of Baylor’s yearbook, a snapshot of homecoming queen Marguerite Joyce shows a large, live chrysanthemum pinned to her coat, as reported by the Texas Standard.

The ease of growing the mum in our region is what may have made it the perfect flower to start a football tradition. According to Smith County AgriLife Extension, the colorful perennial favors short days and long nights, which is perfect for a northeast Texas fall. In the early and mid-1930s during the great depression, the fall chrysanthemum blooms were beautiful and more importantly, easily available.

Although the Hopkins County Genealogical Society has yearbooks from as early as the 1910s from Sulphur Springs, Pickton and Saltillo, fall football traditions were piecemeal at best.

The tradition of football sweetheart started in Pickton first, judging by their yearbook, but mums were carried in a bouquet. The earliest mum pin in connection with fall football appears in Hopkins County in 1947, proudly worn on the lapels of Sulphur Springs football sweetheart Janell Brooks.

After that, mums were everywhere, as girls both wore them as pins and carried them in bouquets. 1954 is the first year the word Homecoming is used in both Pickton and Sulphur Springs, and two smiling young ladies are laden with mums.

In the early 1960s, mums went exclusively to pins. And because this is Texas, in the mid-1960s, the pins got bigger. A 1967 photo from the Wildcat yearbook shows homecoming queen Pat McGarity with a mum laden with acrylic ribbons that reaches from her shoulder to her waist — and a fashionable felt hat and minidress to boot.

As the years go on, the mums seem to get even bigger. By the mid-to-late 1980s, mums reached an almost impossible size. The Cat’s Paw 1992 shows queen Myndi Helm, whose mum takes up her entire body. Mum expert Crystal Spence of Danna’s & the Florist thinks the transition from live mums to silk mums happened in the late ‘70s to early ‘80s.

“I had a real one my freshman year, but after that I had a silk one,” Spence said. "The problem with the real ones was when you stood up on the bleachers to cheer, they’d get messed up.”

Spence now makes mums for others and in the past five or six years has seen an explosion in their popularity — and the outlandishness of the design. Rates for custom mums start at $35 with most in the $125 range. Rarely, Spence has seen some in the $300-plus range.

The craziest mums she’s seen, Spence says, are those that include “crazy colors, boas … basically the ones that get away from school colors.”

While sociologists may speculate about the importance of displaying social status or reciprocal gift-giving, Spence has a simple answer for why mums have become a key tradition in east Texas.

“I kept mine for years and years,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some people still had them. They’re special.”